I'm Still Here

Easy Natural English with Liam. An English listening podcast.

Welcome back, everyone. How are you all doing? I'm still here. I haven't forgotten about you. It has been a long time since I made an episode, but I still see a lot of people. supporting me on patreon and even some new people joining patreon which is great um but uh yeah apologies that i haven't made an episode in a while and there's also a lot of people still using my shadowing app

And it's all those people that are using my app and supporting me on Patreon that make me feel like, oh, I really need to do an episode, even though I've been very, very busy. So, yeah, in today's episode. I'm just going to talk a little bit about what I've been up to, a bit of an update, and also let you know what will be happening with the podcast. So here we go.

I have talked before in some other episodes recently about what I've been doing and why I haven't been making so many episodes. So for those of you that haven't listened to those ones, Yeah, I've been training to be a... a secondary school teacher at the same time as actually doing the job so for a long time and if you've listened to my older episodes you'll know for a long long time

i taught english as a foreign language so i was a teacher of english for people that don't know english that's why i started this podcast um you know originally i started this as a way to uh recruit new students because i used to teach online and yeah i made the podcast to find new students and then even after i stopped that because there were a lot of people listening to the podcast and i didn't want to

Lit people down that liked the podcast, that wanted me to keep going. I wanted to keep making the podcast. And that's also because I myself like learning languages, as you'll know if you're a regular listener.

I study Japanese for a long time. I still keep up my Japanese. I still study Japanese a bit. And I studied French for a long time. And actually recently I've... been going back to French and I've been putting a bit more effort into French into learning French and as someone that's used a lot of podcasts for studying French and Japanese

I know how disappointing it is when I find a podcast I like and then they stop making the podcast. I've always found that quite disappointing. So that's why I don't want to do that to you guys. And that's why I want to keep making the podcast, even if I'm not. uh teaching english anymore and like i said as well i know i've got so many supporters so many people listening um and then yeah lots of people you know using the app using the patreon

So yeah, I wanted to keep it going. But yeah, I have talked about it before, but basically now I'm not working as an English teacher. I'm working as a science teacher now. So I work in a high school here in the UK. You know, and I'm training to be like a qualified. teacher because when you teach english the qualifications are kind of there's not one set qualification that you need to teach english as a foreign language some schools some english centers

They want you to have a certain certificate. Some others don't mind if you have no certificate. Others want a different kind of certificate. I used to have a certificate called a TEFL. um teaching english as a foreign language it's very easy to get takes like um about a month i think you can do it online it was very easy so it's very different from the level of effort that's required to be a teacher in a school like I'm doing now. So what I'm doing now is a training course for a year.

So the certificate is a master's level certificate. It's not a full master's. It's only 60 credits, whereas a full master's is 180 credits, I think. But it is a master's level. It's level seven.

um so it's you know quite an intense um uh like course and at the same time i teach as a full-time teacher which has a lot of um it takes a lot of time to plan all my lessons, um, to, um, you know, do things like mark tests, um, to keep up with all these tasks that I need to do in the school to do with, um, like administration and.

um looking after the children and all these different things um and then of course i have two little children as well um if you if you're a listener you'll know i've got two little children who are now almost two and almost four so they're still one year

i've got a one-year-old and a three-year-old um but yeah they're almost two and almost four um and they take up a lot of my time so you know i usually uh look after my daughters in the morning I go to school. I teach all day. I come home. Well, often I'll stay at school for a bit to plan some lessons and things. Then I'll come home. Then I'll look after my girls. Then I'll put them to bed at like seven o'clock.

And then I'll catch up on some lesson planning or like any kind of work I might need to do or any study I've got left. And then like my weekends or so, I'm catching up on a lot of that stuff, like catching up on my study and things like that. um and then you know at the same time trying to spend some time with my family um trying to keep up with exercise um again if you're a regular listener you'll know that um i you know i

I value exercise and I think it's important. So I try to go to the gym like five days a week or like go for a run or do some kind of exercise. So I'm trying to keep up all these things. So it's been quite hard to find time to make podcasts. It's not so much the time, to be honest, it's more of the motivation. You know, it only takes me...

uh, about 10, you know, uh, it takes me about 10, 20 minutes depending on the episode to record it. Um, and then it spends me, it takes me a bit of time to edit the podcast, um, a bit of time to upload it. The whole process maybe takes. like an hour to make like a couple of episodes. But at the end of the day, after I've done all the stuff I've been describing to you,

At the end of the day, I just honestly just like want some time to myself or some time with my wife. And I just want to like, you know, watch TV or something or just, yeah, just kind of relax for a moment.

So it's more of a motivation thing, really. But at the moment, I'm on a little break from school. So here in the UK, well, like a lot of countries... I think probably similar in most countries. We break the school year up into terms. And at the moment, it's a half term holiday. So we're like halfway through a term, you know, the term is like. a set amount of time at school like um you know you in the uk the school starts in september and then uh you go through

for like a month or so, and then, well, more like a couple of months, and then you have a half-time holiday, and then you go a bit more, and then it's like a Christmas holiday. And then, yeah, it's sort of broken up like that. And at the moment it's a half-term holiday, so I have a week off. So I still have a lot of stuff to catch up on. Usually in these little holidays from school is when I catch up with a lot of the study stuff that I need to do at the moment. So I do have a lot of that to do.

Um, but I still got, you know, but I've got a bit more free time, which is why also I had a bit more motivation to do this episode today to let you guys know that I'm still here and I'm still intending to continue with the podcast. Um, I will keep going. and in the end of June so yeah at the end of June I will have finished I think I will have pretty much finished all of the study that I need to do. And then I'll just be a teacher then and I won't have so much. There's some...

For the first two years of being a qualified teacher, there's some little kind of study things I have to do and keep up, but it's much, much, much less than I do this year. So from sort of July time.

then I should be a bit more free. And I plan, hopefully. Like I said, my life is still pretty full on, even without the study. My life's still pretty full on, raising two kids and being a teacher. If you know anyone that... teachers or if you're a teacher in a school you'll know that it's a lot of work there's just a lot of stuff that always needs to be done but I should have a bit more time

And I can make some more episodes for you guys. And as I've said before, I do want to make more episodes about life here in the UK. Now... You know, because a lot of people are listening, I'm sure you're interested in British culture. You're learning English, probably want to know about the country that made the language. So do you want to talk a bit more about British culture and things like that?

you know because before I was always in Japan when I was making these episodes which was obviously interesting but yeah now I can talk to you guys about British culture But anyway, that's all from me today. Just a quick update, just to let you know that I'm still here. I might have repeated some stuff that I made in the last episode. It was such a long time ago, I don't even remember what I said in that episode. But in the next one, I promise I won't talk about this exact...

again I will talk about something a bit more interesting I'll think of some more interesting topics for you guys so thank you very much for listening thanks for your support and I'll see you back here next time