Happy New Year Titbitonians, I hope you had pleasant Christmas and an explosive start into 2020. In the last post of 2019, I encouraged you to take up the 2020 challenge! No, not the-lose-a-million-kilos-in-a-day challenge, the-climb-Mt-Everest- tomorrow, -oh-and-btw-naked challenge! Or even the-build-your-own-spacecraft-and-journey-to-Mars-and-back-in-a-month. Just simply to make 2020 your business English year, with a 10 – 15 mins. time slot to read your beloved Teatime Titbits and make any notes and ‘create’ some time daily to YouTube yourself (My English!!! Don’t worry, it’s not real English, yet!!) to better English*. Why? It’s free, fun and you can find it everywhere – at the bottom of your arm on your mobile. What’s more it improves listening skills, widens your vocabulary and you can get a feel for the language more. What a better way to start 2020 than to introduce you to 5 channels** every day for the next 2 weeks – 10 day YouTube challenge.
So a few things I want to point out beforehand.
1 *It can be frustrating, if you don’t understand anything/much/everything. Don’t throw in the towels straight away, turn on the subtitles if possible, pause, go back and listen again (more times if you have to), try to get the gist and 5 new words from each video – small improvements over a year can make a big difference.
2. Watch the video of the week www.teatimetitbits.de/home.
3.** Remember I’m a 40 something year old bloke (British)/dude(US) who’s into footy (football/soccer), food and fun stuff. However, I’m also an avid English language vlog watcher, business freak and self-development geek so hopefully there will be something in there for you and if not?!?! Go to YouTube, type in what you are interested in (in English) and see what the Google owned search engine spits out.
Interested in beekeeping? Why not test it now? Type in beekeeping – there’s Barnyard Bees, Maddie Moate and David Burns as the top 3 channels and Barnyard Bees offers you a 22 min vid on the basics of beekeeping entitled “Beekeeping 101”. Fun fact – if you ever see a title with 101, it is the US way of talking about an introduction, the basis of a topic and come originally from the school system.
So join me tomorrow with your first 5 channels on the topic of why you are here. English! See you tomorrow.
to encourage sb (jdn ermütigen), to take up a challenge (sich einer Herausforderung stellen), time slot/window (Zeitfenster), what’s more (und Außerdem), to widen (erweitern), to get a feel for sth (ein Gefühl für etw entwickeln), to point (sth) out (auf etw hinweisen), to throw in the towel (die Flinte ins Korn werfen), straight away (sofort), to turn sth on (hier: einschalten), subtitles (die Untertitel), to pause (hier: anhalten), to get the gist (den Kern verstehen), bloke (British)/ dude(US) (Kerl), to be into sth (etw mögen), however (allerdings), to be avid (passioniert), to spit out (hier: ausspücken), beekeeping (Beinenhaltung), entitled (betitelt),101 (… für Anfänger / Grundkurs)