Rich English Podcast – Season 1 Episode 2

with Peter Fodor - App Agent

Full show transcription here.

When I first moved to the Czech Republic, I had decided to reduce my reliance on technology, especially where phones were concerned. Needing a new phone I opted for the most basic Nokia without even a camera let alone anything as smart as a touch screen. I wanted to be able to call and text, only! Then I met Peter and his team…

On my first visit to Flow Studio, Peter’s original mobile game company, we discovered a shared interest in orienteering. But we’re not here today to talk about running around a forest in all weathers with a map and compass. No, it was Peter and his team’s enthusiasm for tech that reinvigorated me and put me back in touch with my younger self. That sounds awfully serious but really, at the time I met them I had a strong suspicion of all things tech and marketing. Through helping his team with English by researching useful articles on tech industry websites, I remembered that not so long ago I had had more than a passing interest in computer technology, marketing and business entrepreneurship.  I can’t state this boldly enough but without my meeting Peter and his colleague Richard, I probably wouldn’t have built my own website, which led to blogging, video courses and now this podcast. Thank you guys.

A Podcast for entrepreneurs, wantrepreneurs, solopreneurs and all those other …preneurs whose native language is NOT English

Peter Fodor is the Founder and CEO of a company called App Agent who help companies producing mobile applications and games to grow their user base and revenues.

In this show we discuss how Peter began learning English and how he continues to improve as well as talk about his business life, starting out with Flow Studio, producing their own mobile games to making the transition into a mobile marketing agency.

Please Donate to Help make Rich English sustainable

You can help to make Rich English even better by making a small monthly donation of  99kč to cover production costs.


Season 1, Episode 2 with Peter Fodor

In the course of the conversation, you’ll hear a few phrases and words I thought you may need explaining. Here they are:

User acquisition and acquiring clients – these are from the verb to acquire meaning – to get. Basically, user acquisition is how you go about finding new users for your application.

Getting into the flow is about becoming used to a particular situation and maybe getting your head in a particular space where you’re feeling comfortable and concentrating.

Workflow is the sequence of events or stages that a project might pass through to go from its initial start to completion.

To have many hats really means that you have different roles you might have a role as the owner of a business but at the same time you also might take on a more menial task such as sending out invoices for example. So you could say I have an administrative role or an administrative hat as well as my owner hat.

A worker bee is a person who is doing the detailed work, so it might be somebody in administration or might be somebody in design but worker bees are the people who are carrying out the larger ideas conceived by the boss.

A pool of talent is the number of people who are available in any given sector of business who might be your target to take on as an employee.

Collaborative tools are platforms such as Slack, Trello, Asana or even your Google calendar which is open to other people to view. Basically, any kind of platform where you can work closely with other people in order to further your project.

CV curriculum vitae is a document outlining your education and work/training history and personal interests.

A red flag is a warning.

Check out Peter’s company App Agent – www.appagent.com

Link to full transcription

www.richardhill.cz

Suggested app/extension mentioned by Peter – www.grammarly.com

 

Next week I will be back with a solo show to help you with remembering your new vocabulary. OK,  take care for now, bye-bye.

Richard.

Opening the door to a whole world of English content

Certainly Rich English won’t be for everyone, but if you’re interested in hearing real conversations with people who are entrepreneurs, business owners, self-employed or career-minded then it might be for you. My hope is that by interviewing (mainly but not exclusively) non-native English speakers about how they got started in business and their English learning journey, you, the listener will gain insight, knowledge and confidence to carry out your own plans and ideas.  You will also hear me explain some of the industry-specific words and phrases allowing you to better understand the conversation and open the door for you to listen to other similar podcasts and read blogs, websites, books etc. in English.

Rich English Podcast Episode 1

Rich English Podcast with Marketa Horakova

Full show transcription here.

You know as a child the first job I can remember wanting to do (after footballer and rock star) was to be a DJ (disc jockey). I mean the radio presenter type rather than the club version…

My father had a small portable cassette player/recorder which I used to borrow (he owned it and lent it to me) and I would record little radio shows where I played a record then back announced the song in my best radio DJ voice. When I was a little older, around 13, I would take a posh Walkman (personal stereo, remember them?) that had a record mode to football matches with my cousin. During the game, we commentated on the match and recorded it.

So jumping forward about 20 years I can remember the first time I heard the word ‘podcast’. It was in 2003 and a friend of mine had just bought a first generation iPod. He told me he was listening to podcasts on it and I had to ask what they were. “They’re basically radio shows but you can download them to your iPod and listen to them whenever you want”, said he. I thought that sounded like a brilliant idea but then forgot about them for about 10 years or more. Podcasts didn’t really come into my life until around 2015 when I started to listen to a couple of them to learn more about online business (thank you to the Fizzle Show in particular).

A year or two ago I was asked (by next week’s guest Peter Fodor from App Agent) if  I could with producing a podcast. I duly obliged (I said yes) and they were more than happy with the results. They praised my work and suggested that I find other companies for whom I could also produce a podcast. I did nothing…

A Podcast for entrepreneurs, wantrepreneurs, solopreneurs and all those other …preneurs whose native language is NOT English

Now here we are in 2021, I’m 45 years old and only now am I starting my own podcast. Why did it take me so long? I don’t know but it certainly feels like I’ve come full circle and so far, so good. I have found the experience a great one as I enjoy every aspect of the process from idea, recording, interviewing, editing and promoting. (You can help me with that last bit, the promotion, by sharing a link to my podcast and recommending it on your Linked in and Facebook feeds etc.)

Opening the door to a whole world of English content

Certainly Rich English won’t be for everyone, but if you’re interested in hearing real conversations with people who are entrepreneurs, business owners, self-employed or career-minded then it might be for you. My hope is that by interviewing (mainly but not exclusively) non-native English speakers about how they got started in business and their English learning journey, you, the listener will gain insight, knowledge and confidence to carry out your own plans and ideas.  You will also hear me explain some of the industry-specific words and phrases allowing you to better understand the conversation and open the door for you to listen to other similar podcasts and read blogs, websites, books etc. in English.

Please Donate to Help make Rich English sustainable

You can help to make Rich English even better by making a small monthly donation of  99kč to cover production costs.


Season 1, Episode 1 with Markéta Horáková

Markéta is from Terapie v Lese (Therepy in the Forest) who provide therapeutic journeys in the countryside, forests and Prague’s parks. Welcome to the first episode of Rich English and a chat with Marketa about her business experience and English learning journey.  Before you get into the interview with Marketa I thought I should explain one or two phrases that myself or Marketa to use in the interview just help you better understand

Further afield means places away from the specific location you’re in.

Donkey work and heavy lifting meaning the nuts and bolts (there’s another phrase for you –  it’s the details) – carrying out the actual work. You might have a great idea but then who’s going to do it, who’s going to do the data input, who’s going to build physically the website, who’s going to put their fingers to the keyboard and do the actual work? That’s the donkey work or the heavy lifting.

Down the road – in the future, at a more advanced stage than now.

To cover plenty of bases which means to involve everyone or everything in a situation.

My conversation with Marketa is an interesting one and I’m sure there’s a lot to learn so without further ado press play and get on with the show. I hope you enjoy it, I’d love you to leave me a little review and leave me any comments. Of course, you can get in touch with me here on the website and I’m on Facebook, LinkedIn the usual places.

Next week I will be back with an interview with a really interesting guy Peter Fodor who is from a company called App Agent and they help companies who are developing applications for mobile phones. His company helps them to market those applications. That’s a really interesting chat and I hope you can join me. OK,  take care for now, bye-bye.

Richard.

Help for English Learners

Help for English learners who are Czech and Slovak.

You are Czech or Slovak, right? Learning English? Hmmm, I thought so 🙂

I’m Richard, a native British English speaker.

Improving your English is not just about learning grammar, studying books and taking exams. Firstly I believe it should be fun and have a purpose. That’s why I offer help for English learners starting with conversations about motivation, reasons for learning English and goals.  I’m not so much of an English teacher in the classic sense but more someone who coaches you to help yourself, listens to what you want and instructs and teaches where needed. See my previous posts here.

A scientific approach is my method and I like to use techniques that give you space and freedom to think for yourself; the only real way to learn anything properly.

“It’s not just what you know, but how you practice what you know that determines how well the learning serves you later.”
Peter C. Brown, Make It Stick
Today’s article is for intermediate and more advanced English learners. Those of you who would like some tips on improving your understanding when native speakers speak quickly. Let’s get started…

How do I better understand fast English speakers?

Well, that depends on whether you are listening to real people in the physical world or if you mean watching tv/listening to the radio etc. Also, if it’s real people, are you listening to engage in conversation with them or just to listen to what they say? Sometimes you have no option!

Quick tips for improving the speed of your listening comprehension

So, when you are listening to podcasts and cds or watching dvds or on demand video etc.  you obviously have the option to be able to pause and rewind to playback sections until you understand. If you use something like Audible for listening to audiobooks you have the option to slow down the speed. This is the key to learning to understand faster speech. How do you that? Read on..

Step 1 –

Start by listening through to a short section, maybe only a sentence or two. Try, and I know it’s hard, to NOT translate into your native language as you’re listening. Just listen for words you understand.

Step 2 –

Then listen again and try to pick out words that you may recognize but don’t know the meaning of. Write them down, find out their meanings and listen again. This is where zou may encounter a few of the dreaded phrasal verbs. Fear not, I will have an article for you soon on the most used phrasal verbs and the best way to memorize them.

Step 3 –

So now you should be starting to understand a little better but there are still parts that you can’t work out. Firstly, don’t stress about this because as a native English speaker I often find situations, usually in music, where I realize that, after 30 years of listening and singing along to a song, I was singing the wrong words! The reason for this is that English is a language that has such smooth connected speech that it’s difficult to pick out one word from another. This is why it is not recommended to learn vocabulary in single isolated words. Although sometimes it’s fine to learn a new word in isolation, it’s much better if you can learn new vocabulary in collocations (words that often go to together such as ‘Football match ‘ or ‘Best regards’. When you learn the word ‘best’ you hear it as b-e-s-t however in connected speech, in a collocation like ‘best regards’, the last letter T is usually dropped and what you hear is ‘besregards’. “Give my besregards to Jim”

Step 4 –

After you’ve had another listen and tried to work out some more of the connected speech you can then go ahead and look at the subtitles if available. Then as you continue your practice, begin to speed up the audio.

But what about listening to real people in the real world? telephone, fast English speakers, help for English

in the case of listening to real people whom you are actively engaging in conversation with, you have to ask them to slow down and repeat.

“Can you repeat that please?”

”Would you mind speaking a little slower please, it will give me a better chance of understanding you.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t catch that, please could you say it again for me?”

if you’re talking to native English speakers and they don’t understand you they may use…

”say it again” but often. At least where I’m from in the north of England, it will sound like “sayagen”

The traditional and more polite version is “pardon?”

So, that’s a long answer but I hope it helps. I have a lot more help for learners of English here: Almost Everything You Need to Learn English.

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