Hi everyone! So before we set the ball rolling for this year’s series of Keynote Speeches, I thought I’d give a brief overview of what’s in the pipeline for 2022.
As you know, these Keynote Speeches are mainly aimed at improving your speaking and listening skills and among the highlights lined up for you over the coming 12 months are monographs on subjects such as the pronunciation of specific letters, the pronunciation of combinations of letters and even the pronunciation of words that have silent letters.
Also included are important matters such as word stress and intonation, consonant clusters as well as consonant sounds and vowel sounds, including, of course, the all-important schwa.
There are also monographs on other more general language themes, but always bearing in mind basic speaking and listening skills. These include language items such as homophones, collocations, false friends, minimal pairs and, of course, contractions.
And to provide all you listeners out there with a certain element of humour, I’ll be counting on Salvi & Javi’s participation for many of these sessions.
Occasionally I’ll also be dealing with a few topics that are less directly related to speaking and listening and more oriented towards helping you develop your study skills. Some of these will include the importance of doing a needs analysis, some aspects will include self-study, synonyms and antonyms and how you can learn to lose the fear of making mistakes.
Later on, there’ll also be a series outlining, very briefly, the History of the English languages. And another series on the Structure of English. These two series are aimed at giving you a general background to the language you’re learning to help you understand many of the apparent idiosyncrasies you come across in your learning process.
You might also be interested to know that negotiations are well underway for a Special Edition to celebrate the 100th edition of Salvi and Javi’s Key to English podcast. Salvi has been lobbying hard for a Keynote Speech dedicated to Big Bad Words and while that might not be the most fitting subject with which to celebrate such an auspicious number of editions, it’s quite likely that we’ll programme it for the 99th or the 101st edition instead.
And for those of you who are newcomers to the Key to English podcast, I’d also like to point out another feature of these podcasts: the Keynote Response. This is an occasional slot in which I comment on, and give some additional information to, some of the issues that crop up in the interviews that Salvi & Javi conduct with their guests. These Keynote Responses will often deal with general language matters and not so much on the speaking and listening aspects.
And before I wrap up, I actually have a request to make. I’d like all of you, Javi and Salvi included, whenever you listen to a Keynote Speech or Keynote Response, to go over it again, with the transcript, and underline or, even better, note down, in your own handwriting, or with the Braille stylus, just half a dozen of the words or expressions that you consider useful. They might be items you already know but don’t often use yourself or they might simply be items that strike you for whatever other reason. The point is that I deliberately introduce into each Keynote Speech some of the essential vocabulary items and expressions that you’ll come across in real-life contexts and if over the coming year you learn or revise the 500-odd vocabulary items that you’ll have noted down by then, just from these transcripts, your vocabulary will obviously be that much richer.
Finally, while I obviously can’t speak for Salvi & Javi, I’d just like to finish by saying that I hope all you listeners out there enjoy listening to these Keynote Speeches. And, more importantly, that you learn from them. If you can take just one small detail or useful item, from each of them and apply it to what you already know, I, for one, will be happy.
So, whether you’re just starting to learn English or already have a bilingual level, I hope you enjoy listening to the Key to English podcasts. Bye for now!
