Full video

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Hello, and welcome to Real Easy English,

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the podcast where we have real conversations

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in easy English to help you learn.

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I'm Neil.

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And I'm Beth.

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You can find a video of this podcast and

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find a worksheet to help you learn on our website bbclearningenglish.com.

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Hello, Beth, how are you?

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I'm very well, thank you. How are you, Neil?

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I'm very happy. The sun is shining today.

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It is. It's a beautiful day.

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What are we talking about?

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Today we're talking about our childhoods.

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So we'll talk about life,

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how it was,

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What, what our lives were like when we were children.

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How interesting. Let's get started.

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So, Neil, what do you remember most about your childhood?

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Well, it was such a long time ago,

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but I can remember things, obviously, quite clearly.

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I lived in a different country when I was a child.

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Where did you live?

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I lived in Canada until I was ten years old.

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So I can remember, very hot, humid summers,

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but very long and very cold and snowy winters.

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So you always, like, made snowmen, I guess, and had snowball fights?

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Yes. We always had a white Christmas, which is great.

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And I don't think I've ever had a white Christmas in England.

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Not in the south of England.

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Well, I moved house,

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or my family moved house, when I was ten,

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so I feel like a slightly similar thing

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where all of my childhood memories really are in this house and playing

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with my friends that lived in that village and went to my primary school

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when I lived in that house. Having friends over for tea.

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That's a lot of, yeah, strong memories of of my childhood.

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And what kind of things did you do when you were a child?

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What kind of hobbies and interests did you have?

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Well, my friends and I used to always put on shows.

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We would do gymnastics shows in the garden.

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We'd say, 'Mum, Dad, come and watch my gymnastics show with my friend'.

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We used to do singing concerts.

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We wrote our own songs.

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Once, my friend and I recorded onto a tape.

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Do you remember tapes?

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Of course I remember tapes.

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We recorded our own song onto a tape,

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and we sent it to a recording studio in the hope that they would sign us.

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Is it a good song?

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It's great.

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I think we need to hear it.

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Maybe at the end of the show.

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What about you?

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What sort of hobbies did you have when you were a child?

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I just remember playing outside a lot with my friends

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and having adventures and also doing lots and lots of sport.

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So I always liked football and cricket and I played when I was in Canada.

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I played ice hockey.

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That's cool. Can you still ice skate?

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I'm OK. I'd say I'm better than most British people.

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Because you grow up in Canada

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skating.

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Yeah.

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But I'm not brilliant.

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How do you think the world has changed since you were a child?

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The world is really different from when I was a child.

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Because when I was growing up, we didn't have the internet or mobile phones.

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And I think they've made such a difference

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to the way people communicate with each other.

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And it drives me mad sometimes, because my son will try to arrange to go out

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with his friends, just to go to the park, in a group chat,

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and then nothing ever happens.

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And I just say, 'just go there'.

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Yeah.

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It's a hundred metres down the road.

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Knock the door. But I don't think that happens any more.

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No, I think for me, like,

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something that's really changed is, like I was saying about tapes,

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like the idea of playing a tape or putting a CD in a CD player.

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Like, brings back amazing memories.

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I used to have a CD that I would play,

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and then I'd sing really loudly,

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and I would imagine that then suddenly the band would be in the garden

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and they would, and they'd be there singing with me.

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But I think those physical music devices even like having a video or a DVD,

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like, they bring back loads of memories for me.

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Let's recap the language we heard in our conversation about childhood,

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starting with 'childhood', which is the period of time when you are a child.

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We had 'memory'.

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A memory is something that you can remember from the past.

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We can say that something 'brings back memories',

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which just means that it reminds you of something that happened in the past.

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And when we talk about things in the past, we often use the past

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simple. For example, I said that I played in the street with my friends.

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And we also heard 'used to' and 'would', which is used when we talk

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about things that happened a number of times in the past.

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So, for example, I used to play ice hockey.

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It means: I played ice hockey a lot, and now I don't any more.

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And that's it for this episode of Real Easy English.

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Why not test what you've learnt with the worksheet

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Thanks for joining us, and goodbye.

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Bye.