Hello and welcome back to another class with OLA English with Greg. Now, today I'm
gonna give you a little bit of a different class. I'm going to give you a
conversational class in which you are going to learn a ton of common useful
expressions and ways of expressing yourself in English. So if you're ready
let's begin!
I'm Greg from OLA OnlineLanguageAcademy.com
If you want to reach a high level of spoken English then click up there! Right,
today's video is conversational. I'm gonna answer 20 completely random
questions about me. If you like this video and you've got more questions that
you want me to answer for you, write your questions in the comments. If I get 10 or
20 comments with suitable questions then I will do another video like this
for you. So I haven't actually seen these questions yet and the idea is behind
this conversational class is that I'm just gonna answer relatively short
answers. I'm gonna answer them naturally and honestly and then I'm going to teach
you the most useful chunks. Chunks are groups of words which I think it's very
important for you to learn if you want to speak English fluently and also to
understand English more easily. OK, let's have a look at the questions then... bring
them on!
I actually quite enjoy my job, and when I start working if I've got enough
caffeine and enough brainpower I could just continue for 10, 12, 15 hours. I enjoy
what I do so I would probably choose four hours of.. four days of 10 hours a
week and a three-day weekend... that'd be great!
YouTube Facebook and and and the football app that tells me the football scores are when Liverpool are playing
Alright, ALSO, one of my favourite apps is Google Photos, when I take photos it
automatically uploads them to Google and from time to time they'll create a
little video or a collage, it'll tell me what I was doing on this day last year
and I absolutely love that it really takes away the the hassle of me putting
my photos on the computer and organizing them in in in folders and if you want to
search for something, if you want to search for, for example, a photo of my dad
in London, I would type in 'Dad London" and it'd bring up a load of photos of my dad
in London. WOW! I love that app, I couldn't live without it... Google photos!
My first job was a paperboy. I was a paperboy, I used to I used to spend half
an hour every day riding my bike up and down the hills where I'm from delivering
newspapers to to people who wanted their newspapers delivered. It paid five pounds
per week and I kind of did enjoy it. I didn't enjoy doing it on Saturdays, but
from Monday to Friday it was part of my routine and I loved having a job and I
loved the fact that, unlike friends of mine, you know, I had five pounds coming
in every day (*WEEK) and yeah I think it taught me the value of earning money from a
young age. I was, like, 13 when I did that.
Oh there are many many many foods I would not eat. I'm very boring when it
comes to food. Honestly, I like, I like meat, vegetables, chicken, y'know, beef...
Anything that's a little bit weird I won't touch and living in Spain there's so
much shellfish and so much... so many delicacies that for me they're a bit
weird, and I don't eat them! Ah, octopus,
shellfish, lobster... I'm not a shellfish person, snails? Ah no way! Absolutely no no
no no no! Just boring food for me please!
Groundhog Day? I used to live in the town where Groundhog Day was filmed and every
year they show the movie at the cinema (or the 'movie theater') there and
it's such an emotional moment, y'know, when you're in the, when you're in
the cinema with everybody from that town and suddenly you see your town on the
big screen. It's like wow, I mean, it's emotional, brings a... almost brings a
tear to my eye. AND it makes me laugh out loud!
Very funny film and I love it!
The best piece of advice I ever received was from my dad when I was about 16
years old and we had to decide what subjects we wanted to do when we were 17
and 18 years old in the last two years of school and I was gonna do scientific
subjects and I eventually changed my mind to do, like, maths, IT and human
biology, and my dad said, he said, "you know what why don't you do, like, a bit of
French in there too?" because French wasn't compulsory at that age he said, "just do a
little bit of French". I thought, "yeah!" He said, "just do one year", I said, "neh, okay".
He said, "you know, if you do one year you're gonna have a foreign language on
your CV where everybody else in England isn't, so just to a year of French!" I
thought, "yeah go on then, go on then. I enjoy French... let's do it!"
Well, the one year of French turned into two years of French which turned into a
degree at University in French which included a year in France which inspired
me to go to Spain for a year afterwards where I met my future wife and she took
me to America for three years and now it just got me in the language world and
made me want to teach and learn and it just... whoah, wow what a piece of advice!
What a piece of advice! Good father work!
English, I think! I mean I do enjoy teaching English, believe it or not, so if
I had to teach you a university I would yeah I would teach English... spoken
English. Any... spoken English!
I'd love... I'd proper love a parrot, I would! I really, really love birds and I would
love one of those big macaw type parrots. The thing is that I love them so
much that I'd actually feel quite bad having them in my house, I would want
them to be, yeah, out in the forests where they belong, in the jungle, so it's a... yes
I'd love one but I don't think I could do that to them, I would feel too bad. But,
for the sake of the question I'm gonna say parrot!
Fifteen years ago I was living in, I was living in France fifteen years ago!
2002 yeah so I, what would I take from France? From
France what would I put in a time capsule that I could have right now?
That's hard... there was a very nice fondue where I used to live called Fondue Creusois
I would like to put some of that in a time capsule and have it for lunch today!
What's surprised me about my current job? Let me tell you what surprised me the
other day about my current job. I took my laptop to another house, alright? And
when I came back I forgot my laptop. My laptop is my life
for work, y'know, it's got everything on it. What surprised me was that even
though I was 2 full days without my laptop I could still work perfectly.
Everything I use is online for that very reason. Like, I always want to know that if my
laptop gets gets broken or stolen then I can... it's not going to affect my business
and I was really surprised that it worked! So there you go, that surprised me
in a very very good way!
I think that... it sounds so cliché but I can't think of many jobs that I would
rather do. I can't think of any jobs that would rather do than the job that I
do! The only negative about my job at the
moment is that I don't have enough time to do more of my job! How ridiculous is
that? But it's true! And if I was guaranteed to be successful then I would
just do the same thing as I'm doing right now. Is that a boring answer? if it
is, then... football player!
The weirdest thing I've ever eaten was in Kenya we
went to some really cool restaurant in in Nairobi where they serve all sorts of
weird meat and, as I said before, I'm not really keen on trying different, strange
food, but that night I tried a few different things including a bit of
crocodile! And I probably had about, like, a mouthful of crocodile just so that I
could say that I'd eaten it! Very weird.
Shan't be trying it again. Thought it gives me a good answer for this question...
Crocodile!
The coolest road trip I've ever done was the mother of all road trips: Route 66!
Yeah, me and my wife did that a couple of years ago on our last summer vacation
before we had a baby. We went from Chicago and we went all the
way to New Mexico. We didn't actually do the final part because we wanted to see
Colorado as well, but my word, we went on a mammoth road trip around the States and
it was brilliant! Absolutely brilliant!
Right I live in Spain now and before this I lived in the United
States. What are the biggest differences between here and there? How long have you
got? I could do an entire video on this! The timetable, alright? In Spain we tend
to have lunch at 3:30 I used to have a lunch at 12:00 in the States. And we have
dinner at about... bufff what time do I have dinner? I have dinner at about 10 o'clock at night
here! I used to be sleeping at 10 o'clock in the States
y'know? Everything is kind of two hours later than it should be over here in
Spain. That's really the biggest difference and the biggest thing that
it's been hard to get used to. Also it's November and I'm wearing a t-shirt
outside! In November in Chicago we'd be snowing already so that's another huge
difference. It was starting to get nice and Christmassy and it still feels like
summer here. That's quite hard to get my head round as well.
Role model in terms of being a good person and growing up to be a good
person and a good parent and a good citizen?
My parents! And mentor like kind of educational or professional person I
would say my University professor David Hornsby. I think he did a great job of
making everything kind of make sense and make... he was so passionate about his... the
subject that he taught (which was linguistics) and I think that's where I
developed such a passion for the English language even though he taught me
linguistics... French linguistics... it really was so
incredibly infectious and kind of made everything make sense and make me
realize what my big big passion was and yeah, great mentor, great guy.
I would absolutely love to be able to fly! I would! I'd go on holiday whenever I
wanted. Cheap air fares. I'd go and just fly around the city, go up to the top of
the football stadium, watch the game for free.
It'd be a great money saver and it would be a lot of fun!
The strangest compliment I've ever got was that I've got nice teeth!
I didn't even think 'nice teeth' was a thing! But yeah, two people told me I've
got nice teeth. And I ended up marrying one of them! It obviously had a very
positive effect on me!
Alright, best piece of career advice I heard was this: find something you love
doing and then find someone who will pay you to do it! If you don't know what to
do with your life professionally, that's pretty good advice! The worst? I can't even
remember to be honest with you. I don't really.. You know what, when I get bad... when
I get advice that's just not relevant to me, it just totally goes over my head.
I don't even... I might go up mm-hmm but honestly it goes in one ear out the next,
and it's, it's instantly forgotten! So I really don't know, really don't know.
Alright, there you go, maybe you've learned a little bit more about me in
this lesson. Remember to write your questions for me in the comments below.
If I get a good number of questions I will do another conversational video
like this for ya! Alright, thanks for being here
and I'll see you in the next lesson! Bye for now!