English Listening Practice Hot Topics And UK News Ep 671

How Listening to Hot-Button News Will Help You Become Fluent in British English!

Boost Your English with Hot News Stories: From Moon Landings to Trials! Hey there, English language adventurers! Want to skyrocket your English fluency? Hilary, your trusty guide from Adept English, brings you today's most talked-about UK news stories - from moon missions to high-stakes trials. 🌙⚖️

Why Choose This Lesson?

🗞 Real-world News Stories: Get your fingers on the pulse of the world while enhancing your vocabulary.
🎙 Expert Narration: Hilary's clear, engaging style helps you feel the language, not just learn it.
🤝 Community Interaction: Join our Spotify polls to voice your opinion and hear what others think.
🌱 Grow Your Vocabulary: From "neonatal" to "whistleblowers," explore words you've never heard but will never forget.

Dive Into Global Stories:

🌓 Moon Landings: Get the latest update on India's Chandrayaan 3 space mission!
🏥 Medical Mysteries: Unravel shocking, real-life stories that rock the healthcare world!

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
⭐ Martin Luther King Jr.

✔Lesson transcript: https://adeptenglish.com/lessons/english-phrases-learn-english-through-world-events-and-uk-news/

So, what are you waiting for? Click "Play" and jump into an English lesson that you'll never forget, because your journey to fluency starts here! 🚀

If you are struggling with your spoken English? OR craving fluency that makes you sound like a native? Meet Hilary of Adept English and discover an unconventional, conversation-driven method to learning English. In just one riveting lesson, you'll dive into real-world news stories that grip the UK and beyond.

Learn about space missions, gripping trials, and the psychology of crime—all while levelling up your language skills. Want to know how the shocking case of nurse Lucy Letby can transform your grasp of English? The answer is just a click away.

The only way to deal with fear is to face it. We are all capable of good and evil.
⭐ Paulo Coelho

Engage in Real Conversations: By covering stories like the tragic case of Lucy Letby, the lesson helps you understand complex issues. You'll be ready to discuss current events with native speakers.

Visit us at adeptenglish.com to supercharge your English learning even more! 🌟

More About This Lesson

Welcome, future English gurus! This is not your typical English lesson. Adept English offers you a thrilling ride through real-world events - from India's moon landing to high-profile UK trials - crafted to sharpen your English skills. Prepare to explore a rich landscape where you'll learn, speak, and live the English language.

To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit.
⭐ Stephen Hawking

Things you will learn in today's English vocabulary and phrases lesson:

Vocabulary Building: The lesson includes complex words like "incomprehensible," "neonatal," and "Munchausen's Syndrome by Proxy," all explained in simpler terms.
Real-world Context: The lesson incorporates recent news stories, making the language relevant and engaging.
Sentence Structure: Varied and complex sentences help learners understand English syntax and context.
Listening Skills: The format allows students to improve listening comprehension skills.
Cultural Insights: The lesson delves into UK-specific news, enriching students' understanding of British culture.
Phrasal Verbs: Uses terms like "find out," "shut itself down," and "watch out," which are common in everyday language.
Pronunciation Help: Difficult words are sometimes spelled out to assist in pronunciation.
Emotional Vocabulary: Discusses complex feelings and situations, broadening emotional vocabulary.
Ethics and Debate: Introduces ethical questions for possible discussion or consideration, such as issues around whistleblowers.
Common Phrases: Utilizes frequently used English expressions, like "you might wonder," "one to watch," and "find myself interested in."
Grammar Points: Passive voice is mentioned, raising awareness of grammatical structures.
Colloquial Language: Includes casual phrases like "Oh, and don't forget" and "So far," mimicking natural conversation.
Medical Terminology: Introduces specific medical terms, offering industry-specific language learning.

Benefits of our listen & learn approach to learning

Gain More Than Just Language Skills: Dive into a diverse world of topics, from space missions to critical social issues. Your vocabulary and understanding will grow in leaps and bounds.
Interactive Learning: Adept English not just informs but also asks. 82% of listeners want to learn about passive voice? We've got you covered!
Get Cultural: With Adept English, you're soaking in British culture. You'll not just talk like a native but also think like one.
Teacher Hilary: Guides you with easy-to-understand explanations.
Real World Topics: From Chandrayaan 3's mission to moon to Lucy Letby's court trial, our topics resonate with life.
British Nuance: Get familiar with idioms and expressions rooted in British culture.

I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own.
⭐ Audre Lorde

Still on the fence? Your fears are valid, but Adept English is here to help.

Afraid you're English is not good enough? Our lessons are beginner-friendly.
Fear missing the point? We provide full cultural and contextual insights.
Limited vocabulary? Each lesson expands your word bank.
Concerned about relevance? These lessons set you up for real conversations.

Ready to unlock fluency in English? Stop imagining and start doing. Click, listen, and become the English speaker you were destined to be. Your future fluent self will thank you!

Questions You Might Have...

Adept English brings you close to current events - from lunar missions to high-stakes trials -fuelling your language journey with intrigue and conversation starters. Just like moon rovers search for signs of water, we probe into complex topics, giving you the vocabulary to navigate life's many terrains. Start listening; your mission to fluency begins now!

How does this podcast help improve English fluency? By diving into current events like lunar missions and high-profile criminal cases, the podcast exposes you to a diverse set of vocabulary and expressions. This real-world context makes the words more memorable and easier to recall in conversations, helping you speak British English more fluently.
What does the podcast cover? The podcast discusses two international news stories and the gripping criminal case of nurse Lucy Letby in the UK. The mix of topics offers a rich variety of English language usage, providing an effective way to enhance your language learning.
How does the Listen & Learn course mentioned in the podcast work? The Listen & Learn course focuses on the most common 500 English words, aiming to implant them into your brain through immersive listening. Having these words at your fingertips will make you more confident in English conversations. You can find more about the course on the Adept English website.
What are Spotify polls and how do they relate to the podcast? Spotify polls are a way Adept English engages with the audience on various topics. For example, a poll asked if listeners wanted a whole podcast on the passive voice. Polls give you a chance to express your preferences, influencing the content and making your learning experience more interactive.
Can this podcast help with understanding British culture? Absolutely! The podcast dives into current events like high-profile criminal cases that everyone in the UK is talking about. This not only improves your English but also offers insights into British society, an important aspect of achieving fluency in British English.

Most Unusual Words:

Convicted: Found guilty in a court of law.
Incomprehensible: Impossible to understand.
Neonatal: Related to newborn babies.
Whistleblowers: People who expose wrongdoing in an organization.
Munchausen's Syndrome: A condition where someone pretends to be ill for attention.
Feign: To pretend or fake.
Alpine: Related to high mountains, often used to describe ski resorts.
Traumatic: Causing severe emotional distress.
Inquiry: A formal investigation.
Cease: To stop or bring to an end.

Most Frequently Used Words:

Word	Count
Cable	17
About	12
There	10
Means	9
Hospital	9
Nurse	8
Which	7
Might	6

Listen To The Audio Lesson Now

The mp3 audio and pdf transcript for this lesson is now part of the Adept English back catalogue . You can still download and listen to this lesson as part of one of our podcast bundles.

Transcript: English Listening Practice Hot Topics And UK News

Practise your English with last week's 'slow news'

Hi there. Today let's go through some news stories that you might already have heard about, giving you the opportunity to practise your English understanding. I'll talk about two international news stories. And I'll also be talking about the case of the nurse Lucy Letby, who was convicted this week of killing babies in a UK hospital. I thought I'd warn you about that one before we start, but listen to the end of this podcast if you're interested in hearing more about that case. It's something that everyone has been talking about in the UK this week.

Hello, I’m Hilary, and you’re listening to Adept English. We will help you to speak English fluently. All you have to do is listen. So start listening now and find out how it works.

Do you need our 500 Words Course to help you speak English?

Are you struggling with spoken English? Our Listen & Learn course featuring the most common 500 words could be your answer! Imagine having the simplest and the most used English words at your fingertips, automatically in your brain, ready for any conversation. Go to our website at adeptenglish. com to find out more about that course and how to get it.

Boost Your Learning With Adept English

Learn to speak English course 500 most common words product cover art.

Spotify Polls - your chance to get involved!

Oh, and don't forget our Spotify polls! We asked 'Should unpaid work in the home be equally shared?' 62% of you said 'Yes'. 22% of you thought it should depend on the amount of work each person is doing, and 8% of you thought it's OK if one does more. And on whether you want the passive voice as a whole podcast? So far, 82% are saying 'Yes'. Surprisingly, only 5% said that they didn't need it because they already knew it well. So watch out for that podcast then.

Language is the road map of a culture. It tells you where its people come from and where they are going.
⭐ Rita Mae Brown

OK, so what's been in the news this week? Let's practise English with diverse news stories and intriguing insights into global events, as an effective way to help you make progress in your language learning.

English Listening Practice Hot Topics And Uk News Ep 671 Article Image

📷

A photograph of a shocked woman covering her mouth. Unlock Your English Skills: News Edition - From Space Missions to Courtrooms!

Chandrayaan 3 - success for the Indian space mission

Do you remember our podcast about India's Chandrayaan 3 space mission to the moon? That was Adept English podcast 659, back in July, when Chandrayaan 3 had just been launched. And we knew at that point that it was going to take a number of weeks to reach its destination. Well, this week, the 'Lander Module', called 'Vikram', made history by landing on the moon. ' Vikram' landed and released its 'Rover Module', meaning 'the part of the spacecraft which will walk on the moon'. The 'Rover Module' is called ' Pragyaan', which means 'wisdom' in Sanskrit.

Just because something doesn’t do what you planned it to do doesn’t mean it’s useless.
⭐ Thomas Edison

Since then, 'Pragyaan' has taken its first steps on the moon. It moves at one centimetre per second. Interestingly, the landing has been timed to coincide with the start of the lunar day. And a lunar day lasts the equivalent of 14 of our days. So, sunlight for 14 days on the moon.

I always find it fascinating the different day lengths on the different planets in our solar system. When the lunar night finally comes, Pragyaan will automatically shut itself down. What's unknown yet is, will it start up again when the next lunar day comes? We'll have to find out.

Looking for water on the moon

One major goal of the Chandrayaan 3 mission is to look for signs of water. Apparently, in the South Pole region, where Pragyaan has landed, there are craters which are permanently in shadow and inside which it's believed there may be ice. Could the moon support human habitation in the future? And what would that mean for us humans? You might wonder if we're looking at other planets, because we're failing to take care of our own planet Earth. Hopefully we'll deal with our own ecological crises before that happens, before it comes to that.

But there's always the interesting question too, if there is water on the moon, does that mean there might once have been life on the moon? It's one to watch!

The horrific case of Lucy Letby

Horrific news in the UK this week. The outcome of the trial of the nurse Lucy Letby. I'm not sure whether you'll have heard this news story in your own country, but it is a shocking one.

The case of nurse Lucy Letby is incomprehensible and it leaves you grappling with human psychology. The notion of an innocent-looking young nurse being capable of these acts is chilling, and it challenges our assumptions.

Lucy Letby, the nurse, that's N U R S E, was arrested in 2018, and it's taken this long for the case to come to trial. And the trial has lasted months too. So the trial is the legal process that happens inside a courtroom.

This nurse worked on what we call a 'neonatal unit'. That's N E O N A T A L. So that's a unit for newborn babies looking after the most vulnerable ones. The ones that need extra care.

Nurse Letby was accused of killing seven babies and the attempted murder of six other babies, who were harmed in the process, some of them seriously. This all happened between June 2015 and June 2016. So in the space of a year. Normally on a unit of this type, sadly two to three babies might die each year. So the numbers were immediately noticeable to people working on this unit.

Lucy Letby gets convicted and will serve 14 life sentences

Last week, Lucy Letby was finally convicted. That's C O N V I C T E D. That means 'found guilty'. And she was given 14 life sentences. This means she will never come out of prison. For most people, these horrific crimes just do not add up, don't compute with this pleasant-looking nurse, who seems, if anything, rather shy.

People who attended the trial said, 'She's just not what you imagine a child murderer to look like'. And perhaps this contributed to it taking so long to stop her. People around at the time said, 'Oh no, it can't be lovely, Lucy'. But this whole case is horrific, especially when you think of the parents and what they've been through. What happened to them will affect them for the rest of their lives.

Other issues raised by this trial

But this case has so many aspects that I find myself interested in. Doctors on the neonatal unit raised their concerns with hospital managers as early as October 2015. Between June 2015 and October 2015, five babies had died on the unit. And actually, Nurse Letby had attempted to kill a further three babies. So, eight serious incidents. The doctors noticed immediately that Lucy Letby was the only person on the unit for all eight incidents. So they reported their concerns. But instead of informing the police or suspending the nurse, hospital managers silenced the doctors, told them emails must 'cease forthwith' and the hospital managers also did nothing.

The doctors were told to stop talking about it and were led to believe that it would be referred to the police. It wasn't. This meant that Lucy Letby was able to carry out two further murders and three further attempted murders, where she seriously harmed babies. She was finally removed from the neonatal unit in 2016, but she continued to work for the hospital until 2018, when she was arrested.

A culture of 'silencing whistleblowers'?

I think that parts of the NHS have long had a culture of silencing what we call ' whistleblowers'. We use the term 'whistleblowers' to mean 'people who call things out that they believe are wrong, and which other people are trying to cover up'. That is a 'whistleblower'. But this case takes it further than I've known it taken before. Imagine being one of those doctors, convinced of your suspicions about Lucy Letby, yet told to 'stop talking about it'.

At one point, seven of the doctors were made to send a letter of apology to Lucy Letby for having suspicions and their seven signatures are on the bottom of this letter. They all still suspected her. Can you imagine having to do that because you were afraid for your job and your practice?

There is going to be an inquiry into the hospital management. And I think those hospital managers will have some very difficult questions to answer. There are broader implications for the rest of the NHS too. There is a culture of silencing whistleblowers that must stop. Hospitals or hospital trusts use non-disclosure agreements, NDAs, as a way of forcing ex-employees not to speak in return for a good reference, in return for a good job reference, rather than a bad one. There's a big power differential between a hospital and an individual 'whistleblower', and hospitals use this to their advantage, to silence people. Whistleblowers are generally trying 'to do the right thing'. They see something they believe to be wrong and they want to report it.

And the psychology of someone who commits these crimes?

People are also asking, how can someone do what this nurse did? What makes someone want to harm or kill a baby? So far, there are very few insights into the life and the psychology and the background of Lucy Letby, but something has clearly gone badly wrong there.

The case previously, which is most similar to this one, is that of Beverley Allitt, another UK nurse. Over a period of just two months at Grantham Hospital in Lincolnshire in the UK in 1991, four children died after having been brought into a ward with minor conditions. A further nine children collapsed for reasons that couldn't be explained. They were fortunately saved. Beverley Allitt was convicted of four murders and nine attempted murders and was given 13 life sentences. Like Lucy Letby, she will never come out of prison.

The understanding of Beverley Allitt's psychology? It was said that she had Munchausen's Syndrome by Proxy. Munchausen Syndrome is when someone either harms themselves or feigns illness in order to get attention. 'To feign', F E I G N, means 'to pretend'. ' By proxy' means that you feign the illness of someone else, or you harm someone else in order to get attention for yourself as the caregiver. This seems perhaps to fit for Lucy Letby. She seemed to enjoy being the person who looked after the parents in their distress. This, of course, makes it all the more difficult for the parents involved.

Listening Lessons

Children travelling to school in Pakistan have a traumatic experience

Enough on that one. Another story in the news - the cable car in Pakistan. There is a video of this to show just how terrifying it must have been for those inside. A cable car, that's C A B L E - i t's the sort of thing that you might see in an Alpine ski resort, where there are mountains and valleys in between. That's V A L L E Y S.

So cable cars are a quick means of transport between two high points, suspended on a wire high in the air. It's interesting to think of the contrast. Many of us will associate cable cars with holidays, leisure, scenic views, maybe skiing. But these, children in Pakistan depend on the cable cars just to get to school, which is what they were doing. If you're particularly afraid of heights, you might choose not to get into a cable car. But if you're sufficiently trusting of the cable car, it can be a fantastic ride, an exciting experience to travel that way, with amazing views of the landscape.

This cable car was 274 metres up or 900 feet when two of its cables snapped and the cable car was left hanging in high winds. If you look at the photographs or the video, you can see how truly terrifying this must have been for the children. One child was rescued by helicopter, but again, having seen this, it must have been truly traumatic as an experience.

Saved by 'zip line experts'

The rest were saved by 'zip line experts'. This means 'people with expertise in zip lines'. A 'zip line' means there's a wire between two points, usually quite high up, and you can use a harness to hook yourself onto the wire and travel down it at speed, for pleasure. The journey via zip line for those being rescued here would have been terrifying though. But all the people, six children between 10 and 16 and two adults - all of them were rescued in the end, albeit some 12 hours later.

Download The Podcast Audio & Transcript

Cable cars go from potentially thrilling to absolutely terrifying once safety and safe maintenance is at issue. The owner of this cable car has since been arrested, presumably for not maintaining the cable car safely.

Little choice about using cable cars in Kyber Pakhtunkhwa

I could well understand it if these six children and two adults never wanted to set foot inside a cable car again. The problem is in this part of Pakistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the cable car is a popular means of transport. It's the way to get across the valleys. This particular one reduces what otherwise would be a two hour car journey over mountainous terrain to a four minute cable car ride. Difficult to think of not using the cable car then. Hopefully, others running cable cars will make sure the maintenance is done properly after this incident.

Goodbye

Okay, so that's my news round-up for this week. Let us know what you think about it. And don't forget to listen to this podcast a number of times until you understand it all.

Enough for now. Have a lovely day. Speak to you again soon. Goodbye.

Thank you so much for listening. Please help me tell others about this podcast by reviewing or rating it. And, please share it on social media. You can find more listening lessons and a free English course at adeptenglish.com

English Listening Practice Hot Topics And Uk News Ep 671