Have you ever travelled in an English-speaking country? What’s the difference between a ‘trip’ and a ‘journey’? Learn some travel words and phrases, and practise your listening and pronunciation in this free English lesson from Oxford Online English. This lesson is for pre-intermediate learners.
Listen to the full audio here:
A: How was the business trip?
B: (sigh) Don’t ask!
A: I just did. Don’t tell me. Another tale of train delays, I suppose.
B: How did you guess? So, picture the scene, I get on the sleeper train as usual at Euston, fall asleep straightaway, it’s all good … then when I wake up we’re supposed to be in Scotland already, but we’re not moving, so I look at Google Maps and we’re stuck somewhere near … Peterborough!
A: Peterborough! … that’s nowhere near Scotland!
B: Tell me about it! Three hours we sat there while they cleared an obstruction on the line.
A: Was there an accident or something?
B: They never said, but on social media they were talking about an incident, so I guess someone … you know … there were ambulances involved.
A: Right. Well hopefully they were OK, whoever it was. But you’re still alive … and you get money back for the delay, don’t you?
B: Yeah, more than an hour’s delay and you get a full refund.
A: So what’s the problem?
B: Well, I missed my meeting, didn’t I! It was supposed to be a long journey, but in the end, it was an entirely pointless one!
A: I don’t know why you don’t fly instead. That’s – what? – the third time the trains have let you down?
B: Trouble is there’s no direct flight, so I’d still have to go to London first. And I hate airports anyway! You have to get there so early, you just end up wasting time in the departure lounge when you could at least be moving on the train …
A: So long as you’re not sitting somewhere outside Peterborough!
Train Delays – exercise 1
Comprehension: what has happened?
Listen to the full dialogue and answer the questions.
Train Delays – exercise 2
Vocabulary: travel collocations
A collocation is a combination of two or more words that are commonly used together in a specific situation. Listen for some travel collocations, then decide what they mean.
Train Delays – exercise 3
Pronunciation: word stress in collocations
A collocation is more than one word but only one idea. This means that the two (or more) words are not stressed equally. One word is always stronger than the other.
To learn more about pronunciation, try our Pronunciation Course in the Members section at the top of the page.
Train Delays – exercise 4
Grammar: present verbs for different times
You know we can talk about present time, past time and future time. But did you know we can use present verb forms to talk about all three?
