Transcript - Alan's Weekend Words

Hello everyone
Here is a new chatcast. I’m calling this "Alan’s weekend words". I usually have a little time at the weekend to make a podcast and this weekend is no exception. I’m happy to know that you find my recordings interesting and I hope to keep on making them and hopefully keep your interest at the same time.
One of the reasons I decided to make these recordings was to create a small "language corner" where I can tell you some of the things I think are interesting and important about language. Also, whilst I think language lesson podcasts can be very good and helpful, I didn’t want to make mine into language lessons. Firstly, because I’m not a teacher and secondly (and more importantly in my opinion) because I think that people who are interested in languages, or are learning languages seriously need a way to hear that language spoken in a normal, everyday way. A podcast is one way of these people getting that opportunity.
I try to make my presentations like a "chat" and hopefully this will mean you will hear something different to language drills or situational dialogues and vocabulary or grammar tests in my recordings. I will try to just "chat" (inverted commas) in that, I will just talk about things that interest me or things that I have heard about that you might find interesting too.

In a week’s time, next Saturday, me and my wife will be going once more to Germany. We will be going with the Pendle/Kassel community exchange group. My wife is the leader of the English side of the group. This is a cultural exchange where a group of people from Pendle (the region in England where I live) will travel to Kassel in Germany to stay for a week. We will stay with families in the town.

This exchange has been in existence for 25 years and started as an educational exchange between a school in Pendle and a school in Kassel. This originally was for a group of students from each school to take part and visit their counterparts in either Germany or in England. The idea of the visit was to stay for a week with families, enjoying life with a family, and having excursions through the day to visit interesting places. Each year one school would host the visit and the other year they would be guests. This means that the visits took place annually – England one year and Germany the other year.

After a few years of successful student annual visits, some of the students’ parents were interested in taking part and they also enjoyed visiting and staying with families. These days, anyone can join at any age. We have members as young as 12 and as old as 78. This is a good opportunity for older and younger people to do things together, although of course not all the activities we do are for everyone. For example maybe the adults would visit a museum and the younger people would go swimming.

I like this exchange visit very much. It also gives me a chance to speak German and see more of the country and culture. My wife does not speak German, but she is fine because some people in the group can speak English and often language problems can be overcome easily by taking a bit of time to speak slowly. If necessary, we can always use a dictionary or phrase book or even make a sign of what we want to say.

I think these sort of exchanges between people from different countries can work very well and I’m looking forward to going and telling you about it afterwards.

As I am just chatting using my normal way of speaking, if you find some of the vocabulary difficult, please let me know and I’ll explain it more next time I make a podcast.
Don’t forget that you can read the transcription at my blog: www.alanpalmer.blogspot.com

Bye for now
Tschuess
A la prochaine
Zaijian!