Covid: One year on

Is your home neat and tidy? Or is it full of stuff you no longer need? You might need to declutter!Find a full transcript, worksheet and interactive quiz for this episode at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/learningenglish/english/features/6-minute-english_2025/ep-250710SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NE ... Show More

When was the last time you had to apologise to somebody? Do you remember how you did it? Neil and Beth discuss apologies from around the world. Find a full transcript, worksheet and interactive quiz for this episode at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/learningenglish/english/features/6-min ... Show More

Are plant-based substitutes any healthier than the meat options they have replaced? Neil and Georgie discuss this and teach you some new vocabulary.Find a full transcript, worksheet and interactive quiz for this episode at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/learningenglish/english/features/6 ... Show More

Our conversation this time is about something which has been central to our lives around the world since the beginning of the year. We are speaking, of course, about the coronavirus pandemic. Let's get started with a conversation. 

A year ago today, the World Health Organisation officially declared the coronavirus outbreak a "pandemic". In reality, it'd been clear for some time that the SARS-CoV-2 virus wasn't going to go away anytime soon. Cases outside China had been growing fast and Italy was going into ... Show More

It's been about a year since the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus a pandemic. The world has learned a lot in that time — about how the virus spreads, who is at heightened risk and how the disease progresses. Today, Maddie walks us through some of these big lesso ... Show More

A little over two years into a pandemic, the last thing you probably want to see is headlines announcing yet another disease spreading across the globe. And yet, here we are. Beginning in May 2022, an increasing number of cases of monkeypox have been reported in many countries ar ... Show More

More than six months into a shape-shifting pandemic that’s killed more than 454,000 people worldwide, it’s clear we are losing the battle against the outbreak. Most experts believe an effective vaccine won’t be ready until well into 2021. So how do we adjust our thinking from bea ... Show More

As we will all need to be staying at home for a while longer yet due to the coronavirus I thought I would introduce what I think is the best strategy for learning English in the new year. 

April 5, 1918. The first mention of a new influenza outbreak in Kansas appears in a public health report. That strain, later called the Spanish Flu, would go on to kill at least 50 million people worldwide. In a time before widespread global travel, how did this disease spread so ... Show More

As soon as the Coronavirus became a pandemic, people began making parallels to the Spanish Flu outbreak of 1918, and reaching even further back to the black death of the middle ages. It makes sense--past pandemics may be our only reference point for whole populations being strick ... Show More