The English, baby! ESL soap opera recently finished airing its second set of 10 episodes. Each is focused on a specific idiom or American slang phrase and packed with related vocabulary, grammar and laughs. Lots of laughs.

Though, this season was a little darker. After Jason and Devan got engaged last season, things start to get a little heavy. Literally, in Dale’s case. Watch all 10 videos here and see the guide below for links to the full lessons.

2.01 – Get Hitched: Devan and Jason announce to their friends that they are getting married.
2.02 – Let Oneself Go: Dale’s co-workers start to notice that he isn’t taking care of himself.
2.03 – Two Cents: Devan’s friends all have ideas about her wedding.
2.04 – Odd Man Out: All of Jason’s friends want to be groomsmen at the wedding.
2.05 – Over The Top: Marni takes Devan shopping for a wedding dress and simplicity rules.
2.06 – Bridezilla: Devan goes crazy as she and Jason register for wedding gifts.
2.07 – Cold Feet: Jason visits Mason at the dumpster for advice and ends up with socks.
2.08 – The Breaking Point: Jason reaches his limit for wedding planning.
2.09 – Hurt Someone’s Feelings: Jeff confronts Dale about his weight and feelings get hurt.
2.10 – Call Something Off: Jason wants to call off the wedding. Devan cancels their relationship.

We recently got a taste of World Cup action just up the street from the English, baby! office in Portland. The US Women’s National Team took on the Canadians, and two of the athletes were happy to teach some new vocabulary to our members around the world.

Canadian goalkeeper Karina LeBlanc talked about the number one term every goalie must know, “save”. She was tons of fun. We grabbed her right after she said hello to ESPN broadcaster and women’s soccer legend Julie Foudy (pictured above).

There were a few hundred fans there to watch the teams practice. Just before signing some autographs, US defender Ali Krieger gave us an interview. Since she’s such a smart player and a leader, we had her teach the more abstract term “distribution.” She also happened to use the phrase “sink or swim,” so we turned that into a second video.

We also recently featured a pair of lessons by the only Japanese player in MLS, Kosuke Kimura. He talks about last year’s MLS Cup in which his Colorado Rapids pulled off a come from behind victory, and he demonstrates how to “cut the angle” in a hotel lobby. This easy going attitude has made Kosuke a fan favorite, so it’s no surprise that these videos were covered by soccer blogs including Soccer 365 and Burgundy Wave.

You can find more soccer slang lessons on English, baby! See you next season.

After 165 nonstop episodes, it seemed time to start producing the English, baby! soap opera, As the World Learns, in seasons. Watch all 10 episodes of the romantic first season right here. Each episode is an English lesson focused on a particular phrase. See the episode guide below for links to the full lessons.

1.01 – Left Out: Get to know the Ebaby! cast while the men of the office get left out.
1.02 – Glass Ceiling: The women of the office have a plan to break the glass ceiling.
1.03 – Girls’ Night Out: On a girls’ night out, the women make a discovery.
1.04 – Plant the Seed: Devan starts planting the seed to get what she wants.
1.05 – Pop the Question: Mason catches Jason practicing to pop the question.
1.06 – Break the Bank: Jason asks Jeff how to get a ring that won’t break the bank.
1.07 – Have Second Thoughts: Trouble at the office gives Jason second thoughts.
1.08 – Spill the Beans: Mason spills the beans about Jason’s plan.
1.09 – Chicken Out: Jason has a plan, but will he chicken out?
1.10 – It Just Slipped Out: Jason let’s something very important just slip out.

Season 2 starts in November. Don’t miss the wedding planning drama! Thanks for supporting coolest English lessons anywhere. Tell your friends!

With our Celebrity English Lesson series, the philosophy is, you might as well learn from the best. While we’ve had guest teachers from all sorts of sports and entertainment fields, it’s rare that we get someone who is actually the very best at what they do (gold medalists Shen Xue and Zhao Hongbo and Girl Talk come to mind). So we’re thrilled to have defending LPGA Champion and number female 1 golfer in the world, Taiwanese superstar Yani Tseng.

Yani shares some basic golf terms and talks about learning English. At 22, she’s the youngest golfer ever to win 5 majors, so the fact that she acquired excellent English skills along the way is no small accomplishment!

We spoke with Yani at the LPGA Safeway Classic in North Plains, Oregon. Our friend John Canzano even mentioned us in his coverage of the event for The Oregonian. It was the Pro-Am day, and a couple of other well-known players were available to help us teach English as well. Korean star IK Kim was practicing on the putting green when we found her and chatted about the phrase “hole in one”.

Beatriz Recari was actually checking out some sunglasses from a vendor on the fairway (Spaniards love them some shades), but was happy to share her favorite golf term, “stinger”, with us and talk about her mission to learn exotic languages.

After we talked to Beatriz, she headed off to lunch. Food came up in our interview with Yani as well, so we put together this bonus clip just for the blog.

The LPGA Tour is heading to Taiwan, Korea, Malaysia and Mexico this fall, as well as other places. Say hi for us if you see any of these athletes!

Aurelien Collin is one of those people you meet and instantly wish was your good friend. He is so fun and energetic and you don’t even have to talk to him to see it–you can tell by the way he plays.

Even at training, Collin is a physical player, making plays for the ball, shouting and waving his arms. When he’s on the pitch representing Sporting Kansas City, he’s an animal–no one can miss this French star.

Naturally, we asked him to teach some fairly active terms when he agreed to be our latest celebrity English teacher. We started off with challenge because I had heard that Collin only had a couple of weeks to get ready for the season after joining his new team in KC. That sounded like a challenge to me. Of course, Collin said it wasn’t a challenge at all, but we talked about other types of challenges.

Next, we asked Collin to explain tackle.

Watching Collin speak English is kind of like watching him stop a striker. He has to get creative and he tackles the problem with confidence. MLS and Sporting KC are lucky to have this guy and so are we!

This Sunday, the fourth season of True Blood on HBO begins. This show has a lot of fans in the US and around the world, and it also has its own set of vocabulary that its international fans might have some trouble with.

Fortunately, one of the actresses from the show, Lindsay Pulsipher, who plays Crystal starting in season 3, is our latest celebrity English teacher. At a recent showing of her new film, The Oregonian, we asked her to talk about the term “shapeshifter” and, since her character likes to turn into a panther, the phrase “cat got your tongue” in an English lesson.

Lindsay was so kind and very happy to help us teach English. We’re excited to see her in True Blood this season and hopefully in more movies in the future. You can see a trailer for The Oregonian here, and a scene from True Blood with Lindsay in it here. Both are a little too intense to embed on an English education blog, but if you like supernatural and scary stuff, you will probably enjoy them!

Soccer is getting more popular in the US every year. Here in Portland, we have a Major League Soccer team for the first time: Timbers FC. The team is very popular, and whenever I tell fans that our latest celebrity English teacher is Futty Danso, they get really excited.

From his energy on the pitch, to the way he celebrates after scoring a goal, you can tell Futty is a great guy. Even though one of his teammates had just been carted away holding his ankle on the day we met with Futty at training, he was happy to talk to us. John Strong was there covering the training for 95.5 The Game, and he suggested we have Futty talk about the term “shape,” so that’s what we went with for our first lesson with him.

After we talked to him, Futty agreed to let me throw some balls at him to demonstrate different traps for another lesson.

If you’d like to learn more about Futty, take a look at this fascinating interview with him about his childhood and Gambian soccer.

Gregg Gillis, who makes music under the name Girl Talk, is a really smart guy. His music alone gives that away–it can’t be easy to mix parts of more than 300 songs into one very danceable album. Before Girl Talk became his job, he was an engineer, and you can hear how scientifically he speaks in these English lesson videos we recorded with him during his tour stop in Portland.

First, we talked about the phrase “out of the blue” and how his latest album, All Day, surprised everyone.

Then, we talked about the term “sample.”

It was so nice of Gregg to spend 15 minutes or so with us both in his dressing room and up on the stage. He really seemed to get the concept of our Celebrity English Lessons and said he had watched the one with Bone Thugs-n-Harmony and liked it.

Interestingly, before this interview with Gregg took place, we had been planning to run a music English lesson about Girl Talk anyway. We recorded a conversation about him for the dialog. You can listen to me and Ella from the Ebaby! cast chatting about All Day below. And don’t forget, you can always download the album for free!

One of the most watched NBA games ever took place in November of 2007. Why would a game near the beginning of the season be watched by so many people? Most of the fans watching were in China. It was the first time Yao Ming and the Houston Rockets played against young star Yi Jianlian and the team that drafted him, the Milwaukee Bucks. More than 200 million people tuned in to what came to be known as the “Chinese Super Bowl.”

Though in the US, Yi’s fame is nowhere near that of Yao’s, he is a superstar in China and he’s still new to the NBA. His game has to improve if he’s going to take over where Yao leaves off, but his English is coming along nicely. When he first arrived in the US, he used an interpreter and spoke little English. But when we approached him–in English–for an interview at a recent Washington Wizards media session, he didn’t hesitate and confidently agreed. The result is our latest Celebrity English Lesson in which Yi teaches the phrase “put the ball on the floor.”

One thing we cut from this video is a part where I asked Yi if there were any basketball terms he had a hard time with when he first came here. The answer surprised me. He said he didn’t know what was meant by “cut to the basket.” Of course, this phrase means to run quickly toward the basket so that your teammate can pass you the ball and you can score. It’s not something I think of basketball slang exactly, so Yi’s comment may help us find more good basketball idioms we’ve been overlooking.

One of the best parts of watching NBA games on TV is seeing the shot of the players walking into the arena. They usually have on some fancy clothes and headphones and are walking with a lot of attitude. Even through they change into their warm ups and uniforms quickly, players like to really dress up to go to games.

In a recent poll of NBA players by Sports Illustrated, Zaza Pachulia ranked among the most fashionable players in the league. The 7-foot Atlanta Hawks center, who originally hails from the Eastern European nation of Georgia, has good taste in general. He owns a very cool-looking bar in Atlanta called Buckhead Bottle Bar.

So since our Celebrity English Lesson series has covered a lot of basketball slang, we figured why not have Zaza teach an English lesson about fashion language? We met with him at his hotel room in Portland the afternoon before a game. He showed us what he planned to wear that night and talked about what it means to sport something. Since he didn’t know we would be coming up to his room when he picked out the outfit, we get a really authentic look into his suitcase!

Zaza also want to share some more advanced fashion slang with the English, baby! members, so he talked about the term “swag,” which he says is very popular in Atlanta. It’s amazing how much swag Zaza has while still being a really friendly, down-to-Earth guy.