Andrew: Hello, everybody, and welcome back to another Culips community update episode. My name is Andrew, and here I am joined by our Discord moderator, study guide writer, small-group conversation class leader, teacher extraordinaire, Alina. Alina, how's it going?

Alina: It's going not so great, I'm afraid, in terms of I'm not feeling 100%, but it's all good. I'm on the mend, I'm sure. But yeah, here I am. I'm excited to record this update episode and talk all about our upcoming plans, ideas.

Andrew: Awesome. Well, thank you for joining me, Alina. Guys, you can obviously hear in her voice that she's a bit under the weather, and also, I am a bit under the weather as well. Maybe you can hear in my voice. So, we're here. We're going to try and power through this episode. And if it's a little bit on the shorter side, please just understand that it's because we're feeling a little bit sick here.

So, everyone, our plan for this episode is we are going to give you some updates about what's going on in the Culips community. I think many people who just listen to the podcast, maybe they don't really know what's happening so much over on our Discord server, and in our weekly classes and some of our other activities that we have for Culips members.

So, we want to give you just an update about all of these cool things that are going on here at Culips, a little bit behind the scenes that you might not just pick up on if you only listen to the podcast. And Alina, we wanted to start off first with a review, and we got this wonderful review, and we're going to try and do this every month in our Culips community update episode.

We're going to choose one review or one really nice comment that we saw over the month on the Discord server and just share it with everyone. And Alina, this review that we're going to read right now was left by a user named Coco.

Alina: Oh, hi, Coco.

Andrew: Alina, I think Coco comes to your classes, right? Your weekly speaking classes. Does she join?

Alina: Yeah, she's very nice. You know, she's from Japan, but she is currently living in America. And yeah, it was really nice to chat with her. I think I've seen her two or three times so far.

Andrew: Excellent. Yeah. So let me read Coco's review here for everyone because I just love this. This made my heart feel full and happy when I read this review. So here it is. It goes:

So, a very, very nice review, a glowing review from Coco, and she's been a great addition to our classes.

Alina: For sure.

Andrew: Yeah. Thank you so much, Coco. And we wanted to give you that special shout out. Thanks to your wonderful review.

Alina: Thank you, Coco.

Andrew: All right. Next up on our schedule, Alina, is we are going to do a very fun activity. I think I'm really excited for this. This is something new at Culips. We're going to add a little element of fun and games into our community update episode here. What we're going to do is talk about our challenge.

And Alina, you are the mastermind of these monthly challenges that we've been running on our Discord server. Of course, they're free for everybody to join, and we're going to put the link to join the Discord server in the description for this episode.

So, if you're curious about what the challenges are and how to join and how to participate after listening to this episode, just find the link in the description and follow the link, and you can join and participate as well. But we have these monthly challenges, and Alina, we finished our first challenge in January.

And, you know, January is a popular time of the year for starting new activities, right, maybe starting a new hobby, and English learning or resolving to improve your English is a very big and popular New Year's goal for many people. So, our January challenge was quite popular. Alina, do you know, just maybe a guesstimate, how many people started the challenge at the start of the month?

Alina: Ballpark figure, I don't know, about 25 people, I'd say maybe 30.

Andrew: OK, 25 to 30 people. And then how many did we have at the end? How many champions? We're going to call them "Champions." How many people finished the challenge?

Alina: It's 11 people.

Andrew: 11 people. So, guys, what we're going to do is, we are going to take the names of the 11 people who finished the January challenge, and we're going to put all of those names on a spinning wheel, and I'm going to spin the wheel, and we are going to choose one lucky person out of the people who finished the challenge. And that lucky person is going to get, as a prize, a small Culips swag bag.

Alina: Yay!

Andrew: I do have some Culips stickers, and I have some Culips tote bags. So, whoever the wheel selects as the winner, I will reach out to that person through our Discord, and if you send me your address, then I will send you this Culips care package, the swag bag, prize pack, whatever you want to call it, I will send it to you in the mail, just as a way to say thanks for participating in the January challenge.

Alina: This is so exciting.

Andrew: Here we go. Let's spin the wheel, and we'll see who our first prize pack winner is. That was a big spin. Alina, do you want to do the honors? Do you want to read the winner?

Alina: So, the winner is Klaudia. Congratulations!

Andrew: Yeah. Congratulations, Klaudia! You are our first official Culips prize pack winner for completing the January challenge. So Klaudia, I'm going to reach out to you through our Discord server, and if you send me your mailing address, then I will send you a little Culips swag bag in the mail. So very exciting. Amazing. Congratulations, Klaudia.

I think maybe Alina, people would also be curious, and I am curious as well, about next month's challenge. You know, it's a little bit late to start the February challenge. We're almost at the end of the month, but we're going to be starting fresh and new in March with a brand-new challenge, and I am all ears. I really want to know what the March challenge is all about.

So, would you mind introducing it to us?

Alina: Sure. So, I'm going to start with the March challenge. So, I just would like to start with talking about how it came about, like the idea. I got the idea for this challenge, and so, yeah, I was just inspired by one of the Discord members, and I think the member's name is Patricia. Yes.

So, Patricia asked this question in the channel. We have a designated channel where we ask all the questions about English, everything, vocabulary, grammar. So, at some point, maybe a couple of months ago, she asked, "Could you tell me all the meanings of the verb get?"

Andrew: Good luck!

Alina: It's a good question, but I'm not sure if it's possible. So, of course, I shared some common meanings, but that kind of got me thinking, and I'm like, hmm, get is one of these verbs, and I was also there. Like, at some point, I was in the same boat, struggling with that verb and being like, I see it everywhere. Why? How can you use the same verb in all these different contexts?

And what does it mean? So, it's confusing for sure. And tricky. And that's how I thought that that would be actually a great idea for our next challenge, where we could explore, of course, not all the meanings. That would be impossible.

It would take a year, if not more, because I think, if I'm not mistaken, there are about 260 meanings of this verb, and I'm not sure that that is counting all the phrasal verbs and the idioms that include that verb. But I don't want to scare anybody off here. We're going to figure it out. We're going to focus on the basics, the fundamentals, on the commonly used ones.

So, it's going to be good. It's going to be not so difficult, you know. The goal for our challenge, for our next March challenge, is to improve our vocabulary and fluency.

So, if we were focusing on grammar in February, this time we're going to focus all on vocabulary and kind of learn to use this verb in different contexts and sound more natural using it and maybe be more confident as well.

Because, of course, there's still some kind of insecurities around this verb, I'm sure. Even, you know, advanced learners struggle with this verb just to let you know everybody. So, it's OK if you do.

Andrew: Yeah. And I think this is one of the things that can, especially for European speakers of European languages, like when I lived in Quebec, I was a teacher of English to many French native speakers, and they would use words that were perfectly fine English words and English verbs to communicate their ideas.

But often I noticed like, oh, OK, an English speaker. Yeah, we understand this. We know what you're talking about, but instead we would use "get." Like, for example, maybe the French speaker would say, "I arrived at the airport at 10 a.m." And an English native speaker would say, "I got to the airport at 10 a.m."

It's like that one little nuance that can really, really improve your naturalness when speaking English. Your fluency is to use some of these expressions with "get."

So, I think this is great. It's going to be awesome for our friends from Europe who come from this background where maybe there's a lot of shared vocabulary between their native language and English, and they can get away with using some of that shared vocabulary. And also, for people from other countries and other first language backgrounds as well, I think this will be great.

So, yeah, a wonderful idea, and I'm looking forward to this challenge.

Alina: Yeah, me too. So, thanks to Patricia again for inspiring me to create this challenge.

Andrew: OK. So, guys, if you want to participate in the "Get Challenge" for March, get on over to Discord. The link's in the description for this episode, and then you just have to select the monthly challenge channel from the English learning category, and then you can participate and join in. And of course, it's free for everyone.

OK, Alina, one last thing here before we wrap up, and I'll let you go. And it is about our classes, our small-group speaking classes that are upcoming for March. And I have good news that we now have a schedule on our website that everyone can see. Before, the schedule for the classes was only available to Culips members. So, we saw comments like from Coco.

She said, I wasn't sure if it would work with my schedule or not. And I'm sure there are many other people out there. Guys, maybe you're listening right now, and you want to know about if the schedule will sync up with your schedule. So, we hear you loud and clear, and we made this new schedule so that everybody can see it, whether you're a member or not.

Of course, if you want to participate in the classes, you do have to become a Culips member. But if you want to just see if it works with your schedule or not, you can do that now. And we'll put that link to the schedule in the description as well. So, you can easily check that out. But this month, coming up here in March, we have 13 classes scheduled. I'll be teaching some.

Alina, you'll be teaching some. And our other teacher, Indiana, she'll be leading the other ones. And we're going to be talking about six different episodes over the course of those 13 classes. So, I mean, Alina, maybe this is some feedback that you've heard from the participants in your classes, but I really hear from a lot of members that they like the repetition.

They like that they can talk about the same topic multiple times, but with different teachers, maybe with other participants in a different kind of setting and context. And it's just really great for building your fluency, doing that repetition, but also in a kind of slightly different or slightly new way each and every time. Have you heard that feedback from your classes as well?

Alina: For sure. For sure. All the time. And I like to say that myself. I see the same people, for example, say when I'm doing a session for you or something like that, and I see the same faces, and I'm like, you know, good job. Well done. I know that they are going to learn so much better once they go over all that again, and again, it's not going to be like the same.

It's never going to be the same because you have different people you have. I don't know. You never know where the conversation will bring you. Right. So, yeah, people say it all the time, and they definitely see how effective this is.

Andrew: Yeah. So, guys, please take advantage of these courses. I mean, 13 hours of speaking practice in March. Just imagine yourself at the start of April. And if you're like, "Wow, I finished 13 hours of speaking practice in March!" Like that goes a really long way for building your fluency.

So please take advantage by joining as many of these classes as you can. I know all of us really, really enjoy them, and we'd love to have you join us as well. Well, Alina, we did it. We made it to the end here, barely in one piece. Do you have anything else to add before we wrap up?

Alina: I just wanted to say a huge thank you to all the participants of the challenge. You know, it's February challenge, and I know it's not easy. It's hard to do something, to show up every day.

But every day I see these messages and I am there, you know, I don't know, just like watching literally the growth happening before my eyes. And you know what? It's all worth it. It's going to pay off. Keep going. Keep it up. And yeah, I can't wait to see you all in the next challenge as well.

Andrew: Awesome. Yeah. Pat yourself on the back, guys. You're doing fantastic, and we love to see it. This is so great to witness here from our perspective. Really, really nice.

Alina: Definitely. Yeah.

Andrew: All right. Well, Alina, please take care. I hope you feel better for our next community update next month.

Alina: Fingers crossed now.

Andrew: Yeah, fingers crossed. All right. So, take care. And everybody, we'll talk to you in the next Culips episode. Until then. Bye bye.