Renting An Apartment - Listening Lesson (A2)

Rent an apartment English listening lesson

Are you planning to work or study in an English-speaking country? In this free English listening lesson from Oxford Online English, you can learn some useful English phrases and questions to use when renting an apartment or making an appointment. This is a lesson for pre-intermediate learners.

Listen to the dialogue at normal speed here:

or listen to a slower version here:

Read the Text

Woman: Hi, I saw your ad¹ online, is the apartment still available?
Man: Yeah, it is. Would you like to come and see it?
Woman: Maybe, but can I ask you some questions first?
Man: Sure.
Woman: How far is it from the subway?
Man: It’s about a ten-minute walk², not far.
Woman: And is it fully furnished³?
Man: Yeah, fully furnished.
Woman: And the rent is $550 a month, right? Including bills?
Man: No, plus⁴ bills.
Woman: OK, I think I’d like to come and see it. When would be a good time?
Man: How about Tuesday?
Woman: Alright, in the morning?
Man: No problem. Let’s say ten o’clock. By the way, when were you thinking⁵ of moving in?
Woman: I need a place as soon as possible.
Man: OK, that’s great, I need to find someone quickly as well⁶.
Woman: OK, so see you Tuesday, thanks a lot, bye.
Man: Bye.

Vocabulary Notes

The vocabulary in these notes will give you many of the answers for the exercises below. You may prefer to try those exercises first, then come back to this section if you need to.

1. Ad = advertisement. You can also say “advert”
2. You can use this form to talk about the time it takes to do something. For example: a nine-hour flight, a four-week job, a two-hour meeting
3. Furnished = with all furniture – chairs, tables, shelves, beds etc.
4. Plus here means something is extra, or not included. For example: ‘It costs $10, plus sales tax’ = you need to pay more than ten dollars
5. The past continuous here makes the question more indirect, and so more polite.
6. As well = too.

You should do either exercise 1a or 1b. Both exercises give you five definitions of words in the dialogue.

The extra support version (1a) is a matching exercise, where you can see the five answers and you need to put them in the right place.

In the extra challenge version (1b), you must listen to the audio and find the correct words, then write them in the gaps.

If you think 1b will be difficult, why not try 1a first, then come back later and do 1b? You can then do exercises 2-4 in any order.

Renting an Apartment – exercise 1a (extra support)
Vocabulary match

Renting an Apartment – exercise 1b (extra challenge)
Vocabulary search

Renting an Apartment – exercise 2
Grammar and Vocabulary: using different words

Look at two sentences that mean the same thing:

How about meeting on Monday?
= Let’s meet on Monday.

You can see that if you choose one word, you need to use the right word to go with it – e.g. it’s ‘meeting’ after ‘how about’, but ‘meet’ after ‘let’s’.

Read five more sentences and re-write them using the word shown in brackets.

Renting an Apartment – exercise 3
Listening skill: using a transcript

When you listen with a transcript, you will probably think about the words you don’t know, but it’s also important to pay attention to the words you know really well. Different speakers say them in different ways – and the most common words are often unstressed, so they can be difficult to hear.

Listen to five clips from the dialogue and look at a transcript. Which word goes in the gap each time?