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 265. Telling Jokes in English (Part 2)

This is part 2 in a short series on jokes. In the last one we considered some of the social and codes around joke telling – including when, why and how we should tell jokes and respond to jokes. I suggest that you listen to that if you haven’t already done so.

In this one we’re going to look at some typical joke structures, consider what makes a joke funny, and then I’m going to tell you lots of jokes. So, more entertaining and useful listening practice, with some jokes you can learn and share, and plenty of vocabulary teaching too. Again, there might be a part 3 to this episode, depending how long it is.

Just a reminder: This episode is all about jokes, but even if you don’t laugh at any of these jokes (many of which are, admittedly, quite bad jokes!) that is fine – because you’re learning lots of vocabulary. Perhaps, if you don’t get the jokes the first time, after you’ve understand the vocabulary, you can listen to these episodes again, come back to the jokes and see if any of them strike you as funny on a second listen. Also, I don’t expect you to remember all of these jokes, but you could pick a couple of jokes that you like, learn how to say them, and then share them with a couple of English-speaking friends. But be prepared to explain the jokes if nobody understands!