Luke’s Improvised Storytelling: Jurassic Park 🦖 [1004] Listen & Learn English

Luke's ENGLISH Podcast - Learn British English with Luke Thompson

Luke Thompson performs an improvised retelling of the film Jurassic Park from the perspective of Dr. Alan Grant to demonstrate how storytell

Key takeaways

• Retelling familiar stories is an effective way to practice narrative tenses and vocabulary recall.
• Luke identifies specific linguistic errors, such as using 'scream' instead of the more accurate 'roar' for dinosaurs.
• The episode clarifies technical distinctions, like the difference between tree sap and fossilized resin (amber).
• ChatGPT can be used as a powerful tool to audit transcripts for improved vocabulary and register.
• Luke emphasizes that learners should prioritize spoken fluency over perfect accuracy during improvisation.

Main topics

• Improvised Storytelling
• Jurassic Park Plot Retelling
• Vocabulary Self-Correction

Notable quotes

English is not something you know, it's something you can do.

Conclusion

A highly practical episode showing how to turn entertainment into a st

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) Thank you for choosing Luke's English Podcast. For more episodes with specific vocabulary and pronunciation teaching, plus ad-free listening, access to the Premium community, and to show your support for the podcast, sign up to LEP Premium at teachaluke.co.uk slash premium. Speaker 1 (0:22) You're listening to Luke's English Podcast. Speaker 1 (0:35) Hello, listeners. Welcome back to Luke's English Podcast. How are you doing today? I hope you're doing fine. So, welcome to this new episode of my podcast for learners of English all around the world. In this episode, I'm going to tell you a story. So, this is a story episode. I'm going to do it in a slightly different way to usual because most of this story is going to be improvised. I'm just going to kind of improvise my way through a story. I'm going to try to do this. It's going to be... A bit of a challenge. It's sort of an experiment, but it should be a bit of fun. Okay, now, when you're telling a story, if it's a made-up story, I mean, if it's a work of fiction, which is what I'm going to try to do today, one of the difficult things is obviously the structure of the story, the plot of the story. the actual narrative, you know, working that out can be really difficult if you're just improvising something. So what I've chosen to do with this one is I'm taking an existing story, a story that already exists, the plot of a film, a well-known film. And as I go through the story, I'm sure you're going to identify which one it is. But what I'm going to try to do. It's tell that story. From the point of view of one of the main characters. Okay. So, yeah, this will be a challenge, but I also want to encourage you to do something like this and to show you that it can be fun to tell stories in different ways and it can be good speaking practice if, for example, you have one of your favourite films or even your favourite book or something. Just try to tell the story of that film. And it helps if you do it from the point of view of one of the characters. You could do it like that, telling the story from the point of view of one of the characters. Or you can just tell the story of the film as if you are explaining it to someone who's never seen it before. And yes, I'm encouraging you to do speaking practice on your own. You can do that. Obviously, when you do speaking practice on your own, you want to get feedback. So you could do that with a speaking partner, with a teacher. right with a language instructor if you want to you could always speak to ai Speaker 1 (2:54) I don't want to encourage the use of AI too much, but obviously it has its uses. So you could talk to AI and then ask it to give you feedback. This story that I'm going to tell you today, this episode is going to be fairly long. You don't have to do something as long as this. You could do something much shorter. Even if you just tell a story for like five minutes or try to, I think it's a very good exercise. And if you do that kind of practice regularly, it can... be a great way to activate your English because listening is great, reading is great, studying is great, but as I always say, English is not something you know, it's something you can do. So you should always find ways to actually practice producing English in writing or speaking. And improvising a story or describing the plot of a film can be a fun way to do it. So in the spirit of that, I'd like to... do this episode today. So, an improvised story from the point of view of one of the characters. I'm going to start the story in just a moment. The PDF, yes, there's a PDF with a full transcript of this entire episode. So, if you want to read what I am saying, check the episode PDF. If you are watching the video version of this on YouTube, switch on the subtitles. You'll be able to read the subtitles along with me. Okay. But I recommend that you just listen to this episode and then check the PDF transcript later. That can be a good way to do a bit of both. You do listening and then you kind of add reading on the top of it. I recommend that you just listen and enjoy this episode and then check the PDF and read it later. And, you know, then you add reading practice and you also can check the transcript for bits of vocabulary that you may have noticed during the episode. Right then. Hold on a second. Hi, this is Luke from the future. Just before we start, I wanted to say a couple of other things. Firstly, I will be making a premium series based on this episode with a vocabulary quiz and vocabulary review, focusing on words and expressions in the story, particularly things like phrasal verbs and idioms and other fixed expressions. And also in this... series, there will be a pronunciation episode to help you practice pausing, sentence stress, intonation, and connected speech by chunking a shorter version of this story and then reading it aloud with me. So if you're serious about learning English with me and you want to get those episodes when they arrive, plus all the other premium ones in the archive, sign up to Luke's English Podcast Premium at teacherluke.co.uk slash premium, link in the description. Also, stick around until the end of this episode in order to hear some comments from me on the specific words and terms I use when telling this story. I have a few little corrections and improvements to make, such as the fact that I should have said roar, not scream, because dinosaurs don't really scream, they roar. I don't know why I said scream, but there you go. And also, I should have said the word flora, not fauna. at one point. Flora refers to plant life, whereas the word fauna refers to animal life. And a couple of other little words and details that I want to correct. So stick around until the end of the story for that. Various corrections of vocabulary terminology and a couple of scientific inaccuracies. But anyway, now, without further ado, let's start the story. And here we go. All right. So did I ever tell you about... Speaker 1 (6:37) When I used to be a paleontologist. Yeah, I don't think I ever told you about that. I used to be a paleontologist many years ago before I became an English teacher, because, you know, I've had a long life and there have been many different chapters. But before I ever became an English teacher and a podcaster, I used to work as a paleontologist. I mean, I stopped. Obviously, I had to stop because it was, you know, it was just too stressful. And you might think, well. You might think, wait a minute, what is a paleontologist, Luke? Why is it stressful? A paleontologist is someone who basically studies the past, the ancient past, and normally does that through the study of fossils, right? The remains of animals that are buried in the ground. I mean, we're talking about animals that have been in the ground for millions and millions of years. You know, a paleontologist. Yes, like Ross from Friends. Yes, like that. So a guy who studies dinosaurs, let's say that. Too stressful. And you might be thinking, Luke, it's not that stressful. Most of the time, paleontologists, what do they do? What's stressful about that? You spend most of your time just digging in the ground or brushing, brushing the earth with a brush, looking for things and usually not finding them. And if you're lucky, you might find parts of a skeleton of something. But what's stressful about that? Well, you know, my experience as a paleontologist was particularly stressful. And so I had to stop because it was just too much for me. Let me tell you what happened. Right. So this all started when I was doing a paleontology job with my girlfriend at the time. Her name is Ellie. She's not my girlfriend anymore. But Ellie was Ellie is a brilliant. paleontologist scientist, not a paleontologist. She's a paleobotanist, which means that she specializes rather than specializing in animal life like I do or did because I don't do it anymore. Of course, she specialized as a paleobotanist in botany. Right. So that's a plant life most mostly. But she was also very knowledgeable about dinosaurs. She still is. But, you know, we're not together anymore. But... She is a brilliant, brilliant person. And at that time, we were together and we were working together as well on this dig. And it was a fantastic dig. There were lots of. you know, interesting things that we were finding in the ground. And it was a great time, the two of us together digging in the ground. I mean, what more could you want? What more could a paleontologist want than to be digging in the ground every day? next to a beautiful... woman who was also your girlfriend at the time, although not my girlfriend anymore. She's with someone else now, another paleontologist. Anyway, let's not talk about that. Anyway, so yeah, I loved being a paleontologist and I loved dinosaurs, of course, and they're fascinating. One thing I didn't like about being a paleontologist, one of the things was Well, pfft. The kids, the children. Because for some reason, being a dinosaur expert meant that... Parents normally, parents of little children, were always desperate to introduce you to their children. There were always children coming, coming to you, always children coming. Speaker 1 (10:41) And children love dinosaurs as well, but I don't know why they love dinosaurs, because if they really understood about dinosaurs, I don't think they would love them, because dinosaurs were, you know, really scary, like really scary things that would eat. Everything they could get their teeth into. The carnivorous ones, anyway. You know, they were pretty monstrous, but children just love them. I don't know why. You know, but parents always would come and bring their children to you and expecting me as a paleontologist to tell them about dinosaurs. Well, I don't want to teach your children about dinosaurs. I want to find dinosaurs and study them. dig them out of the ground with my beautiful girlfriend, my girlfriend at the time. She's not my girlfriend anymore. So the kids would come and it was, I mean, if these children really knew how terrifying dinosaurs really were, how sharp their claws were, they wouldn't be so interested in that. I think they should stick to other things, you know, like, you know, learning their other lessons at school. teddy bears and things like that the children and dinosaurs they just don't they should never really go together i don't understand the connection so i was working with ellie on this dinosaur dig there were children which i was who i didn't really want to talk to um and so we'd finished for the day and Speaker 1 (12:12) This guy came in a suit. saying he worked for some insurance company. I don't remember exactly. Forgive me if I ramble. I have a tendency to ramble. And it's also difficult to remember. It was quite a long time ago. Anyway, apparently there was a visitor. So we went into our trailer. Ellie and I went into the trailer where we would, you know, rest at the end of the day, where we'd have our lunch and things like that. We had a... We had a refrigerator in there that was full of bottles of champagne that we were waiting to open when we'd finished our dig. You know, we were planning to celebrate the end of the dig, which was coming soon. But this guy came in with his insurance man, a man in a suit. He came in and, I mean, we were quite shocked, to be honest, at his rudeness. stormed into the room, didn't really introduce himself properly and went straight to the fridge, our fridge, and opened it up and got out a bottle of champagne and popped the cork. And, you know, we just thought, who is this guy? But I have to say, he was an interesting man, quite a charming man. This is what I was thinking at the time. And he popped it open and he said, we have reason to celebrate. He was an English guy. We've got a reason to celebrate. Speaker 1 (13:35) And I don't know, I felt like he was trying to sell us something. I don't know what was going on. But it turned out that this guy's name was John Hammond, right? And he was a billionaire. Speaker 1 (13:48) Okay. And, you know, billionaires, what can you do? I mean, they just think that they run the world. They think they own the world and they probably do, don't they? Let's be honest. But this guy, John Hammond, was a billionaire. And he started to tell us about this extraordinary thing that he'd done. I mean, I don't know how it was possible. I mean, it was mind blowing. I still can't quite come to terms with it now. Basically, what he told us is that he had a project on this island. somewhere off the coast of Costa Rica, it was. He owned the island. Of course he did. He was a billionaire. Speaker 1 (14:31) And on that island, he was doing some... Speaker 1 (14:35) Interesting things. Now, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, this sounds suspicious. Speaker 1 (14:41) Who is this guy? Okay, I mean, I was a bit suspicious, but the more he talked, the more interesting it became. Let me try to get to the point. He told us that on this island he was developing... actual dinosaurs. He was breeding dinosaurs. And Ellie and I were both shocked. Speaker 1 (15:08) Sort of incredulous, like we couldn't quite believe it, but also fascinated because as you know, for a paleontologist, the idea that someone had been genetically engineering and breeding real living dinosaurs. Speaker 1 (15:27) was irresistible. I mean, this was just... Speaker 1 (15:32) Irresistible to us. And this man John Hammond told us... that he developed this park. It was going to be a theme park, a bit like sort of Disneyland or, you know, those theme parks where they have dolphins and killer whales who do tricks, you know, that sort of thing. Sea Life Centre or something. But it was for dinosaurs. Speaker 1 (15:57) And the insurance guy told us that they'd had some problem. One of the members of staff, there'd been a health and safety issue. And that they needed experts to come just to check the island, just to make sure that it was safe and that it could then be opened. It was a sort of an insurance problem. And they needed us to come to look at it. And we had been chosen. Ellie and I had been handpicked by John Hammond and his company. And his insurance man, they'd chosen us, they'd heard about our reputation as being leading... Paleo... what was it, paleontologists and paleobotanists. So this was very flattering. to be chosen by this billionaire to go and take part in this project. And so, despite the fact we had the dig and everything, we thought, well, this is extraordinary. We have to go. So we agreed. I mean, I was a little sceptical. I thought there's got to be a catch here somewhere. But we went and, you know, we took a helicopter flight and everything. It was very exciting. And obviously it was just wonderful to... Speaker 1 (17:17) have the experience with Ellie. Speaker 1 (17:20) And we landed on the island and I was, you know, both of us looking out of the window to see if we could see anything. You know, we saw some fences and some bits of infrastructure and stuff like that. We landed on the island the whole time. John Hammond was talking and talking and talking, telling us how, you know, about how they developed this and these fences and the high levels of security and the expertise that they had, the members of staff, the brilliant... IT crew that they had working on the island and that they'd spared no expense. He kept saying, we spared no expense. The amount of money that they must have spent. He did also tell us that there was a company involved. He wasn't the only investor in this project. There was another company called... InGen, I think it was, who'd also invested money in this project. Astronomical amounts of investment had been put into this project. Speaker 1 (18:23) The insurance man told us about some of the investors. I mean, to be honest, that stuff is pretty boring to me. So a lot of it went over my head. I was just thinking, let me see the dinosaurs. I kind of didn't believe it. I was thinking, maybe they've got, I don't know, a couple of little ones. Speaker 1 (18:45) Maybe they're just, I don't know what, I didn't know what to think. Speaker 1 (18:49) birds dressed as dinosaurs. Who knows? I was just curious. So we arrived on the island. And the first thing that John Hammond, I mean, we were tired. It was a long journey. But the first thing he insisted on doing was taking us on a tour of the island. So off we went. And he really swept us off our feet. And we were in these really nice looking Jeeps riding through, driving through the island. I was thinking, OK. I'll see it. I'll believe it when I see it. That was what I was thinking. I'll believe it when I see actual dinosaurs. Driving along, Ellie started to notice the plant life. And she was saying, look at these plants. These are actually original. These are the same plants that we've seen in fossil records. This is incredible. And John Hammond, of course, was saying, oh, yes, we've included lots of fauna as well here. Some of the original fauna has also been brought back. I'll show you exactly how we did all of this. We spared no expense. And Ellie was distracted by the plants. And then as we drove up this hill. That is when I caught my first sight of the most incredible thing I've ever seen in my life. Speaker 1 (19:59) At that point. There they were. Speaker 1 (20:05) Three, if I remember correctly, Brachiosaurus. Speaker 1 (20:11) Full size. I mean, these things are like the size of skyscrapers with their huge long necks walking in a line. Calling to each other, I was stunned. When I managed to... Speaker 1 (20:27) Ellie didn't, I was saying, Ellie, look at this. Look, look, look. She's a paleobotanist. She loves plants. But I managed to get her to look in the same direction as me, and she couldn't believe it, too. And I know we couldn't help it. We got out of the Jeeps and walked towards them. I mean, thinking back on it now, that was probably not a very wise idea. If you see three huge animals the size of... churches. Speaker 1 (20:58) it's probably not a good idea to just walk right up to them. Speaker 1 (21:03) But we were so excited and I was amazed to actually see the actual bone structure, the way that they moved. It was indescribable. And it's unreal to me now to imagine. The sequence of events that happened afterwards. And... It all happened so quickly, but that was incredible. But John was like, get back in the Jeep. We've got plenty of other things to see. This is just the beginning. And we drove on and then we saw in the valley herds of Parasaurolophus. I've never been able to say that. Herds of these dinosaurs running through the valley and feeding in the water. I mean, absolutely mind-blowing stuff. Speaker 1 (21:57) Eventually, we kept travelling by jeep and... Speaker 1 (22:05) What happened next? There by the side of the road, there was another dinosaur which was lying down on its side. It appeared to be sick. And there were some members of staff there caring for it. So we wandered over. And it was a triceratops, an actual triceratops, the most beautiful. triceratops. So much more beautiful than I'd ever imagined. But this one was lying down and it was clearly sick. It was unwell. How did we know? Well, there was a mountain of dinosaur poo next to it. I mean... Normally I would have been disgusted, but I was fascinated, I'll be honest. And so was Ellie, even more so, because she started to examine the dung of this Triceratops, and she was fascinated by exploring the things it had been eating. I mean, she's, you know, I had to tell her, you know, make sure you wash your hands after this because you never know. She was fascinated. Hammond was like, come on, we've got to keep going. Ellie decided that she would stay with the triceratops. She wanted to try and help this sick triceratops. So she decided to stay. That's Ellie. That's that's just always the way she's been. You know, if she decides to do something. She just does it and there's nothing you can do with it. Just typical of Ellie, always doing her own thing and never staying with me. But anyway, I got back in the Jeep with Hammond and his insurance guy, whose name was Donald, I think. Donald Gerano, that's it. Gennaro. Gerano? Gerano. Gerano? Guano? No, Gennaro. Donald Gennaro. That was his name. Poor Donald. It's terrible what happened to him. I'll tell you about that when we get there. So, we get to the headquarters of this place, of this incredible theme park. I mean, my mind was... I was overwhelmed by everything. And I just couldn't quite decide what to think of it all. Speaker 1 (24:28) But I was keen to understand how he had brought these dinosaurs back to life. He'd been sort of hinting at it the whole time. Oh, scientific, genetic, this and cloning that and spared no expense, he kept saying. And at that point, he introduced me to his other guests. Now, remember, we'd been brought to the island in order to do a sort of inspection. for the benefit of the insurance company. They needed specialists to come to just check the park to make sure it was actually okay and that it would be safe for public, you know, to be open to the public. I mean, I felt like it was a bit of a big responsibility, to be honest. But I understand why they chose a paleontologist to come. As if to say, yeah, these are, I mean, what am I going to do? I'm going to say, okay, yes, these are dinosaurs that is, they're incredibly dangerous. But, I mean, yeah, it's safe, I suppose. I don't quite know what they expected from us. It was almost as if it was just a formality, like... John Hammond was just ticking boxes. Yeah, paleontologist inspection, fine, whatever. There was another scientist there as well. His name was, what was his name? Ian. Ian Malcolm. Ian Malcolm. Interesting character. Ian. Now, Ian was not a paleontologist. He was, well, he described himself as a chaotician. A chaotician. That's someone who is an expert in chaos theory. Speaker 1 (26:07) which, I mean, it's a branch of maths, basically. I mean, to be honest, Ian, he was a very flamboyant character, which you don't expect really from a mathematician, do you? I mean, really. I wasn't that impressed by Ian, to be honest. I mean, he was a he was very what's the word for it? He was very eccentric and flamboyant. and didn't really act like a man. He was very happy to be known as a chaotician. He was always telling, oh, yeah, I'm a chaotician. I study chaos theory. You know what chaos theory is? Let me show you with a drop of water. And I was thinking, this is all very vague to me as a paleontologist. It's never really been my cup of tea. Things like chaos theory, maths. Just let me get into the ground and actually... get my hands on some dinosaur bones. That's my approach to this. Much more practical. But fine, okay, for some reason, Ian, as a chaotician, as a mathematician, had been brought to inspect the island. I mean, what... I don't know what... Speaker 1 (27:13) I don't know if he was qualified to do that. Speaker 1 (27:16) But anyway, he was interesting company. And Ellie certainly seemed to seem to like him. Yeah, I mean, as far as I'm concerned, he was just a jumped up maths teacher, really, who wore dark glasses and a shirt unbuttoned and very handsome. Anyway. Speaker 1 (27:41) Ian was there. We all sat down to eat. I mean, I wasn't particularly hungry. I mean, I'd lost my appetite, to be honest. But we sat round and ate and talked and discussed stuff. And Ian made some interesting points about the ethics of it. Speaker 1 (28:01) I mean, what a deep thinker he is. Oh, you thought about, you know, your scientists have been so busy. What was it? What did he say? Your scientists have been so busy trying to work out whether you could do this. They didn't think about whether they should. Deep, deep stuff. Is that? I don't know. That's what he brought to the meeting anyway. It didn't seem to make any difference. To be honest, any of the things that we said or observed didn't seem to make any difference. I think John Hammond had basically decided that he was going to do this and that he had the money, he had the influence, it was going to happen. And the insurance company just needed to tick boxes. They needed to prove that they got some experts in to just verify that the park was safe. I mean, I don't know. I think it's completely impossible to check that the park was safe. And anyway, as we know, the park, well, was it safe? No, it wasn't. It was not safe at all. Let me tell you exactly what happened. So after that, they showed us the laboratories where they'd developed... these dinosaurs. And they told us how they'd done it. And it is actually fascinating and incredible what they did. So they... How did they get the dinosaur DNA? Well... Speaker 1 (29:19) Hammond... Speaker 1 (29:21) had found a Speaker 1 (29:26) amber in the ground. Amber, not amber, not my friend Amber, but amber. You know, it's like a dried sap that comes out of a tree. Okay, you know trees, inside trees they have this stuff called sap. It's kind of like a sugary, sweet, gloopy sort of liquid, which if you, certain trees have a lot of sap inside them. It's kind of like the blood of a tree, let's say. And Certain trees, like I think pine trees, some types of pine trees, I think. I mean, I'm a paleontologist. I'm not a botanist. So, you know, don't expect me to know everything about everything. But the sap comes out and it drips out. And it sometimes quite quickly will drip down the trunk of a tree. And, for example, if there are insects just sitting on the tree, sometimes they will be trapped inside this amber. trapped inside and the amber then sets and it goes hard and if it falls on the ground it could be buried and it can actually last for millions and millions of years. And John Hammond had been searching all around the world for samples of this amber because him and his scientists had worked out that actually some of the insects Speaker 1 (30:52) Preserved inside the amber. Speaker 1 (30:55) could contain not only their own DNA, but the DNA of other animals and insects that bite, specifically mosquitoes. Because as we all know, mosquitoes bite, don't they? They bite, they draw blood from animals like us, or indeed many other species of animals, and they keep the blood inside them and they feed on it. Incredibly, John and his scientists and his teams had found... perfectly