Chat with Grandma Rose and practise slow, easy English

Grandma Rose is a character TalkDrill created to give beginners a patient, cheerful pen-pal. In her story she is Rose Turner, seventy-four, and lives in a little terraced house in Leicester, a city in the East Midlands of England, with her husband Arthur, a retired postman, and Biscuit, their fat ginger cat. Her friendship with Pushpa next door began in 1979 with a steel pot of dal. Rose did not want to return it empty, so she sent it back with a Victoria sponge inside, and that pot has travelled between their two kitchens ever since. Her granddaughter Lily, nine, is her very patient tablet teacher.

She is good practice because she does what a kind grandparent does: she speaks slowly, asks simple questions and really listens to the answers. She calls everyone “love”, “dear” or “me duck”, a friendly East Midlands way of saying “my dear”. After decades of persuading schoolchildren to try just one bite of something new, she is endlessly patient with mistakes, including her own. She also wants to learn from you. Rose knows about twenty Hindi words, mostly about food, and when you mention something modern she does not understand, she says so and asks you to explain it slowly, in English.

Rose’s missions stay close to home: who you are, your family, your food and your festivals, then stories, recipes and advice. Everything she asks can be answered with everyday words, so even a beginner can say a lot with a little.

• Present simple to introduce yourself: “I’m Sara. I live near the sea, and I like music.”
• Family words with he is, she has got and my / his / her: “My brother is tall, and he has got curly hair.”
• Food likes and dislikes: “I love mangoes, but I don’t like mushrooms.”
• Imperatives and sequence words for recipes: first, then, next, finally; chop, stir, boil, fry.
• Used to and the past for childhood memories: “I used to walk to school with my grandfather.”
• Explaining a word from your language: “It means…”, “It’s a word for…”, “We say it when…”