Where did you go for your last holiday? What did you do, and did you enjoy it? In this free English listening lesson from Oxford Online English, a woman talks about her last holiday in Italy. You can learn some useful questions, words and phrases to use when talking about vacations. This lesson is for pre-intermediate learners.
Listen to the dialogue at normal speed here:
or listen to a slower version here:
Man: So, how was your trip?
Woman: Oh, it was amazing! Holiday of a lifetime.
Man: You went to Venice, right?
Woman: No! Where did you get that idea? We went to Pisa and Cinque Terre.
Man: What’s it like around there?
Woman: Oh, it’s beautiful, especially on the coast. There are some really nice towns and you can swim and sunbathe and walk in the hills if that’s your thing.
Man: Did you speak any Italian?
Woman: No, not really. They get a lot of tourists around there, so they’re used to speaking English.
Man: Bet the food was good though.
Woman: Oh, you can’t even imagine. You even eat when you’re full just because it tastes so good.
Man: Did you bring back any souvenirs? some nice wine? olive oil? an Italian boyfriend?
Woman: No, of course not! Don’t be cheeky!
Talking about Holidays – exercise 1
Vocabulary: tourism words and collocations
The dialogue features words and expressions for the experience of going on holiday and also to describe the places that tourists visit. These include collocations – common combinations of words.
For each question, mark the option that you hear in the dialogue.
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Question 1 of 5
1. Question
The ‘incorrect’ options may be correct language – but they’re not what the speakers say: your job is to identify what you hear. Sometimes the incorrect options are also incorrect language. Click ‘Hint’ for more details.
1. Which question does the man ask?
Hint
Hint: All four options are correct language, though they mean slightly different things:
– a journey is when you travel from one place to another;
– a trip is when you leave one place, visit one or many other places, then go back to where you started (e.g. home);
– ‘holiday’ is British and ‘vacation’ is American; they are similar to trip but with the additional idea that your reason for travel is leisure or relaxation – a trip can include work, for example. -
Question 2 of 5
2. Question
2. Which expression does the woman use?
Hint
This is an example of collocation – only one answer is possible because the other three options are never used in this combination.
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Question 3 of 5
3. Question
3. Which does the woman say?
Hint
The four options all mean something similar – the key difference is register: how formal is the language? The version used in this dialogue is the most informal, because it’s a conversation between two friends.
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Question 4 of 5
4. Question
4. Which does the woman say?
Hint
This time it’s a question of grammar: the phrase ‘be used to’ means ‘be accustomed to’ or ‘be familiar with’ but there is a rule about the form of the verb that comes next. It’s the one used in the dialogue!
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Question 5 of 5
5. Question
5. Which question does the man ask?
Hint
The verbs ‘bring’, ‘come’, ‘go’ and ‘take’ can all be used before the word ‘back’. You can discount two of them in this case, because they don’t involve the idea of carrying something from one place to another. The difference between the other wrong option and the right answer is the direction of travel (home < - > holiday).
Talking about Holidays – exercise 2
Grammar: word order in questions
The order of words in questions is one of the most confusing things in English. There are rules to help you – it’s just a bit more complicated than it might be in your language.
Read five rules about word order in questions; for each one, move the words into the right order to make a question that is used in the dialogue.
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Question 1 of 5
1. Question
The capital letter has been removed from the first word to make this exercise more of a challenge, and so has the question mark after the last word!
1. If you want the answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’, an easy way to form a question is to make an affirmative statement, then add ‘right?’
The word order is: subject + verb + complement + right?
Example: You’re German, right?Unfortunately for you, this isn’t possible in more formal situations, but it’s fine in informal contexts like this recording.
Sort the words to form the question used in the dialogue.
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to Venice
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right
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you
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went
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CorrectIncorrect -
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Question 2 of 5
2. Question
2. If the context is not informal, you must use a different word order for yes/no questions:
auxiliary verb + subject + main verb + complement
Example: Do you like sunbathing?The auxiliary verb depends on the tense – the example in the last sentence uses the present tense ‘do’ but the question from the dialogue is in the past simple.
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any Italian
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you
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did
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speak
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CorrectIncorrect -
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Question 3 of 5
3. Question
3. Some questions can’t be answered with ‘yes’ or ‘no’ – they are asking for information. In most information questions, you need an auxiliary verb and the same word order as the previous example, plus a question word at the beginning:
question word + auxiliary verb + subject + main verb (+ complement)
Example: Where do you live?Now make an information question from the dialogue.
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where
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did
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get
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you
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that idea
View Answers:
CorrectIncorrectHint
Grammar Extra!
Some information questions starting with ‘who’ or ‘what’ do not require an auxiliary verb – it depends on the grammar of the answer:
Q: Who painted the Mona Lisa?
A: Leonardo da Vinci painted it.
> The ‘who’ of the question is the subject of the verb in the answer, so there’s no auxiliary verb.
Q: What did you paint in your art class?
A: We painted a bowl of fruit.
> The ‘what’ of the question is the object of the verb in the answer, so you need an auxiliary verb. -
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Question 4 of 5
4. Question
4. You don’t need the auxiliary verb ‘do’ if the main verb is ‘be’, but you still need question word order, with the verb before the subject:
question word + be + subject (+ complement)
Example: Why are you interested in castles?A complement is something that comes after the verb to tell you more about the subject – e.g. ‘you’ (the subject) are ‘interested in castles’ – but not all questions have a complement. The question from the dialogue doesn’t have one.
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was
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trip
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how
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your
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CorrectIncorrectHint
The subject is two words: possessive adjective + noun
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Question 5 of 5
5. Question
5. When the main verb is ‘be’, there is often a ‘dummy’ subject in English – that is, the word ‘it’ or ‘there’ which acts as the subject in terms of grammar but doesn’t really mean anything. When this happens, a complement is needed – because ‘it’ and ‘there’ don’t carry meaning, so something has to! The word order is the same as the last example:
question word + be + dummy subject + complement (+ adverbial)
Example: Why are there so many churches here?Adverbial information is optional – it adds detail about time or place.
Now make a ‘dummy subject’ question from the dialogue.
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it
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like
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is
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around there
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what
View Answers:
CorrectIncorrectHint
There is a trap here: in some contexts, ‘like’ is a verb, but not in this case.
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Talking about Holidays – exercise 3
Pronunciation: understanding stress and intonation
Stress and intonation are both ways in which the sound of what we say depends on meaning, but they’re not the same thing. Do you know the difference?
Listen to five excerpts from the recording and find the matching rule about stress and intonation.
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Question 1 of 5
1. Question
We pronounce some words more prominently than others – they are a bit longer and louder – because those words put the meaning in the sentence: this is stress.
We say some phrases with a rise or fall in the pitch, to give a message to the speaker that is not contained in the meaning of the individual words: this is intonation.
1. Normally, nouns, verbs (apart from ‘be’), adjectives and adverbs are stressed because they put meaning in the sentence; prepositions, articles and pronouns don’t, so they’re unstressed.
Listen to the recording and choose which words are stressed.
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Question 2 of 5
2. Question
2. If a speaker thinks some words are even more important than the other stressed words, they can make them prominent – that is, much longer than normal.
Which words are prominent in the recording?
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Question 3 of 5
3. Question
3. We use intonation to indicate to someone else whether we have finished speaking or not. Your voice should fall and slow down at the end of a sentence, but rise if you haven’t finished yet.
Has the speaker in this clip finished her sentence?
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Question 4 of 5
4. Question
4. We also use intonation in lists. When you’re writing a list you can use bullet points – and when you’re speaking, use pauses and a certain intonation.
What do both speakers do with their voices for each item in the list?
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Question 5 of 5
5. Question
5. Like the grammar of word order, there’s more than one rule for intonation in questions.
In this information question, does the speaker’s voice rise or fall at the end?
Talking about Holidays – exercise 4
Pronunciation: elision and the glottal stop
When we put words together, some sounds change. One very common example is when the sound /t/ almost disappears – this is called elision.
Listen to five excerpts containing examples of elision and write the missing words.
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Question 1 of 5
1. Question
They all contain a ‘silent’ /t/. Click ‘Hint’ for more information about what is happening in the mouth.
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1. We to Pisa and Cinque Terre.
Hint
Think of the word ‘football’: nobody pronounces a full /t/ because their mouth is already moving into position for /b/.
Some people put their tongue into place to make a /t/ but don’t make the sound; others do nothing with their tongue and block the sound by closing their vocal cords instead – this is called a glottal stop, and the female speaker in this dialogue does it a lot. It is not ‘incorrect’ or ‘lazy’ pronunciation: when the next sound is a consonant, dropping /t/ is a common feature of standard English. Even the Queen does it!
However, the speaker in this recording uses glottal stops so much that it sometimes occurs when the next sound is a vowel. Dropping /t/ before a vowel is not standard, but it is common for speakers with certain accents, such as people from London and South-east England.
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Question 2 of 5
2. Question
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2. Oh, you even imagine.
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Question 3 of 5
3. Question
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3. Where did you idea?
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Question 4 of 5
4. Question
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4. – So how was your trip?
– Oh, was amazing!
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Question 5 of 5
5. Question
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5. No, really. They a of around there, so they’re to speaking English.
Hint
In the last gap, the final sound is /t/ but not in the spelling!
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