Morning Routine English Listening Practice (All Levels)

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A typical morning.

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Hi, this is the Language Learning Report Card podcast.

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I’m Vickie Kelty.

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I teach English online, focusing on speaking.

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Today, I want you to talk about a typical morning.

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For my typical morning, I wake up

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at 7:04.

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I like random numbers.

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Sometimes I push snooze and I continue sleeping.

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Then I wake up at 7:33.

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Next, I go and wash my face.

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This helps me to wake up even more.

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After I wash my face, I go to make breakfast.

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Sometimes I have a bowl of cereal with soy milk, or other times I have an egg sandwich

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If I have time, I have my egg sandwich on toast.

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I usually have a cup of tea as well.

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Then I get dressed.

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After that, I make my bed.

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I know some people make their bed first, but not me.

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I don’t make my bed until very late.

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When I finish all these activities, I feed my cats.

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When my cats finish eating,

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I play with them.

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Sometimes, Gunther, my male cat, prefers to continue sleeping after he finishes eating.

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My female cat, Janice, always loves to play.

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Finally, I go to work.

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It’s not a long commute to work because it’s in my apartment.

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I work at home.

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I teach my English classes online.

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Okay, that’s my typical morning.

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Now it’s your turn to talk about your typical morning.

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Tell me what activities you do in the morning.

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Before we go, remember to do your self-evaluation.

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How comfortable do you feel talking about your morning activities?

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Satisfactory or Development Needed?

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Use your answer to decide, to listen,

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to this episode again or to another episode, the same level or a different level.

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You can find more listening practice at VickieKelty.com.

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That’s all from me.

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Bye.

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My morning routine with some fun idioms.

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Hi, this is Language Learning Report Card, and I’m Vickie Kelty.

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I teach English online, focusing on speaking.

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Today, I want you to talk about your morning routine using idioms, so I’ll go first.

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Let’s see how natural I can do it.

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You be the judge.

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So I start my morning off with an early wake-up call that I never answer.

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I almost always press snooze after my alarm goes off.

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And if not, once, twice,

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Three, maximum four times.

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I really try to limit my snoozing to four times, which is unfortunate because the early bird gets the worm.

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So I should just wake up when my alarm goes off initially.

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I set it for a time that is perfect for giving me the

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time and space to do everything that I need to do in the morning.

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So when I press snooze a million times, yeah, it makes everything a lot more difficult.

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But it is what it is.

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So after my fourth time pressing snooze, I…

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continue getting ready, which just involves splashing some water on my face to wake up a little more, and then heading off to the kitchen to get my breakfast.

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And fortunately for me, my eyes are never bigger than my stomach in the mornings, so I always choose the perfect breakfast.

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It’s probably because I don’t have time for a big breakfast, but like I said, that is

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in my favor.

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Definitely works in my favor because in the evenings when I have more time to plan my meals, sometimes my eyes are bigger than my stomach and I choose way too much.

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And then half of it goes back in the fridge, leftovers for the next day.

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After breakfast, I head off to, or rather,

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I head back to my bedroom to get dressed.

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And I don’t usually select my clothes beforehand.

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I have certain things that I tend to wear, but I just go with my gut, pull something out of the closet, and voila, that’s what I’m going to wear for work.

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I don’t need a lot of time to get dressed.

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I’m not super picky with what I wear.

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But after that, I gotta make the bed.

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So the best part of making the bed is that it’s super easy to do.

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Just need a little bit of elbow grease and you can get it done in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.

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Okay, that’s a joke.

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I don’t need any elbow grease because it is not difficult to make the bed, especially when you make it the way that I do

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which is just pulling the sheets over the pillows.

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Like it’s not rocket science.

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And yeah, I’m just laughing because it’s so silly how quickly I make the bed.

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I would probably do a better job of making the bed more hotel standard if I didn’t press snooze so many times.

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in the morning, but it is what it is.

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Lastly, before I head to work, I have to do the very most important thing on my list, which is, of course, to feed and play with the cats.

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It’s a little chaotic at this point.

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I have to say, I know I made it sound like these things aren’t

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too difficult.

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Each one goes pretty fast, but I’m honestly running around like a chicken with its head cut off, trying to get everything done in the short amount of time I have.

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All of it due to the fact that I press snooze so many times in the morning.

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It’s the price I pay.

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But I do get the kids, sorry, not kids! Cats.

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I do get the cats fed and played with in the hopes that they won’t interrupt my classes too much.

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And then I start my day off on the right foot.

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If I press the snooze button less than four times, eat a breakfast that isn’t too filling, put on something decent, get the bed made,

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again, to a good enough standard, and most importantly, get the cats fed and played with, then I know that I will have a fantabulous day.

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And that’s it.

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It’s time for me to teach some English.

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And that’s how it’s done.

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So, how’d I do?

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Did the idioms fit well into my daily routine?

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And what idioms would you use to talk about your morning?

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Before we go, be sure to do your self-evaluation.

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How comfy do you feel using idioms to talk about your morning routine?

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Satisfactory or Development Needed?

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Do a quick self-eval and use

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your answers to that eval to decide whether to listen to this recording again and keep practicing or head off to listen to another one, maybe even a different level.

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Remember, you can find more listening practice at VickieKelty.com.

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That’s all from me.

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Bye now.

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My mornings growing up in Nebraska.

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Hi, this is Language Learning Report Card Podcast.

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I’m Vickie Kelty.

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I teach English online, focusing on speaking.

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Today, I want you to talk about what your mornings were like growing up.

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I’ll get us started by telling you a little bit about my mornings in Nebraska as a child.

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So I didn’t have to wake up too early when I was in grade school.

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And I didn’t have to worry about an alarm clock at all because, hello!, that’s what your parents are for, right?

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So I do not remember ever having an alarm clock as a child.

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Maybe I did, but I doubt it.

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And I woke up

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Probably very begrudgingly because I am not a morning person at all.

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And man, they make it, I feel like they make us wake up so early for school.

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And maybe, I don’t know.

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It’s just early.

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It’s too early for me.

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Luckily, my breakfast was super duper easy.

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I just popped a Pop-Tart in the toaster so that I could eat it on the run.

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Even now, I will do that for breakfast.

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If I have somewhere to be, I would much rather just take a piece of toast or take a granola bar and eat on the run.

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If it means that I get to sleep more.

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Do you feel this?

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Like, does anybody else relate to this?

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I actually

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would get dressed before I had breakfast though, so that I could just grab the Pop-Tart and get on the road.

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When I say get on the road, I mean get on the road with my 2 little feet because we did not drive to school.

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It wasn’t that far away.

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So walking was fine, but I’ll get to that.

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So yeah, I got dressed before I went to breakfast and I guess I shouldn’t say went to breakfast,

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before I went to grab my breakfast and run out the door.

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I don’t remember planning my clothes beforehand, but I don’t know, maybe I did.

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It doesn’t sound like me, so I’m gonna guess that I did not plan my outfits in advance.

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I probably just snagged something out of the closet and ta-da, that was my outfit for the day.

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Nothing fancy.

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Sometimes I got obsessed with certain outfits, and so I would wear them on repeat.

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And that is how cool I was.

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So yeah, relatable?

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Yes, you did that too.

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Awesome.

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I’m glad.

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Another thing that I probably didn’t do as a child was to make the bed.

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Maybe I did, maybe I didn’t.

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It is another mystery that will remain unsolved.

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Okay, my parents probably know, but we’re not going to ask them.

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We’re just going to assume that I did, that I of course made my bed because I was such a little angel who would do all of her chores after school, of course, and always wanted to help out with cleaning.

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Who doesn’t want to help out with the cleaning?

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So yes, I definitely made my bed.

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I’m thinking back now and I remember I totally made my bed.

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Yep, every day.

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For sure.

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No doubt about it.

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Well, if I did make my bed, I’m sure that it was in this like haphazard fashion that probably doesn’t qualify as actually making the bed, but potato, potato.

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I didn’t have any pets growing up, so I never had to worry about feeding or playing with my cats like I do nowadays.

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But when I was a child, I adored letting the neighbor’s cats come and visit.

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So they, we had just a lot of cats in the neighborhood that were indoor outdoor cats.

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And so when the neighbors would let them roam around, they would come visit other neighbors.

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And I let them inside and other neighbors would let them inside if they were

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cat lovers too.

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The downside of this bad habit, I call it a bad habit, because my mom has allergies, so she was not the biggest fan of my habit of letting the cats in.

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But I really thought that it was the best thing ever to let the cats come in and cuddle and wander around our house until they wanted to go back to their homes.

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They didn’t really, they basically just liked to come into our house for a moment, maybe take a nap and then leave because I never gave them food.

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I

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just wanted to hang out with them and didn’t consider the fact that they probably just wanted little treats.

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And we didn’t have cat treats.

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We probably had food in our fridge that they could eat, but I didn’t know what food a cat ate.

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So yeah, they never drank the milk I gave them.

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Who knew that they wouldn’t like it?

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Crazy.

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And

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Now we get to what I mentioned before about going to school.

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So I walked to school because this was before online classes, not like what I do now.

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There was no going to the other room and logging into a computer and ta-da, you’re in class.

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Nope, that didn’t happen.

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So I walked to school and it was either

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walking with my sister, walking with a friend.

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And if I didn’t have either of those things to accompany me, then I would just take a good book.

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I would read and walk.

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I was a multitasker from birth.

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I also rode my bike sometimes, but not a ton.

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I have never been big on biking places.

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So that was

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mostly when I was in a rush or pretty much just when I was in a rush, which to be fair, I was in a rush most of the time, but only because I don’t like to wake up early and I have no sense of time.

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And so it took me longer than I intended to braid my hair or put in some curls or

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something that I thought was going to be like 2 minutes and it ended up being 20 minutes.

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And then I was like, ahhh! I need to run to school now so I’m not late for my, whatever, music class or homeroom.

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Whatever I had first, probably homeroom.

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And

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The best part about biking to school though is that sometimes I had to figure out how to put my violin or my clarinet onto the back of my bike.

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We had this little contraption that you could strap the violin or my clarinet to and it was a little bit of a balancing act and it was quite funny.

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I would

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love to see pictures of me on my bicycle with my clarinet or violins trapped to the back because those were the tricky days for sure.

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And the bike helmet.

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I know that there are tons of people who don’t wear helmets when they bike, but I tried to.

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always wear my helmet.

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And I say tried because actually the problem was more getting the helmet off than it was getting the helmet on.

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I had no problem getting my helmet on, but so the problem was that the strap on the helmet sometimes would get stuck and then I couldn’t get it back off.

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And that was a big reason that I did not like wearing my helmet.

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I didn’t care as much that my hair looked absolutely horrendous after taking it off.

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It was more that I just couldn’t even get the helmet off.

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And it was a little awkward having to go to your teacher to ask for help to get your helmet off every time you rode your bike.

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So that is, in a nutshell, my mornings growing up in Nebraska trying to head off to grade school and not be late.

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What about you?

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What were your mornings like growing up?

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Tell me everything.

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Before we go, don’t forget to do your self-eval.

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How comfy do you feel about talking about your mornings growing up?

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Satisfactory or Development Needed?

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Whichever feels more comfy for you.

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Use that answer to decide to listen to this episode again or head off and listen to another one.

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Maybe the same level, maybe a different one.

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Remember, you can find more listening practice anytime right here at VickieKelty.com.

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That’s all for me.