Shownotes
I'm doing a little survey to find out more about ALE listeners. There are just four tiny questions. It will only take a minute or two, and will help me a LOT! Please check it out. Thanks, Cooper
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Season 1 Episode 12Thank you for downloading this episode.
👉The story begins at 01:54 and the tiny lessons begin at 13:40
👉You can find the transcript after the Credits!
👉Visit our website to download the Podcast User's Manual and find out more! https://alittleenglish.com/
A Little English is written, produced, recorded, edited, mixed, mastered and scored by Edward Cooper Howland.
All stories are either in the public domain, or written by me.
Copyright 2024 Edward Cooper Howland
⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐
TRANSCRIPT:
Hi. My name is Cooper, and this is…A Little English. Every episode, I read a short story. After the story, there are three tiny lessons.
If you’re really serious about studying using this podcast, please go to my website, www.alittleenglish.com. You can get the Podcast User’s Manual, with lots of ideas for self-study. If you just want to listen, then relax and enjoy.
Oh my goodness, this is the end of season one, the end of Winnie-the-Pooh. Well the first book at least. I’ll talk more after the story about what’s coming in season two, but for now, there is a LOT of Christopher Robin in this story, so….are you ready, Tabatha?
Winnie-the-Pooh, Chapter X
In Which Christopher Robin Gives Pooh a Party, and We Say Goodbye
Part 2
When they had all nearly eaten enough, Christopher Robin banged on the table with his spoon, and everybody stopped talking and was very silent, except Roo who was just finishing a loud attack of hiccups and trying to look as if it was one of Rabbit’s relations.
“This party,” said Christopher Robin, “is a party because of what someone did, and we all know who it was, and it’s his party, because of what he did, and I’ve got a present for him and here it is.” Then he felt about a little and whispered, “Where is it?”
While he was looking, Eeyore coughed in an impressive way and began to speak.
“Friends,” he said, “including oddments, it is a great pleasure, or perhaps I had better say it has been a pleasure so far, to see you at my party. What I did was nothing. Any of you—except Rabbit and Owl and Kanga—would have done the same. Oh, and Pooh. My remarks do not, of course, apply to Piglet and Roo, because they are too small. Any of you would have done the same. But it just happened to be Me. It was not, I need hardly say, with an idea of getting what Christopher Robin is looking for now”—and he put his front leg to his mouth and said in a loud whisper, “Try under the table”—“that I did what I did—but because I feel that we should all do what we can to help. I feel that we should all—”
“H—hup!” said Roo accidentally.
“Roo, dear!” said Kanga reproachfully.
“Was it me?” asked Roo, a little surprised.
“What’s Eeyore talking about?” Piglet whispered to Pooh.
“I don’t know,” said Pooh rather dolefully.
“I thought this was your party.”
“I thought it was once. But I suppose it isn’t.”
“I’d sooner it was yours than Eeyore’s,” said Piglet.
“So would I,” said Pooh.
“H—hup!” said Roo again.
“As—I—was—saying,” said Eeyore loudly and sternly, “as I was saying when I was interrupted by various Loud Sounds, I feel that—”
“Here it is!” cried Christopher Robin excitedly. “Pass it down to silly old Pooh. It’s for Pooh.”
“For Pooh?” said Eeyore.
“Of course it is. The best bear in all the world.”
“I might have known,” said Eeyore. “After all, one can’t complain. I have my friends. Somebody spoke to me only yesterday. And was it last week or the week before that Rabbit bumped into me and said ‘Bother!’ The Social Round. Always something going on.”
Nobody was listening, for they were all saying “Open it, Pooh,” “What is it, Pooh?” “I know what it is,” “No, you don’t” and other helpful remarks of this sort. And of course Pooh was opening it as quickly as ever he could, but without cutting the string, because you never know when a bit of string might be Useful. At last it was undone.
When Pooh saw what it was, he nearly fell down, he was so pleased. It was a Special Pencil Case. There were pencils in it marked “B” for Bear, and pencils marked “HB” for Helping Bear, and pencils marked “BB” for Brave Bear. There was a knife for sharpening the pencils, and india-rubber for rubbing out anything which you had spelt wrong, and a ruler for ruling lines for the words to walk on, and inches marked on the ruler in case you wanted to know how many inches anything was, and Blue Pencils and Red Pencils and Green Pencils for saying special things in blue and red and green. And all these lovely things were in little pockets of their own in a Special Case which shut with a click when you clicked it. And they were all for Pooh.
“Oh!” said Pooh.
“Oh, Pooh!” said everybody else except Eeyore.
“Thank you,” growled Pooh.
But Eeyore was saying to himself, “This writing business. Pencils and whatnot. Overrated, if you ask me. Silly stuff. Nothing in it.”
Later on, when they had all said “Goodbye” and “Thank you” to Christopher Robin, Pooh and Piglet walked home thoughtfully together in the golden evening, and for a long time they were silent.
“When you wake up in the morning, Pooh,” said Piglet at last, “what’s the first thing you say to yourself?”
“What’s for breakfast?” said Pooh. “What do you say, Piglet?”
“I say, I wonder what’s going to happen exciting today?” said Piglet.
Pooh nodded thoughtfully.
“It’s the same thing,” he said.
“And what did happen?” asked Christopher Robin.
“When?”
“Next morning.”
“I don’t know.”
“Could you think and tell me and Pooh some time?”
“If you wanted it very much.”
“Pooh does,” said Christopher Robin.
He gave a deep sigh, picked his bear up by the leg and walked off to the door, trailing Winnie-the-Pooh behind him. At the door he turned and said “Coming to see me have my bath?”
“I might,” I said.
“Was Pooh’s pencil case any better than mine?”
“It was just the same,” I said.
He nodded and went out … and in a moment I heard Winnie-the-Pooh—bump, bump, bump—going up the stairs behind him.
And that is the end of the book. I’m actually having a lot of feelings right now. It took me about six months of preparation and practice to begin this podcast, and I always knew that I would read Winnie-the-Pooh to first. But I wasn’t sure what I would do after that. And now, here we are, at the end. It’s time to take a bath and put Edward Bear and Christopher Robin to bed.
Like I always say in the credits, all the stories I read are in the public domain, which means that the copyright has expired on them. So far, only the first Winnie-the-pooh book is in the public domain, so I can’t continue with those stories. Not until next year, anyway. It’s actually pretty interesting legal stuff, and you can google it yourself, if you want to.
Anyway, I’ve decided that for season two of A Little English, we are gonna do something different. We’re going to read some pretty weird science fiction stories by another one of my favorite authors, Philip K Dick. And since Halloween is coming up, we are gonna start with a spooky one, called The Hanging Stranger. These stories are also public domain, but they come from the 1950s and 60s, so I hope the language will be a little easier to understand.
Phil Dick’s stories are very different from AA Milne’s and I am super excited to get started. I hope you’re gonna come along for the ride.
Anyway, let’s do some tiny lessons!
How is the Big Picture looking tonight?
I just have one question: why was it so important that Pooh got a pencil case as a present? There are a few answers, but I think the best one is that it’s exactly the same case as Christopher Robin-the real Christopher Robin- had. So the two best friends can write together.
What about a dance at the Dictionary Disco?
There are two absolutely beastly adverbs in this story, and they’re right near each other.
First Kanga speaks reproachfully. Whoa. Long word. Well. “Reproach” means to scold someone or speak with them like a mom to a kid. Like Kanga does….a lot. So reproachFULLY means to talk to someone….like……you are their Mom. And you just caught them doing something naughty.
Right afterwards, Pooh speaks dolefully. I don’t think that you can be “dole.’ But you can be “doleful.” Full of dole? No. Doleful means sad or kinda depressed. So speaking “dolefully” is just a fancy 1926 way of saying “sadly.”
How about Season One’s final Melody Moment?
Actually I don’t have a new lesson for today. It’s the end of Season One, and I want to review. If you go all the way back to episode one, I talk about the Boots and Cats of English. That’s just another way to say the rhythm. Rhythm is incredibly important for spoken English. Actually, I think it’s the MOST important thing in speaking and listening to English. It’s created by having strong and weak syllables. Strong syllables generally sound like the way they are written. And weak syllables are made weak by reducing the vowel sound into a schwa. Or sometimes another sound, like the schwi. That’s it. That’s the key to sounding great in spoken English. Change about half your vowel sounds to schwas. So instead of O or A, you just say a little tiny….uh.
DOn’t worry, I’ll talk a LOT more about this.
Let’s go to the credits!
Thank you for listening to Season 1 Episode 12 of A Little English.
Every episode is produced entirely by me, Edward Cooper Howland, here in Hiroshima, Japan.
For more information on how to study using this podcast, please go to www.alittleenglish.com, where you can get the Podcast User’s Manual.
You can follow me on social media, @alelearning on instagram and twitter.
To join the conversation and the community around A Little English, please go to our discord. There’s a link in the show notes.
If you want to support this podcast, you can go to patreon.com/alittleenglish. If you do, you can join a private discord server for patrons, and you can chat with me. Ask me questions! Maybe I can help you with your homework! Maybe :)
Don’t forget to subscribe and leave a review on whatever app you’re using to listen.
The stories I read are in the public domain, and I get them from standardebooks.org, which is a really good website and you should check it out.
Again, thank you so much for listening.
For now, be kind to yourselves, and to each other.
Mentioned in this episode:
Transcripts
Hi. My name is Cooper, and this is…A Little English. Every episode, I read a short story. After the story, there are three tiny lessons.
If you’re really serious about studying using this podcast, please go to my website, www.alittleenglish.com. You can get the Podcast User’s Manual, with lots of ideas for self-study. If you just want to listen, then relax and enjoy.
Oh my goodness, this is the end of season one, the end of Winnie-the-Pooh. Well the first book at least. I’ll talk more after the story about what’s coming in season two, but for now, there is a LOT of Christopher Robin in this story, so….are you ready, Tabatha?
Winnie-the-Pooh, Chapter X
In Which Christopher Robin Gives Pooh a Party, and We Say Goodbye
Part 2
When they had all nearly eaten enough, Christopher Robin banged on the table with his spoon, and everybody stopped talking and was very silent, except Roo who was just finishing a loud attack of hiccups and trying to look as if it was one of Rabbit’s relations.
“This party,” said Christopher Robin, “is a party because of what someone did, and we all know who it was, and it’s his party, because of what he did, and I’ve got a present for him and here it is.” Then he felt about a little and whispered, “Where is it?”
While he was looking, Eeyore coughed in an impressive way and began to speak.
“Friends,” he said, “including oddments, it is a great pleasure, or perhaps I had better say it has been a pleasure so far, to see you at my party. What I did was nothing. Any of you—except Rabbit and Owl and Kanga—would have done the same. Oh, and Pooh. My remarks do not, of course, apply to Piglet and Roo, because they are too small. Any of you would have done the same. But it just happened to be Me. It was not, I need hardly say, with an idea of getting what Christopher Robin is looking for now”—and he put his front leg to his mouth and said in a loud whisper, “Try under the table”—“that I did what I did—but because I feel that we should all do what we can to help. I feel that we should all—”
“H—hup!” said Roo accidentally.
“Roo, dear!” said Kanga reproachfully.
“Was it me?” asked Roo, a little surprised.
“What’s Eeyore talking about?” Piglet whispered to Pooh.
“I don’t know,” said Pooh rather dolefully.
“I thought this was your party.”
“I thought it was once. But I suppose it isn’t.”
“I’d sooner it was yours than Eeyore’s,” said Piglet.
“So would I,” said Pooh.
“H—hup!” said Roo again.
“As—I—was—saying,” said Eeyore loudly and sternly, “as I was saying when I was interrupted by various Loud Sounds, I feel that—”
“Here it is!” cried Christopher Robin excitedly. “Pass it down to silly old Pooh. It’s for Pooh.”
“For Pooh?” said Eeyore.
“Of course it is. The best bear in all the world.”
“I might have known,” said Eeyore. “After all, one can’t complain. I have my friends. Somebody spoke to me only yesterday. And was it last week or the week before that Rabbit bumped into me and said ‘Bother!’ The Social Round. Always something going on.”
Nobody was listening, for they were all saying “Open it, Pooh,” “What is it, Pooh?” “I know what it is,” “No, you don’t” and other helpful remarks of this sort. And of course Pooh was opening it as quickly as ever he could, but without cutting the string, because you never know when a bit of string might be Useful. At last it was undone.
When Pooh saw what it was, he nearly fell down, he was so pleased. It was a Special Pencil Case. There were pencils in it marked “B” for Bear, and pencils marked “HB” for Helping Bear, and pencils marked “BB” for Brave Bear. There was a knife for sharpening the pencils, and india-rubber for rubbing out anything which you had spelt wrong, and a ruler for ruling lines for the words to walk on, and inches marked on the ruler in case you wanted to know how many inches anything was, and Blue Pencils and Red Pencils and Green Pencils for saying special things in blue and red and green. And all these lovely things were in little pockets of their own in a Special Case which shut with a click when you clicked it. And they were all for Pooh.
“Oh!” said Pooh.
“Oh, Pooh!” said everybody else except Eeyore.
“Thank you,” growled Pooh.
But Eeyore was saying to himself, “This writing business. Pencils and whatnot. Overrated, if you ask me. Silly stuff. Nothing in it.”
Later on, when they had all said “Goodbye” and “Thank you” to Christopher Robin, Pooh and Piglet walked home thoughtfully together in the golden evening, and for a long time they were silent.
“When you wake up in the morning, Pooh,” said Piglet at last, “what’s the first thing you say to yourself?”
“What’s for breakfast?” said Pooh. “What do you say, Piglet?”
“I say, I wonder what’s going to happen exciting today?” said Piglet.
Pooh nodded thoughtfully.
“It’s the same thing,” he said.
“And what did happen?” asked Christopher Robin.
“When?”
“Next morning.”
“I don’t know.”
“Could you think and tell me and Pooh some time?”
“If you wanted it very much.”
“Pooh does,” said Christopher Robin.
He gave a deep sigh, picked his bear up by the leg and walked off to the door, trailing Winnie-the-Pooh behind him. At the door he turned and said “Coming to see me have my bath?”
“I might,” I said.
“Was Pooh’s pencil case any better than mine?”
“It was just the same,” I said.
He nodded and went out … and in a moment I heard Winnie-the-Pooh—bump, bump, bump—going up the stairs behind him.
And that is the end of the book. I’m actually having a lot of feelings right now. It took me about six months of preparation and practice to begin this podcast, and I always knew that I would read Winnie-the-Pooh to first. But I wasn’t sure what I would do after that. And now, here we are, at the end. It’s time to take a bath and put Edward Bear and Christopher Robin to bed.
Like I always say in the credits, all the stories I read are in the public domain, which means that the copyright has expired on them. So far, only the first Winnie-the-pooh book is in the public domain, so I can’t continue with those stories. Not until next year, anyway. It’s actually pretty interesting legal stuff, and you can google it yourself, if you want to.
omain, but they come from the:Phil Dick’s stories are very different from AA Milne’s and I am super excited to get started. I hope you’re gonna come along for the ride.
Anyway, let’s do some tiny lessons!
How is the Big Picture looking tonight?
I just have one question: why was it so important that Pooh got a pencil case as a present? There are a few answers, but I think the best one is that it’s exactly the same case as Christopher Robin-the real Christopher Robin- had. So the two best friends can write together.
What about a dance at the Dictionary Disco?
There are two absolutely beastly adverbs in this story, and they’re right near each other.
First Kanga speaks reproachfully. Whoa. Long word. Well. “Reproach” means to scold someone or speak with them like a mom to a kid. Like Kanga does….a lot. So reproachFULLY means to talk to someone….like……you are their Mom. And you just caught them doing something naughty.
dolefully” is just a fancy:How about Season One’s final Melody Moment?
Actually I don’t have a new lesson for today. It’s the end of Season One, and I want to review. If you go all the way back to episode one, I talk about the Boots and Cats of English. That’s just another way to say the rhythm. Rhythm is incredibly important for spoken English. Actually, I think it’s the MOST important thing in speaking and listening to English. It’s created by having strong and weak syllables. Strong syllables generally sound like the way they are written. And weak syllables are made weak by reducing the vowel sound into a schwa. Or sometimes another sound, like the schwi. That’s it. That’s the key to sounding great in spoken English. Change about half your vowel sounds to schwas. So instead of O or A, you just say a little tiny….uh.
DOn’t worry, I’ll talk a LOT more about this.
Let’s go to the credits!
Thank you for listening to Season 1 Episode 12 of A Little English.
Every episode is produced entirely by me, Edward Cooper Howland, here in Hiroshima, Japan.
For more information on how to study using this podcast, please go to www.alittleenglish.com, where you can get the Podcast User’s Manual.
You can follow me on social media, @alelearning on instagram and twitter.
To join the conversation and the community around A Little English, please go to our discord. There’s a link in the show notes.
If you want to support this podcast, you can go to patreon.com/alittleenglish. If you do, you can join a private discord server for patrons, and you can chat with me. Ask me questions! Maybe I can help you with your homework! Maybe :)
Don’t forget to subscribe and leave a review on whatever app you’re using to listen.
The stories I read are in the public domain, and I get them from standardebooks.org, which is a really good website and you should check it out.
Again, thank you so much for listening.
For now, be kind to yourselves, and to each other.
