Who is Luke?

Hi, I'm Luke and I'm an English Language teacher from London.

I've been teaching  English for over 11 years. I started in Japan and lived in Kanagawa prefecture for two years. Since then I've been teaching in London and I regularly teach courses in business English, academic English, legal English, general English and English for exam courses like FCE, IELTS and BEC.

I graduated from Liverpool John Moore's University in 1999 with a BA Hons degree in Media and Cultural Studies. I worked at various media production companies before going into English language teaching. I took my CELTA in 2001 and then my DELTA in 2006 at UCL. I now teach full time in a language school in London.

I am a prolific writer of ELT materials, and I often design courses in EAP for which I usually write the material. I have written original courses for English for the Pharmaceutical Industry, English for the Oil and Gas Industries and English for Journalists. I am a semi-published author with some of my work being used in materials publications in several countries.

I started Luke's English Podcast in 2009 and since then it has become enormously popular. I plan to continue writing material and publishing episodes of the podcast before hopefully publishing material of my own and expanding my website.

I am also a musician and a comedian. I play drums and bass in several bands, and I regularly perform stand-up comedy in London. 

I sincerely hope you enjoy listening to Luke's English Podcast and that you find it improves your English. Check my other pages to find useful advice for learning English, and for how to use the podcast as a good way to improve your English in many areas.


Thanks for visiting the site!

Luke		



EPISODE 228. Zombies! Part 1. The Zombie in Popular Culture


Zombies seem to be more popular than ever, but why? (The Walking Dead, zombie films like Zombieland, Shaun of the Dead and computer games like Left 4 Dead or Resident Evil)

The origin of the word “zombie”.
The concept has been popularly associated with the Vodou religion, but it plays no part in that faith’s formal practices.
In Haitian folklore, a zombie is an animated corpse raised by magical means, such as witchcraft. Zombies featured widely in Haitian rural folklore, as dead persons physically revived by the act of necromancy of a bokor sorcerer (the bokor is a witch-like figure). Zombies remain under the control of the bokor as their personal slaves, since they have no will of their own. Some people say that zombie voodoo magic is real, but others claim that it’s just a chemical or hypnotic control of a living person – causing them to act like mindless slaves of the bokor sorcerer. That’s certainly very creepy and fascinating from a social, biological, chemical and psychological point of view.


EPISODE 229. Zombies! Part 2: Zombie Survival


The Zombieland 32 Rules of Zombie Survival

Pick a survival quiz and go through it.

The Ultimate Zombie Apocalypse Survival Quiz

The Walking Dead Survival Test