Culips Community Update – February 2025

Hello, everybody, and welcome back to another QLips Community Update episode. My name's Andrew, and here I am joined by our Discord moderator, study guide writer. small group conversation class, leader, teacher, extraordinaire, Alina. Alina, how's it going? It's going not so great, I'm afraid, in terms of, you know, I'm not feeling 100%, but like, you know, it's all good.

I'm on the end, I'm sure. But yeah, here I am. I'm excited to record this update episode and talk all about our upcoming plans, ideas. Awesome. Well, thank you for joining me, Alina. Guys, you can obviously hear in her voice that she's a bit under the weather. And also I am a bit under the weather as well. Maybe you can hear in my voice.

we're here we're going to try and power through this episode and if it's a little bit on the shorter side please just understand that it's because we're feeling a little bit sick here

So everyone, our plan for this episode is we are going to give you some updates about what's going on in the Qloops community. I think many people who just listen to the podcast, maybe they don't really know what's happening so much over on our discord server and in our weekly classes and some of our other activities that we have for qlips members so we want to give you just an update about all of these cool things that are going on here at qlips a little bit behind the scenes that you

might not just pick up on if you only listen to the podcast. And Alina, we wanted to start off first with a review and we got this wonderful review and we're going to try and do this every month in our... Qlips community update episode we're going to choose one review or one really nice comment that we saw over the month on the discord server and just share it with everyone and Alina this

review that we're going to read right now was left by a user named Coco. Oh, hi, Coco. Helena, I think Coco comes to your classes, right? Your weekly speaking classes. Does she join? Yeah. She's very nice. You know, she's from Japan, but she is currently living in America. And yeah, it was really nice to chat with her. I think I've seen her two or three times so far. Excellent. Yeah. So.

Let me read Coco's review here for everyone because I just love this. This made my heart feel full and happy when I read this review. So here it is. It goes. I joined Q-Lips last month and have been loving the small group sessions ever since. Before that, I listened to the Q-Lips podcast for over six months and I had been curious about the small group sessions, especially since speaking was...

my biggest challenge but I hesitated to join because I wasn't sure if the schedule would work or if the conversations would be too advanced. Looking back, I wish I had joined sooner. People in the small group are from all over the world, so it's not just conversation practice, and it truly broadens your perspective. If you're on the fence, take the plunge. You won't regret it. So a very, very nice review, a glowing review from Coco. And she's been a great addition to our classes. For sure.

Yeah. Thank you so much, Coco. And we wanted to give you that special shout out. Thanks to your wonderful review. Thank you, Coco. All right. Next up on our schedule, Alina, is we are going to do...

A very fun activity, I think. I'm really excited for this. This is something new at Q-Lips. We're going to add a little element of fun and games into our community update episode here. What we're going to do is talk about our challenge. And Alina, you are the mastermind of these monthly challenges that we've been running on our Discord server. Of course, they're free for everybody to join. And we're going to put the link to join.

the Discord server in the description for this episode. So if you're curious about what the challenges are and how to join and how to participate after listening to this episode, just find the link in the description and follow the link. You can join and participate as well. But we have these monthly challenges. And Alina, we finished our first challenge in January. And, you know, January is a popular...

time of the year for starting new activities, right? Maybe starting a new hobby and English learning. or resolving to improve your english is a very big and popular new year's goal for many people so our january challenge was quite popular alina do you know Just maybe a guesstimate. How many people started the challenge at the start of the month? Ballpark figure, I don't know, about 25 people. I'd say maybe 30. Okay, 25 to 30 people. And then how many did we have?

At the end, how many champions? We're going to call them champions. How many people finished the challenge? It's 11 people. 11 people. So guys, what we're going to do is we are going to take... the names of the 11 people who finished the January challenge. And we're going to put all of those names on a spinning wheel. And I'm going to spin the wheel and we are going to choose one lucky person out of the people who finished the challenge.

And that lucky person is going to get, as a prize, a small Q-lips swag bag. Yay! I do have some Kulips stickers and I have some Kulips tote bags. So whoever the wheel selects as the winner, I will reach out to that person through our discord. And if you send me your address, then I will send you this.

Q-Lips Care package, the swag bag, prize pack, whatever you want to call it, I will send it to you in the mail just as a way to say thanks for participating in the January challenge. This is so exciting. Here we go. Let's spin the wheel and we'll see who our first prize pack winner is. That was a big spin. Alina, do you want to do the honors? Do you want to read the winner?

So the winner is Claudia. Congratulations. Yeah, congratulations, Claudia. You are our first official Qloops prize pack winner for completing the January challenge. So, Claudia, I'm going to reach out to you through our Discord. server. And if you send me your mailing address, then I will send you a little Kulips swag bag in the mail. So very exciting. Amazing. Congratulations, Claudia.

I think maybe Alina, people would also be curious and I am curious as well about next month's challenge. You know, it's a little bit late to start the February challenge. We're almost at the end of the month, but we're going to be starting.

fresh and new in March with a brand new challenge and I am all ears. I really want to know what the March challenge is all about. So would you mind introducing it to us? Sure. So I just would like to start with talking about how it came about, like the idea. I got the idea for this challenge. And so, yeah, it was just inspired by one of the Discord members.

Member's name is Patricia. Yes, so Patricia asked this question in the channel, you know, we have a designated channel where we ask all the questions about English, everything, you know, vocabulary, grammar. So at some point, maybe a couple months ago, she asked, could you tell me, you know, all the meanings of the verb get? Good luck. It's a good question. I'm not sure if it's possible.

So, of course, I shared some common meanings, but that kind of got me thinking, and I'm like, hmm, get is one of these verbs, you know, and I was also there, like, at some point, I was in the same boat, struggling with that verb, and being like, I see it everywhere. Why? How can you use the same verb in all these different contexts? And what does it mean? So it's confusing, for sure.

And tricky. And that's how I thought that that would be actually a great idea for our next challenge, where we could explore, of course, not all the meanings. That would be impossible. It would take a year, if not more, because I think... If I'm not mistaken, there are about 260 meanings of this verb. And I'm not sure that that is counting all the phrasal verbs and the idioms that include that verb.

But I don't want to scare anybody off here. Like, look, we're going to figure it out. We're going to focus on the basics, you know, the fundamentals, on the commonly used ones. So it's going to be good. It's going to be not so difficult, you know. The goal for our challenge, you know, for our next March challenge is to improve our vocabulary and fluency. So if we were focusing on grammar in February...

This time we're going to focus all on vocabulary and, you know, kind of learn to use this verb in different contexts and sound more natural using it. be more confident as well, because of course, you know, there's still some kind of insecurities around this verb, I'm sure. Even, you know, advanced learners struggle with this verb, just, you know, just to let you know everybody. So it's okay if you do. Yeah, and I think...

This is one of the things that can, especially for European speakers of European languages, like when I lived in Quebec, I was a teacher of English to many French native speakers, and they would use words. that were perfectly fine English words and English verbs to communicate their ideas, but often I noticed like, oh, okay. An English speaker, yeah, we understand this. We know what you're talking about, but instead we would use get. Like for example, maybe the...

French speaker would say I arrived at the airport at 10 a.m. And an English native speaker would say I got to the airport at 10 a.m. It's like that one little nuance that can really, really improve your naturalness when speaking English.

fluency is to use some of these expressions with get so i think this is great it's going to be awesome for are our friends from europe who come from this background where maybe there's a lot of shared vocabulary between their native language and english and they can get away with using some of that shared vocabulary and also for

People from other countries and other first language backgrounds as well, I think this will be great. So yeah, a wonderful idea. And I'm looking forward to this challenge. Yeah, me too. So thanks to Patricia again for inspiring me to create this challenge. Okay, so guys, if you want to participate in the Get Challenge for March,

Get on over to Discord. The link's in the description for this episode. And then you just have to select the monthly challenge channel from the English learning category, and then you can participate. join in. And of course, it's free for everyone. Okay, Alina, one last thing here before we wrap up and I'll let you go. And it is...

about our classes, our small group speaking classes that are upcoming for March. And I have good news that we now have a schedule on our website that everyone can see. Before, the schedule for the classes was only available available to Qloops members. So we saw

Comments like from Coco, you know, she said, I wasn't sure if it would work with my schedule or not. And I'm sure there are many other people out there. Guys, maybe you're listening right now and you want to know about if the schedule will sync up with your schedule. So. We hear you loud and clear, and we made this new schedule so that everybody can see it, whether you're a member or not.

course if you want to participate in the classes you do have to become a QLips member but if you want to just see if it works with your schedule or not you can do that now and we'll put that link to the schedule in the description as well so you can easily check that out But this month coming up here in March, we have 13 classes scheduled. I'll be teaching some.

Alina, you'll be teaching some, and our other teacher, Indiana, she'll be leading the other ones. And we're going to be talking about six different episodes over the course of those 13 classes. Alina, maybe this is some feedback that you've heard from the participants in your classes, but...

I really hear from a lot of members that they like the repetition. They like that they can talk about the same topic multiple times, but with different teachers, maybe with other participants in a different kind of setting and context and it's just really great for building your fluency doing that repetition but also in a kind of slightly different or slightly new way each and every time

Have you heard that feedback from your classes as well? For sure, for sure. All the time. And I mean, I like to say that myself. You know, I see the same people, for example, say when I'm doing like a session for you or something like that, and I see the same faces and I'm like...

You know, good job. Well done. I know that like they are going to learn so much better once they go over all that time again. And again, you know, it's not going to be like the same. It's never going to be the same because you have different people. You have, I don't know, you never know where the conversation will bring you, right? So yeah, people say it all the time and they definitely see how effective this is. Yeah. So guys...

please take advantage of these courses. I mean, 13 hours of speaking practice in March. Just imagine yourself at the start of April. And if you're like, wow, I finished 13 hours of speaking practice in March. That goes a really long way for building your fluency. So please take advantage by joining as many of these classes as you can. I know all of us really, really enjoy them and we'd love to have you join us as well. Well.

Alina, we did it. We made it to the end here, barely in one piece. Do you have anything else to add before we wrap up? I just wanted to say a huge thank you to all the participants of the challenge. It's February challenge. And, you know, I know it's not easy. It's hard to do something, to show up every day. But, you know, every day I see these messages.

And I am there, you know, I don't know, just like watching literally like the growth happening before my eyes. And you know what? It's all worth it. It's going to pay off. Keep going. Keep it up. And yeah, I can't wait to... See you all in the next challenge as well. Awesome. Yeah. Pat yourself on the back, guys. You're doing fantastic and we love to see it. This is so great to witness here from our perspective. Really, really nice. Definitely. Yeah.

All right. Well, Alina, please take care. I hope you feel better for our next community update next month. Fingers crossed now. Yeah, fingers crossed. All right. So take care and everybody will talk to you in the next Q-Lips episode. Until then, bye-bye.