How often do you visit new places? Do you know words to talk about being a tourist in a responsible way? Learn some of these words and practise your listening in this free English lesson from Oxford Online English. This lesson is for pre-intermediate and intermediate learners.
Listen to the full audio here:
Our primary aim is to promote responsible tourism. We are blessed in this city to have one of the country’s most visited attractions, the Roman Baths, which receives over a million visitors a year. Indeed, one in five jobs in Bath is in the tourism sector – so, the local economy is heavily dependent on it. But, we are strongly opposed to outdated tourism practices that harm the environment: single-use plastics should have no place here, for example, so the city needs more drinking water stations with free reusable or recyclable containers. We are especially keen to reduce the number of single-occupancy vehicles coming into the city centre, for which our transport network needs to be more integrated across the whole local authority area, to improve the travel experience and air quality for locals and visitors alike. In our historic city, it is challenging to introduce the infrastructure for electric vehicles for private use; however, we’re absolutely committed to the idea of a clean air zone for commercial and public transport vehicles, so we plan for six new electric charging points at park and ride sites around the city, funded by a nightly tourism tax. And lastly, research shows that visitors are highly likely to spend more in local businesses if they’ve been given something for free: the mayor’s office already offers free walking tours, but we intend to expand that offer with completely free services on key bus routes into the city, again funded by a new tax, this time on businesses – the idea being that if our guests save money on getting into town, they have more pounds in their pocket at the shops …
Talking Tourism – exercise 1
Comprehension: hearing the detail
Who is the speaker and what ideas does she have?
Listen to the full dialogue and answer the questions.
Talking Tourism – exercise 2
Pronunciation: adding sounds between words
When one word ends with a vowel sound and the next word starts with a vowel, many speakers add a consonant sound between the words.
This is called ‘liaison’.
Listen to some examples and decide which sound is added.
To learn more about pronunciation, try our Pronunciation Course in the Members section at the top of the page.
Talking Tourism – exercise 3
Vocabulary: intensifiers
Intensifiers are adverbs that you put before adjectives to make the idea stronger. You can hear five in this speech.
Talking Tourism – exercise 4
Grammar: present verbs with future meaning
You know that there are a number of ways to talk about the future in English. But how often do you do it using verbs in the present simple?
Listen to some parts of the recording and write the missing word(s).
