Real Easy English: Talking about public transport
06:09 Share

Hello and welcome to Real Easy English, the podcast where we have real conversations in easy English to help you learn. I'm Neil and with me is Georgie. Hello. Did you know that you can now watch a video of this podcast and you can read along with a transcript on our website? Visit bbclearningenglish.com.

Hi Georgie, how are you? I'm very well, thank you Neil. How are you? How was your journey into work? My journey into work was very good today actually and we're actually talking about transport today. How was your journey to work? My journey was quite easy this morning actually. It isn't always. And Neil, we actually have a very similar commute, don't we? I get the Tube to work, which in the UK is the underground train station

So I walk to the station around 15 to 20 minutes and then I get the underground train, one train, and then I change and then get another one and then I walk to work. What about you? I do that. But before your bit, I have to get a bus as well. Are you that far away from the station? A couple of miles. OK. Three kilometres. A bit too far to walk then. A bit too far to walk. I have walked.

when the public transport has been unreliable. But normally I get the bus to the tube stop and then I get on the tube into work. Lovely. And do you like the tube? What do you think about it? I think the tube is very convenient actually, because the trains go very frequently. So if you miss one, you can wait just a couple of minutes and get the next one.

And it's probably the quickest way to get into central London because there's so much traffic driving is a really bad idea. Yeah, I agree with you. It is very reliable. It's usually very easy. The thing I don't like about it, especially in the morning at rush hour is.

is the number of people on the tube. The underground trains in London are very old. They're very small and they are very crowded in the mornings. So crowded means there's lots of people. We can also say packed. Yeah, and I really don't like being in a tight space with lots of people in the mornings, so early in the morning. Yeah.

Yeah, I agree. But I'm lucky because I get on the tube at the first stop, so I always get a seat. But then by the time you get on, it is usually really packed. And the closer you get into central London, the more packed it is. You're squashed up against strangers. It's not always fun. I hate it. What about buses? Do you like buses? Buses are OK.

In London, again, they are quite frequent and that's convenient. Not always. I mean, they are, they're frequent, but they're more unreliable than trains, aren't they? There always seems to be roadworks near where I live and when there are roadworks, there are traffic lights and then there are delays on the buses.

So in the city, public transport can be great. But what about when we go outside of the city? What do you use to go to other parts of the UK? If it's quite far, so if I'm going really far north, maybe to Scotland or to, I don't know, Manchester or a northern city.

It's probably better to get the train because it's faster and I really like trains. You can relax. It's a relaxing experience. Some of my best travel experiences have been on long distance trains. Yeah? Yeah. Where have you been that's been so fantastic on a train? Well, I once went from Prague to Moscow on a train. Wow.

Yeah. What was that like? Really exciting. Why? It took about three days and I was with some friends and we could eat and drink and look out the window. The landscape changed frequently. It was just exciting.

Let's recap the vocabulary we heard in this podcast, starting with some useful adjectives to describe public transport. For example, we had 'crowded', which means very busy. We also hear 'packed'. We had 'reliable', which describes something you can trust, and 'unreliable', which describes something you can't trust. We heard 'frequent', which describes something that happens often.

And we also heard 'delayed', which means something like public transport comes later than expected. That's it for this episode of Real Easy English. Don't forget to go to our website where you can get a free worksheet to download to test what you've learnt. It's at bbclearningenglish.com. Next time, we're talking about different times of year – spring, summer, autumn and winter. See you then. Goodbye. Bye.

Want to learn more English? We have a new easy video series, the London to Edinburgh Challenge. Go to our website to watch this exciting race. Three people, five days, £100. Who will get to Edinburgh first? Visit bbclearningenglish.com