Travel English | A Complete Guide for English Learners

1. Course Overview: Hello and welcome to the course. I hope you are ready and excited to learn everything you need about travel English so that you can handle any kind of travel situation, whether it's a vacation or a business trip, naturally and with confidence without causing awkward situations or misunderstandings. That's what this course is all about. That's what you're going to get from this course. As I said, my name is Luke. I am an American English teacher. I've been traveling around the world for over 15 years. I've been teaching English for over ten years. And I'm very excited to be your guide for this course. Now we're going to be spending most of our time on the blackboard. So let's go over there and I just want to spend a few minutes talking about how you can get the most from this course. So let's hop over to the Blackboard, okay, Now, as I said, we're going to spend most of our time over here and I will be writing just like this. Now, why? Instead of just talking over some slides, I feel that it's very important to get as much input as possible so that what you learn really sticks. So you will see me here like this throughout the course. And you'll also see me here writing on the board throughout the course in a kind of interactive way. Now we're gonna be talking about examples as well. Everything we learned is going to be by example, not just single vocabulary words, not just isolated phrases. Everything will be in context. Because if you think about going on a trip, everything that you need is in a context, in a situation. Check-in counter, asking for recommendations, need something. You're trying to be polite, trying to avoid something or prepare for something. All of the things that you need to say are in situations, right? So we're going to be looking at lots of full examples, complete sentences. And we'll be looking at them here on the board and we'll be making notes beside them. Speaking of notes, of course, the input is important. Hearing me, seeing me, seeing what is on the board. That's input, That's great. Output is also very important. So I would strongly recommend that throughout the course, you take notes as well. Write down what's important and make sure to always remember it in context. Remember how it's used so that when you need it, when you find yourself in those situations. Oh, yes. I remember what I should say here and I know when to say it, and I know how to say it because I wrote it down, I had some output. Now, notes, that's great, right down the important stuff. But practices also important. I would recommend writing dialogues and, or role-plays throughout the course as well. And we'll talk about this later on. I will as we go along, give you suggestions about specifically what dialogues and roleplays to make. This is writing down things that you and another person would say or with yourself pretending to be both sides and doing that live and recording it again. We'll go over that later on in a few different places throughout. But practice is very important. That also helps it really stick in your mind. Finally, I want to make sure you know that you can and should ask questions. Ask if you have a question. Can I use this phrase that you taught here in another situation, this one? Yes or no, right? Ask me, I'm here with you throughout the course. Not just this me, but the other meet, the one that's actually there at the time that you're watching it, right? Feel free to ask questions. I'm more than happy to answer when it make sure you get the answers that you need again, so that you can handle these travel situations, whether it's for vacations or work travel, business trips, or whatever, I want to make sure you get what you need from this course so that you can travel with confidence and enjoy yourself when you're traveling, because travel should be fun and not stressful. Alright, so the only thing that's left for us to do is jump right into the course, to jump into our first set of examples, we're going to be talking about things we need to express before the trip to get ready for the trip. So I hope you're ready. I'm excited. Let's jump into the first lesson. 2. Casually Stating Preferences: Well, here we are in our first actual lesson of the course, where we're going to be diving into examples, talking about expressions and situations that happen before the trip itself. How to decide where you're going to go, how to have those conversations, give preferences, ask questions. Then if you go to a travel agency, how to handle that sort of situation. Now, even if you're not that type of traveler, you will find a lot of interesting expressions very useful elsewhere, even if you're not the type of traveler who goes to a travel agency, we're going to talk about how to reserve things, making bookings in advance. We'll talk about making sure you're ready for a trip and much, much more. But we're going to start with deciding where to go. That's, that's the key thing, right? Before you do anything else, you need to decide, Hey, we want to go on a trip. Where should we go? Whether you're talking to a friend or a colleague, if it's a work trip, maybe you're going to go to one of two conferences or maybe with your spouse, your girlfriend, your boyfriend, your brother or sister or parents, whatever it may be, right? How do we do that? Let's jump over to the blackboard and just get into it. Now, when we talk about deciding where to go, there are different ways to do it. We may want to be more or less direct. We may want to make a suggestion in a very gentle indirect way or in a very direct and very clear way. We may want to instead ask questions. Let's start with suggestions that are not so direct as a way to kind of get a feeling for how others feel about it. So we're going to start here with suggestions. And the general sense we get from this word suggestion is that it's not too strong. We are not saying, Hey, we're going here, That's the decision. Shut up. If you disagree. We want to avoid that, so we want to make it a bit gentler. And of course, there are a few different ways that we can do it. So let's take a look. Let's explore these. Now. Each of these has a different connotation, so we're going to go through them one-by-one. We'll talk about the connotation and then we'll look at the questions. I wouldn't mind going somewhere warm. This is probably a response to someone else asking, Let's say I'm going on a trip with a friend. Where do you think we should go? I wouldn't mind going somewhere warm. That's keeping it very broad. Number one, is there are a lot of warm places. Maybe something tropical. Could be Singapore, could be Miami or Hawaii, or somewhere warm, right? This time of year, of course, or whenever we've decided to travel. So it's very broad, but also it's very open to suggestions from the other side. I wouldn't mind. This doesn't feel like I'm forcing the issue, right? So sometimes we want to be less direct like this. And again, we'll talk about more direct expressions later on. Sometimes we don't want to be too forceful because if I know that you're probably going to agree with me, I want to make sure you can say your part too. I don't want to come across or seem like I'm forcing you into anything. Now you could place behind. I wouldn't mind a lot of different things. You could say I wouldn't mind going somewhere tropical. I wouldn't mind going and then you could say a specific place. I wouldn't mind going to I'm just going to put South America, e.g. whatever you want to put there, it doesn't have to be going you could say visiting usually it's going to be an I-N-G verb. I wouldn't mind visiting. I wouldn't mind seeing. You could say visiting, seeing going those would probably be the most common. Now there is more flexibility here. You could say e.g. I. Wouldn't mind a road trip. So it's not that it has to have the I-N-G verb after it. If you want to say a thing here, that is also totally fine. I could go for is a bit more casual sounding. It's more casual than I wouldn't mind. I wouldn't mind. Again, not to direct, but it's neutral. It's not very formal, it's not very informal. I could go for is the type of phrase that you would use to talk about ice cream. I could go for, I can go for some ice cream, which is a great expression when you want to say what you want without being too direct. Like you'd go for an iced coffee. Sure. Yeah. Okay. Great. I could go for that. You just put the thing right after it. Just know if you use this expression. You could say an iced coffee, a beach vacation, a trip to. Tripp wouldn't mind a trip to Tokyo, mumbai, Shanghai. So a specific place that's totally fine. Or a more general criteria. Criteria is in this case, what you prefer, what you want, what you would like. So at this stage, saying a trip to a specific city might be too specific. It may be better to be more general. A beach vacation, a road trip or something. Something where thus something followed by some kind of thing. And you could be more specific there if you want to. So I wouldn't recommend it so early in the conversation. I'm partial to resorts now this feels a bit more formal. If this one feels casual, this third one feels more formal. Feels like I have a preference for this, feels a bit like that. That's kind of the connotation. This one is definitely less common than the first two. The first two are extremely common. I use this one much less often personal experience there. I'm partial to road trips. I'm partial to beach vacations. I'm partial to trips with a lot of tours. I'm partial to domestic travel. I'm partial to Asia, I'm partial to Europe, I'm partial to South America. So anything you want to put there, That's fine. Just know that it feels more formal than the other one. And you're saying basically, I prefer or I favor those. And you can say I prefer and I favor, that would be fine too. It's the same thing. These are a little bit more neutral. I'm assuming, you know, prefers. So we didn't talk about that as a phrase here because I think you already know that one. Okay, now another way we could do this. I've always wanted to see the cherry blossoms in Japan. Notice here that I am being more specific, right? I'm stating thing that I really want. That doesn't mean you must agree with me, but I'm creating a vision for the vacation that I would like I've always wanted. That adds a little bit of emotion to it. It's not just saying, I prefer this. I want this. I wouldn't mind this. Yeah, that's how you feel. Now. Add a little more emotion, add some history to it. This is something I have wanted for a long time. Okay, that might be a way to push you a little bit to persuade you, instead of not being too pushy, I'm trying to get you on my side. I've always wanted to visit the Taj Mahal. I've always wanted to go to South America and hike the Andes. I've always wanted to see the Southwestern United States, Arizona, the Grand Canyon. That sort of thing allows you to kinda build a vision for what the trip could be. So it's really useful to see, to visit, to go to, to explore, to experience. And there you can be more or less specific. In this case, it's extremely specific to see the cherry blossoms in Japan. Oh, that's not just a specific place, but it's a very specific time. I think it's mid to early April in Japan that they have the cherry blossoms. Well, that is very specific, right? Well, that's fine. If you want to be specific. But if you want to be less specific, you could say, I've always wanted to visit Africa. Africa is a gigantic continent. If you agree with that vision I have, you might say, oh, interesting. Yeah, That would be cool. Well, okay, Now we can decide where do we want to go on the continent of Africa, it's gigantic. Be more or less specific. Just be aware when you are more or less specific. You might push the other person toward or away from what you want, your very specific. It's possible they'll say not super interested in that. If you're more broad, you might get them on board with the general idea and then you can convince them To do the specific thing that you want to do. Okay? So these are a few ways to just give your general preferences to be somewhat indirect and allow for the other person to share their side. Except the last one is a little bit more, not pushy, It's just pushing a little bit right? Next we're gonna talk about some questions we can use to do the same thing. 3. Travel Preference Questions: Sometimes when you're deciding something, in this case we're talking about where to go on a trip, but you could use this for other things too. You want to ask what the other person thinks first before you give your opinion for different reasons. I want to know how everybody feels and then I'll say what I think. Maybe I'm the final decision-maker and I want to get everyone's opinion. Again. These phrases are useful in all kinds of different situations. But we're talking about things that happened before the trip, right? Wouldn't it be cool to see the Himalayas? I've never been to Asia. Would you be into that? How do you feel about backpacking? How would you feel about visiting Pablo and a lady in Argentina? Now, for each of these, we have, as with the previous phrases, different connotations. And of course there are different variations of these. If I say, wouldn't it be cool? I'm asking a question that could be considered leading. You might feel in some ways awkward if you don't say no. Now, if you say, I kinda push you to say Yeah, it would be cool. That doesn't mean you're committing to say that you want to go there to, to the Himalayas, right? It does mean that I'm trying to paint the vision, paint the picture with my question, wouldn't it be cool? We often use this. Wouldn't it be something to do, something as a structure to give a hypothetical or a rhetorical. Often a rhetorical question is one that doesn't need an answer. It's almost like a statement. Wouldn't it be great to see the Himalayas? And then the other person says, Yep, That would be cool or nothing at all. And really I'm just making a comment as a question that nobody has to answer. And it's hypothetical because it's not a real thing. We're talking about something in our imaginations right now. What about this one? What's different about it? I've never been to Asia. Would you be into that? This is a clear yes, no question. But it needs an answer. It's a yes, no question that requires answer. It's like saying, do you like ice cream? And you say yes or no. I suppose you could say It's okay, it's fine sometimes. Yeah. I guess you could say different things, but you've got to answer the question. So it's a little bit more of this question is a bit more pointed. Would you be into that? Would you be interested in that? Would you be cool with that? Would you be okay with that? Now those are all a little bit different. But the basic idea is that I'm asking you to tell me what you think right now. Whereas if I use this one up here, It's a little fuzzier. Could be asking you to answer right now, but it could be just a rhetorical question or it could be something that you answer, but that doesn't mean you agree that we're going to go there on this trip coming up, right? So if you really want to know what somebody thinks right now, this is probably a better one. And if you want to paint a picture of vision, get what's inside of your imagination out there for others to hear. Maybe this one is a little bit better when it's decision time. Go with the second one, I would say would you be into that into, in this case means interested in and you could say, Would you be interested In that? Would you like to do that? Would you be excited about that? Those are all okay. This would you is again, hypothetical. Maybe we haven't even decided for sure that we are going to go on a trip, but we're just exploring the idea. If we did travel, would you be into visiting Asia? Would you be into maybe seeing the Himalayas? Would you be into a road trip? Would you like to go to a resort? Just relax for seven days, drink Mimosa by the pool and read. Crappy fiction for v will do in resorts. I don't know. Well, this would be a great question to use and it has all of those variations. Again, each of those have slightly different feelings. Would you be okay with that? E.g. has the feeling of all you need to do is give permission into it means do you like it? Do you want to do that? How do you think about that? If I say Are you okay with that? It's sort of like permission given. But maybe you're not excited about it. Maybe you don't feel strongly about it. I think into and interested in would be better for this type of question. How do you feel about backpacking? This one is much more open. An open question allows you to talk more, to say more, I'm opening up the space for you to express how you feel. This feels more like a yes or no. It's a I like it or I don't like it or I'm in the middle sort of question. And this one is basically saying, what's your thoughts about this? Then you can say backpacking, it's such a pain. You have to carry things around. It hurts my back. And you then have to check into a place which you don't know the people there. Or I love backpacking. It's so exciting. I love meeting new people, carrying stuff around his great exercise. However, you feel about that, right? In this case, I'm not trying to define where to go. In this case, I'm trying to define the type two type of travel. And that might be very important to do as well. If two people are traveling together at three people, four people traveling together for the first time. It might be a good idea to establish travel style. Some people like to be tourists. They like to visit museums, see famous sites, and otherwise stay at the hotel. Some people go to big cities and they just love to shop. Some people love adventure. They like the rough style of travel where it's a struggle and meeting new people. And that would be something like maybe backpacking or hiking, right? Some people like to just go to a resort and sip of Moses by the pool. It's all good, right? Well, I'm trying to get a feel for how everyone feels. How do you feel about this? Now some people will add, if you're talking to a group, how do you all feel about this? And it's quite common nowadays to say, how do you guys feel about this? Now, in specifically American English, if you say you guys, that does not mean anymore, it doesn't mean just you men guys can be used for boys or girls. Girls can say that to all girls are guys and girls. It just means you all. So either one of those, if you're talking to a group. But the suggestion of this one is that you would like to go backpacking. Otherwise, you would have said, How do you feel about a cruise? Accrues? Sitting on a boat with a bunch of food and drinks and relaxing. I've never been on a cruise. That's what type of travel I've never done. I don't know if it's really for me because everything is planned out in advance. I like at least a few surprises. I don't know. Maybe I should try it someday, but just not quite my favorite style of travel. And then other people can just describe how they feel. Not a big fan of backpacking. I would be much more in favor of taking a cruise. And note there the word would I would be more into this. I would would, would, would, would hypothetical word it tells you a hypothetical, just talking about something in our imaginations. How would you again, that keyword would, how would you feel about visiting Pablo and a lady in Argentina? Well, same basic idea here, except instead of how do you feel talking about it now, this would you emphasizes that it is hypothetical. And instead of being only about a place, we suggest an activity, in this case, visiting people that we know they're right. We're thinking about ideas. Oh, well, which places around the world have people we know. We know that even in France and in Indiana, mean this isn't an in Japan and in China and Argentina. How would you feel about visiting Pablo? And then later in Argentina? Ah, that sounds fun. I would be into that. I think that would be really fun. That would be very interesting. That's a good idea as a way to respond positively or that doesn't sound fun to me. I like to just do whatever I want. And if I'm visiting someone than they feel like they need to be a tour guide. So you can say whatever you want as a response. The key thing is the question that you ask. Now we're going to go on and talk about how we can be a little more forceful so far we've been talking about very indirect ways to express preferences. Well, what if we want to say much more clearly, what we want to do, where we want to go. 4. Getting a Bit Direct or Pushy: How can we express preferences when we feel pretty strongly about our preference? Well, there, you could be indirect, but that might lead to a long conversation about where to go. The phrases that we've been talking about so far, fine, great. That conversation is a good conversation to have. But sometimes we want to be a little bit more confident. We could say a bit more direct. We could say a bit more pushy. Now, what's the difference between direct and pushy? Direct means I just state very clearly without any way for you to misunderstand what I really feel. What I feel. What flavor of ice cream do you want? Vanilla, chocolate, mint chocolate chip, whatever it is, you say it very clearly. Well, you could give a simple one word answer like that when someone asks you where you want to go, we're going to explore some ways to express it in a sentence, how to say that. But what's the difference between that and being pushy? Being pushy means that you're trying to convince another person to want what you want or to do what you want, whether they actually want to do that or not. And for that reason, pushing this often comes across as somewhat route. It can, depending on the relationship that you have come across or seem rude. So you have to be a bit careful. Again, pushy is sort of like, Hey, hey, hey, this is what I want. Hey, hey, hey, hey, you like mint chocolate chip as well, right? That's how it feels. And so it can be a bit, can be not always a bit rude, sometimes good friends. That's just how they talk to each other. So that's not necessarily a bad thing. Okay? So let's dive into a few ways to do this. Some common ways to be direct or perhaps a bit pushy. I'm dead set. Just look at this part. Okay. Let's go somewhere. Unless you have a better idea. And I get to pick. I'm dead set on something. It means I feel very strongly about it. And if you don't agree, if you have a different opinion than we might have an argument. If we argue about it, we might finally come to a solution. We might finally decide, okay, well then we're not going. But maybe I know you don't have a strong opinion. And so I want to just say very clearly what I want. I'm dead set on that. Can use that for lots of other things too. I'm dead set on a Ferrari, means that's the only thing I want. Nothing else. I won't settle for less. It's very clear, cannot be misunderstood, and it means we have a very strong opinion about it. Okay? Now that's different than this one. Let's go somewhere with good food and wine south of France. So this one is saying clearly what I want, but it's also being quite general, right? Let's go somewhere with good food and wine. Okay, well, that's probably it could be a lot of places. Right. And also with this second one, I'm not being nearly as blunt. Blunt is sort of like don't. That's what I think. Wow, like that. Again, not always rude, depending on the situation. It's not so blunt, but it is direct. It's very direct. It's very clear. It could mean just that I favor this. Right. But I'm willing to change my mind if you say, I don't know, I think we should go somewhere with a great hiking. Okay. Well, that could be the same place, I suppose, or I think we should go somewhere with bad food. No, don't say that. No one would say bad food, right? But it's just a way to express it without that softwood language, that soft indirect language we talked about before. This is not too pushy, It's just direct. Then we use a question to throw out an idea. South of France. Definitely agree. Good food and wine, but I would prefer Italy. Okay, and then we can have a conversation about it. So I think of all of these, I think this one might be the most clear and open to disagreement depending on the situation. Unless you have a better idea, I'd prefer a hiking trip. Now this one could be understood as rude. This one could feel like, you don't have a better idea and I want to go hiking. So do you agree or not could be taken like that? In some situations. Again, we probably are traveling with someone that we know well. And so sometimes these direct expressions are just natural. This is how we talk to each other. Unless you have a better idea, I'd prefer a hiking trip. The IDE makes it a lot softer because this side is short for, it's a contraction of I would, and you can say I would too often use I'd instead of I would. But this part definitely softens the whole thing. Now, why not just say, I'd prefer a hiking trip. Yes, we could do that. But adding this first part, unless you have a better idea, helps me to kind of push you in my direction. Unless you have a better suggestion, I think we should watch this movie. Okay? Most people, when they hear that, they're going to say, Alright, yeah, that's fine. Probably it could lead to a disagreement and argument. It could lead to maybe you saying no. I don't think so. But in most cases I say it because I know that you don't have a strong preference. And so I want to say my preference and finished the conversation. Let's decide. It's a way to push this question to its conclusion, to finally decide, hey, where are we going to go? But it also leaves open the possibility that you might have a better idea. Maybe you have a great idea that you're holding in your back pocket. Okay, so I'm leaving open that possibility. Unless you have a better idea. I'd prefer hiking trip. Whoa, okay. What about this? Well, I never thought of that before. Yes. Let's do that. Maybe you know me so well, you know what idea I will think is better than a hiking trip. Okay, and I just didn't think of it before. So I think that one's pretty interesting. I get to pick our vacation spot this year, Columbia. At first glance, this one looks like it could be almost rude, pushy way to direct. But you have to think about the context. If somebody says, I get to pick this year, these are people who are close, close friends, family, let's say it's parents. And they have four kids, and they travel every year and they let their kids take turns who gets to choose, right? So in this case, it's just a reminder. It's my turn. I get to do it. I get to pick. Okay. So reminder. But it's kind of a strong one. Hey, this is what I want. Hey, this is what I think right now. We could change it to I want if we have a strong opinion and we don't do the turns thing and it's just two people who are close. Someone has a strong opinion. They say, I want to pick our vacation spot. I went to pick where we eat dinner. I want to, you could say, of course, replace pick with choose, and decide. I want to decide where we state our hotel. That's a very clear, strong opinion, but because it's probably used only with people, we're very close to this kind of expression. Yes, it's direct. Yes, it's a bit pushy, but also that's often natural for people we're close to and it won't cause a fence probably it's not meant to cause offense. It's a way to start the conversation because the other person who hears this might say, oh, okay, okay. Okay. Well, you feel strongly about it. But I was thinking maybe one person has a stronger opinion about it and the other person generally wants to throw out other ideas, but do so less directly, okay? This is just a way to begin, okay? Or they know the other person doesn't care and the other person will just say, okay, because I get to pick, I want to pick, I want to choose, I want to decide. And again, this could be used for a lot of different things. I want to decide where we eat for dinner tonight. I'd like to decide where we eat for dinner tonight would soften it a bit because we have that. Right. I want to pick our hotel or our hotels for the whole trip. Okay? Okay. If I know that you're good at that kind of thing, and you say very clearly, I want to pick our hotels were avoiding an argument by you saying that clearly and me saying, alright, fine, grid. I know you'd like to choose that. I don't care. So go ahead. Right. That's actually a common situation when my wife and I go on vacations. She likes to pick the hotels, but I don't really care. I'll sleep anywhere. She wants to choose. Great. So you might say, I get to pick our hotels and I'll say, yep, fine with me, right. But but I get to pick which tours we go on or I want to pick things that I care about. Okay, fine. So it's still a conversation, but the phrasing is more direct in the phrasing does sound a bit more pushy. Alright. Now we're going to talk about how we say what we've decided. We're going to talk about the decisions. 5. When You Can't Decide: What do you say when someone asks you something, a preference? Where should we go? What do you want to eat for dinner? What would you like to do later? And you really don't care. You want the other person to decide. How can you express that. We've talked about different expressions. Direct, less direct, casual, formal for how to give preferences and how to ask, what do we say? We don't want to make the decision. There are a few simple expressions I'd like to quickly go through those before we talk about the decision itself. You probably know these, but I want to make sure that we're on the same page because you need to know these if you don't want to be the one making the final decision, it's up to you. I can't decide your call. And you pick. Now, are these all exactly the same? A few nuances here. Really, these are the most common for it's up to you, means it is your decision. I don't want to choose. What that means is whatever they choose, you have to agree with. If you say it's up to you and then they say, Okay, well let's go to South Africa. And you say, oh, no, I went there last year. Well, then you should say, not, it's up to you. You should say, well, anywhere but these three places, anywhere but anywhere but a, B, and C, Maybe you traveled to those two or three places recently. You don't want to go back to those places. You want to go somewhere new. So you have some requirements. Okay. Well then don't say it's up to you. Only use It's up to you if you really don't care and you really don't want to make the decision and you're willing to agree with whatever that person says. If you say, oh, not there, then you're going to look like the type of person who doesn't want to try to make the decision, but then complains, once it gets made, I can't decide. Could be the same thing, but it's also used to mean, give me some suggestions first and give me some reasons and explain a bit more than maybe I will be able to decide. This is like you take the decision, it's your decision. This is more like right now based on what I know, based on what I'm thinking, I'm not able to make a decision. Okay. Where would you like to go? I don't know. I can't decide. Oh, how about a, B, or C? These might be good. What do you think about those? Maybe a would be fun. Okay. Or I look at them and I think I still can't decide. You choose. It's up to you. It's up to you. Okay? Or you have a preference. Or maybe you say, I'm thinking, the other person says, I'm thinking we could go to South Africa or perhaps we could go to we could go to Europe. Okay. Could you tell me why you wanna go to those places? What would we do there? And then you talk about why you want to why you're interested in those two places. Oh, I've, I've heard, I've always heard that the South of China is really beautiful. I'd like to, I'd really like to visit. Okay. But I've also heard that. And then you explain yourself and then I make a decision. But before I didn't have your thoughts, I didn't have what you want it to say and so I couldn't decide. And so I said, I can't decide. I can't make a decision. Now. I think I think I do know what I want to do after you explain yourself now. Now I think I can give my preference. I think the South of China, yeah, that does sound really nice. Alright, let's do that. We'll talk about that expression in a moment. Your call and you pick. These are really, really simple, really, really common. These mean similar to why did you even ask me, I can't be bothered to make a decision. You're the one who's interested in deciding that sort of thing. So just go ahead and decide and let me know what you've decided. Often when you say your call or you pick it sort of like, I'm not going to think about it. I'm not going to think about where we go, you decide and then I will just go with you. And that can be used for dinner and that could be used for what we go and do today. And that can be used for all kinds of things close, so many different things. It could be. I'm not even interested in thinking about this question. That's usually how these two are used. These two could be more conversational, particularly this one. When I say, it's up to you, maybe I still want to hear your answer, right. But if I say your call, you pick I may not even need to know right away what you decided. Just pick one bucket and then I'll just go with you. Okay? So it's a little bit more at a distance. These are very common for uncertainty. But now I want to look at the expressions that we need to use when we want to say, Hey, this is where we're going to go. 6. Announcing the Decision: When it's time to end the conversation about where to go and say where we're going to go. We could do it in a few different ways and we'll talk about each of these. Okay. Turkey it is. We're going with a camping trip in Canada. It's decided then two weeks in Europe. Great. That settles it. A road trip. Okay. That's not deciding where exactly, but maybe we don't care. Maybe we're just going to drive and we'll talk about how to add to that one in a second. This one is really simple. It's basically like tying up the conversation we had, asking and giving preferences and saying, I don't care, It's up to you. You decide. Finally saying, here it is, This is the one, right? And so probably the simplest way to do it is, okay. It is a road trip. It is Southeast Asia, it is a relaxing crews. It is adding this, it is feels very conclusive. Something is decided. It's kind of weird looking sentence. I know. But it's a really common way to express this feeling of, hey, we're finished with this decision made. Here's the decision wrapped in a little package with a bow on top, right? Being everyone can see, right? Right. You see, everyone's see. It's kinda like that. It's accomplishing a sense of finality. Of course, we're talking about expressions for travel, but this can be used in all kinds of other decision-making situations too. Alright. It is, it doesn't have to only be one word, Turkey, it is a road trip. It is Southeast Asia. It is very common and it sounds very optimistic and very positive. Wu who's sort of like that often with the exclamation mark after it. We're going with okay. We're going with we decided to go with we went with when we're talking about a decision go with and went with are really, really common. It's the conclusion to choosing something we had three or four options we were thinking about. Finally, we've made a decision. We're going with. And I drew a line here because I want to make it clear that we're going with and then we usually say some noun here, replace this whole thing, a camping trip in Canada. With that. We're going with that to simplify it, that you could put almost anything there. We're going with a road trip, we're going with a camping trip in Canada, are going with Canada. We're going with two weeks in Europe. All of those things can be considered to be the thing that we're going to do or the place that we're going to go. So we're going with, that is a good way to think about it. We decided to go with is just a longer way to say it. I think it sounds a bit more formal. We went with would be usually not this this would be we went with maybe an agency or we went with this airline. That's the one that we chose. You make that decision. And once you make that decision, the decision is over. But for the trip, you make the decision and then the trip is still coming up. And so we probably wouldn't use went with to talk about the decision of the trip. Okay. It's decided then two weeks in Europe. Now you might say, hey, this is grammatically weird. I know, I know, but this is how people would say it. It's decided then stop. And then what did you decide? And if you are formally writing this, you might make this a, you might make this a colon here. Two weeks in Europe, a road trip through the Southwest, train ride across Russia, the Siberian Railroad, right? Some people do that one. I've always wondered what that would be like, that what it's called the Trans-Siberian rail road. Is that correct? Anyway, you made a decision. This one feels more formal. This has a very clear formal field to it. This one, I think extremely common, kinda fun and hopeful, very clear. This one really, really common. This, it is at the end very optimistic and enthusiastic. Kind of could be considered casual. And this one may be a little bit. This one definitely more formal feeling the third one. Okay, great. That settles it. A road trip. Now, again, I'll say one more time you can put what you want here at the end, right? Whatever it is, I'm tired of coming up with fictional places to go and fictional things to do. Come up with 1 billion already. Brave, it's dry. But I want to focus on the phrase here. Enthusiasm. Great, great, great. That settles. It, suggests that we're now at the end of a long conversation on the topic, right? This is not something we would say usually if I just said what I think and you said you pick and then that's it, right? I probably won't say, Great, that settles it. I can, but usually this will follow at the end of a discussion or even an argument. Finally, we agree, we compromise back-and-forth. I want to go somewhere warm while I wanted to take a camping trip up north. Well, after a long time, we finally agree. Great. We're done. Great. That settles it. A road trip, a road trip through the Southwest. You just say very clearly what it is. Make sure we're on the same page and then we move forward with planning. Or perhaps perhaps we talk to a travel agency. Now, we're gonna talk about that next. But I want to make it clear whether that's your travel style or not. The language that we need to communicate with a travel agent is useful in a lot of different situations. So stick with it regardless because we're going to talk about a lot of really interesting, really useful expressions and words. So I'll see you in the next lesson. 7. Travel Agency Overivew and Vocabulary: People plan their trips in different ways. Some people like to do everything themselves, figure out the flights and the destinations and the hotels and the tours. Build an itinerary for the trip themselves. Some people want some help, so they may go to a travel agency. Now we're going to spend some time on this. The kinds of things that they may ask you, the different things that you can say to make sure that you express what you want on your trip. Now, although we're gonna be focusing on the travel agency, a lot of the things that we talk about are going to be useful in many other areas as well. So I would recommend, even if travel agencies are not your style, that you stick around for the next few lessons because it really is going to be a lot of useful expressions. Okay, So let's first just go through a few important terms, things that we need to make sure that we note before we get into the questions and the different expressions. In relation to a travel agency, you'll typically be talking about a package, whether it's a vacation package or tour package or trip package. A package includes different things that may include the flights, the hotels, the different things that you will do on the trip. Maybe food, depending what kinda depends on the type of vacation or trip that you're taking. But generally it's going to be talked about as a package. And the travel agent will usually use that word when they're referencing your trip. They couldn't say your trip, but they'll often talk about the package. Now. Sometimes they'll ask you if you want something that's all inclusive. Now, this would be a resort e.g. or a cruise that I talked about before where everything's included. It's just like it sounds. Now if it's an adjective, it will have a hyphen between it, an all-inclusive vacation and all-inclusive resort stay, e.g. so this is where you have food and entertainment and your room and your flight. Everything is included. It could just be about the resort itself, not including the flight or the whole package, could be all-inclusive, which includes food destinations. As I said, that's where you're going. That is where you are going. You can have several destinations on one trip. Maybe you stop first and Rome, and then you take a train to France, and then you go to Germany, e.g. that would be different destinations on your trip. So often the places on the trip that you're going to go will be your different destinations. And then you may have add-ons. Add-ons are extra things that you may include or maybe not. That could be things like travel insurance. It could be things like luxury, stay in one place. It could be a rental car, e.g. these would be optional things that you will be offered. And this is used in a lot of different areas, especially related to travel. Anytime you see add-ons, these are usually going to be non necessary things that are optional that you can choose to leave out or add on for your trip. Or in fact, in a lot of different things for whatever you're getting, there's the main thing and then there are the add-ons. And then to talk about the prices, often you'll hear instead of prices, rates, the rates are really good. This time of year, if you go during the autumn, you will get better rates or the rates tend to be higher in the autumn, e.g. rates just means that's another way to say price. Especially for hotels, especially for tours. You will hear rates used instead of prices. So those are just a few key things. Now we're going to really quickly move through the questions that you may be asked before we explore how you can express the things you want when you're building out your trip. 8. Open Travel Agency Questions: The first type of question that I want to talk about that a travel agent may ask you is what I would call an open question. This is where you're asked a question and all you have to do is describe something, explain something. We'll look at yes-no questions or closed questions next. But just quickly, let's go through some open ones. What kind of well, that could be as simple as what kind of trip are you thinking? What kind of trip are you thinking? There? You're just describing it. Adventure, backpacking, resort, relaxation. We want to see a lot of history. We want to visit a lot of museums, that sort of thing. You're just giving a description of the trip that you want to take. What are your preferences in terms of? Now this definitely feels more formal. In terms of, has a sort of formal feeling to it, right? In terms of is actually a really useful phrase. It's a great way to point at something and say about this, about this thing, has that formal feeling, but it's really useful. What are your preferences in terms of travel style? That would be a common question. In terms of travel style. What are your preferences in terms of and then in terms of accommodations, what are your preferences? That means, what type of accommodations do you usually like? Accommodations are e.g. your hotel. We'll talk more about that later in the course. But the places where you're going to stay, what are you looking to? This is about expectations. Expectations there they might ask, what are you looking to get out of this trip? What are you looking to get out of this trip? Or you might hear instead of looking, hoping, it's a great way to ask about expectations. You can use that in a lot of different ways, a lot of different areas. I'm telling you this because you can use these question beginnings all the time anytime. Well, the second one is a little more formal, but they're really useful way outside of travel situations. What are you looking to get out of the trip? What are you looking to do on the trip? What are you looking to see? What are you looking to? What do you expect? What do you anticipate to get out of? It? Could be the thing that we want to remember about it, the thing that we want to experience most, Oh, we want adventure. That's the most important thing. We want fresh air and nature. We want to get out of the city and we want to experience wild areas. Okay, so maybe that's hiking. We want honestly to just relax. That's what we want to get out of it. We want relaxation. So they're just getting a sense for how you feel about it. And these are three really common ways to ask, how do you usually, this one might be how do you usually travel? How do you usually get around? That would be maybe about transportation. Maybe that would be do you want to rent a car or take public transportation? Would you rather walk as much as possible? You'd like to get out and walk when you're on vacation? Okay. How do you usually get around or how do you usually travel would be a bit more general and a bit more like this question. What perhaps even this question, how often do you, this is a frequency question. And again, that's why they're imagine, that's why this is a frequency question that is extremely common. You can use it all the time to ask people about how frequently they do something, how often do you travel? How often do you take road trips? And these are these are questions I'll put question marks at the end of these, right? How often do you go hiking maybe there I'm trying to get your experience if you go hiking every weekend and I might recommend some more advanced hiking, a place with more advanced hiking opportunities, right? How often do you do something extremely common? And how would you, now, this one is often going to have a specific word after it. How would you describe your ideal vacation? I'm just shortening it here for the sake of space. How would you describe your ideal vacation? How would you describe your ideal spouse? How would you describe the perfect trip? How would you describe the perfect day? This sort of thing is a way to get people talking about something. It's a great prompt to get someone to describe. Now it often has describe after it, but sometimes we use beginning here. We might go with like instead, how would you how would you like to get around generally in the city? By car or public transportation? So that would be okay. But this describe one for the travel agency situation would be probably more common. So these are all typical questions that by the way, you can use in tons of different situations. We're going to look at a few more. Next though, we're going to talk about closed questions or yes, no questions. 9. Closed Travel Agency Questions: Take a look at the beginnings of these questions. Are, did our Can r, and we could go on with would do, there are a lot of other beginnings that can be like this. This would be yes or no questions or closed closed questions. Are there any activities? Are there any activities you really enjoy? Again, these are questions that the travel agent might ask because they're trying to get more information because their job is to build a trip for you. That is their job. They're going to ask you these questions so that they can put a package together, right? Are there any activities you really enjoy? Are there any things that you really want to make sure you do? Okay? Do you have there you could put a lot of different things. Do you have a specific place in mind? I means a specific destination. Well, we already know that we want to spend our vacation in a different continent. So not even continent that we live in. Okay. Or live on. I think it would be for continent, not live. I think we live in countries and continents. I'm pretty sure that's right. Right. So that would be one question. Do you have activities in mind? Do you have things that you would like to do in mind? This is a great way to ask someone about their expectations. The things that they're thinking about, where we're going to do something together today. And I would say, did you have any in mind? Give me your ideas and I'll tell you what I think. You have any things that we might do in mind? No. Okay. Well, I have some thoughts right now. Why is it did instead of do, this just makes it a little softer. It makes it a little bit less direct. It's a more common way to begin this question. Are you into, we talked to, into, into means you like that. You find that interesting, you find that exciting. Okay? Are you into museums? Are you into hiking? Are you into tours? Are you into adventure? Travel? Whatever thing they want to put there to try to narrow down your preferences, what you would like before they make recommendations. Can you see yourself? Now you might be thinking, wait a second. That sounds like a job interview question. Yeah, that's right. This is a very common beginning to a job interview question. Can you see yourself working here in ten years? And then you would answer that checkout my, my job interview course to learn more about that. But this is about visualizing. It's an I there or imagining. And often, can you imagine yourself is a common way to say this too. Can you imagine, can you imagine yourself? And then if someone doesn't travel a lot, they think they might like one style, but then they get there and they realize they don't. So let's say I'm a travel agent. I have a lot of experience helping people plan their trips, right? Building packages for them. And I know that some people who book relaxing trips at resorts. After three days of their ten day all-inclusive resort package, they get really bored and they have nothing to do. Okay. Can you see yourself just relaxing for ten days? Okay. Because maybe the one I want to recommend doesn't have any tours that go out and it's just for relaxation. But I have another one which has little tours that you can take in a lot of activities. Can you see yourself doing that? They told me before. We just want to relax. Okay. It worked so hard. Okay. Can you see yourself just relaxing by the pool or by the beach for ten days? Maybe not. Okay. Now I have one. And then they could talk about the package that has activities, interesting things to do. Are you looking to and there you would add any kind of preference. And I know I've said this 1,000 times, but these questions are really great for getting people to talk about what they think and describe what they think and give their preferences. I love using all of these questions. I use them all the time. Are you looking to? I use that when people are telling me their English learning goals and I want to ask more questions. Okay, So are you looking to use English for travel when you're going around the world for business. Is that what you're looking to do? Are you looking to just learn casually? I'm trying to understand your preferences. Are you looking to do to do a lot of outdoor outdoor activities? Whitewater rafting, hiking, mountain climbing. What are some other outdoor activities? Sports, scuba diving, that sort of thing. Are you looking to stay? Usually have a verb here, a simple verb, are you looking to stay in luxury hotels? Some people really have preferences. They want to stay only in the best hotels. If I'm going to travel only once a year, I'm going to stay in four or five-star hotels only. I'm going to enjoy myself and relax. Some people know I want to, I want to stay in cheaper hotels because then I have more money to spend on doing stuff. E.g. are you looking to stay in luxury hotels? No, not really. We just want to stay in a very convenient part of town or a central area or somewhere close to a lot of the tours that we want to do would be a way to answer that. So again, very common. Now, we need to get into the specifics. So we've looked at some open questions, some closed questions. Be patient, we're almost through the questions, then we're going to really explore the things that we can say to describe and give these preferences or criteria or requirements when talking to the travel agent. So next we're just going to look through a few questions to get specifics. 10. Getting Specifics: There are a few questions that a travel agent will ask that are not very interesting, but generally are necessary. Key details. So we're just going to quickly go through these questions and how we would answer them honestly, answering them is very simple. You just as quickly as possible, as simply as possible, say what the answer is. It doesn't usually need to be a full sentence. With some of the questions we've been talking about. We have to describe something. Oh, we really like doing outdoor activities and we're hoping to do some hiking while we're there. That kind of thing, describing, right? Well, that's great. That's important to help them understand what kind of trip you want to take. But then there's the other side. Those basic details which are necessary for those quick answers. Simple answers are fine. What's the budget for the trip? I means how much money do you want to spend? And you could give a range or an exact number. About 10,000, about 3,000, about 100,000. That would be quite a trip depending on how long you're going to be traveling. Okay. Great. Or you could say somewhere between 5000-10 thousand e.g. are you interested in doing travel insurance? Are you interested in doing traveling or doing doing well, it doesn't have to be there. It could be taken out. It might say Are you interested in travel insurance? That's okay. You can say either yes or no, of course. Or you could say, well, how much does it cost? Or could you tell me a little bit more about it or would you recommend it, or what do I get if I have travel insurance? How many people will be going? That's usually a simple 346. How many people are you traveling with if that's your family and you have a family of five, then your answer is five. That's it. That's all you need to say. Are you interested in traveling with a group? Now this doesn't mean your family. If you have a family, are you going to just want to travel with just your family or do you mind traveling with some other families? Often cheaper if you travel with a group, sometimes it's more interesting, more fun. Some types of travel are only available with groups. Some tours are only available if you're part of a group. Even if you traveled by yourself, if you choose to travel in a group, you might have the opportunity to meet people and experience things together. If that's your style, then you would say yes, absolutely or no. Just our family. We want to take a family trip or no. I usually do solo travel. I'd like to go by myself. Okay. Do you have any dietary needs there? You would simply say e.g. we're all vegetarian. Or my wife is a pest getArea and that means only seafood, no chicken, beef, pork, lamb. That all of them. Anything other than any meet other than seafood? Or none, none. Or sometimes there are allergy requirements, allergies. But usually this is not something that the agent will ask. That will be something that they might ask at a restaurant. Any allergies? I don't want to say well, I do have one, but I don't want to say what it is. Dietary needs usually is about any requirements and they might say dietary requirements instead. So that way when they're booking the flights for you, if they're doing that, they're going to include your dietary requirements when they book it with the airline, e.g. or the hotel or the resort. What are your preferences in terms of accommodation? That useful phrase in terms of is so, so useful. I love it about that, right? In terms of accommodation, in terms of meals, in terms of activities. Luxury hotels. We really don't care about having a nice room as long as it's clean. So definitely book something cheaper for us, please. Um, we would love to stay in an interesting AirBnB. Well, we want to do some camping, but probably for most of the trip, we would like to stay in mid-range hotels. That means not too cheap, not too expensive. Okay. So those are your preferences in terms of accommodation. Are there any absolute musts? This is a great one. I love to ask this question. Do you have any absolute musts? That means things that have to be there. And if they're not there, I'm not even going to take the trip, right? People asked me that question. I usually say yes, will there be coffee? No coffee. I don't go like that. Yes. Absolute musts. We want to make sure that we talking as maybe parents. Have a separate room from the kids, and the kids stay in one room, the parents stay in another. We don't want to be in the same room as them. Okay? That's an absolute must. What would be another absolute must? Maybe an activity we want to go on the Harry Potter tour. It's an absolute must. Maybe there's a specific place you went to visit. One absolute must is we'd love to take a short trip to that place. Whatever place it is that you must visit a very interesting place. Yes, an absolute must. We want to make sure that we fly direct. There are no layovers. Very important that the flights are all direct flights. We don't like long layovers. We'll talk more about that later. Layover is when you stop in the middle and then keep going, right? Those are absolute musts, must have that. You could get rid of. Absolute, but absolute makes it a bit stronger to be honest. What about cuisine? Now? That's not really a complete question, right? What about cuisine? Cuisine means food, right? What about it? But often it's in the context of a conversation about preferences. So there you might say, Oh, We want to book some really nice Italian restaurants. Or we want to get some really good local seafood. We'd like to try some local seafood spots, or we've heard about a very famous local dish. And we'd like to try a famous restaurant that serves that dish at some point. Okay, So there you just say your preferences about cuisine. We'll talk a bit more about how to state those preferences in a moment. But you just say what kind of food you want to eat or you say, not really. We don't really have any preferences. We'll figure it out when we get there. We'll find out what interesting food is around near our hotel, e.g. what are your preferred travel dates? Now, this is also very important. This could be more general, it could be more specific. Very clear dates. Say, we want to go between the 19th and the 28th of next month, 19th and 20th. Very clear. Or it could be more generally, you could say the last two weeks of next month. Although although although although it's flexible, it's a bit flexible. Got it. Okay. So they'll try to get it around that time, but they know it can be plus or minus a few days. You could say plus or minus. Well, we want to leave on the 1800s and get back on the 28th, plus or minus a few days. Okay? So that day, the last day, the return date is plus or minus. That's a good way to say it. Plus, plus. And the minus plus, not, not a lot of room here, right? Plus and minus, or you could say, but the return date is flexible. We want to leave on the 1800s. But the return date, the return date, the return date is flexible around the 29th. Around the 29th. If you use a round, that means about around around the 29th, but it is flexible. And by the way, the other date is the departure date. Departure date. It's got to be this day. Return date, pretty flexible. Somewhere around the 20 What did I say? 28th. 29th. Well, it's just an example. Preferred. You want to make it very clear if it's flexible or if it's very clear. Okay. If it's very clear, make sure you say between the 18th and the 29th, 18th and 29th, departure date, 800s, return date 29th. No other days. Okay. Got it. Got it. Understood. Now, next, we're going to take a quick look at a few sentence beginnings that we can use to give these preferences. We've talked about it generally writing around the sentences. I just wanted to give you very clearly some beginnings you can use to answer these sorts of questions, including the preferences questions. Before we go on to bookings and reservations. 11. Stating Preferences with an Agent: Giving your preferences to the travel agent is actually pretty simple. We've talked about some of these expressions, but just so that you have them burned into your memory so that you know how to answer these very common questions, even outside of a travel agency, Let's go through them. We let's assume we're traveling with someone else. We would rather, this is a preference. We would rather what? There's some verb after this. Fly. Business class. Stay in relatively cheap hotels, stay in luxury hotels, go on. Tours, hike as much as possible. We would rather do this, compare to something else as opposed to something else. So when you want to choose one choice because it's better than another, often you use, we would rather, okay. What do you looking to get out of the trip? We're really looking to relax. As we've talked about. We're looking to do what? You're looking to see a lot of historical sites. A lot of historical sites. Okay, great. We generally prefer staying in resorts. Maybe we'd like to relax. Now there you could say prefer staying or prefer to stay. Prefers one of those weird ones where you could use either to stay or staying. They're not, not all verbs are like that, but some of them are, were really into hiking. What are you into? This is going to be a noun, it's gonna be a thing. We're really into hiking and nature walks. Okay, Good to know. I might they might even say that, good to know, good to know. We tend to be, often be, but you could put different verbs there. We tend to go, we tend to stay, we tend to prefer, we tend to eat. We tend to be major foodies. So we'd like to have as many different local interesting cuisines as possible. If you have a preference for trying local cuisine, you could say that your major foodie, he loved to try different kinds of food you like to explore delicious cuisine, okay, again, we tend to, this is what we usually do. This is talking about our routine or what we do. Usually when we travel, the type of lifestyle we have, type of lifestyle we prefer. Typically, we don't do group tours. We don't do group group tours. Typically, we do group tours. Okay. Either one, whatever you prefer. This is just a generalization that helps the travel agent better plan and prepare your trip package. And you can use all of these to talk about preferences outside of a travel agency, the questions that we looked at. And in fact, these ways of talking about preferences are so common in spoken English, you can use them in many different situations. So the travel agency is just a convenient way to talk about all of these extremely useful and common questions and sentence beginnings. Alright, so be sure to check out the accompanying PDF to find more answers so that you can really get a feeling for all of these, okay? Next, we're going to take a look at Booking and reservations. 12. Flight Booking Overview and Vocabulary: So far we've talked about deciding which place we're going to travel to. We've talked about the travel agency, the questions that you may be asked and how to answer those questions with your preferences and with your requirements, your criteria for the trip. Now we're going to get into a very important part of preparing for the trip. That is, bookings and reservations were going to be talking about booking a flight, also going to talk about hotel reservations. Now you might say booking of light. I've always booked a flight on a website. Very true. Usually if I book a flight by myself, I will go onto a travel website or an app. And I will book the flight, their search, the destination, and make sure I put in where I'm leaving from the dates and then I'll browse different flights, great. But sometimes you do need to book over the phone. You may need to talk with someone who's going to help you book that flight. It may be for different reasons. Some airlines, you just have to do that. Maybe they don't have their flights in the place where you want to search. Sometimes you're using points to book a trip and you may need to make a call with the, in my case, bank that has your points. When I travel, I like to use my credit card points so that I can get either free flights or discounted flights. It's great. It's a common thing that people do in America for whatever reason, you may need to book your flight on the phone. Regardless, I want to make sure you know the language. Even if most of the time you are booking online or you're asking a travel agent to do it for you. I want to make sure that you know the language. So we're going to go through some important vocabulary and then we're going to go through a dialogue to go through some of the key words and phrases and expressions we need in that situation. So that you feel comfortable if you're ever asked about flights or if you ever need to book a flight over the phone, okay, first, a few important words and phrases that will definitely need to know. For this kind of situation. You'll need to know round-trip, one-way direct flight. Believe we've talked about that already. Roundtrip flight means you are going to a destination and returning. So it is a round trip ticket or a round trip flight. Sometimes people call it even though it's actually two flights or more, sometimes it's still called that could also be just a round-trip ticket. One-way means you don't book the one coming back. It is one way kind of explains itself. A direct flight means that there are no layovers. So if you have a layover, this is your point of origin or where you leave from. And this is your destination or where you're going. You fly here. And then you wait maybe an hour, maybe half an hour, and then you fly here. So this experience, the experience here is called your layover. Now I want to make it clear that's the experience. This is a layover. I'm in the layover, right? That's what you're doing. This place or point is just called the connection. The connection is the point connecting in Dallas, e.g. my connection in Dallas, my connection in London. That's the middle point. If you have some times to connections, if it's really bad, right? And then your destination is the last one. This is not a destination, it's a connection. And while you're here, you say you have a layover. So a direct flight goes directly to your destination. That's a direct flight. Maybe you have that requirement. So that's those two. Now a red eye flight, generally, because time zones are weird for international flights, generally, a red-eye flight is going to be a domestic flight, or at least one which has a destination that is close to the time zone that you left from, right? This is going to be an overnight flight or flight during the night. And sometimes those are cheaper, sometimes not. It's called a red-eye flight because when you get there, you are going to have red eyes. And then we have window or I'll now the seats. Often you have the aisle here in the middle, and then a seat here, a seat here, and a seat here. And this is by the, this is the edge of the airplane. There's a little window here. So obviously this is your aisle seat and this is your window seat window or I'll if it's here, it's the aisle. If it's here, It's the window. And this I guess it's called the middle seat. Just call it the middle seat, but usually window and I'll are going to relate to the seats on the plane that you choose. We're going to start with booking the flight. And then we're gonna be talking about reserving a hotel room as well, Okay? Frequent flyer miles. This is an idea that's common in many airlines. Sometimes it's not just one airline, but a group of airlines together. I believe one's called Star Alliance. And you earn what we would call in the United States miles based on how far you fly. If you get miles, that means you get to either discount future travel or travel for free. Sometimes you can take a flight. If you have earned 5,000 mi, your flight is 3,500. Well, guess what? That's going to be a free flight for you. You can use your airline miles or your frequent flyer miles. Okay, so those are just a few key terms that I'd like you to keep in mind. Now, we're going to take a quick look. Well, not super quick. We're going to take a look. We're going to go through our flight booking dialogue. 13. Flight Booking | Greetings and Stating Intention: Let's jump right in to our flight booking dialogue. Now you may be asking yourself, hold on. What is the difference between a booking and a reservation? Exactly. Can I say flight reservation? Know it sounds awkward. It should be a flight booking. Okay. Sure. Do I have to say hotel reservation? What can I say hotel booking? In fact, for hotel, you can say either one. Alright, what about a restaurant that a booking or reservation? There? It's usually a restaurant reservation, although sometimes you could say booking, but you wouldn't want to say appointment. That's for sure. It's really down to the situation. In the case of flights. We wouldn't say flight reservation, we would call it a booking. Okay. Now let's try to keep this situation as simple as possible. This is me calling to book a flight. I may need to call because I want to use my points to book the flight. Or maybe I want to call for some other reason. I have questions or I'm not happy with the flights that I'm finding on the website that I was using, for whatever reason I've decided to call, it happens. Alright, so let's jump into it. How can I help you? Common way to begin this conversation? Something more specific. Thank you for calling blah, blah, blah. How can I help you? Or they might want to confirm something first, we're going to skip over some of those things. Getting details. Could I please confirm your username or could I could please confirm your email or could you please confirm your phone number in case I need to call you back? Those are more customer service things. I really want to focus on the language of the situation. Hi, I need to book a flight for next month. Now, notice here not giving excessive detail. If you say e.g. I. Need to book a flight next month leaving on the 1800s and coming back on the 29th. And I'd also like to make sure that I get a window seat. And you say a bunch of things right from the start, they're going to ask you that stuff again because this is the beginning of the call. So you want to give basic high level information and then wait for them to ask you questions. They will ask you the things they want to know. Don't be the one to give them everything from the beginning. Describing something, yeah. You would say more in your description. Here. You're giving them details so that they can do things for you. So give them information as they ask for it and keep your answers fairly simple, okay. I need to book a flight for next month. If you wanted to say a flight to next month, that would be okay as well. If you want to say like two, that's okay too. I of course you could say I want to, want to, I like to. Okay. All good. Okay. Now, now this person is asking important questions. Very specific. Where are you leaving from and what's the destination? I'm looking to? Ah, I'm looking too similar to I want to It's just another way to say it. I'm looking to book. Or we could change this to get if we want to use a different word, you wanted to say, fine, I suppose that would work. Get, maybe find a flight from New York, JFK to Goa, India. Okay. Now why say New York JFK? Maybe I have a specific airport in mind. Every airport has a three, every International Airport has a three letter code that tells you which airport it is. Well, in New York, there's truth. I guess, three major airports that you could choose from. Newark, LaGuardia, and JFK. Well, I want to leave from JFK, maybe that's closest to my house. You would add that right after the city. Now sometimes you don't say the three-letter thing, e.g. maybe it's the name of the airport. Yeah. I'm leaving from London, Heathrow. So you'd still say the city and then say the airports name after it. So it's either the name of the airport or this three-letter code to then the destination. Remember destination is where we are going. Now from here on out, all we're going to do is try to give information to this person as simply and as clearly as possible. Let's look at the question-and-answer that we have here. We're gonna go through it, getting into more and more detail as we go. And I'll try to explain as much as I can about how to make sure it's extremely clear, but just remember what the goal is. The goal is to not have any misunderstandings, because misunderstandings will lead to you not getting what you want, right? So you want to be as clear as possible, especially over the phone. 14. Flight Booking | Travel Dates: Moving on to the next question. So we've got the airport information or at least the destination and the departure point. Okay. You said next month, which dates? Simple question. Ideally, this is telling the other person, let's say her. Okay, The other person that this is a preference, meaning there is some flexibility anytime you start with, ideally, that means I don't have very hard limits. I can be flexible. Ideally, I'd like to leave it three. If we leave at 03:30, it's okay but no later than 345, ideally three. So if you want to make me happy, Let's leave at three. Okay. Ideally, leaving the 18th with a return flight on the 29th. We know this is next month, so we don't have to repeat that information. Okay. It's not three months from now, it's next month. We've already said that this person who's asking the questions, she knows how to capture information, That's her job. The departure flight is plus or minus a few days. If there are better prices for the return flight. It's not as flexible. Either the 28th or 29th, but preferably the 29th. Okay. What's happening here? The departure flight is plus or minus a few days. You can say that in different ways. You can say the departure flight is more flexible a few days before, a few days before or after. But it's not just a few days before or after. It's not just plus or minus a few days. I have a requirement. If the prices are all the same, yeah, make it the 18th. But if you can find cheaper flights, e.g. I. Went the 800s, but if you can find a flight on the 17th and it's $200 cheaper, yeah, do that one. Okay. Great. If if there are better prices for the return flight, It's not as flexible. You can say. And for the return flight or because it's different, you could say. But for the return flight, you are adding information, but you're going against the previous thing because the return flight is not as flexible. Remember, return flight is the flight coming back. We have a round trip. So I'm going and I'm coming back. The this flight coming back is called the return return flight. Now, she might have asked, is this a round trip flight? If I didn't say that, is this a roundtrip flight or one way, then I would say roundtrip. Now that I've said it's a return flight, she's not going to ask that again. If you talk to someone on the phone about this sort of thing, they're really good at capturing information. Usually you only need to say something once and they've got it. You said return flight. That means it's roundtrip. Okay. For the return flight, it's not as flexible. Not as flexible as what? Well, not as flexible as this flight. This flight could be the 16th, 17th, 18th, 19th, 20th, even 20th. Okay, that's what a few days means. Few days to the left and a few days to the right. It's three, maybe even four days. If you want it to feel like less. You can say maybe a couple. If you want to be more specific, then you can say one or two days, one or two days before or after. It depends on how specific you want to be. It's not as flexible. Now I'm going to make it very clear, either the 28th or 29th, but preferably the 29th. So if you have two choices and both seem good, a and B, either a or B, okay, if I just say either a or B, then I'm going to flip a coin. If it's a, it's a, if it's B, it's B. But preferably be preferably the 29th. Okay. So have a flight on the 29th. I'll book that one. Unless it's maybe $900 more than the flight on the 28th. Okay. So that's so far taking care of where and also the dates that we need to keep going. We need to get into even more detail to get the best possible flight. 15. Flight Booking | Flight Preferences: Now she says Got it. Which means, I understand it's a very sort of quick and snappy way to say I understand it. Got it. Got it, got it. Good. I understand. I'm seeing quite a few that meet your criteria. Remember criteria, that means your requirements. What you want, would you prefer? But just a few more questions. Okay. I need to go get more details here. This time. She's going to throw to questions out there. But in this case, they're bundled together because they're related. Connections plus what type of flight? Economy or business class, e.g. what level of flight those are closely-related. It won't be the first question and then something completely unrelated to price, e.g. no, it's gonna be two things that are pretty closely related. And when you answer, you want to answer both questions because you want to, you're kinda playing ping-pong back and forth here. If someone asks you two questions, shouldn't be too hard to answer because they're pretty close together, they're related. So you hit the ball back by answering two questions. If you only answer one question and you were asked two questions, then they have to ask again, that's not very efficient. Are you looking at economy? Now? What's that economy? Well, the economy is the level in the plane you have. Usually they're different for different airlines, but there might be first class and business class. And then usually it's economy. And sometimes that's also called coach, COACHE, coach and economy are similar. Now a trend I've noticed in the last few years probably will continue, is more and more different levels so that you can upgrade to Economy Plus or business class light or something like that. First-class gold. You get to sit with the, sit in the front with the captain. There seems like there are more and more even though there aren't more seats that dividing it up more and more. But let's go generally with first-class, business class and economy, the three divisions that are common, okay, So what do we say here? We've got to answer two questions about the connections question. We want to talk about the level of the flight. I'm hoping I'm looking to I'm hoping this is what I want, my preference. Now notice we're answering a different way each time. We could answer the same way. I'm looking, I'm looking, I'm looking. I want I want I want I hope I hope I hope I would like, I would like I would like. But if you answered different ways, the variety is better for the back-and-forth. It's good to have variety. It keeps the other person from falling asleep, even though it's their job. I'm hoping to get a direct flight. And then we could add this or leave it out if it's not too expensive. Now you would add that to make it clear that price is important to me. I'm a little flexible here, but it is important to me. And often using if is a great way to do that. We did that before when we were talking about plus or minus a few days. If there are better prices, okay? This one, if it's not too much more expensive, if it's $3,000 more, no way, even if it's $700 more, maybe not. It depends on your budget, right? Okay. So I wanna give a preference there. I want to let them know that I do care about cost, So they're looking out for cost. But, but I'm willing to spend a bit more on comfort. Comfort being that it's direct, so I don't have a long layover. Economy is fine. Fine is okay. Not bad. It's fine. It's okay. It's good. You could say, unless now we give a limit to it. Sort of like saying, but if, but if I can get a business class upgrade with my miles, so maybe I have miles or some kind of rewards with this airline. And I can use that, use my rewards, used my miles without paying extra and upgrade to business class. If I can do that, that would be awesome. I'm trying to say I want an upgrade if it's possible because I'm a loyal customer of this airline. But I don't want to pay extra. That's what I'm saying. Unless, if are great ways to add these preferences, these limitations to what you want, Let's keep going. 16. Flight Booking | Options: I've mentioned that I want to use my miles or my rewards to upgrade to business class if it's possible. And she says, Sure. Could you provide your frequent flyer rewards number you have with us or to make it even more efficient, cut this out. Now, she might add that you have with us because people have different rewards numbers with different companies, different airlines, different programs. So it could be the wrong one that I give. But generally I know who I'm calling, so she might leave that out. Could you provide your frequent flyer rewards number? Okay. And then I would just say, I kind of left that out of the dialogue on purpose to save space here. The answer would be simple. It's if you want to give a number, you just want to say something, give basic information, especially a number. And then say a, B, C, D, one-two-three, a, D, B, C. What have I done until it's a bcd123. Okay, great. Thank you. And then a pause. Okay. I have two possible flights. So of all the things we've talked about so far, there are two flights. I'm going to have to maybe make a choice to possible flights. Now this is again, we said sometimes when I say two flights or when she says two flights, It's actually four flights if they're all direct, right? Because flight is being used here the same way that we might use trip going there and the return flight round-trip. Sometimes people will call that a flight to flights. Okay. Could say two options either way, but it's common for people to say two flights, or I have a great flight here. Well, that flight is actually going there and return. It's the round trip flight. Sometimes people say flight, even though it's more than one. So two flights, There's actually two options, two possible options. And this might even be simplified to possibilities as a noun. Two possibilities. That's an I there, okay, possibilities as the noun form. One flight. Now she described it. So here's where you need to listen very carefully. Listen. You need to choose the right one, okay? Because he's going to give a lot of details. This might be the most details you get at one time, two possible flights, one flight leaving on the 19th, returning on the 29th. It's in economy, but it is direct. You do have miles to use, which would make that $1,400.75. So there you have to pay careful attention. Because if you miss here something, you could choose the wrong one and that could cost you a lot of money, right? So listen carefully and be ready to ask to repeat it. So if you need that to be repeated, just say, could you please repeat that? Sometimes people will say, sorry. Could you please repeat that? Sorry. Could you please repeat that? Now if she says both and you want to hear both. Could you please repeat those? Could you please repeat both flights? Sorry. Could you please say those again? Say those again. If you only want her to say one, then you would say Say that again. If she has said one, if she said both, then you want to say could you say the first one again? Could you repeat the first one? Say the first one again? Repeat the first one. Sorry. Could you please repeat the second one? I didn't quite hear it. Okay. Then she'll say that again. The other one is leaving on the 800s, returning on the 28th business class with a short layover in London, Heathrow. With your rewards, that one would be $784 round trip. There, I just need to make a choice. Again. Be ready to ask someone to repeat. Be clear which one you want them to repeat. If there are two things, please repeat the first. Could you please repeat the second? Right? Could you say the first again? Could you say the second again or could you please repeat? Both? Could you please repeat those? Could you say those again? There are different ways to say it, but that is very important, especially when you're being told a lot of information. 17. Flight Booking | Selecting and Bags: Now it's time to make the choice. Which 01:00 A.M. I going to choose? The first one sounds fantastic. The second is a bit over my budget, okay? Now that we have to say the second thing, No, the first one sounds fantastic. But why say the first one sounds fantastic? I thought we were trying to be clear. Why not just say, I choose the first one. I would like to have the first one. You can say the first one. Just say the first one. I want the first one, it's fine. But we're trying to be conversational in addition to being clear, in addition to providing the correct information, or were talking to someone who uses the English language? Well, they will know if I say the first one sounds fantastic, as long as I don't follow that with, but the first one sounds fantastic, but I think I'll choose the second. If you don't say that, which you can. If you don't say that, saying the first one sounds fantastic, means I choose the first one and there will be no confusion there. And this is just an optional comment if you want to add comments. The second one is a bit over my budget. You could say, I'm not crazy about economy, but it's a short flight. We could say, well, I don't mind sitting in economy. It's a relatively short flight. Maybe you don't mind sitting in economy ever. So you don't mention that at all. I just wanted to say if you want to add a comment there, you can for the sake of being conversational. Or if you want to provide a reason. For some reason, it's a bit over my budget. It's too expensive for me, are more than I want to pay. Let's say over my budget, outside my budget or a little bit. Sometimes we say little pricey, great word. That's a bit pricey and beans a little too much. Okay, great. So now here's the confirmation again. Listen carefully, you've made your choice. Now the information that is included in your choices about to be repeated back to you. This will always happen. Very important step for this person to do. They will always repeat the information. They will always do a confirmation because they want to make sure they don't have it wrong. So if they have it wrong, that's going to cause more problems for them. So I'll go ahead and book that direct economy flight to go leaving the 19th and returning to New York, JFK on the 29th. Everything's there. Everything is there. Perfect. It's leaving on the 19th. It's returning on the 29th. It's perfect. And we know it's coming back to JFK, so I don't need to ask. Oh, is it returning to the same airport? Is it coming back to LaGuardia or JFK return flight to LaGuardia, JFK, Newark. She mentioned it. Perfect. This is great. Now we have a follow-up question. How many bags will you be checking? Sometimes they'll ask this, sometimes not. What is it checked bag. We will talk more about this later on, but a checked bag is one that goes under the airplane. Under the airplane, not with you above you in the overhead stowage or as a carry-on, right. To put in front of you under the seat, checked bag, you give it to them before you get your boarding pass. When you check in, usually usually sometimes you can check bags at other points, but usually that's when you do it. Okay. Just one is that Included? Included means do I have to pay extra? Is it free? If it's included? That means I don't need to pay extra. If it's not included, I have to pay a fee, pay a baggage fee, or then I have to decide maybe to not check my bag? Yes. One checked bag is included. As far as I know in my travel experience, pretty much every time I've traveled internationally, a check bag is included. You can check a bag in some domestic flights, domestic versus international. It's not included. You have to pay extra depending on the flight that you book. You can't check a bag unless you pay for it. Domestic means within your country, international means outside of your country? Yes. One check bag is included. Do you have any seating preferences? Any seating preferences? Okay. Now we're gonna be talking about seating, so let's, let's do that. We're getting close to the end here. 18. Flight Booking | Seating and Meals: Now, remember we talked about the different types of seats you have, the window seat, aisle seat. You can also request seats closer to the front, closer to the back. I'll take an aisle seat as close to the front as possible. What if there are no aisle seats? Okay. But then why did she ask about seating preferences? Or she may say, Do you have any seating preferences window or aisle window or I'll usually they don't say middle. I don't think anybody wants to sit in the middle between two people. Right? I'll take an aisle seat as close to the front as possible. Okay. And she's looking, looking, looking. Do you mind sitting next to an exit door? Now some people really don't want to sit next to an exit. I love sitting next to an exit because that means I have a lot of leg room I can stretch out, so that's a great seat. And they asked you to make sure that you can open the door in the event of an emergency. But I've never experienced that before. So I usually say Sure, No problem, happy to do it. I think I could do it if I had to write. Do you mind sitting next to an exit or an exit door? No. No, I don't mind. No doesn't mean no, I don't want to know. It means I don't want to do you mind know that means that I want that good. Yes, I like that. Do you mind closing the door? No. Doesn't mean no, I won't close the door. It means no, I don't mind. Which means yes, I can do that. That's fine. No, that would be great. That would be great. More leg room. Again, this is just a comment. Leg room is usually something people care about on a flight who I like this airline, they have more leg room than most other airlines. Lots of leg room in business class. It's worth the extra cost. Tons of leg room in first-class. I'm so glad I spent $9,000 on a five-minute flight for more leg room, right? Okay, great. Now notice these are very simple responses. Often customer service people will say, awesome, Thanks, Great, perfect little comments. And then either ask a question or provide some confirmation details or something like that. I'll put you in an aisle seat next to the exit, finally, letting me know it's the last real question. Do you have any meal preferences? Now, we've talked about meal preferences. It's similar to dietary needs. There we can say, what are the options? What are the options? What choices do I have? What are they serving? She might not know that. What are they serving. Or you could say something like, I'm vegetarian, in which case she will make sure she puts that in the flight bookings somewhere so that you get a vegetarian meal. There are different kinds of meal requirements. If you have one, you probably know how to say it. So you would just say that. And if you want to know what they're serving, it's unlikely that this person is going to know. Okay. Now, wherever they serve is fine. That means I don't care. Nope. I have no preference. No preference. Don't care. Whatever they serve is fine. Thank you. Then at this point, if I need to pay, we would go on to the payment details. We're not going to get into that because again, that's really just please give me your full name and then you would give the full name. Please give me your credit card number and give the credit card number, please tell me the what would be the expiration date? All of the things that you need to give over the phone. But really the question is just going to be please tell me this, please tell me this. Could you tell me this? Could you please tell me this? Please tell me this. And then you just say what that is. You don't even need to worry about sentences in that case. So this is how you would handle a situation where you need to book a flight over the phone? I know it's not as common, it's not as ordinary as booking in an app or booking online. But it's important to know this language. It comes up a lot in flying situations when you're talking to people about your flight or on the plane even. And we'll talk more about that when we actually get to that section of the course. Okay, so that's it for this lesson. If you have any questions, let me know. In the next one, we're going to talk about how to do a hotel reservation or how to book a hotel room over the phone. 19. Room Booking Overview and Key Terms: We're getting close to the end of our first section about preparing for the trip. And the next section we're going to be focusing on airports and flying. Now, in this lesson, we're going to be talking about a hotel reservation or a hotel booking. But we're not going to do a full dialogue like we did for booking a flight. Why not? Because many things about booking a room will be the same as booking a flight. A lot of the things around the dates will be pretty much the same. The interaction will actually be quite similar. You're trying to book a thing, right? And you're trying to get it for a certain date. There are some follow-up questions, of course. So instead of doing a whole dialogue, we're going to look at some of the key vocabulary that we need for this situation. Booking a hotel room, as well as some common expressions, some common phrases and sentences for making requests, as well as very common questions that you may need to ask when you're booking a hotel room to make sure that something is what you are expecting or to find out about something you want to know before actually confirming the hotel reservation. Again, note that I'm saying either reservation or booking because it can be either one in this case. So let's start with the key vocabulary. We're going to head over to the blackboard. Now, as we've already said, a reservation is the same as a booking used very often for a hotel, used for things like renting a car, you reserve a car, you have a car rental reservation or a rental reservation. Now you could say booking a car, but that wouldn't be as common as saying that you have a reservation. And as I mentioned, I believe for a restaurant, it would be Reservation, probably not booking. Now, how about Booker room? How do we use this as a verb? Because this can cause some confusion. So we have Reservation, which is a noun, and book which is a verb. But if it is that thing, what do you have? Then you have a booking. And then this is to reserve something. To reserve. You could reserve or book a meal, and that would be the verb to reserve or book a meal for maybe this evening in our room, or to make up booking, to have a booking to have a booking number and a reservation number. So it can be used as a noun in this way or as an additive as an adjective if it's going in front of something like number, can I have your reservation number? Can I have your booking number? Okay. Now we have different types of beds. This is just something quickly to note. Double queen and king or the most common. Sometimes you'll see twin. Sometimes you'll see something like deluxe, perhaps deluxe. Although usually the bed is not deluxe, it might be a deluxe room. There are different levels, but these are the most common double, queen and king. And it might be a room with e.g. two doubles or it might be two twins, where it, sometimes it might be to queen beds. Usually not too king beds though. But often these will go right in front of rooms. So a double room, does it mean to rooms? It means a room with a double bed which is smaller. And then a queen room is a room that has a queen bed which is a little bigger. And then a king room is a room that has Yeah, that's right. A king bed. Okay. So that's usually the biggest, the biggest one. And the difference between a queen and a king, It's pretty big. Pretty big. Now, complimentary is something that you see often related to travel, particularly if you're staying at a resort or you're, you have booked a travel package of some kind. But especially in a hotel. Complimentary is extremely common. This is stuff that you get without paying extra for it. Now there's another word that I want to quickly mention here, amenities because these two can be easily mixed up. I just want to mention this quickly to avoid confusion. A specific thing that the hotel wants to mention as free that they're providing to you will usually be called a complimentary thing. So they might say, We provide complimentary towels, e.g. That's the same as saying we provide free towels. Why not just say free? It sounds more professional, right? It sounds more services, I guess. So. Complimentary is much more common for service industry stuff when you're getting something for free. We have complimentary shuttle service to the airport. Complimentary free shuttle service. Okay. Now what about amenities then? These might be free things, e.g. using the pool, 247, Internet access, towels, things that are on site at the hotel that are provided to guests in general, right. So we talk about these in different ways. The hotel shuttle service to the airport wouldn't be an amenity and amenity would be something that's there at the hotel that is provided to you there that you get as a guest. And they may not even want to emphasize that, hey, it's free because it's Wi-Fi. Wi-fi is generally not something that you pay for. I have had to pay for Wi-Fi a couple of times, but generally speaking, Wi-Fi will be free. They might say We offer free Wi-Fi in the rooms as well as hairdryers and an indoor pool. Well, the indoor pool is just something about this place that is appealing, that is attractive. And whether it's described as complimentary is kind of up to the hotel. But usually the complimentary thing is something they're adding to it. That's not just, they're not just there at the hotel, but something that Hey, we're giving you this something extra that is being offered. Usually. Usually. Now I just quickly because I was curious if there was a list. I just quickly Googled some of the most common hotel amenities. And on the one that I've found, I'm just going to read them off to you very quickly. Parking free Wi-Fi room service, 24-hour guest reception, complimentary toiletries. Hey, there's complimentary, healthy breakfast, ample wall outlets, hair styling tools, flexible checkout, pool, mini fridge, complimentary electric chargers, clothing iron, business facilities, transportation information free breakfast, laundry services, spawn wellness amenities, exercise facilities and accessories. Daily newspaper, entertainment, complimentary luggage storage, cribs and cuts for children. Custom offers curated experiences, fancy bath robes. Okay, So this is just a huge list of different amenities. And notice that some of those were referred to as complimentary. So it's really up to the hotel which ones they want to describe that way. Standard is a really common word that's used for the basic thing, usually the lower price. This is the standard room. That means just the normal room, a cheaper room. And then there are things you might add to it, which would be upgrades or possibly add-ons, upgrades or add-ons, things that are there as part of what you pay are included. Now this is used in many different ways, but if something is included, generally, it's part of the price. You're paying for it, but it is part of the price. It's not free. Oh, is is the shuttle service included? That means I want to know I have to pay extra. It is included. That's complimentary. It's included. You are paying for it. So maybe they'll say it's complimentary to make it sound better, but actually you are paying for it by paying for the room. Is breakfast included? This is one of the most common questions I ask. Is breakfast included? Well, unfortunately, not breakfast. There's an extra fee and $25 fee for breakfast and you have to reserve breakfast in advance. Okay, thank you very much. So those are some of the common words that you see related to specifically booking a hotel room. Now we're going to take a quick look at some common sentences you might use when you want to make a request. When you're booking a room, you want to make a specific request. We're going to talk about how to do that. 20. Hotel Booking Request: What I'd like you to pay attention to most is the beginning of each of these sentences. I like to. I need to I'm looking to I'm interested in now they're all a little different. But generally speaking, pay attention to these four. Because if you can use them comfortably and naturally, you can ask for almost anything. You can express a desire or make a request in almost situation. And depending on how you want the other person to feel or how you want to express yourself. You may use one of these or another, or another or another. But I really want to make sure you feel comfortable with these four, especially because they're extremely common. Yes, useful when booking a hotel. But useful in so many other situations at a restaurant ordering food. I use these when I order food at a restaurant or requesting something of someone you don't know very well. Or sometimes someone you do know very well. Or maybe talking to a taxi driver or asking for something in a gift shop, answering questions with a customer service person, and many, many more. Okay, so let's look at how they're used. I just want to make sure you really paying attention for this part because they're so common. I'd like to book a room for three nights, a simple request, but the structure is, I'd like to plus a verb. And then what follows that verb? Book a room for three nights, book a flight, arrange a tour, order a coffee. I'd like to order the salmon. I'd like to book a room. I'd like to have a latte. Okay. I'd like to then verb and then what? K. And it sounds polite. This is probably the best one because number one, it's very clear. It's polite, but at the same time, not overly formal. It's not too formal sounding, it just sounds natural and nice and polite. And you can ask it to anyone, a close friend, someone you don't know well, a person in a service job, so many different situations. The King of France, now I need to, and you could say, I need to book a room. I need to reserve a room from the 20th to the 31st of next month. Now, we should be familiar with from the 28th to the 31st of next month from our flight booking lesson. Right? So that part is the same. A lot of those things are shared between those two. That's why we're not doing a full dialogue. This one though, does feel a little bit more direct and it's not as usable in all situations. E.g. in that restaurant situation, I need a coffee. I need to order a coffee. That doesn't sound right. So when you want to tell someone what you need and you want them to do something for you. You have a request. Often you can use it, but you have to be aware that it's kind of direct. And in some situations, like a restaurant, it's quite strange. In fact, this one, on the other hand, is more universal, meaning that it can be used in more different situations. This one is pretty friendly. I'm looking to get a standard room for three nights starting the 28th, just another way to say the beginning date and they will assume the end date because it's three nights. Usually when we talk about a hotel room, we say nights, not days. How many nights are you staying? Because you're in the hotel for the night? Not the day. That day is an awkward time because on the first day you check in halfway through the day and on the last day you check out halfway through the day. So everything hotel related, any type of accommodation, which we'll talk about later in the course will be about knights counting nights. Now, I'm looking to means I'm seeking something. It's a desire, but it's not about making a choice. Making a choice between five things. Don't use. I'm looking to data. If you're making a choice, just say, I like this one. I like a, I'd like b, I'd like to see, right? But if you don't have a specific set of choices and you want to state a desire that someone else can help you with. You have a request that someone else can help you with, then you can usually use I'm looking I'm looking to get downtown. Okay. I can help take you there. I'm looking to get a taxi to the airport. I'm looking to do some interesting activities out of the city. Do you have any recommendations? I'm stating my desire or a request, but if I'm looking at a menu in a restaurant, I won't say I'm looking to have. The shrimp skimpy know, you're just making a choice there. You're pointing at it with your finger there. You'd say I'd like to I'd like to get I'd like to have I'd like to order the shrimps campy. You could also say, I'd like the shrimp skimpy or in the restaurants situation. I'll have the shrimp skimpy. So just be aware of the difference there. General requests use I'm looking that's quite common, but can use I'd like for this one too. I'd like to get a standard room. I'd like to see some interesting sites outside of the city. Very useful. I'm interested in a queen room, checking in on the 28th and checking out on the 31st. Another way to say the same thing. This is the type of room I want, as I said before, it's a room with a queen bed. And interested in is the initial thing that we might say to someone. We haven't spoken to this person before. The initial thing that will say to them is I'm interested in and then state your request there again. You wouldn't use it if you're making choices. Usually, unless you have a question about it. I'm interested in the shrimps campy, but I'm wondering, does it have sunflower seeds? Sounds a little odd in that situation, but you could use it. It's okay. This one is when you're just starting that interaction and you want to stay to that request or that desire. We're interested in doing some kind of tour, maybe a coffee tour. And we're wondering if you have anything available or, you know, any interesting tours going on. We're interested in that. Now you could hear say, we're interested in doing that. But generally speaking, after interested in, you're going to say the noun. Now that's the difference between this one and the others. I'd like to I need to I'm looking to, I'm interested in, there's a different preposition here. I'm interested in followed by a noun, a queen room. This is an adjective, but then this is the noun, a queen room. I'm interested in a tour, I'm interested in a Broadway show. Now, you could put here a gerund or an I-N-G verb. If you want to learn more about gerunds, check out some of my other courses. I talk about them a lot. But something like I'm interested in seeing I'm interested in going. I'm interested in if you wanted to put an I-N-G here, I'm interested in booking, could say booking a queen room and that would be fine. Okay, so remember these, these are very common. Tattoo them onto your brain, makes sure you're comfortable with them. With these. You will be very powerful, able to request pretty much anything. Now let's take a quick look at some common questions to get more information. 21. Asking About Availability and Services: When making a hotel reservation, which questions can we ask to figure out which type of room we want, whether this is even the right hotel for us. Or maybe just to satisfy our curiosity, what questions can we use to figure these things out efficiently? Well, that's what we're going to spend a bit of time talking about. Starting with do. Now again, as I've said many times already, these are questions that can be used elsewhere in many other situations. Similar situations, this is just one. Doo, doo, doo. Doo. Questions with do are very common because they push the other person to give a yes or no answer. If a yes or no answer is what we want. Usually, if you have some criteria or requirements, it is a yes or no answer. You have this or not. Do you have any chocolate left? If you go to an ice cream store, you may ask that Chocolates of popular flavor. So do you have any chocolate left? Do you still have chocolate left? Yes, we still have some. Oh, great. Great. Well, I want to know if I go to a hotel, do all the rooms have Wi-Fi included? Remember we said included means that it is part of the room price. This may affect my decision if it's not included in all rooms, but perhaps only some of the higher-level rooms, more expensive rooms. I may need to book one of those, but if it's included in all rooms, maybe the standard room is fine. Okay. Do all the rooms have replaced this to understand the grammar with do you? Or if it's something like it than it does, does it have if you're asking about a thing, does it have does this room have does it have does I'm interested in the standard room? Oh, yes. Great. Does it have what's it? The standard room. So if you're talking about an IT, one thing then use does not do. Does it have a WiFi included? Unfortunately not. Oh, okay. In that case, I may have to book a queen room. Does the queen room have Wi-Fi included? Yes, it does. Oh, fantastic. Okay. Do you have do you who's u? Is u the person or Xiu the hotel? You, this impersonal you is the EU we use to talk about that thing over there that this person on the phone is representing. The thing is the hotel, The business, the hotel as the business. And this person who you're talking to is kind of part of that business. So when you say you, You're talking to you as in the hotel and this person Who's on the phone with you. But if someone else were on the phone, you could still say you when we get there, if that person is not there, it's okay. Right. We're really interested in the room. Not so much the person. Okay. Do you have any sweet rooms available? Do you have any queen rooms available? Do you have any deluxe rooms available? Do you have free Wi-Fi? Do you have complimentary WiFi? Do you have a pool? Do you have a Jim do you have a 24-hour Jim? Do you have free breakfast? Do you have complimentary breakfast? Do you have rooms with a view over the ocean? Do you have I'm running out of questions here. All of these questions, do you have allows the other person to simply say yes or no? And it's probably the most common question to ask in this situation, starting with du, then using you, the impersonal you then have, and then whatever you want to know after it. Do you have that? Do you have it? Do you have a shuttle service to and from the airport? This is about things that are offered. So it's not only things that are actually at the hotel, not only the amenities that are there, but also the services provided. We could say that the services are things that the hotel has, but it doesn't have to be have. If we want to focus on the service thing. Often we use offer instead of have. Have tends to be more often used for the things that are there or not there, do have breakfast. But if you say Do you offer breakfast, then we're focusing more on the service provided. The service provided. And that is really, really common. So what do you want to focus on? Things that are there or the service provided for a lot of them you can use either do you offer or do you have do you have free airport shuttle service? Do you offer free airport shuttle service? Right. And then you'll get a clear answer either way. Some things, e.g. do you have a Jim do you have a 24-hour Jim might be a little awkward to ask as do you offer a 24-hour gym? They'll understand you, but it's a little awkward because if Jim is just a thing that the hotel has or doesn't have. Okay. Let's look at a few more questions. 22. Hotel Booking Questions with IS and ARE: While those do questions are really common for booking a hotel room, It's not the only type. Yes. Very useful. Very common. You can ask those yes or no questions. But another type of common yes or no question starts with R or is depending on what you're saying. Next, is there are there are allowed are available. Okay. What's going on here? Well, again, it is a yes or no question. Usually with this type of question, we want to get a simple answer. Do you have it? Yes or no? Okay. Is there yes or no? It's actually another way to ask almost the same thing. Is there a complimentary breakfast? Do you have complimentary breakfast? It's kind of asking the same thing. So there's a lot of overlap here with these. And it's really asking, does it exist? Which is the same as saying, Do you have it? These are almost exactly the same. Okay. How about this next one? Are there any rooms available facing the water? We could stop there. Are there any rooms available? No. Okay. Bye. Are there any rooms available facing the water? Maybe this is just a preference that I have. If not, it's okay. I can stay in another room. I just want to know if it's there. Do you have any rooms available facing the water? Same thing. Now we get into a difference. Our service animals are allowed. Now if we wanted to ask this with du, then it wouldn't be do you have it would be do you allow? So we could still use do. But do you allow Do you allow service animals? Are service animals are allowed? Same question there. Again, if we change the way that it is phrased, Will it be animals that are needed by certain people like a seeing eye dog, e.g. are umbrellas available at reception? This is a slightly more formal sounding way to ask something instead of do you have, do you have, do you have? If you want to make it sound a bit more formal, you can say are available or is that the available is breakfast available yet? Wendy's breakfast available. When is breakfast available? That is the time. We'll get into those those questions later on when we talk about accommodations. But for this type, even though it's asking the same question as do you have umbrellas at reception or their umbrellas at reception? It's giving it a slightly more formal, respectful tone or feeling. When you want to have that maybe use available instead of have or are there are umbrellas available if you wanted to use do there, you'd have to say, do you have umbrellas available? And it would lose that formal feelings. So that would be a little bit odd if you were trying to make it sound more formal, again, common. Another quick set of questions before we move on. 23. More Common Hotel Booking Questions: Let's just quickly go through one more set of questions we may want to ask when we're booking the room. Could I get a room above the 20th floor? Can I store my surfboard at reception? Will I be able to store my bags before check-in? What extra amenities come with? The suite room. Okay. Could I in cani again, we're dealing with yes-no questions. A lot of these are yes-no questions. If you have very specific questions like, what time is breakfast, what hours are the gym open, things like that, or where is the nearest movie theater or things like that? You'll probably ask them once you get to the hotel. So we'll look at questions for that. When we talk about accommodation, you probably will ask most of those questions once you arrive. Here, we're just trying to figure out which type of room we should book or make sure that yes, this is the right hotel. So again, yes, no questions are going to be the most useful could IN can I essentially have, in this case the same meaning, but they feel different. Could I feels more soft, gentler, less direct. If you're trying to get permission from someone. Instead of saying, Can I close the window? You could say could I close the window and it just sounds nicer. You're asking if something is okay or something is allowed and you wanna do it in a way that's going to encourage them to say Yes. Yes. So ask more politely, could I is better than in that case, I think can I store my surfboard and reception? That's all right. But it sounds more like a telling me that kind of thing. So I think for this sort of situation, anytime you find yourself in this sort of situation where others are doing a service for you or helping you in some way, it's going to be better in almost every case to say, could I instead of can I can, I just feel a little bit harsh to me. Could I store my surfboard at reception? I think if you use could instead of can, there's a higher chance that the answer will be yes. When that person has the choice to say yes or no, depending on how they feel. Okay. That's just a general a general feeling I have. But I think most people would agree, at least that could is less direct than can. Will I be able to store my bags before check-in will lie? This one is about a future event, right? It's a future thing that's going to happen. I haven't checked in yet. I'm booking the room now. So I want to make sure that when I get there I will be able to do that so that I don't have to carry my bags everywhere. Again, a yes, no question. But this will relieve any anxiety you might have had. I don't want to carry my bags around all day. This place. They have a very late check-in, three o'clock. I have to carry my bags around all day. No. I asked this question. Will I be able to store my bags? Most of the time? They will. Every time in my case, I've ever asked them to do that. They have done that. So just asking this question about something that probably will happen in the future can be a good way to relieve any stress or anxiety you might have. What does our only non yes, no question. What extra amenities come with the suite room. Now, what if you want to ask somebody to describe something? You could say can you tell me what amenities. Right. And then they'll say yeah, sure. And then they'll tell you. But just give me a description. What amenities what time is checkout? It's 11 a Okay, great. So what questions are a great way to push somebody to describe something or explain something? Give a simple answer. That's not a yes-no question. What extra amenities come with the suite room? Oh, with a suite room, you get a fully stocked fridge with different types of soda and alcohol. Or the suite room comes with a full balcony overlooking the water. Wow, a suite room has a hot tub and a king size bed. Nice. Those are some nice amenities that come with the suite room. So explaining more, not a simple yes, no question, useful when you want to ask somebody to describe rather than just say, yes, we have breakfast. Yes. We have a gym. No, we don't have a pool. E.g. okay. So now we're going to go on and talk about how we can talk about remembering things before the trip starts. 24. Overview and Key Vocabulary for Remembering Things: Quite a few years ago, I was going on a trip somewhere. I can't remember which trip it was, but it was an international trip and I left home. I thought I've got everything right. Yes. Okay. Let's go. And I got to the airport. And then suddenly I realized I don't have my passport. Now. Luckily, it was okay because I'd arrived with plenty of time to spare. So I was able to go all the way back home, get my passport, and then go back to the airport still with enough time to spare. So maybe that's a general tip. Always leave home way early. If you have a lot of time in case anything goes wrong, you'll be okay, you won't miss your flight. But we do need to remember things before we go, right? So what we're going to talk about next before we get to our airports stuff. What we're going to talk about is how to make sure that we remember everything we need before we leave. Some of the useful words and phrases that we need to talk about. That as well as what precautions we may need to make in case something happens. So first, let's take a look at a few useful words and phrases for remembering things. Now I think it's important to clarify a few words that get mixed up. One is remind, Reminder and remember. Okay, So remind. This is when one person tells another person about something that they may or may not have forgotten. It doesn't mean they did forget. Only. It really just means whether you forgot or not, I'm going to tell you because if you did forget, you need to remember. If you didn't forget. Okay, great. So to remind someone is to just tell them something. Now, maybe they asked you to do that. In that case, we would say, Hey, remind me to remind me to send a thank you card to Shirley. Remind me to pack an umbrella. Remind me to do that. So before we leave, I'll say, Hey, did you pack an umbrella? I'm reminding you. This reminder is a verb. It is a verb and often it's a request to another person. Remind me to remind me to bring this, remind me to take that, remind me to send this. When you're reminding someone of something, you don't always say remind, you might say instead, Hey, did you bring that? Hey, did you remember this? And we'll talk about that in a moment. Now, a reminder is a noun. That's the thing. Sometimes we would begin with, just a reminder. Just a reminder. A quick reminder, very common. A quick reminder. You asked me to tell you to bring an umbrella. A quick reminder. Did you get the umbrella? Did you pack the sunscreen? Okay. Now, reminder could also be not from a person, something that you put into your phone or something that you told to your virtual assistant or something you put in your calendar that you look at before you leave? Yep. Oh, yes, I need this up. I gotta get the sunscreen. Have to get the sunscreen and you check that or you get a notification. And you oh, yes. Sunscreen. You when you wanted to remember it, set a reminder to remind you to bring the sunscreen. And the reminder is the thing that goes blue, blue, blue, blue. That tells you on your phone, Hey, bring sunscreen, or when you go to the supermarket to buy things, reminder or six reminders, things that you're supposed to bring, things on your shopping list, okay? Then remember, is a thing that you have in your mind and you're talking about something that happened in the past. But it could be one thing, like remember the umbrella. If you're giving a command, remember to bring the umbrella. Remember the sunscreen. Remember, we're leaving at 04:00 P.M. tomorrow. Remember our flight is at 06:30, so we should leave leave we should leave 3 h early. Remember? So you're telling somebody something, you're telling somebody to remember something that actually they already know, right? They probably haven't forgotten. So that would be the opposite of forget. To forget something is to not to remember it. Okay? Now sometimes we say, I almost forgot. That would be as you're walking out the door, suddenly you stop as you're walking out. I didn't turn the I didn't turn the air conditioning off. I almost forgot. You didn't forget you almost forgot. It would have been too late after you left to turn it off. But you didn't forget so you turned it off? I almost forgot. That was close. Ok. These are very, very common and we're also going to look at a checklist. A way to remind yourself of things is to make a checklist. You look through the list and check make a check for each thing. Got it, got it, got it, got it, got it. We'll talk about that in a moment. Very terrible check marks. But it's a list of things that you make to remember and that's called a check list. By the way, remember is used much more broadly. I don't want to say it's only for that sort of situation. We're just using it that way. We can use remember and other ways to like remember when we were in high-school, remember this song, that sort of thing. We're not really talking about, that. We're focusing on not forgetting things before we leave, right? Okay, so now let's take a look at a few common sentences we could use as we're getting ready to leave to make sure we didn't forget anything. 25. Phrases for Reminding and Remembering Part 1: Don't forget to ask Leslie about feeding the cats. We've talked about not forgetting. A way to remind someone would be to say, don't forget. You said you were going to do that. We need someone to feed our cats while we're gone. You said that you'd be the one to do it. So don't forget. Great way to remind someone but direct. Usually people who are fairly close can speak directly, so that's fine. But you wouldn't use this in a formal situation or with someone you don't know well, doesn't sound very polite. Don't do that. Don't forget. But you'd say it to someone you're traveling with, probably write a close friend or family member. I almost forgot to turn the security system on it. I almost forgot. Remember. I didn't forget, but I almost did. Okay. Why would we say this? I don't know, maybe so that the other person feels a little peace of mind, knowing for sure that it is done and they don't have to stress out very important. Okay, let's go over the checklist one more time. Okay. This is something we're doing together. You and I were traveling together. Let's get one more time. Let's go over the checklist. Then. How does it sound with question tones followed by check. We don't have to write anything down. Maybe maybe I'm looking at something on my phone. Maybe I wrote it down on a piece of paper, but I say one word followed by, check if we have it sunscreen. I know I'm always saying sunscreen. I need a lot of sunscreen when I travel. I burned very easily. It's not good. So I need SPF 100 sunscreen whenever I travel. If I ever forgot it, that would be bad news. I would turn into a tomato within five-minutes in a sunny place. And I don't get tan either. I get I burn, I get red and then back to fairly pale and then read it. I never actually get a son a sun tan. Okay. Sunscreen. Question mark, sunscreen, check. Someone else is saying check. You could say it to yourself as well. That would be okay. I talk to myself a lot. If I'm traveling by myself, I might do it. Sounds green. Check Our I'll say it in my head. At least. A book you're going to read on the flight. A book, a book. Check. And you could keep going. Laptop check, iPad, check, mosquito repellent check, umbrella, Czech passport check, cash check, credit card check. Just keep going like that. But you should use that rising intonation. I asked you to get the mosquito spray. This is clearly a person who's upset or frustrated. You forgot it, it's too late now we're already at the airport. I asked you to get the mosquito spray or I need it now, I'm looking for it because mosquitoes are eating me alive. And I don't have mosquito spray and I'm frustrated. Or or perhaps we need to find another way. So you are supposed to order mosquito spray on Amazon three days ago so that it would arrive in time for us to have it packed in our bags when we leave. You didn't do that, you forgot to do that. We haven't left yet. So now we need to pick up some mosquito spray on the way to the airport. So we have a change of plan. That's all a change of plan. And maybe in this case, I'm just expressing a little bit of frustration. Again there. You don't want to say that to someone you don't? No. Well at all, usually someone who's fairly close to you. I'm an advocate for being direct and straightforward with people you're close to. I think that's pretty normal. I asked you to bring mosquito spray doesn't express extreme anger, but it's just a comment. And then you find a solution, of course. Okay, let's now look at a few questions we could use in this situation. 26. Phrases for Reminding and Remembering Part 2: Did you remember to buy neck pillows? This might be the question that is asked before someone says, I asked you to buy neck pillows before the expression of frustration. I'm asking, did you remember so we're still on the checklist stage. Did you remember sunscreen? Did you remember this? Did you remember that you have responsibilities? I have responsibilities. One of your responsibilities was to buy neck pillows. Right? And maybe here I'm not even upset or anything, even if you say no because we're standing in the airport and I say, did you remember to buy neck pillows? If you say no, I'm not going to say I asked you to buy neck pillows. Instead, I'm going to say, oh, well, they have some right here. We could buy in this ridiculously expensive duty free shop where everything is overpriced. We can buy these. Okay. Great. Yeah, good idea. So maybe I'm just asking to know whether or not I should buy these that I'm looking at right now. So I want to know if you packed them or not. Did you remember you said you're going to order them before we before we left? I want to know if that's true. And then depending on the answer, you can go from there. How do you feel about them not remembering it? Or that's fine. No problem. You brought the passports, right? This one is also quite direct. It's a very common conformations sentence structure. When we want to ask somebody something, we simply make the statement that we believe is true and then to confirm it, if you write it, you have a comma here. To confirm it, we add, right? So the shape of the question is just the sentence that we want to be true. You brought mosquito spray, you booked the tickets. You book the tour, right? So it's simple. Just add right at the end with a question mark. Now, depends on how you say it. You say, Right. You book the Harry Potter tour tickets, right? I actually messed that up once I was supposed to and I didn't. And someone said to you book the Harry Potter tour tickets, right? And I went, I forgot, sorry. And they were sold out and we couldn't go. Big mistake. So how are you going to say it? You booked the tickets right now. I forgot. That's okay. What? Respond how you would respond? You booked the tickets, right? There's a little more urgency there when I say it that way. A little bit more force. And you can tell when I asked the question that if the answer is no, I'm going to be very upset and I'm worried that you didn't. So I want to really make sure, but I'm pretty sure you did in so I'm getting ready to get frustrated. So it really depends on how you say it. Pay attention to the intonation. You booked the tickets, right? Yeah, I did. Great. You booked the tickets, right? Yeah, I did. Okay. I hope so. All right. Good. You better you better have booked the tickets. So pay attention to the intonation. Can you please be sure to let our neighbors know will be gone. Can you please be sure? This may be the first time I'm asking this. I think you know that you should do this, but I want to make sure that you know that you should. I'm not reminding you, but i'm I'm asking you to do it. Be sure to. It's kind of like saying remember to. Please, don't forget to. But I'm framing it as a question. Can you please be sure to by some sunscreen, can you please be sure to bring the passports? Can you please be sure to ask the neighbor to take care of our cats while we're gone. Can you please be sure to it's a kind of hybrid between a request and a kind of reminder because I'm pretty sure that you know, that I'm pretty sure you've been thinking about it. I'm pretty sure that you're going to do that because that's your responsibility. And I'm either reminding you or I'm just asking you for the first time. And can you please is quite polite, quite respectful. You can use it in any kind of situation. Can you please close the window? Can you please open the door? Can you please warm this up for me in the microwave? Could you please make me a cup of coffee? Now could is fine. You can replace Ken with could, could mix it even softer, even gentler. Okay, So we've talked about remembering things. We're going to quickly look at some sentences we can use for precautions, making sure we have what we need in case something goes wrong. 27. Taking Precautions Overview: Besides making sure that we don't forget anything before leaving on a trip, we may also want to take some precautions. What does the precaution? This is something that you do to prepare for something that could go wrong. The electricity goes out. You have a flashlight. If it rains, you have an umbrella. If something may happen, you do something to get ready for that possibility. It may or may not happen. If it happens, you'll be ready. You'll have a plan. What if the ATM is not working when you arrive? You can't get cash. Well, luckily, you already have some. You've got some before you left, some local currency. That is a precaution. So you're kinda preparing for negative possibilities, unexpected things that can go wrong. Now, the most useful thing, the most useful two words, well, two or three depending on how you say it that you need for this sort of thing is in case. And then the whole thing in the phrase is just in case. Just in case this happens. Let's do that. Just in case that happens, Let's do this. Now. You can just say in case, in case we get attacked by a bear, Let's bring bear spray. Just in case we get attacked by a bear. Let's bring bear spray. Or you could say, let's bring bear spray just in case we get attacked by a bear. Or let's bring bear spray in case we get attacked by a bear. All of those are fine. You can put the in case at the beginning and then say what you're going to do to protect yourself or to prevent that, the precaution you're going to take, or you could reverse it and say that precaution first, then incase or just in case, and then the thing that could happen. Alright, so either way, we're gonna look at some examples. Of course, we're going to start with some questions that we can use and then we'll look at some regular sentences. I know, I know we're getting there almost, almost at the end of our first section. I know excited to get on the airplane, Im2. Im2. Let's take a look at a few questions. 28. Common Precautions: Should we exchange some local currency? Just in case, just in case the ATMs there don't work there as the place we're going. Should we, as I'm asking you, is that a good thing to do? Should we do that? If I want to know your opinion about preparing and what you think should happen, should we, both of us do that? Should we exchange some local currency just in case the ATMs there don't work. You can take out just if you want to, but just as quite common. Same thing here, same question. Do you think we should? It's just a different way to phrase exactly the same question. Do you think we should? Do you think we should, we, should, we, should we use simpler, right? But this is very common to do you think we should call the bank to give them a heads up? Now here, we're not using just in case because we don't want to say what could happen, the possibility of what could happen, what could happen just in case they think that we are using our credit cards, but actually we're not us and where somebody else who has stolen our credit cards and is using them in another country, who has a lot to say. So we can imply that we know why we would call the bank. Do you think we should call the bank to give them a heads up that we're going to be in another country. I think we should, yes, we should. Sometimes you need to do that. A heads up as like a notice. Give them a notice. Notices a bit more formal and heads up is more casual. Same thing here. Do you think? Do you think? But instead of we should shoot us about doing, we should buy, we should get, we should take, we should exchange, we should call or doing something. In this case, we need or we will need. I'm just imagining the future. Now. Do you think we will need? Do you think we need? We will need means in the future. We're going to say, I wish I had this. I wish we had mosquito repellent. We don't. So back then, I wish I had said, Do you think we'll we will we'll do you think we'll need mosquito repellent? I didn't say it. We didn't take it and now we're being eaten alive by mosquitoes. Okay? If we don't say we'll It's just something that we need now. Do you think we need do you think we need sunscreen? Yes, absolutely. Now you could say those are interchangeable because we need it now because we will need it. So that's fair. That's fair. It's just a different way to phrase it. Now we might just ask a question, what if very common question. When we're wondering about things that could happen, we say, what if, what if there are zombies? What if we get attacked by a bear? What if the power goes out? What if we can't find our way back to the hotel? What if the taxi gets lost? What if my phone dies? What if it rains? What if there's a thunderstorm? What if there's a flood? Okay. Well then we would give a solution. I would say what if the power goes out and I just hold up my flashlight and say flashlight. American English flashlight. British English torch, flashlight. Okay, great. What if what if my phone dies? Power bank? You can answer with a single word, two words. You can answer with a whole sentence. It's very flexible there, okay? Now, some common statements we might use. 29. Heading Out the Door: Let's be sure to book the hotel a few weeks in advance. Let's be sure. Now we probably don't need incase or Justin case for this one. This is just to remind the other person or to remind myself that this is an important thing to do very early. It is a precaution against wasting money because if you book the hotel a few days in advance, in advance means before, it will probably be a lot more expensive than if you book a few weeks in advance. The price difference is big. Let's be sure. I'm just saying this as a statement. Be sure, let's be sure we do this. Let's be sure we bring sunscreen. Let's be sure we bring a flashlight as a reminder to us if I'm talking to myself, that's okay to bring a jacket. So this is saying the action first, then the thing that could happen, maybe it will happen, maybe not, I don't know. Bring a jacket just in case evenings get cold. We're going somewhere. We're not sure about the weather there. The seasons are changing. I'm telling you what to do here. This is not a reminder. I'm just saying do this. I'm giving you a recommendation. Bring a jacket, bring a flashlight, bring bug spray, bring a bucket hat, bring cotton candy ice cream. Just telling you what to bring. Take this. Just in case we get hungry, just in case we get attacked by a bear. In case evenings get cold, we don't know. I'm telling you now I'm bringing a first aid kit. I'm bringing it. I'm going to I'm not asking you. It's not a reminder. I haven't forgotten. Nothing like that. This is just a precaution I'm taking and I'm letting you know that I'm taking this precaution. Maybe you asked maybe you didn't. I'm bringing a first aid kit. I'm going to going to bring and then this little statement, better safe than sorry, you can use in all of these cases, whether it's the bear attack or the electricity going out or your phone dying. All of those things that could happen when you state your precaution, bringing a first aid kit, bringing a jacket, booking the hotel in advance. For all of those things. Better safe than sorry, it's a common expression we use. It just means it's better to be prepared, better to take precautions, then to regret it later. Two pairs of shoes, one pair of hiking shoes, one pair of Nike shoes. We may go out to dinner, but we may also do some hiking. I think I'll bring both better safe than sorry, you can use it for that sort of situation too. This is an extremely common expression when we're talking about precautions and what we're going to bring in case we need it later. It's better safe than sorry. Okay. Now, we are absolutely ready to go into our next section. We've come a long way. We've talked about a lot of different things, how to decide where to go. We went to a travel agency. We talked about preferences and our different criteria. We talked about booking in reservations. We talked about so many things. Then we got into remembering stuff, right? How do we remember what we need? How do we make reminders? How do we show a little bit of frustration when someone else didn't remember something. Great. Well now it's time to move on. When we leave. When we're actually walking out the door, when we're all together already, everybody's ready, Nobody's forgotten anything. We just say. Let's go and expression of enthusiasm or excitement. Okay, everybody ready? Let's go. Sometimes we say, here we go. Here we go as a feeling of we're ready, excited, moving forward, moving on. And you can say, here we go or here we go with more excitement. We could also say time to hit the road. Time to hit the road. That just means time to go. This one could be more or less excited. You could use it very excitedly. Time to hit the road or time to hit the road. So depending on how you say it, alright. Now it is time to hit the road. It is time to fly. It is time to go to the airport and hop on the plane. I'm looking forward to the next section. I hope you are too. Now, I'd like you to practice what we've learned. It's very important to do that. Make dialogues and role-plays. Using the expressions in the sentences that we've talked about. You can do a dialogue, write down the description of the situation. Maybe it's a hotel booking. Maybe you're booking a flight, write down a description of the situation and then write down what each person would say. This is a great way to put what you've learned into practice. If you want to do a role-play, then do it more freestyle, make sure you're using what you've learned. Write down the key words and phrases you want to use, and then record yourself. Actually speaking both sides. Don't write down the whole thing. Record yourself. Improvising, speaking both parts, and make sure you use the key phrases and sentences we've talked about. This is how you get comfortable with it. Yes, you know it. But in order to get comfortable with it, you have to practice it so that when you find yourself in that situation, you can do it. You can use the phrases and sentences. No problem. Okay? So do three dialogues or role-plays. You can do two dialogues in one role-play or one dialogue. And to role-plays or three role-plays, three dialogues, however you want to do it. Do three for this section, practice. And now we're going to jump in to the next one. Here we go. 30. Airport Overview and Vocabulary: After getting everything ready for the trip, we've headed out the door on the way to the airport. In this section of the course, we're going to be talking about everything that happens at the airport when you get there up until the point of departure, when you get on the plane. Then we're going to talk about this stuff that happens on the plane. How do you handle situations the plane? And then we're going to talk about things that happen on arrival after your plane lands at the airport, at your destination. That's what we're going to be talking about. Make sure you're taking notes as we go. Make sure you're practicing the words and phrases we talk about so that you can use them when you are in these travel situations, these are very common things. Make sure that if you have questions you ask, okay, so let's begin our second section of the course, airports and flying. Now, when you arrive at the airport, you're probably going to be at your terminal. And we'll look at some more words as well. You'll be at your terminal. And different airports have a different number of terminals. Some only have one. It depends on the size of the airport. Also, whether it's an international airport or a domestic airport. And you need to really go through three main stages. You need to check in. And I'm going to write it like this as a noun. Then you need to go through security. Then you need to board. I'll just call this boarding. Now, there's a lot of stuff going on with these three. So these are just the three main stages you get to the airport. You have to get your ticket or boarding pass, and you have to check your bags. If you have bags to check, then you need to check the stuff that you have with you through security or this security checkpoint, then you have to find your gate. And then probably after waiting awhile, you can get on the plane, you can board the plane. So first is check-in. Now before we get to that, we're going to go over some important words. I want to make sure you keep in mind some important words that will come up in a lot of the phrases that we talk about for these three stages and the things that happen in-between. Okay, So I mentioned terminal. Let's talk a little bit about departures and arrivals. Departures and arrivals are too, I guess you could say categories. Departures are flights. Instead of saying airplanes, we often call them flights. Your flight, my flight. It is a flight. And when we say the name will say e.g. flight aka be 48. Okay. So departures is when the flights are going out and this is maybe one part of the terminal. These are flights that are leaving, right? These are flights that are going somewhere. And then there are arrivals. And arrivals are flights that are coming into this airport. That's where you would go to meet and pick up your friend. They're arriving, they are visiting where you live, you go and you pick them up. Or a family member you haven't seen in awhile, they fly into your city, you go and you pick them up. When you're looking for where to go. That's the right terminal, terminal, terminal to terminal B. And then it's their arrivals. Okay, let's go pick up Aunt Sally. Of course, you know, international and domestic. We talked about that international flight to other countries, domestic flying within your country. And then we have a boarding pass. This is just your ticket. That's all it is. Your boarding pass is the piece of paper you get when you check in. That is your ticket, that is what they will take when you actually get on the plane. Boarding means to get on a large vessel, not for a car, but for an airplane, for a boat. You board the boat, you board the plane. And we have carry on, checked and overweight. And then after all of these, it's going to be bags, carry-on bags, checked bags, overweight bags. Carry-on bag. Checked bag, and overweight bag. Carry-on bag is one that you take with you to your seat on the airplane. It's usually smaller. It's a backpack. It's a small bag on Wheels. Something that you can fit either under the seat or in the overhead stowage above your head. Now sometimes the little bag that you have is called a personal item instead of being called. A carry on, but those two kind of get a fuzzy line between them, we can say, so. Let's just say, let's just say carry on. But they might also call some smaller things, personal items. Then it checked bag is one that you check. How many bags do you want to check to? One. This is where your main luggage is. If it's a very short flight, you're visiting somewhere for a few days. You may not even have checked bag for some domestic flights. You cannot check it back for free, not even one. You have to pay for it to pay for even one checked bag. Most international flights that I'm aware of at least allow you to have one checked bag for free without paying extra unless it is overweight and overweight bag is over the limit. And usually then you have to pay some fee for that overweight bag. I don't know what the limit is. It's different for different places. And also there's pounds and kilograms. In the United States, we use pounds instead of kilos, but kilos or pounds and then it's over that you have to pay extra. That would be an overweight bag fee. Extra costs usually is called a fee than we have since we are talking about bags, let's say baggage claim. Now in some places this is called the baggage carousel. Each one that goes around the round when you pick up your bag is a baggage carousel and the whole area is described as usually baggage claim, sometimes luggage claim. Often baggage and luggage are interchangeable. So if you see the word luggage, it's going to be the same thing as baggage. Baggage, luggage, luggage, baggage. But you wouldn't say one lug. So if it's one thing and you're talking about mine, you'll say my bag, my bag. My bag. My bag. That's my bag. Let me get my bag. Oh, I haven't overweight bag. You could say a piece of luggage, but it's usually a bit clunky if we're talking about it generally, we can call it we can call it luggage. And then finally we have the check-in counter, COUNTIF ER. Now, this is different in different places to traditionally the check-in counter is where you go to talk to a person to get your boarding pass. Usually you give them if it's an international flight, you'd give them your passport. You maybe tell them the flight that you have, right? So they know they check your passport, they print out your boarding pass for you, and then you have the baggage or luggage conversation. How many checked bags? You check your bag. We're going to go through that right. Now. It's much more common for airports to have a a kiosk check-in. It's also called check-in, but it's a check-in kiosk. And this is a little machine and you go up to that with a screen and you you put in your name and then it says, Is this your flight, how many passengers? And it prints out your tickets or your boarding passes for you. Sometimes people call them tickets. I sometimes call them tickets. But your boarding passes. And you can get up thing for your bag as well to check your bag, a baggage tag, I believe it's called. You can do all of it at the kiosk. Again, some airports are different. Now, we're going to go through the check-in conversation with a real person. Just like we went through the flight booking conversation with a real person. When in fact, you might want to just book your flight online, you may need to have that conversation. I believe even if you're a kiosk type of person, you still need to know how to have the conversation. You may find yourself in places without kiosks. Or you can be a person like me who actually enjoys the interaction at the check-in counter, I often walk straight past the kiosk, straight up to the counter or wait in line. Maybe there are a few people in line. Because I enjoy that interaction. I liked the feeling of safety of talking to a person and confirming, yes, this is the fright flight. I'm not flying to some crazy place. I'm not aware of. It. Didn't make a mistake. I just like the human interaction. I enjoy that part of it, right? So whether you do that or not, it's up to you. Of course, if you're a kiosk person, I don't judge you. When I'm in a hurry, I will usually use the kiosk. But I find, especially when I have checked bags on an international flight, I rarely use the kiosk. I go straight past it to the counter because I just like that. So again, up to you, but we're going to go through the check-in counter conversation. We're going to do that next. 31. Airport Check-in Part 1: Here's the situation. You're in New York City. Maybe you were visiting, maybe you're from New York City. Okay. And you've got a flight from New York City to Istanbul, Turkey. Alright? You go to the airport. Well, in advance, you're a very responsible person. You leave early, get everything ready. You go to the airport and you arrive 3 h before your flight. That's pretty good. 3 h should be enough time. Let's say you're at JFK, JFK international airport. I'm using this one because I know this airport well. And I've been on many flights from this airport as well as the others. So I'm speaking from experience here. You figure out at the airport, which of the check-in counters is your airline? Oh, there it is. Okay, good. So you go up to the counter, was a little bit of a line. You wait a few minutes and then it's your turn. You didn't use the kiosk because you want the interaction, right? You go up to the counter. What happens next? Okay? We're going to go through this situation from beginning to end so that you know how to handle it. If and when you ever find yourself in this situation, I want you to be well-prepared. We will look at variations, different ways to express things in the situation, to be more clear, more direct, and sometimes how they might speak to you in different ways depending on their style, depending on their mood, how do you handle it? Okay, so first things first, what do you call this person? Alright, there's a name tag, Nancy. You could say Nancy. But most of the time we'll use something more generic. If it's a man and you need to say something to this person or get their attention. Same goes for shopping center or someone you don't know in public, you need to get their attention for some reason, a shop assistant. Same thing. Sir. Sir. If it's a man, miss for a woman. And sometimes we can also use, ma'am, there's a line here generally, miss is for a younger woman and man will be a bit more general, a bit broader. But that's a very fuzzy line. Most of the time you can use miss and that should be fine. If you use, ma'am, it's okay too. But certain myths are the most common and I think the best to use in this kind of situation. Okay, so now we know how to refer to the person at the counter. Again, if you want to use their name, It's fine. I suppose if you can see the name tag, but you're not obligated to you're not obligated to do that. How are you today? Well, very friendly beginning. This is what Nancy did I say? Nancy. Let's go with Nancy. This is what Nancy is saying at the beginning. Hello, how are you today? Oh, very friendly. I'm wonderful. How about you? Now the interesting thing about this one is that it is completely reversible. If I walk up to the check-in counter and say, hello, how are you today? And then Nancy looks up and sees me because she was typing away at her computer. She can say, I'm wonderful, How about you? Then we can begin the interaction. But probably it will be the other way around. Usually, the person at the counter will say this first and then my response will be something like this. But you could say, I'm fine, I'm great. I'm good. How about you is the best thing to say there, you return whatever they ask of you. So if they ask you, how is it going, you can say How about you? If they say what's going on, you can say what's going on with you. They won't ask what's going on probably because you're seeing them for the first time. You're meeting them for the first time and they know what's going on, you're here to check in, right? You don't need to say I would like to check in. You don't need to say that. Why? Because that's the only thing that happens here, generally speaking, right? If someone says, How can I help you write? And you really want to say it, you can say, I'd like to check in. I want to check in, I need to check in. But 99.99999% of the time, you won't need to say that because that's what happens here. Okay, Great. How can I help you is another way that it might begin. How can I help you? Instead of saying I'd like to check in, you could say simply what flight you have. Start with that because that's why you're here. I have a flight to Istanbul leaving at 07:46. Now she won't ask AM or PM because that's going to be the nearest 746 or 07:46 A.M. and 07:46 P.M. so whichever one is closest, whichever one is coming up is the one I'm talking about. Okay. And in the United States, it's only the AM PM time zones. Some places have the 24-hour time. And in the United States It's AM PM. I'd like to check in for my 746 flight to Istanbul. Any difference between these two? Well, this one certainly says what I'm doing here, but it's okay because I'm not just saying Yes, I'd like to check in. We want to be efficient with this communication, right? We don't want to say, I'd like to check in and then she has to say, Okay, of course. What's the flights or which flight? If you want to say it and it's fine to say it if it's part of it, if it's part of the whole description, include the flight somewhere in there. I'd like to check in for my 746 flight to Istanbul personally, I think this one is quite a bit better because it's simpler and it gives the information that she's going to need. She needs to find your flight very quickly so that she can help you get your boarding pass and help you take care of everything else, your bag and get you off to security. I have a flight. Alright. I have a flight to Istanbul, or you could say, my flight to Istanbul is leaving at 07:46. If you want to. I have a flight to Istanbul. Leaving in 3 h would be okay if you look at your watch. But generally speaking, it's going to be something like this. I like to include the time and you can include the flight number as well. I have a flight to Istanbul leaving at 07:46. Its flight. Okay. Let me check. Click Search. Okay, I found it. Okay, let's look at a few more variations of this though. 32. Airport Check-in Part 2: How about a common in friendly greeting followed by a very simple question. Good afternoon. That's something that people who are working in service jobs where they need to meet a lot of people. That's something that they will say. Usually it's in the afternoon, but it might be morning if it's in the nighttime than it would be evening. Good afternoon. Good evening. Good morning or good morning. Good afternoon, good evening. Good afternoon. Very common greeting. I can say it to her. She can say it to me. Good afternoon. Good afternoon or good afternoon. Hello, something like that. Good afternoon. Where are you flying? Simple question. This is the information that she needs. Again, we are answering questions here. We're not telling stories. We're not making a lot of jokes. I mean, you can if you really want to. But we're really just trying to get through the process to move on to the next step, right? So I highly recommend keeping it as simple as possible. You don't need to talk a lot. You shouldn't be talking a lot. In this situation, there are people in line behind you. This person wants to help you and then move on to the next person. So be efficient with your communication. It is not the time for a lot of small talk and a lot of chit-chat. Ok. So quickly, I'm on the 746 flight to Istanbul. That's a good one. Very clear. The 746 because she said Which flight. So I call it the 746 flight. I like this one a lot because we're using a time as an adjective. The 746 flight to Istanbul connecting in London. There were adding an interesting detail. Not because it's interesting, but because that might help. If there are multiple flights from JFK going to Istanbul, maybe one is connecting in London, maybe another's connecting somewhere else. Alright, so this might be helpful. At least it's not causing any confusion. If it's not helpful. That's fine. It's not a big deal to say it. Okay. Connecting in London. Remember connection is where you stop in the middle. Okay? So the 746 flight to Istanbul connecting in London. So efficient, so clear. Now we're going to look at a very, very, very simple back-and-forth conversation. I actually like these because they're so efficient and so simple. Hi there. We're good. That's friendly enough. Hello there. Hello. Passport, please. I handover my passport. I might not even say anything or make a little noise like that. Or I'll say Sure, Here you are. If you want to say something, when you give something to someone that they asked you for. Here you are is a good one. And sure is a nice way to say yes, Sure. Would you like some chocolate? Sure. You want a coffee? Sure. Going to have your passport. Sure. Then when you give it here, you are. Sometimes people say, here you go. You'll hear me say, here you go. Here you are. Here it is would be okay as well. Now, because she has my passport. She can look it up using the I guess they're using the name, maybe last name or maybe the passport number. I'm not sure what they're using. Istanbul. One word with a question tone. Now she could say are you flying to Istanbul or just Istanbul? Yes. That's right. Okay. Just confirming. You can say yes. You can say yes, that's right. You can just say that's right. I wouldn't recommend saying something like Uh-huh. That means yes, but I don't think it works very well in this situation because it sounds too much like huh. Like you didn't hear, right? Uh-huh, Uh-huh, Uh-huh. So don't use that one. Yes. That's right or correct? Correct. Or just right? Right. Is Danville, right? That's very efficient. Maybe too efficient possibly. Okay. So now we have this first interaction, giving the flight details, giving the passport and maybe answering the initial question or a simple greeting. Now we need to go on to talk about the bags. 33. Airport Check-in Part 3: Once the person at the airline checkout counter has confirmed for themselves and for you which flight you're going to take. It's time to talk about baggage or luggage. And they might ask questions in slightly different ways. But generally, there are two types. There are how many questions and then there are ru questions. And we need to talk about them slightly differently, or we need to answer them slightly differently. So the questions might be, how many bags will you be checking? And this could be how many bags are you checking as well? This is the most common question. How many? Now can you answer yes or no to that question? No. What if the answer is zero? Should I say zero? We'll get to it. Okay. We'll talk about that. Are you checking any bags is another way they might ask this. So this one, you could say is a little easier. I suppose it depends on what you consider to be easy. But if they ask this one, are you checking any bags? The first the initial answer is a yes or no. Yes. No. But that's not enough. So you have to say yes, no, and then something else. Right? Now. If the answer is just know, you can probably not say anything. But if it's yes, then you have to usually give the number. Whereas if it's this one, you start with a number. You don't have to say yes. Okay. So let's look at the answers. How many bags will you be checking? How many bags are you checking? Just one. Notice it's not a long sentence. It's very clear. If it's one, then we can use just if it's two, you probably shouldn't use just the word just is used to downplay something to point at how small the number is. Only one, Just one. Just this one. Only this one. You can point at it if you want. Just this one, only one, just this one. Only this one right here that I'm pointing at on the ground. None if the answer is zero, so don't say zero and don't say no. If the question has how many in it, how many, how many, how many? The answer cannot be no, and it should not be zero. Technically, zero is correct, but it's weird if you say zero, say none, if the answer is zero, okay? None. I just have a carry on. None. I just have a carry on and a personal item. Maybe you're taking a short flight. Maybe you don't need a lot of stuff. Maybe you're planning on buying all your clothes when you get there. Okay. Some people like to travel. I like this expression, like to travel light. Okay. So again, if the question is how many? You can say how many? Just one, only one or 23 For six. The hut. Now, you can't check 100 bags? Probably. I don't think you can probably have to ship those separately. I don't know what the limit is. Actually, I'm not sure. Or if it's zero, none. And then you can add if you want to, if you want to be very clear and just say nothing conversational, then you'll say none. Sounds a little unfriendly. So none. I just have a carry on. I just have a personal item. You could ask a question. Can I have to carry ions? So maybe I want to know if I have to check one of my bags, I would prefer not to. I don't want to wait around for the bag to arrive at the baggage carousel thing. So if I can check both of my Rowley bags, That's often what they're called Rowley bags or roller bags. They are on wheels, they roll Rowley or roller bags. I will take both of them on the plane if I can. I'd rather not check them. Sometimes you're only allowed to have one carry-on bag. So they might say to that, can I have to carry ons? Know, you can only carry on one bag. Alright. So I guess I'm checking one bag there, you would show your reluctance. You're not excited about it, but you have to check one or yes, it's fine. No problem. Oh, great, fantastic. So the answer that they give will determine what you say next. If it's the other way you don't want to have to carry ons, but you want to check two bags. You don't want to deal with putting your bag in the plane and the overhead stowage compartment. So you want to check both bags. You may ask how much does a second checked bag cost? Sometimes you can check two bags for free. Generally not. So you might just directly ask how much does the second checked bag cost? Or you might say, to how many bags are you checking? Two. And then you can ask, how much does a second checked bag cost? You're just curious about the price or maybe the price or the amount that she gives will determine whether or not you will check both bags. Maybe you'll just check one and then guess I'll do the other one as a carry-on because it's small enough. I can carry it on. I just I didn't really want to deal with it. So if it's too expensive, I won't check two bags. Now, what about this yes or no question? Are you checking any bags? Are you checking any bags? So there you say yes or no, but then immediately follow it if it's yes with the number. So it's pretty much the same. But since the question is different, the answer is a little different. Yes. To are you checking any bags? Yes, too. Don't just say yes. Because then she has to say how many don't make her say it. Are you checking any bags? Yes. Just one. Yes. Two. Now, if the answer is no, you can say instead of none. No. I just have a carry on. No. I just have a carry-on and a personal item. No. You don't have to say more there. It's not necessary. This one is kind of necessary yes to yes one. But this one, you can just say no if you want to make it very clear that you don't need to check any bags. 34. Airport Check-in Part 4: So we've confirmed the number of bags. Now we need to put the bag up on the scale. We have to weigh way the bag or bags. That's a that's an h, not an end. By the way. I always have people tell me your your ends and h is look the same. Yes, that's true. I'm sorry. Please put your bag up on the scale. Very simple request, please put your bag on the scale is the most common way for them to ask this question. Very straightforward. Please place your bag on the scale. Please put your bags on the scale one at a time if you have more than one. So they usually will weigh them individually and then they will they will put the baggage tags on them. Usually there's a luggage or baggage tag that sticky that they will help put on your bag for you. And that is a way for you to know that is my bag when you pick it up at the baggage claim on arrival? Sure. Okay. Alright. Should we say all of those? No. I'm just giving you some variations. I really like. Sure. I say it a lot. Sure, sure, sure, sure, sure. Okay. Alright. You're just agreeing to something anytime somebody asks you to do something and it's a quick yes. Sure. Okay. Alright. These are the most common. Fine. Be careful with. Fine can sometimes sound like fine, like annoyed, like you aren't happy to do it. Sure. Okay. Alright. Those are neutral. So I think those are good. Sir. Your bag is overweight. So you call this person miss perhaps or Sir, if it's a man and he or she calls you sir, probably even though now they know your name. We're not on a first-name basis or not on a first-name basis still. So we could use first names, but probably it's going to still be miss. And Sir, sir, your bag is overweight. Oh, great. There is a limit, right? Limit. And if it's too heavy, then you have to pay extra. Usually there's a limit. There's a fee for bags over 100 pounds. Great. There's a fee for bags over 100 pounds. And I'm not sure if that is a real limit. I'm just throwing out numbers here. Kilos kilograms would be different. I don't know what a normal number would be. I can't remember. I always forget. But what happens when they tell you that your bag is sometimes they'll say to heavy. Now the question is, by how much? So when we say by how much, we often want to know the amount over the limit. If the limit is 100 pounds and that's 100 right there. And I'm over that To some degree. I want to know if it's a little tiny bit over or way over. Why? Well, if I'm a little bit over, then I might be able to take something out and put it in my carry-on or put it in my backpack. And avoid the fee if it's if it's over by the weight of a pair of socks, which happened to me once one time I was at the airport, I was checking in, I weighed my bag and they said, Sir, your bag is overweight. And I said, How much is it over by? How much is it over by or I may not have said that exact sentence. By how much? So this is how much over the line MI, by how much? It's a very common question. By how much? Now my H's looked like wise. I have an H problem. By one pound by, we use ounces, that's a smaller unit than pounds in the United States. I know it's crazy, right? Ounces, ounces by 3 oz. Okay. One time I removed a pair of socks and one other tiny little thing, put it in my backpack, weighed the bag again, and it was fine under the limit. So sometimes sometimes just say Give me a sec, give me a moment, give me a that's a t. Give me a minute. Give me a sec. Give me a moment, give me a minute. Now if you say Give me a sec, that's quite casual sounding. A sec is a short amount of time it sure. For a second. And it's fine to say, but it is more casual sounding. I'll take some stuff out. I'll take some things out. I'll move a few things into my backpack or into my carry-on bag. Okay. Or perhaps It's way over. Oh, okay. It's way over. What is way over mean? Well, that means by a lot. It's over by a lot. Great. Okay. Fantastic. In that case, I guess I have no choice. I guess I have no choice. I have to pay the fee because it's way over. I can't move my stuff anywhere else and I need it so I can I pay with a card. So there you might ask about payment method. If you have no way to avoid a fee, if your bag is over, then you could make a comment like, I guess I have no choice. Which is kind of eye rolling moment, right? Where you're not super happy about the situation. And then you can ask about the payment method. I don't know why I put it on two lines. Payment payment method. Which would be can I pay by card? Can I pay with cash? With cash by card? Remember that? With cash? Bicarb? Don't say by cash. Don't say with card. It's with cash by card. Very useful to know, okay, Now that we've talked about the weight of the bag and how to deal with that, we should talk about what happens when the person at the check-in counter asks about what's in the bag. Or maybe they want to give us some information about what's going to happen to the bag after it gets checked. 35. Airport Check-in Part 5: Sometimes you'll be asked when you're checking your bag, whether certain things are in your bag. Some things are prohibited from being in checked bags. So these are not things that are going to be checked at the security checkpoint or when you go through security because the things that you take through security, our carry ons and personal items. So if you're checking a bag, they may need to make sure certain items are not in your bag. So they might ask, are there any of these items in your luggage or are any of these items in your luggage? Or do you have we know this one already, right? We're very familiar with this. Do you have any of these items in your bag or in your bags? Now, what are they saying? What are they talking about? What are these items? Typically, if they ask this and sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. There have been times when I've had to go behind the counter and open my bag and look through it and figure out what it was that I put in there. There wasn't supposed to be in there. And many times, I've never been even asked this question. Do you have these things, any of these things in your bags? These are maybe dangerous chemicals or knives or weapons of any kind, or even ordinary things like needles, certain types of needles. There's a long list. Batteries, certain types of batteries in rechargeable devices are not allowed in certain bags. In certain airlines. There are a lot of rules and they're all different. But if you're asked this question, you might think about it and say, no. If you're sure, right? No. You want to be sure. Because if you're already through security, they can't go and find you. And sometimes they need to take something out is rare. But I've heard it happening. I've heard about people who have experienced that before. So they might say e.g. do you have any lithium ion batteries in your bag that you want to check or that you're checking? No. No. The edge just to thinking noise. No. I'm very sure. I don't think so. Less sure. I don't think so. Now this might cause them to say please step behind the counter and make sure or sometimes it's a yes. Yes, I do have one in there. So they'll give you the bag back. You have to go through it, take that out, put it in your maybe carry on, and then give the bag back to them. Sometimes they have a little scanner right there with them and they will actually scan your checked bag to make sure it doesn't have any of those things? It's almost like a security check before the security check. Okay. Sir, could you please come behind the counter and open your bag? This has happened to me quite a few times on international flights. So it's, it's really inconvenient to go behind there or you go to some site area, open it up and you figure out what is this thing that I'm not supposed to have? Because you might not have even remembered what it was or where you put it, right? It's it's not very convenient. Sure. Again, Sure. It's a great way to say Yes, I will do that. It sounds friendly, but it's also kind of neutral, not showing too much enthusiasm. Oh, I must have left my power bank in the pocket. That tone is a remembering tone. Oh, oh, ah, ah, oh, I must have left my power bank rechargeable batteries in one of the pockets. So then you would resolve that, figure that out, and then they will take the bag and you can usually go after that, but sometimes not. Sometimes they have a few more things to take care of with you before you go to the security check. E.g. they may need to give you some information about what you need to do with your bag. If there's a connection, sometimes you have to get your bag. You have to collect your bag at the baggage claim of the connection and then recheck the bag and then get on your second flight after you've rejected. Most of the time it goes all the way through, but sometimes it doesn't go to the end, final destination and you have to do some stuff so they may have some information for you. How would they say that? Well, let's take a look at that. 36. Airport Check-in Part 6: In some cases, for whatever reason, you're checked bag can't go to your final destination. You have a connection or two connections. And for whatever reason some thing at some airport happens. And they know that you're going to need to get your bag in order to make sure it gets to your end destination where you're traveling to. So they might just give you a notice after you arrive at your connection, London. Because that's my connection. You'll need to collect your luggage and recheck it. Collect as a way to say go to the baggage claim and get it. So pay careful attention to that because people often lose luggage because they didn't catch that part or they didn't understand. Just be ready for that, be ready for the possibility. In my experience, it doesn't happen very often. I think I've experienced that maybe twice. Most of the time it goes all the way through without me doing anything to my destination, but sometimes not. And they'll tell you something like this. You'll need to pick up your bags at your connection and go through security again before your next flight. So inconvenient, this might again be because you have an international flight followed by a domestic flight. So you do the international flight, you arrive in your destination country, but it is not the destination city. So then you need to take a domestic flight. And there are two different systems. The systems are different. So the domestic flight system requires you to recheck the bag and maybe even go through security again, which is very annoying, but it does happen again. It's happened to me a couple of times. So you have to recheck and go through security. Now, this is generally the whole flow of this situation, of the check-in situation. Sometimes here they will ask you about your meals, meal preferences. Do you have any meal preferences? Or do you have any dietary requirements? Sometimes you'll be asked meal preferences. Dietary requirements when you check in, generally not. But if they do ask this question, it's exactly the same as the situation we already talked about booking the flight. They might ask meal preferences there and you would answer in exactly the same way. So I don't want to repeat stuff too much in this course. I hope you got that part. Go back and review if you're really need to brush up on that part specifically. But I think you probably you probably remember it and it's pretty simple. Okay. So now they're going to hand back the passport, give us the boarding pass, and perhaps give a brief summary to make sure we understand everything clearly and we know what to do next. 37. Airport Check-in Part 7: Now that you've checked your bags or not checked your bags, if you don't have any checked bags, confirmed your meals. If they asked you about that, confirmed the flight, all of the important stuff. The last thing for them to do is give you back your passport and give you your boarding pass. Usually they don't just say, here you go buy. Usually they'll say, Here is your passport and boarding pass, or here you go, your passport and boarding pass. But then they might explain a bit what is on the boarding pass. Remember, the boarding passes the ticket. It's your ticket. It's the thing that you give to the person at the gate when you get on the plane. It's your ticket, it's your boarding pass, but there's information on it. What information? Usually it's the seat. Your seat your assigned seat, as well as your gate and your boarding time. Now, sometimes the boarding time is not assigned yet. They don't know yet. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't. Sometimes the gate is not assigned yet. They haven't put it on there yet. But if it is if it's all there, Seat number, the gate number, and the boarding time than they might explain to you what's there. Just to kind of wrap up this interaction and make sure you're very clear about what you need to do next and the information that's on the boarding pass. So they might say something like this. Here's your passport and boarding pass. Urine seat 25 F, and your boarding gate is D 43. Now, you might have a little grammar disagreement here. You might think, wait a second, shouldn't it be here are your passport and boarding pass, since it's two different things. Well, great job, technically, yes, grammatically. But usually if somebody hands you something, even if it's more than one or two things, right? Especially two different things. They might say here is, in fact, it's very, very common. Here is your passport and boarding pass. Okay? Now if it's a single thing, one thing and it's more than one of that single thing than it might be here are here are your cups, cups, they're cups. More than one cup. So cups. But here is your cup and basketball. Okay, that's a little strange, but people often say it. Okay. You're in C25, F, and your boarding gate is D4, D3. This one doesn't have the boarding time. The difference is your flight may be leaving at what did I say? 746. Right. But the boarding time is when you get on the plane, when you actually step onto the plane or what time they begin that process. So it's two different things. Always keep that in mind. This is your seat 25 f, and they might circle it with a red pen. This is your seat. 25 f. And you'll board board is the verb through gate D 43. Okay, and they might circle that as well. This is your seat and yield board through gate D 43. I feel like I feel like I should use red for that Mads. Okay. The plane starts boarding at 07:12. So I suggest you hurry. So they're telling us that it's pretty soon, so we need to get there soon. Now in our situation, we have plenty of time. That's our scenario, right? For this interaction, we arrived 3 h early, very responsible. But if you're running late, they might say it's maybe it's it's 652 now. So that's pretty soon. Sporting soon I need to get through security very fast, so they're reminding me to hurry. Okay. After you go through security fine. Gate D 43, your seat is 25 f you're boarding time is in 20 min. So instead of telling me what time I need to board, they'll tell me how many minutes remain and that's useful too. I kind of I kind of liked that one. Again, in our situation way early, so we don't have to worry about it. But if you're cutting it close, running late or cutting it close, common expression, cutting it close. Then you might hear something like this. Running late would be another 11 time. I was really running late, cutting it very close. And they were closing down the check-in counter. And I was running to it saying, wait, wait, please. They saw me coming and just as they were about to leave, they stopped. They checked me in and they let me go and I ran to Security and I ran through security and I ran to the gate. By the time I got to the gate, I was very out of breath. Like this. And it was really stressful. I was running so late that I couldn't get a taxi. It wouldn't be on time. So I had to hire someone on a motorcycle to drive me extra fast to the airport. Pretty crazy. It was it was I barely made that flight, but luckily, very, very luckily, I didn't, I didn't miss it. So these are just common things that you hear. Now, what is the last thing they might say after this just by well, they might direct you toward security or the security checkpoint. That's what we're going to talk about next. But perhaps we will need to ask about that. So if you want to, you can say, you can ask a question. You can say something like simply, where is security? Now, you may have heard me say both security. That's a Y. Not an age. It's not a seven. It's a Y. That's a little direct, but you may have heard me say security security checkpoint, either one of those, right. And in fact, they're both pretty okay. So if you say security, check, security, checkpoint, security, it's generally all fine. They might have one or the other name in a specific airport. You just have to be aware that there is some variation in how people talk about what I just call security, honestly. Which way is another way to ask? Which way? Which way is security? Where a security I think is good if we want it to be really polite and respectful. This is kind of a direct one, is direct, but straight. We might say instead, could you could you point me toward security? Could you point me toward very nice, very respectful. If you want someone not to give you directions, but just to say that way or that way. Say it like this because it's very nice sounding. I really like to use it. Instead of where security, retroactive security. It's fine. It's fine. But could you please even Please. Sounds nice. Could you please point me towards security or point me in the direction of security? I think that'll be pretty good. Now they might say something like that way point that was over there, that way, or at the end to the left. And they might point towards the end and then say at the end to the left, at the end to the left, usually they're using their hands. Usually it's not that far away and usually there's a lot of signage telling you where to go. It's generally it's pretty clear. The last thing to say then would be thank you. Thank you very much. Have a good afternoon, Have a great day. And I might say that to her. She might say that to me, Have a great day, have a great day. Have a great day. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Take care. Have a great evening. All of those things are fine. Thank you so much. It's just a polite way to say goodbye instead of just bye. Have a great something or thank you so much. I appreciate it. I appreciate it. Thank you so much. So much. You might be thinking her for the directions to security or just in general, for the whole thing, making the interaction goes smoothly. So that's it for the check-in. You did it? We did it. Hopefully, it was interesting. I personally enjoy this process. Try it next time. If you usually go to the kiosk, at least you need to know how to do it. Now, I would also encourage you to write your own dialogue, See if you can do it. Practice a role-play, do it with yourself. See if you can go back and forth and use the words and phrases we've talked about. Now, we're going to talk about what's next. Security. 38. Security Overview and Vocabulary: After checking in at the airport, we've got our boarding pass, we've checked our bags. The next thing to do is go through security. This is usually the least pleasant part of flying somewhere. People, when they complain about something, they might complain about the food on the flight. They might complain about turbulence in the air and they might complain about security. It's not pleasant. You're putting things through scanners, you're going here, you're going there, you're taking off shoes, you're putting on shoes, your recombine ovulating, stuff that people talk about. Word, it's not particularly fun. Now, we're going to spend a little time on this, but the interactions and security are not like a lot of the other travel interactions we have. It's not like the dialogue we did to book the flight. It's not like the check-in dialogue. These are usually very simple interactions where you need to make sure you understand what someone has told you to do, or you need to understand what someone insecurity has asked you so that you can give a simple, clear response so that you can get through as efficiently and quickly as possible so that you can move on with your life and go and find your gate. So we're going to spend a little time on this. First, I wanted to go through a few important words and ideas to kind of lay a foundation and then we'll get into some common instructions. So let's head over to the Blackboard. When you arrive at security, you may find yourself at the end of a line. Now in American English, we use line. In British English, it tends to be q, which is a unique word in English because it has four vowels in a row. That's just a fun fact. A few other basic things I just want to make sure we're clear on before we get into the security checks situation. Articles means any kind of item. So if you see articles, articles that are not allowed, articles to remove, articles to keep on articles to take out. If you see articles, it's usually going to be an item of some kind, whether that's a hat or something that you have in your bag or don't have in your bag. Look out for that word and just know generally it's going to mean some thing or some item that you have with you. You will also see perhaps the word dispose. And I'm not saying that someone is going to say these words to you. But you might see them around in the security check. You might see them on a sign. It's very important actually to pay attention to the signs. You may avoid a lot of delays because if you have something with you, you're not supposed to have even if it's a bottle of water, that can cause you some problems, right? So just be aware of the signs. Pay attention to the signs before you go into the security check. Dispose just means throw away. Maybe lighters, maybe water bottles. Again, it's different in different airports. Place means put a slightly more formal sounding word. Sometimes instead of saying, put your shoes on the conveyor belt, they'll say place your shoes on the conveyor belt. Place your bag on the conveyor belt. Conveyor. Sometimes you'll see it called that sometimes not. Conveyor. Belt is what's always moving so that they can look at everything in X-ray so that they can see if there are any dangerous items. Okay. Place instead of put it just sounds a bit more formal. Place your shoes in a tray. Place your shoes in a tray. You'll hear tray a lot too. Sometimes. Sometimes been sometimes, sometimes trade depends on where you are. Remove, lookout for this word. Take off. Remove your shoes as a common one. Sometimes remove belts, shoes and jackets. Belt shoes, jackets, hats, glasses, remove all jewelry, remove socks. Probably not really. I don't think I've ever had to remove socks before, but I've had to remove things from bag. Sometimes remove a laptops and electronics from your bag. So you'll see that word usually instead of take out, sometimes there'll be saying takeout and you'll see a sign that says Remove either or. You might hear metallic items or metallic articles. Or sometimes you'll see devices, sometimes electronics. And that, that's a fairly broad category. That could be computers, that could be phones, that could be chargers, that could be any kind of thing. And device is something that uses electronics to run. And they might ask you to remove all of them or they might just ask you to remove your laptop. If you have one of those with you. Liquids that would include usually shampoo. It would include water or soda, or maybe nail polish. All of that kind of stuff is considered a liquid. And then as I said, been in tray are the same thing. It's the thing that you put all of your stuff in. But the key thing really is to just make sure that you're paying attention, right? Make sure that you're looking around to see what others are doing. The nice thing is that you can usually just copy what other people are doing. Look at the signs to make sure e.g. if they don't allow water bottles that you don't buy one right before you go in and then you have to either drink it very quickly because it's not allowed or just throw it away and waste money and make sure you know what's allowed and what's not so that you'd put stuff that's not supposed to be in your carry-on bags, in your checked bag. So make sure you look at that in advance. This is more travel advice than English advice here. But I sometimes go to the website of the airport or the agency I know is in charge of security and check their rules and limits so that I know I need to put this in my check bag or this is allowed in my carry-on in the United States is tsa.gov, tsa.gov. And you'd have to search depending on where you travel for the airport and their rules about security or the agency that is responsible for it. And they'll usually have that on the website. And when you're there, if you do look that up in advance, you may look for the word prohibited or sometimes forbidden. And these are things that are absolutely not allowed. Obvious stuff of course, would be like weapons. But you might be surprised. Sometimes in some places there are things that are just not allowed to go through security and then you have to plan accordingly. Look for the words prohibited and forbidden to figure that out. Now, sometimes you make mistakes. One time, I spent a summer in a place in the wilderness and one of my hobbies was two, carve little things out of wood. So I had a big carving knife by huge knife, pretty big knife. And I had to fly somewhere. But I had forgotten that my knife, my carving knife was in my bag. So I went through security and halfway through, I heard a bunch of alarm started going off and a bunch of people came out of the security office, more officers came up and there seemed to be a lot of commotion and I thought what the heck is going on here at someone brings a gun into security, what's going on? And they came up to me and said, sir, what is in your bag? Or maybe it was Sir, do you have a knife in your bag? And then suddenly I remembered, oh, no. I do have a giant knife. They think I'm trying to sneak a gigantic carving knife that's very sharp through security. That's not it. So they just took it away from me. I just lost the knife. They said, Sorry, you can't take this. You either have to leave or we're going to confiscate this knife. To confiscate just means to take it away. So they confiscated it. It wasn't particularly expensive. But I should have thought more carefully. When I was packing my bags about what was in my bag, I forgot that that was there. So just be aware of that. Sometimes going to that website or checking the airports website is a way to remind yourself of some stuff like giant knives that you're not supposed to bring through security that you're not supposed to bring to the airport, period. Okay. Let's now talk about some common instructions that you will hear once you get to security. 39. Basic Commands: While the actual experience of going through security is not pleasant, not fun. The good news is that the language is not very difficult. Once you know the important words and a few common phrases that you're probably going to hear. You can handle it. It's not that difficult because they want to keep things as efficient and clear as possible so that they can get people through security as quickly as possible so that the airport can function smoothly, right? So you're going to hear a lot of simplified commands. Commands. Let's call them commands. Things that you're supposed to do, do this, do that. But it's not going to be a complicated sentence. We would really love it if you could please remove your shoes, right? You're not going to hear a lot of long sentences. It's going to be fairly straight forward. You might hear if it's more polite, something followed by pleas, e.g. right at the beginning when you enter the line or right before you get to the area with the X-ray scanners and the conveyor belt where you have to put things on and take things out of your bags before you get to that area there there might be a person there to check your passport and boarding pass. Well, they might just say passport and boarding pass. Please. Passport and boarding pass, please. Passport and boarding pass, please. Basically, that means give me those two things. You have them right there. You just got your boarding pass. So you give it to this person to check before you go in. Great. That's very simple. Sometimes they don't even say please. But when you get in there, the commands are also going to be pretty simple. Again, as I said, it's not we would love if you could please. Nothing indirect like that. Very direct language depending on where you are, especially if you're in the United States, it's going to be very hard to misunderstand and it's going to be very loud. Take your shoes off. But sometimes without the verb and the your just shoes off, shoes off electronics out of your bags, belts on the tray. They might start with the thing and then say where it goes with no language around it. They might cut out the verb part where they say remove takeout. You might hear that maybe not. Sometimes they just start with a thing, then say where it goes, belts off shoes, off bags on the tray, electronics out of your bag, electronics in a separate bin. And we'll go through some of the specific commands. But it's going to usually feel at least feel like that. It's kind of simplified, stripped-down language. And then some more general commands like keep moving, keep moving, don't stop. So you might think, Oh, that's not very polite. No, they don't need to be polite. They're not supposed to be polite. They're trying to be efficient. I personally like this. I think this makes security much easier. Please yell as loud as you like, be as clear as you like. Just say two words. Belts off, shoes off. Great. I love it. Very efficient. Very hard to misunderstand. So now let's take a look at a few of these, of these sentences, just so we have a sense for what is common. Alright? Remove shoes and belts and place them in the bins. Remove or takeoff. Same thing. Shoes and belts. And shoes and belts. And where do they go? These two things, place them, put them you might hear, put them, place them in the bins. Bins or trays, as I said, sometimes it's one, sometimes the other. Take off jackets. Notice the stripped-down language. It's not take off your jackets, remove your shoes. These are often removed in security because it's not necessary. Just take off jackets. I'm not recommending you speak like this. I'm saying sometimes this kind of extremely simple language is better. Takeoff jackets, hats, shoes, and metallic items here we're getting a nice little list of things. Quite efficient. Place any large electronics in the bins. That means sort of like saying if you have them, instead of saying if you have electronics, placed them in the bins, that would be an ordinary way to say it. Place any. If you don't have them, just keep moving, don't stop. If you have them put them in. Large is a bit vague. It's kind of a vague word because large could be. Well, how big is large? Well, if it's an electronic, probably a laptop is large and maybe a cell phone is small, so you can use that. And if it's not right, then they will eventually let you know. But that's the guideline I usually follow. If it's if it's the size of a phone or smaller. It's small, in my opinion. Do not remove your shoes. Some places make you do that. Some don't. Do not remove your shoes would be a command to keep moving. Because most people expect or many people expect to remove their shoes. So sometimes it's a surprise when you don't have to. There are places where people are used to doing it. Maybe in their country every time they fly, they have to take their shoes off. So when they say don't remove your shoes, don't remove your shoes, they are just trying to stop you from doing that, which would slow down the line, knowing that some people expect that they will have to. Okay, So again, pretty simple language, kind of hard to misunderstand. As long as you know, a lot of these key words, these important words that we've talked about and the way that they say things very simplified. Now we're going to look at some common responses to specific questions. In security. 40. Following Simple Commands: Now that we know a lot of the common terms and commands for security, what's left? Well, this might be when you are asked a question that you have to answer or when you have a question. And I want to go over both of those, but I think we can start with answering questions. When you answer questions insecurity, do not tell stories, do not explain things a lot. Keep answers as simple as possible. And I would highly recommend sticking with yes. No. Okay. Is this your bag? Yes. Did you take your laptop out? Yes. Did you pack any lithium ion batteries? No. Take your bag. Okay. So when you want to answer that something is true, just say yes. Don't provide a whole sentence. Don't make them try to interpret anything that can only lead to more questions or delays or them not quite understanding because it's very noisy. So nod your head and say yes if the answer is yes, whatever they ask. If you don't understand, say Sorry. That's fine. Pardon? Because you didn't understand. Okay. Pardon? Don't pretend you understand. If you don't, pardon? And make sure you use the question tone anytime you don't understand. Sorry. Pardon. And then they'll repeat it hopefully clearly. Right. Do you have any liquids in your bag? No. No. Did you remove all your electronics? Yes. Yes. Okay. Yes. No. I recommend using your head when you answer. Okay. You could answer with a head nod, but you don't have to. This is when you're following following the command. Following the command. Okay. Okay. Don't say I will do that. Don't say yes, sir. You can. Don't say yes, ma'am. You can, but it's better to just say, okay, when you're going to do something, alright, pretty straightforward. Now if you're asking questions, if you're asking questions, you should focus on keeping those questions simple. Again, we want to get through this process. It's unpleasant, It's not fun. So if you have a question, try to make sure that your question is as simple as possible. And I would highly recommend that you ask questions in a way that can be answered with a yes or a no. If your question requires someone to explain a lot of things, you're holding up the entire line, the entire queue. If your question is asking the other person to explain a lot of things and your question is kind of long and complicated. They might misunderstand and that can cause frustration and you being delayed. So let's keep it moving. Keep moving. Keep moving. Move to the scanner. Okay. Okay. I will. Right. So that's my general advice. When you're going through security, keep it simple. Don't worry about being friendly, don't worry about being polite and respectful. Efficiency is the top goal, okay? Now we're going to look at some of the questions that you might need to ask when you're going through security and right before security, when you're showing the person asking for it, your passport and boarding pass. 41. Questions in Security: You may have some questions when you get up to the person right in front of security who asks for your passport and boarding pass. This is before you get into the main security area, you're about to get there, you might want to get ahead of things a little bit, right? Get ready before everyone else is getting ready. So ask a will question because it's the future. Will I need to take my hoodie off when I get in? I'm wearing a hoodie, a shirt with a hood, sweatshirt with the hood. I want to know if I need to remove it. Notice that this question can get a yes or a no. Yes. No. Okay. Great. If yes, I need to start taking it off now very early so that I can get everything else ready and get through as quickly as possible. Do I need to take my iPad out of my backpack? Yes or no? So it's a weird question about the future. It's ado question. This could be to, not to that person, but the person insecurity. Perhaps you ask one of the people who's stacking the bins are stacking the trays. Do I need to put my iPad in the bin? Do I need to take my iPad out of my backpack? We keep this very simple. The question, should I take my phone charger out too? So maybe I want to know if I need to take all electronics out or just the big stuff. I've taken out my iPad and my laptop. Should I take my phone charger out to again? What do you know? Another yes or no question. How about this one? Now this one requires a bit of context. So we're going to add the context, but then tag on a yes, no question. Context is I'm in a big hurry. I'm late for my flight. You could add, I'm running I'm running late for my flight. Is there an express lane? Sometimes some airports will have an express lane and you might have to pay to go through it there, e.g. the TSA, they have thing that you can pay, I think yearly and then when you pay that, you can go through a different security lane faster because there are fewer people who use that. It's much faster. That's a kind of express lane. So I might wonder if this is available. I'm even willing to pay extra because I don't want to miss my flight, so I'm late for my flight. Is there an express lane? Again, the answer is yes or no, noticing a pattern? I certainly hope so. Now again, before I go through security, I may want to know if specific things are allowed. Our bottles of perfume allowed. I'm not sure what you could do about it at that point. If you have one with you and you've already checked your bag, this could be a question that you ask when you check in as well. But sometimes there is something you can do about it. Maybe there's a certain size limit and you can distribute the perfume between bottles so that each one is smaller than the limit. There are some things that you can do to kind of get around it. So you might ask a question like this, is bottled water allowed, lighters probably not allowed. You might ask once you're in the security check area, can I keep my shoes on? You see everyone else wearing their shoes? Can I keep my shoes on? Yes or no? I'm asking the person insecurity. Can I go through so I'm standing at the scanner. I'm standing at the scanner and they might have become distracted for a second. The man or woman who's there at the scanner, usually they wave you through like this. Let's go through let's go through come on. The wave you through. Maybe they get distracted. I want to know is it my turn? Can I go Can I go through notice again? We have yes, no, yes, no, yes, no. All of these are yes-no questions. We are keeping it very simple. So once again, my advice. Simple answers, yes, no. Okay. And simple questions always answerable by yes-no. Once you're in there, you have these specific questions. You don't even need to have this part can, are you don't even need to have these all the time. E.g. shoes off. Make sure you have the question tone in your voice though when you say it. Shoes off, belt belt off laptop out, laptop out, watch in the tray. What does that mean, watching the tray? My watch. I have a watch and I want to know if I should put it in the tray. What's the long way to say that question? Should I put my watch in the tray? Do I need to put my watch in the tray? Should I do I need to. Okay. Fine. Simpler watching the tray. Now i'm I'm pointing at it than the person I'm talking to is looking at it. Watching the TRE yes or no. Okay. So for these even simpler, but still yes-no questions, very important to make sure you have this rising intonation in your voice. Data, data, data, data. When you say These, watching the tray, laptop out. Belt off, shoes off, hat off, hoodie off. Keep that rising tone there. Now, sometimes they have some questions where they want to know. Is this yours, e.g. maybe a bag went through. It's your bag and they need to check it again. Sometimes it goes through the x-ray scanner and something sets it off. There's something in there that they need to make sure it's okay. And so they actually call people over to a special checking area. This has happened to me a number of times. And there are three people around because three people's bags need to be checked in. This person's job is to put on some gloves and check inside of each bag, but they don't know which person goes with which bag. So they, they take a bag and they say, Whose bag is this or whose bag. Sometimes. If you're the only person there, okay, lucky, that's easier. But if they say, Whose bag is this? Whose bag, then you step forward and say simply, that's mine. That's mine. Anytime you need to claim something or say it belongs to you, just say that's mine. Maybe your shoes went through and they fell on the floor. Those are mine. Those are mine. Those are mine. The bag is there and it needs to be checked manually. That's mine. That's my okay. Come forward. And then they might ask a few questions. Okay. Well, what will they ask? Maybe they take out some electronic device and they say, What's this? They want to know what it is. They want to make sure it's not dangerous. They might ask you, what is this? What is this? What is this? You have to explain it. It's this happened to me very recently. I'll tell you exactly what happened in what it was. And what was it? Oh, yeah. It's wireless charging pad. So on the x-ray it must have looked a little bit weird because it had these three spots and that must have looked strange. So they stay flagged. They flagged my bag. I guess we could say they flagged it to say something weird here. It's wrong with me. Fmla, G, G. That's an a. They flagged my bag and then I had to say that's mine, That's my bag. Then they asked me a couple of questions. The main one was they took out the thing and said, What is this? They usually say don't touch. They don't want you to touch it. They want to do it. So he took it out. He said, What's this? I said it's a wireless charging pad. And he said, okay, Simple, right? Very simple. I didn't tell a story. Now that mistake there would be to say, oh, that's this thing I bought my mama to try to be conversational. Avoid that at all costs. Do not try to be too conversational. Keep it simple. It's a wireless charging pad. It's a, it's a selfie stick. So another one that happened to me before a selfie stick you have you use your phone with a selfie stick, you clip it on there and it looks a little weird. It looks like it could be a kind of weapon, I suppose. So they said, What's this? It's a selfie stick. And then oh, okay. Usually it's only one thing. If it's two, then it's what's this? What's this? Okay. And then if it's something that's not allowed, then you have to have the conversation about does it need to be thrown away or you have to send it somewhere? E.g. if you have a large container with the liquid inside and those are not allowed, sometimes they're not going to let you take that at all and they will confiscate that. Sometimes they will allow you to arrange to ship it back to yourself. That sometimes happens. Sometimes they just want to confirm what it is. They might go and get a swab, a swab, a cotton swab, and test it to make sure it's not a dangerous compound. But first they'll say, What's in this, what is in this? You want to explain as simply as possible. You can't answer yes or no to that question, right? So you have to give an answer but don't give a long one. It's a serum, It's a skincare serum. It's sunscreen, whatever is inside of it, hopefully not something dangerous. They might do a swab to actually test it to make sure it's not something dangerous. And then usually they'll say something like, You're fine, go ahead. You can go you can take your bag or something like that. Then you would put your bag together and then go, very simple. Nothing extra. Don't try to start a conversation. This is not the time for it. Okay? So that's security. That is how to get through security efficiently so that you're not delayed. And so that you don't delay others so that you can get to your gate as quickly as possible. Now we're going to talk about getting to the gate, finding the gate, arriving at the gate, and the stuff that happens right up until you board the plane, you have any questions, just let me know. 42. Arriving at the Gate: You've finished going through security. What a relief. It's over. Now you go to the recumbent ovulation area. Not every airport has it, but it's actually called that. It's a crazy name. I only learned it fairly recently. It's called the long word re, come. Bob. You lay ocean area to recombine, ovulate means to put things back together. So you've had all of your stuff taken out, your shoes or off your hoodie was off. You get everything back together. You double-check, you, make sure you have everything. You do that, put your shoes back on, put stuff in your bag, in the recumbent ovulation area. I'm not telling you to remember that. That's just a fun word that I wanted to quickly point out. Then what's next? Well, then it's time to head to your departure gate. The departure gate. And this should probably be on your boarding pass. Sometimes not there you need to. If it's not on your boarding pass, check the screens that you'll see all along the walls in the terminal. Check the departures board. It's called the board that departure is less there departures board or just check the departures. And you'll find your flight there, you'll find the flight number and maybe the gate has been assigned if it wasn't on your boarding pass. Okay. It's gate D4, D3. Got it. Now you know where you need to go, okay, so you have to find your gate. Now, it should be fairly straightforward. It should be pretty easy to find following the signs. Sometimes you need to ask. If you need to ask, It's pretty simple. Just say, Could you maybe you see an information desk somewhere? Could you point this is familiar, right. Point me toward and then wherever you need to go, the bathroom, gauge D 43 or whatever you need to find the nearest coffee shop if that's what you need. Or once you've arrived at your destination, point me toward public transportation or wherever I can get a taxi. Could you tell me how to could you tell me how to get to gate D4, D3, how to get to the baggage claim area? Wherever you happen to need to find. Let's say you get to your gate. That's what we're going to spend a bit of time talking about. You get to the correct gate, but you'll want to confirm that it is the correct gate. You may have some questions to ask. You may need to ask about your seating, confirm your seating. So there are a few questions that are important and a few requests as well as conformations that are important when you get to the gate, not things you always need to do, but things that sometimes come up. You may also want to ask about the order of boarding because usually a flight will board in groups and maybe you will arrive in the middle of the boarding process. And you're not sure which group you're in or you know which group you're in and you're not sure if they have boarded your group yet. So we're going to talk about these things. First. We're going to get to the confirmation. Now, most of the time when you get to the gate that's on your boarding pass. Maybe it says it on the departures screen. When you get there, there's going to be another screen there that says that this is the flight that will have the flight number on it. And it will have also the usually destination where you're going and usually the attendance standing there at the gate, they will have uniform of the airline that you booked with. So hopefully, hopefully it's all good. But what if you want to confirm it's worth it, right? What if the screen is not working? What if it's just not there for some reason you don't see it and you want to just make sure How do you do that. Okay, so let's look at some examples of that. Let's say that this is going to be a flight to Osaka. And in honor of that, Let's say that the flight is flight aka be 48. And let's say this is gate a three. So we got to get a three. We have, I don't even know if this is a real gate. This is all made up. This is fairly fictional and we've got the flight number, we've got the destination. We want to just confirm just confirm with whoever is standing at the counter there. Is this great way to confirm. Maybe the most common is this the correct gate for flight aka B48? That's a simple question. Is this excuse me, is this the right line for the taxis? Yes. This is the right line? Yes. We were in line for that. Anytime there's a line or you're not sure if this is the right place. Just say, is this The right or the correct. And you can say the write gate for getting a taxi for the movie we're going to see for flight AKP 48. Okay, this is where you can make it a statement. Now, this should be pretty familiar. This is the gate the departure gate for flight AK-47 eight, correct? Right. This is the gate for flight AKP 48, right? Correct. Yes. Okay. Or we can state the intention at the beginning. This is also common. This one feels a bit more formal, a bit more formal to have this. Just to confirm. Just to confirm. You can do that with details as well. If you've made an arrangement with a friend and you want to make sure that they know that you know what the plan is and you want to get that across simply just to confirm just to confirm, the flight to Osaka is departing from this gate, right? Correct. So this is the same as the previous one except it doesn't start here. It starts with this little piece, just to confirm. And that gives it a bit more emphasis. It makes it a bit more formal. And you can use that in a lot of other situations as well. It's a great way to state your intentions. What I intend to do. Confirm. Just to confirm, very useful just to confirm the meeting for tomorrow is being held on Zoom. Right. And you can replace right with correct. They are interchangeable. Generally speaking, the flight to Osaka is departing from here. So they're the question tone is very important because I didn't say is the flight to Osaka departing from here. I could say that if I wanted to say is the flight to Osaka departing from here? That is phrased as a question. So there it's not as important to make sure you have the question tone than an Internet at the end. But you probably want to use it anyway. I mean, it's it's something you should do. For the one that's phrased as a sentence, the flight to Osaka is departing from here. That's a statement. So if you want to make it a question which you can do, make sure you have that rising intonation when you ask otherwise, there may be some confusion. The flight to Osaka is departing from here. Now I don't always recommend that you use this way to ask questions and confirm things, but it is fairly common and you can do it if you're pretty confident in your ability to use only intonation, done it at an antenna, to ask a question when the phrasing is just like a regular sentence. Now, let's talk quickly about the boarding time. Sometimes we need to confirm that. How do we ask 43. Questions at the Gate: What do you may be noticing is some common patterns in the types of statements and questions we use in travel situations. And there will be more in upcoming lessons. There are a lot of things in common with the ways we interact with people when we travel. And if we really feel comfortable using these questions and phrases, we can use them in so many other different situations. And you'll get a better feel for these because we're kind of triangulating. That means, oh, we used this type of question for another situation, and now we can use it here. So you have an even richer understanding of this type of question and how and when it can be used. Confirming time, fairly straightforward. What time is boarding? What time will future this flight start boarding? What time will this flight start boarding? When is this flight boarding? When is this flight boarding? Now, there might be a time there on the board. Okay. But you want to ask now if you want to confirm, how do you do that? Is the flight boarding at 07:15? That's what time I think it's boarding. So I say my understanding of the boarding time and then I double-check it by asking it this way. Or I could make the statement. I think you know how to do this by now. The flight is boarding at 07:15, right? The flight is boarding at 07:15? Correct? That's a very universal way to confirm things. You state what you think is true. And then you add, right? Correct. At the end. Very, very efficient. Okay. Could also say, is the flight boarding yet? I'm not sure if it's happening yet. Is the flight boarding yet? And that might be a fairly common question. So there are a lot of ways that we can ask this. A very casual way would be to say, am I, am I late? I wouldn't recommend saying that in this kind of situation because well, if you see everyone's sitting around, you'll know you're not late anyway. But it just feels a little bit too personal to ask someone who is trying to do their job, right? Am I late? Would be when we're meeting friends and we're concerned that being late could cause problems for other people and my late. Okay. That would be good for friends, maybe not in this situation. Has the flight started boarding? Is the flight boarding yet? Is the flight boarding at 07:15? The flight is boarding at 07:15. Right. What time is boarding? All of these questions would be okay. Now, what about when it's the specific group? I can see that boarding is happening, but I need to know if my group that I see here on my boarding pass because that's sometimes is there. I need to know if my group has started boarding yet because I want to make sure I don't miss the chance to get on the plane as soon as possible to ask about when the group is boarding. It's just as you would expect. Are you boarding group three yet? Adding this yet is a feeling of something coming up hasn't happened yet. Are we there yet? Is this going on yet? I know it will happen. I want to know if it's currently happening or not. Is is group three boarding yet? Same thing yet is very useful. Don't say is group three boarding because the chance that you will arrive right when your group is boarding is small, you'll either be a little too late for that, which in which case you can get on the plane directly or you'll be early and group three hasn't started boarding yet, so you have to wait a little longer. Okay, now, we have a few other things we might ask. We might mention, we might say, problems we may need to solve before we get on the plane. Our seats haven't been assigned yet. We're using yet here, but this means on my boarding pass, I don't have a seat number. Okay. So I need to ask this so that I can get an assigned seat and maybe I'm worried that I'm not sitting with the person I'm traveling with. If it's a seven-hour flight, I want two seats like this that are adjacent. That means side-by-side. And my concern is because our seats haven't been assigned yet. That means it's not on the boarding pass. We were supposed to have seats assigned a long time ago and we still don't have assigned seats. Are we going to even be able to sit together if the flight is. Fully booked. I'm a little worried that we won't and that's not good. I don't want to sit next to a stranger. I'd rather sit next to my good friend or my spouse, or my girlfriend, or my boyfriend or my parents. Right. I want to make sure we're adjacent. Okay. Well, this is suggesting that something needs to happen even though it's a statement, not a question. Our seats haven't been assigned yet. Likely when you say that the person at the counter is going to say, oh, yes, Let me do that for you. Okay? Or they might say, yes, we're working on that now we're going to be handing out new boarding passes to everyone who doesn't have assigned seats or we will print out new boarding passes for you. We're working on it. Please just give us a few minutes. Please. Bear with us, bear with me. That means be patient, please. That's a very common phrase that you will hear. Okay, great. Now I know at least you are working on it. Or now that I've said this, you will start working on it. This has sometimes worked out in my favor onetime because the seats hadn't been assigned. I got upgraded to a higher class in the flight and it was much more comfortable. I was expecting because they hadn't assigned our seats. So that was a win. Could you let us know where we will be sitting? That would be saying the same thing in question form. Could you let us know is a very polite, very nice way to say we need to know where our seats are, please. I strongly recommend not being too pushy in this situation. If you speak in a way that sounds pushy, all you're going to do is make them feel uncomfortable. Then if they have the option to upgrade somebody, it's not going to be you, right? So I'm not saying be polite just to get benefits. But generally speaking, I recommend using polite language in this kind of situation. It's the opposite from security. Remember when we were going through security, simple, just get through, well done. But now that we're back in a hey, I'm dealing with a person's situation. They're helping me. I need something done. Be respectful, be polite. Could you let us know? Would you mind letting us? No. Again, same thing as this one. Pretty much exactly the same thing. And they may give the same answer. We are working on that. Please bear with us. Oh, I'm sorry to hear that. Can I see your boarding passes, please? And then they assign your seats for you. And this is where you'll ask anything that you need to ask if you have preferences, if you maybe changed your mind about your bag, you can ask. If you can check your bag. Is it too late to is it is it too late to check my bag? They might be able to help you out with that. Sometimes, not always. If there are any vacant seats in business class, could we be moved up? Vacant means empty. That means seats that are not taken. And if you don't have assigned seats, doesn't hurt to ask. I'm not recommending that you do. I've heard that it works sometimes and most of the time it doesn't work. Excuse me. I'm wondering if there are any first-class seats available. I would like to be upgraded without paying extra. Probably not. Now, if you want to upgrade and pay extra, you might be able to do it here. Probably too late. Usually if you need to upgrade, you should do that when you check in it, go to the check-in counter and maybe while you're taking care of the baggage stuff, you say, would it be too late to upgrade to business class or first class depending on the price, if you want to do that, would it be, would it be possible? Is it too late? Would it be too late? So that's when you're willing to possibly depending on the amount, pay extra for that upgrade unless you already are in the highest class and you don't need to upgrade because You can't you can't go any further off without sitting with the pilot. Right. But again, that's different from this one if there are any vacant seats, this is asking if we can be moved up for free. I'm not recommending that you use that. I'm saying that's something that you could possibly say. Okay. Now, these are the things that we may need to ask and confirm at the gate before boarding. But what about the announcements? Really, that's the most common language you hear when you're sitting at the gate waiting, waiting, waiting. You hear a lot of announcements. And that's where you need to be really paying attention because there can be changes that you need to be aware of. That might change what your plan is, whether you're going to sit here for the next hour or go get some food or sometimes change Gates. Who knows, things happen, flights get delayed. So next, we're going to take a look at some of the most common announcements that you may hear at the gate in the airport when you're waiting for your flight. 44. Gate and Boarding Announcements: Before we actually get into the stuff that happens on the plane, on the flight, there's something that I want to cover very quickly and that is Announcements. Announcements are unique in this course because it is very one way. Even when we were talking about security, yes, a lot of the communication is one-way. It's a command e.g. but there is some interaction. Yes, No, that's mine. That sort of thing. Right. And the questions we talked about as well, for announcements, you're hearing it over a speaker in the airport. Maybe you're waiting at your gate. Maybe you're running to your gate at high-speed, right? You hear it. And it's really just giving you some information. So I don't want to spend much time on this at all. I want to fly through these announcements. And the reason that I'm sharing them is that I want you to be familiar with the format, familiar with the style. Again, there's no interaction. And so we're really focusing in this course on stuff that you have to do, the back-and-forth of travel situations. So this is this is going to be kind of a unique lesson and that's why we're going to be going at 20,000 mi an hour. Okay. This is just to give you some familiarity with these. Now I suppose you could say they're interactive in the sense that if you hear one that relates to something you need to do, you may need to run faster or say, the flight takeoff yet or where's my gates? You may need to change direction or do something slightly differently, or stand up and go somewhere. Sure. There are actions to take, but there's not going to be too much stuff to say because the person who's speaking is probably not right in front of you. Right? Okay. So here we go very quickly. This is an announcement that you hear. Flight aka be 48 to Osaka is now boarding through gate a three. Please proceed to get a three and have your boarding pass ready. Okay. That tells you it's time to stand up. It's time to make sure you have everything. Everything is recombine ovulated. After security. You're at the gate, stand up, get on, get on the flight. But it's probably not that simple. That's usually the beginning of the process. And they have priority boarding first. People who need to get on the plane earlier. Maybe people who have paid for higher-level tickets can get on the flight earlier. So it's beginning the process for this one. Good afternoon folks. Now notice the tone of this one. The first one is very straight. You might hear some kind of greeting at the beginning. You may hear, Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, or ladies and gentlemen. Now, some would say that is going out of fashion, The ladies and gentlemen and instead maybe hearing something like everyone, e.g. Good afternoon everyone. That's common, that's fine. But traveling around the world, I still here, ladies and gentlemen, very often, then you get this more casual sounding one which is, well, it's more casual, it feels more natural. Maybe this is the person who's standing at the counter next to the boarding gate. And they're doing a local announcement just for this waiting area, right? Just for this boarding area. Okay. Maybe I've heard that one a lot too. Good afternoon, folks. This is a boarding announcement for banana Airlines flight AK 48 to Osaka. Any passengers with wheelchairs or special requirements may now board. So you may hear this board as an instruction. You may board, you may not board. This is a verb, this is an action. May now or board at this time, sometimes a more formal version of it will be at this time. Well, that's just a fancy way to say, now may now bored. And since this one is more casual feeling, then we'll just go with now. But don't be surprised if you hear at this at this time. Now, any passengers that is telling you that the process has started. But you people over there and group 234,567.8 Do Not Board yet. You can stand up and get in line if you like. But first, people who need special help to get on to the flight. This is about accessibility. Accessibility when you hear that, that's usually about e.g. people who are in wheelchairs, people who are hard of hearing, sometimes blind people, e.g. accessibility is about helping people who need help do things that are easy for people who don't need help for those kinds of things. If I can say it that way, you usually hear this in the announcement as well. Instead of wheelchairs or special requirements. Sometimes you'll hear service people. That might be members of the military. Sometimes they get too bored early, or maybe pregnant people, they might be specific about that. There are a lot of different things they might say here, I'm just putting this sort of any passengers with as a placeholder, but you may hear different things in that place. What announcement will you hear when your group is called? Well, it might be as simple as group three is now boarding for flight aka B48 to Osaka. Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention, please? Probably not that one. Ladies and gentlemen, group three is now boarding for flight aka before to Osaka. That's my announcement. Voice group three may now start boarding flight aka before to Osaka. Now I've left off from the example, the things that they may use to get your attention. They're just a dressing everyone. And that's because they'll use different things. Really. They're just saying, Hey everybody, right. Whether it's ladies and gentlemen or folks or pardon the interruption or May I please have your attention or whatever it happens to be. Okay. So another way to say it. At this time, ladies and gentlemen, at this time, flight a KB 48 to Osaka is now boarding super special rewards members. Okay? You were about to stand up and then you realize you're not a super special rewards member. If you were, you could board first or very early. So this sometimes happens, and often they'll have a separate line for the super special rewards member. And airlines have different names for that. This is just one I made up. And I don't think it exists in real life, but that will often be how they announced that one. Again, these are just things to know, things to be aware of, things that you will hear pretty easy to understand. One more quick set of examples before we get on the plane passengers. This is an announcement that flight, aka be 48 to Osaka has been delayed due to weather conditions. We expect this to be a short delay and apologize for any inconvenience. Now, why would that be an inconvenience? Well, if the flight is delayed and you have a connection and it's a tight connection, then you might miss your next flight. That could be a problem. Maybe they'll wait for you knowing that the flight is delayed, maybe not. You might have to get on a different flight. It happens. It has happened to me. So often apologizing for inconveniences is what they will say when they make an announcement. That is bad news. And this is of course, bad news due to poor weather conditions, due to inclement weather conditions, due to they might be specific and say do too. Maybe snow on the runway. The plane takes off, or may be due to heavy something, heavy wind, heavy rain, heavy snow. So it's delayed. The point is, it's delayed. I've had flights delayed 24 h one time I arrived at in a, in another country and I was at my connection and I was ready to get on my next flight. And they said, Unfortunately, the flight has been delayed. Okay. We apologize for any inconvenience. The next flight will be in 24 h. 24 h because there was a typhoon happening. And so they canceled all flights. So they put us in a hotel which was actually nice, very nice and free breakfast in the morning. They bust us back to the hotel the next day, I had to explain a few things to the people I was meeting and then it was fine. And I always had a pretty good experience. I actually didn't mind the very long delayed flight. And it happens, you don't know what to expect. Sometimes there's a blizzard, sometimes there's a typhoon. Things happen. Now at the beginning I did say passengers, dear passengers. That is a little formal. You hear it again. I'm just trying to sort of pepper in a few of these that you will hear. Ding dong. This is a final Board and call for flight aka B48 to Osaka. All passengers for this flight, please board through gate a three at this time. This is a final boarding call. This, you might note a slight change in formality. Compared to folks, and we expect a short delay. Who's the we? Well, the we is the one there beside the gate that I can see making the announcement. This wouldn't use we why? This sounds like the type of announcement that you would hear played over the entire terminal that the entire airport perhaps could hear. And so these are perhaps common but usually simpler. They tend not to be for very narrow things. They tend not to be for little things like delays that will be announced at the gate. Usually these are going to be for final boarding calls. That is actually the most common type of announcement that you hear in airports, that you hear in the terminal. Final boarding calls for specific flights. Let's everybody know that this plane is about to close the doors. And when they close the doors, nobody can get on. You're going to be late. If you're the one running through the airport and you hear this, you're thinking, well, we have a couple of minutes, at least you have maybe 2 min after they say this before they close the doors and you cannot get on. And I have missed flights before, and it is not fun. And I've also barely made flights. And when I heard that, it made me realize, okay, well, at least I might make it they haven't closed the doors yet, running through the airport with my bag. Finally at the last minute, I made it and got on just as they were sort of putting everything away and getting ready to close the doors. Passengers you might hear or you might just hear that ding dong. You might hear an announcement chime sound that they play a bell or something like that. That's pretty common. Instead of addressing anybody, passengers, ladies and gentlemen, that sort of thing. Okay. So just a few common announcements that I want you to be aware of. If you have any questions about this or anything else we've been talking about up to this point. Let me know. Try to write your own announcements based on your travel experience. What did they actually say next time you're flying? Listen carefully, try to write it down and then write your own. Do a variation. That's a great way to process the information that you hear. Sometimes we just let this stuff go in one ear and out the other and that's fine. But if you do these little exercises like writing dialogues, doing role-plays, and listening to announcements, writing your own. You're forcing yourself to process the information. By processing the information, you're more likely to remember it. It's more likely to stick. Okay. So let me know if you have any questions. And now let's board the plane. 45. Flying Overview and Key Vocabulary: We got to the airport with plenty of time to spare, checked in, checked our bags, got our boarding pass, went through security, found our gate weighted. Now finally, finally, finally, it's time to get on the plane to board the plane. So now we're going to spend a bit of time talking about stuff that happens on the plane. Now we'll go over, of course, some important words and phrases, the essentials to have a foundation as we usually do. Then we're going to go in some useful expressions, things that you may be told that you need to respond to. And then how to ask for things. When you're on the flight, you need help with something. You want to request something. How do you do that naturally on the plane? How to have conversations with the person next to you? Yes. You may not have thought about that, but if you want to, how do you do that? Then we're going to get into the stuff that happens on arrival. So we have a lot to cover on the plane itself. Let's first jump into some key vocabulary. One thing that always used to confuse me was the difference between captain and pilot. Now I know that a pilot is someone who flies the plane, but also when you hear in flight announcements, usually it's a this is your captain speaking. You hear that at the beginning of almost every announcement from the captain, captain or pilot, that is such a classic sound by the way, when the captain actually begins the announcement that crackled, you hear that sound, and then it's usually not very clear. The audio is usually very low quality or conference speaking and they don't speak very clearly. But you hear captain. Captain. So what's the answer? In fact, while these words are different, you can use them most of the time interchangeably. You're flying on a large airplane with a bunch of people. That person who's flying it is the captain. And is a pilot? A pilot? Maybe not. The pilot. Ah, okay. So a pilot is what they do or what they know how to do, what they're qualified to do. If you want to learn how to fly an airplane, you start with a very small one and you might get a license which is called, I believe, your pilot's license. And so once you haven't you're a pilot of a little airplane, then you can rent for a lot of money. So you are a pilot. What is a pilot? A pilot is a person who flies the plane or flies up plane. The plane driver. So saying pilot is just the person who does that. But a flight is going to have more than one pilot. It has to for safety reasons, unless it's a very, very small airplane. And I don't know what the size requirements are. But I would imagine a plane that only fits six people doesn't need to pilots, I'm pretty sure. But for a normal flight that you would take to another country, there will be two pilots on the plane. One is the co-pilot, co means with the co-pilot, and the other is the captain. The captain think of a captain as the position. This person is in charge of this flight. They are the leader of this flight. So it's not just about them being a pilot who flies an airplane. It's about them being in charge, that person who is flying the plane, that person is in charge. And so you hear often in the announcement, this is your captain speaking. We've got clear whether coming out of San Francisco, they have this sort of interesting tempo when they speak. Anyway. So that's the difference between those two. If you were curious, Let's keep going. We've got flight attendants. And this is now often called cabin crew. So the crew would be the whole staff on the flight and the ones who come around and help you and bring you things and tell you Don't don't do that or do that. Whatever they tell you. This is the cabin crew. These individuals you wouldn't call a person usually a cabin crew. The whole group of staff on the flight or the cabin crew. Crew is a group of people write, a flight attendant would be one. So flight attendants you could use usually it's cabin crew for the whole group. The cabin crew were very, very. Polite and respectful and helpful. And if it's one person, then you'll say flight attendant. You can say flight attendants. But again, cabin crew is more common for the whole group. Okay, Then you'll hear safety. Often it's shortened to demo, but it might be demonstration. And sometimes this is a video that's played on the seat back screen. If the seat back has a screen, it'll be played there or it will be a demo by real people, the cabin crew. They'll demonstrate how to put on a life jacket. They'll demonstrate to put a mask on if you need to do that and oxygen mask. But that's what that's called. Then you have overhead. That's in our overhead stowage to Stowe is to put something in a place and close it to stow. It is to keep it safe in a place. It's called stowage overhead because it is over your head. Now this is often instead call it the overhead bins. Sometimes you'll hear been instead of overhead stowage and sometimes you'll hear overhead stowage been or just, uh, could you please put this in the overhead bin for me? Someone who might need help putting it up there because you're taller than they are. That happens to me a lot because I'm taller than a lot of people. Would you mind helping me put this in the overhead bin? Oh sure. I'm happy to do that. I often do that on most flights. Actually, I do that. You have the tray table. Tray table is the one that you put stuff on that folds down that is connected to the seat back, which is what little children love to kick when you're trying to sleep on a seven-hour flight and you keep waking up because there's a little kid right behind you kicking, kicking, kicking the entire flight. Can you tell that this has happened to me before? Sometimes this is written as one word, sometimes with a hyphen between. Sometimes it is written as two words. You have the preflight, that's an L check. And usually the preflight check is when all of the cabin crew are going around making sure everything's okay. They're closing the doors, they're doing all of this stuff to get ready for flying. So they're checking things. Anything that happens before is pre, pre means before preflight check. You will hear taxi used as a verb, just flying through these taxi is a verb. I thought taxi was a thing, a yellow thing in New York. Well, that is what it is. A taxi is a car that takes you around, but technically it taxis you around to take you from one place to another. Now that usage is not so common, but you still hear things like water taxi taxing people around. And you hear the airplane taxiing. Taxiing. After taxiing, we took off we taxied for 30 min before takeoff. If you're complaining about it, how long do we need to taxi before takeoff? So it's used as a verb, and it's taxiing on the runway. Or the runway is just the straight one that the airplane goes down very quickly when it takes off. What about the other areas that are not really the runway? This is usually called the tarmac. Now, I don't know if this is super important to know, but that's just the material that it's made out of. The tarmac. Tarmac is that material. It's similar to black top and it has given its name to the whole thing. The whole surface is called the tarmac, maybe including the runway as well. Maybe jet way, by the way, is what you walk out onto to get onto the plane. So it's sort of this arm that moves around. It's retractable. It can go left and right and up and down. And that's what you walk through to board the plane. So you go through the gate to the jet way, over the jet way to the airplane itself. Couple of other things I want to mention very quickly, take off, I said, but I want to mention one thing. Takeoff as one word is a noun. That is the thing that we do after takeoff. We took our seat belts off. Okay. So takeoff is that process that down the runway and up into the air, That's take-off. After takeoff, we will be serving drinks and snacks. But if you talk about it as a verb, then you need to separate these two words. I just want to mention this. It's a small point. It's not very important. I just want to quickly note it. Take off. When are we going to take off? What time is takeoff? Would that be the noun or that'd be this one. What time is the thing? What time is take-off? That would be the noun as one word. When are we going to take off? That's talking about the action. So that's two words, just something interesting to note. And finally, we have cruising altitude. Cruising altitude is when we level out. And this is the altitude we're going to stay at for most of the flight. The plane goes up and up and up and up and up until it reaches the right altitude. Then it flattens out and then just kind of stays like that for the whole flight until you start to descend. We're descending into San Francisco. So you start to descend it sometimes. That's called the descent. And going up is called the ascent or assent. Assent is a verb which means to go up, okay? Once you reach cruising altitude, altitude just means how high you are above the C. Actually, that's the altitude. Then they might start serving food, they might start serving drinks. Usually that's when you can take off your seat belt, relax a little bit, maybe take a nap. That's usually when you start to feel more comfortable. Okay. So let me know if you have any questions about these. We are now going to, now that we have this foundation, start talking about some of the common phrases that you will hear as instructions before takeoff. 46. Cabin Crew Instructions: Once you've found your seat and perhaps put your bag in the overhead stowage been you sit down. And now it's time to once again take commands. With travel. It's all about taking commands from people, doing what people tell me to do. Well for some things, yes. But I actually prefer the word instructions in the case of stuff that happens before the plane takes off instructions. And also I'm going to, I'm going to use the word permission. We're going to talk about some of the common phrases that you'll hear, permission. Now, the reason I don't say commands is that feels very harsh. The word command is sort of like a finger in your face. And we don't want to have that feeling sitting on the plane, right? We're talking with the flight attendants who are hopefully not as pushy as the people in the security check or fright. So they may tell us what to do and the language may be similar, but it will be softer and that's why I would like to call what they tell me instructions. Now permission is more like you can. So for instructions you might hear please, followed by a verb. Sounds familiar, right? Put your laptops in the tray. Put your bag in the overheads stowage been sounds the same as security, but they might add please to make it softer, they probably will. If they need to ask you to do that, they might use could you as a question, Who? That sounds nice. Could you? And then a verb, could you put, Could you place? Could you go? Could you, could you, could you could you someone might ask me, as I said before, could you please put my bag up in the bin? Sure. My answer would be, of course I will. It is my duty as a tall person. Okay. Would you mind maybe, although that one I think sounds a bit too personal, but maybe would you then that's going to be an I-N-G. Would you mind putting my bag in the overhead stowage been of course, it would be my pleasure. Absolutely. Okay. So instructions may be softened with please and they may be softened with questions phrased as questions. Now, permission would be that you can do something. This usually starts with you may, you may do this. That means it's not an instruction. Do it or don't do it, doesn't matter to me. You have to put your seat belt on, but if you want to turn your entertainment system on or not, I don't really care. You may do it at this time. You may get up and walk around the cabin. You may, you don't have to, but you may. And you might hear instead, you can and you'll hear one I really like, kind of personal, a bit more casual sounding, but you'll still hear it. Feel free. I love this one. I say it a lot. When people come over to my house, I say, feel free to grab a drink, feel free to have a seat. Feel free to pet that cat, but don't pet that cat over there. Only that one. Yes. Feel free. You may do that. You may. You can feel free. All very common. So let's now take a look at a few of the sentences that we may hear in this situation before we talk about the questions that we can ask. And that will be a very essential lesson. You want to pay very careful attention to that one in particular, because it's going to be useful in a lot of other situations. So here, fasten your seat belts. Does that sound like a command? Well, it depends on how it's said. The passenger seat belt. That sounds like a command, but fasten your seat belt. Announced to everyone. It's it's fine. I think if it's said in a relatively friendly way, put your tray tables up. And then sometimes we hear in your seats or seat backs in the upright position. Upright position. So if you were taking a nap and your leaned way back, your seat back was tilted back. You have to bring it up and put your tray table up before take-off. That is something they will always say as well as please turn off all electronic devices. Now, this is what they say. Please doesn't make it a little nicer, right? But a lot of people don't and instead put it in airplane mode. I'm not telling you what to do. Of course, I know what I do. Okay. Airplane mode, why is it there if I'm not supposed to use it, what's the point of airplane mode? If I don't use airplane mode. But I've heard, I've even heard on some flights, do not use airplane mode. You must turn off all electronic devices. Airplane mode. No, I didn't do that. Of course. I always follow instructions very carefully and I never I never tried to get away with using my phone on airplane mode. Instead of turning it off or even worse, not even putting it on airplane mode, I would never do that. Never. And you shouldn't either. Of course. Stowe, we talked about this word stowage, right? But Stowe itself is a verb, stole your bags in the overhead bins. Very natural way to say that that's an instruction. If you're asking everyone to do that and that's an instruction to everyone. You're not going to hear the could you and would you mind? It's just an instruction to everyone? Still your bags and the overhead bins, put your tray tables up. We want to get this information across very simply. But if one of the flight attendants walks up to me and I'm trying to cram my carry-on bag under the seat. It's not fitting. Then that flight attendant may say, sir, could you please stow your bag in the overhead bin? Or sir, would you mind showing your bag in the overhead bin? Would you mind going? So that's a common thing you'll hear and that's a very useful format for questions in general. Could you end? Would you mind, Great. You made this has permission again, you may move around the cabin once we reach cruising altitude. Remember cruising altitude is when we reach that flat level. Once we get there, you can undo your seat belt and you can walk around if you want to, that's fine. You may you are allowed. They won't say you are allowed, but allows what it means. Sometimes it's less formal sounding, but sometimes, as I mentioned, you will hear, feel free to feel free to move about the cabin once we reach cruising altitude. That's a common announcement. Okay, now that we've covered this pre-flight stuff, we are going to go on and talk about things that we will ask to the cabin crew. Now, you may want to ask me right now. Wait. Aren't we going to go through the safety demonstration? I first of all, no. Because it's so simple, you can usually just watch the person doing that. Putting on the oxygen mask, putting on the life vest, It's the same in every single flight. And often there is a visual that goes with it that explains it even more clearly than the words that are being said. So you can almost ignore what's being said and just look at the pictures of what you're supposed to do in the case of an emergency. Or if you have to use an oxygen mask. The pictures or the video that they show. Very clear. I don't want to go through it because my focus in this course is the interactive stuff. And we've talked about some stuff that's not interactive, like announcements. And I want to talk about the stuff that we can go over very quickly, like these and like the announcements that you hear before you get on the plane, right? But most of this course is going to be on the stuff that I want you to know how to say when you're interacting and travel situations. And for this demonstration, it's not interactive at all. It starts to get too far away from my purpose for this course. Again, I want to prepare you to be able to handle any kind of travel situation. And you can handle the safety in flight demonstration even if you're asleep. Because it's that simple. Okay, so now we're going to talk about the stuff that you can ask to the flight attendants when you need help or when you want something. 47. How to Make Requests on Flights (and Restaurants): There's a useful way to think about asking for things on a flight. Once the plane has left the ground, you are basically in a flying restaurant and you can treat it like that. Generally speaking, of course, there are a few things to know. There are some differences. But most of the time you're asking for things, you're requesting things, right? Whether it's food or not, the way that you do that is very similar to the way that you would do it in a restaurant. Think of it as a restaurant that sells not just food, but blankets. I shades, whatever you have to ask for on the flight. Now the other reason I'm mentioning this is that we're not going to be doing a restaurant dialogue. In this course. We're not going to be doing a full dialogue. Because as I said, most of the things you need to say, most of the things you need to express to get what you want are fairly simple. And we're going to go through those in this lesson. But I just want to make it clear that you can use these same questions, these same requests when you're in a restaurant. The difference might be that you don't have to talk about the tip. You don't have to ask for the check. You may not have to ask for a menu, but the stuff in the middle, a lot of that is pretty much the same. So a few common phrases or beginnings rather that we need. And we can ask for almost anything politely in these ways. Could I have Could I get I'd like, I'll have. Now. These two are questions. This is a question and this is a question. These two are phrased a little differently. They're just as polite, but they're not phrased as questions. Could I get? And this might be when the flight attendant is going down the aisle with drinks and they say, Would you like something to drink? Would you Would you like something to drink? Common question. Could I have Could I have a coffee? Can I have a coffee? Could I have water? Could I have a glass of wine? You can add to this if you like. Could I and then you can put right here. Could I please if you want to soften it even more, if you don't say please, It's okay. You don't have to. Could I please have a coffee? Could I please have water? Could I please have a glass of wine? Or you could put it at the end. You could say, Could I have a coffee, please? At the end? Because I have a water, please. Could I have a glass of wine, please? That would be totally fine. Could I get is the same thing, but it feels a little bit more casual. Just a little bit, a little bit more casual. Either way. I feel like American English speakers tend to say, get maybe more often than British English speakers. But that's just my rough impression. Now, e.g. when they bring the meals out, you can't order from a menu. Most of the time. They'll have what they're going to serve. And you might have two choices. You might have three choices. Usually some flights, I think in first-class or business class may have a full menu of options, but it really depends. So they might say, would you prefer beef or chicken? You prefer beef or chicken. Would you prefer the, sometimes you'll hear the fish or the chicken. Sometimes it will be there. And there you might say, Could I get chicken? Could I get the beef? You could say, could I have Could I get for the drinks? You could say that two. Can I get a cup of hot tea, please? Sure. They might say Absolutely. Okay. Now, if you have dietary requirements and you said that before the flight, you might not have to ask at all. They might bring you out a vegetarian meal. They might bring you out a gluten-free meal. They might bring you out to the meal you requested because you have special dietary needs. Now, this might have changed, but I used to because I didn't want to eat at the same time as everybody else. I wanted to get my food earlier, since when I was in my early 20s, I think I would always let them know before the flight that I wanted a vegetarian meal. Always. And the reason I did that is because they would usually ring out the special meals before the other meals. I don't know if that's still common, but if you say you have dietary needs or a special meal, they may bring the food out first. I just didn't want to be with two other people eating at the same time at my little tray table. I wanted to get my food earlier. Now I can deal with whatever. I don't really care. Now, I'd like is the same thing. It's just not phrased as the question. This is usually when you want to request basically anything. I'd like a blanket, please. I would use please. They're probably if you've said I'd like, then I would encourage you to use please at the end because it can sound kind of sudden if you're not asking. I tend to be an asker. I almost always will ask something I want instead of saving it as a request. That's not a question. But if you say I'd like a blanket, please, That's totally fine. Now, I'll have probably wouldn't work for non food things. And I'll have would usually be when you're presented with some choices. If you're not presented with choices, then usually you won't say, I'll have e.g. it would be very strange if as a flight attendant is walking by, you stop them and say, I'll have a glass of orange juice. Now why is that different than when they're going by with the cart of drinks and saying, I'll have an orange juice. Well, I'm not quite sure why, but it's just that this one is usually used when the choices are there in front of you. I will have the fish, I will have the beef, I will have the noodles. I will have a coffee, please. I will have a water, please. It's right there in front of me. It's on the cart, right? I will have a Diet Coke, please. But if the choices are not there in front of me, then it's suddenly becomes a little odd. It sounds a little bit strange. So you just want to be careful about that. If you want to do that, right, someone is walking by or you push the button to get their attention the call button, and then the flight attendant comes up to you and says, How may I help you or can I help you? Then you would probably want to say this one. I would recommend at least I favor the question form in that situation, There's nothing presented in front of you. There are no choices in front of you. There's just a person standing there waiting to help you, willing to help you. There, do not use this one. And these three are okay and these two are better than the third one. And if you asked me why, I don't I don't know the have one just feels like grabbing thing. There's something there and I want to grab that one right there. And that's the best I can do. I'm not sure exactly why. I'll have a glass of orange juice. Now, can we use these in restaurants? As I said, Yes, absolutely. Right. If you want to get the waiter or waitress is attention in a restaurant, you would say, Excuse me. Could I please get or could I get or could I have or the waiter or waitress is standing there at the table waiting for you to order. You're looking at the menu. The options are there in front of you. I'll have a Caesar salad and the salmon. And I would like a glass of Merleau as well. Okay. Great. I would like is the same as I'd like. I'd like I would like I'd like feels a little less formal. I would like sounds a bit more formal, but they are exactly the same thing. So it's generally speaking, the same phrases on the flight and in a restaurant. And that makes this very simple. When you're asking for things, just be aware of some of these slight differences in how these feel. Now let's take a look at a couple of these beginnings that we can use when we have a few more specific requests. 48. Specific Requests: For this next and last set of examples for requesting things on the flight, we want to be a little bit more specific with our requests. Previously, we looked at examples to ask for things that we wanted given to us or brought to us. But that's not the only type of thing we would need to ask about. That's not the only type of help we would need. Sometimes it's not about bringing me something. Sometimes I need help with something. Sometimes I want to know something. And it's not about me asking you to bring me that right away. Maybe I just want to know how can we do that? Okay. Well, do you have is a really simple one. We're going to explore it more later when we get to the hotel and accommodations part. But do you have is talking about availability? I'm not asking you to give me anything now. Maybe I'm suggesting that with the question and maybe that will be my next question. But first, I just want to know if you have it or not. Are we just talking about food and drinks here? We could be talking about a lot of different things. Do you have spare headphones? Do you have blankets? Do you have vegetarian meals? That's a question at the end. These are questions, right? Because these are all phrases questions. We know that because of the beginning. Do you have earplugs? Someone's snoring loudly behind you. Do you have vodka or whatever you want right? Now? The suggested question then might be if they say yes we do, then I want that, right, but still, after they say yes, we have vodka, then you might say, Could I get one of those? Do you have earplugs? Yes, we do. Could I get or have getter have we talked about that? Some Could I get some? Could I have some if it's more than one thing? Do you have blankets? Well, if I say blankets, I mean that generally, if they say yes, we do, then I might say Could I get one, please? Could I have one, please? So there we would go back to our original phrases that we talked about to request things. But I first wanted to know if you have it. And there are plenty of times where you're curious about something. You want to know if they have something and then you might decide. I don't I don't actually want that. I was just curious. I'm just considering all of my options. So it's very useful in so many different situations, especially when you want something or when you want to consider several options. And you want to say, do you have this, you have this, do you have this? Then you choose from among those three things. I'm wondering if you have is basically the same thing but sounds more formal. So we would say on the flight, I'm wondering if you have I'm wondering if you have extra anything pillows. If you have extra pillows. Now, what's the difference? Well, it's not a question. It's a statement, but the way that it's stated suggests I want to know this and so the flight attendant will answer the question. I'm wondering if you have extra pillows. Yes, we do. Oh, could I get one? Could I please have two? Could I get 65 extra pillows? I want to surround myself in pillows. Sir. Each person is only allowed to have one pillow or two pillows at the most. I'm so sorry. I cannot give you 65 pillows. Well, it was worth a try. So this is just more formal sounding and phrased as a statement instead of a question. You'll notice that we often accomplish the same things with both statements and questions. Even though one is not a question, it's still like a question. It's used in the same way as we use a question. Now here, we're not talking about what I want right now when you walk by with the drinks, right? The flight attendant goes by with the drink cart. The cart with the drinks, the trolley. If that's what it can be called. What I say. Would you mind giving me a cup of tea, please? Probably not. Could I have Could I get I like, are the best ways to express that. So what are we saying with would you mind? Well, this is where you want them to not give you something usually, but do something for you. Do something for you rather than give you something. Now I suppose if you said Would you mind bringing me an extra pillow? Would you mind bringing me an extra pillow? The question at the end, it would be okay, but I think it's better to ask if they have extra pillows first and then follow that. Would you mind bringing me one? Would you mind bringing me one question mark? That's okay. That's okay. But if the things are right in front of you, if you're sitting at the restaurant and you're looking at the menu and the waiter is right there, then don't say, Would you mind giving me, would you mind bringing me the salmon? Right? It's unnatural. There doesn't work in that situation. There, you might say, I'll have the salmon, right? That's the one that we would use. Definitely when something is right in front of you. If it's right in front of you, the drinks, the food, don't say Would you mind? You would say Would you mind if you want somebody to go get something and bring it back to you or to do you another kind of favor, e.g. Would you mind asking that person to close their window? I'm trying to sleep and the light from their window over there is shining right in my face. And I don't feel like it's my job to stand up and walk over there and say, please close your window. Would you mind closing your window? I would like if the flight attendant could go over there and say to them, would you mind closing your window? They can be kind of intermediary and they're probably more likely to listen to the flight attendant than me, write, could start a fight if I go over there and say, hey, close your window. I've tried to sleep. It could cause problems. So would you mind asking that person I'm asking them to do something for me. Would you mind opening the overhead storage bin? And as I said before, would you mind helping me put my bag in the overhead stowage been Did I say storage before? It should be. Stowage been not storage been stowage. I sometimes say storage by accident. I mean to say stowage, not storage. Okay. Would it be possible this sounds more formal, little bit. Also very common, but it's really indirect. Okay. Would you mind is something that you can use all kinds of situations you're talking to a close friend. Would you mind closing the window? Would you mind bringing me a coffee? Would you mind going outside and grabbing the box that's on the front porch? Would you mind driving to the supermarket and getting me some milk? Would you mind going out to the mailbox and getting the mail for me, please. Would you mind would you mind would you mind? Would it be possible? Feels a little more? Would it be possible? I'm very respectful, I'm very polite, which is fine. But just know that it feels like that. And you wouldn't say to your friend, and would it be possible for you to go outside to the front porch and get that box and bring it back into me, please. I would be most grateful. That sounds kind of weird. In that situation. It's okay. If you're asking someone you don't know to do something for you in this way, right? And especially if it's a major inconvenience, let's say that I'm I'm flying with my kids. This happened to me recently, not my kids, but there was someone on the flight with their kids and they wanted to know if they could take the whole front row of seats so that their kids could lay down and sleep because their kids were little four or 56, something like that. And they couldn't sleep very well and sometimes they were crying and making a lot of noise, right. So I heard the mother of these kids say very politely to the flight attendant, would it be possible for us to move up to the front row where nobody's sitting. And then the kids the two kids can stretch out across the seats and sleep. Would it be possible would that if you don't want to say what it is, would that be possible? If you want to explain it, I'd like to get at the data. The data. Would that be possible is the last thing you say to get the other person to hopefully say yes. And if they say no, they say, I'm sorry, it's not possible. So the way that this is phrased, would it be possible to move up to first-class, to move up to the front row seats or the front seats. There. So that my kids can stretch out and sleep. Would it be possible to get an extra blanket? You can ask it that way. It's okay. It's basically the same as would you mind, but it has that more formal feeling. The blanket one, my probably better to use. Would you mind rather than Would it be possible just because it's a fairly simple request? And would it be possible would be for something bigger a bigger favor, moving seats around, That's a pretty big thing that they're doing. They're allowing that. If they allow it, would it be possible for us to sit next to each other maybe before we get on the flight. The seats are not assigned yet. And I want to make sure we can sit together, maybe me and my wife. And I'm concerned because I know that the flight is fully booked, that we won't be able to sit together. Would it be possible to make sure we sit together? Would it be possible for us to get adjacent seats, seats that are side-by-side for us to be able to sit together. So that would be a way to say that when you really want to show respect to the other person and you want to let them know, Hey, I know that this is a bigger thing that you're doing. Do you think you could is similar, but it's usually the opposite rather than it being for a big thing. It's for a very small thing. Do you think you could? I'm using this example a lot but put my bag up in the overhead stowage. Been do you think you could hand me that cup? Do you think you could hand me that cup? Now, the question actually would lead someone to say, Yes, I think I could not take any action. That's not what it really means. It sounds like that, but what it really means is I want that, please give it to me. But again, it's usually for something very small. Do you think you could hand me that umbrella? Do you think you could hold the door while I push this chair out? Do you think you could help me on my homework? I guess it depends on the relationship for the homework. One, if it's a close family member, maybe if it's a classmate, maybe I don't know the situation. Their homework could be a big one or not a big one if it's just a math, a math problem, that's quite subjective. But the feeling, the overall feeling for the, do you think you could is smaller, not a big deal. And the would it be possible a much bigger thing that someone may or may not agree to do for you. So these are the common questions and statements that we need to get things done on the flight. And you can use these for other people who are flying, not just the flight attendants. Do you think you could move for just a moment? I need to go to the restroom. Do you think you could? Yes, of course. And then they will move stand up so that you can get out and go to the restroom. It's the same thing. Now, usually someone else's not bringing your stuff. So could I have is not something that you would say usually to another passenger on the flight. But still these are universal, very common expressions, very common questions and statements. Make sure you remember these. Make sure you know how to use these because you will use them in all kinds of different travel situations. You will use them in all kinds of situations in your daily life. If you're using English, they are that common. And as you can see, they're not that complicated, they're not that difficult. So make sure you're practicing with these. Make your own examples. Next, we're going to talk about how to have a conversation with someone on the flight with you, with one of your fellow passengers. 49. How to Start Conversations with Fellow Passengers (or Anyone!): Let's take a short break from all of the instructions, all the phrases and statements and questions. We need to get things done in travel situations and just relax. Maybe watch some in flight movies, maybe sleep for awhile. Enjoy a meal, if that's possible. On a flight. Maybe have a glass of wine or some tea or coffee, just relax and maybe, maybe or maybe not. Maybe have a conversation. Now, I'm not pushing you to do that. I'm not telling you you should start a small talk conversation with the passenger to your left or right. But you can. Now, we're going to spend a little time talking about how to do this. I'm going to give you some tips for beginning conversations in any situation. But specifically on the flight with a passenger to your left or right. And again, I'm not pushing you to do that, but it can be very interesting. I've had some fantastic conversations with my fellow passengers. I've learned a lot from those conversations. And so I often start conversations. Sometimes I'm not in the mood. Sometimes I just want to I just wanted to get this flight over with. I just want to sleep for 7 h, wake up, get off the plane, and get to my destination, get to the hotel. But very often, I like to have small talk. I like to start a conversation. So we'll go through a few ways to do that. Things to keep in mind. If you want to start conversations, then we'll look at a few specific example sentences so that you can get a feel for it. Some sort of starter questions, starter comments. Really, the key for starting a conversation is to find something in common. Find something in common. That means something that you share, which is pretty easy in this situation. Easier than a lot of other situations. To be honest, it's actually, it's actually one of the easier situations to start a conversation, something that you share. Well, what do you share? You share that you are coming from one place and going to another. And it's the same place. We're both on the plane. We both left that place. Justin, now we're in the air and we are on the way toward another place. And we're both going there because we're on the same flight. We're also on the same flight where we're doing the same thing, we're sitting on the plane. So we have a lot in common actually, and we can begin with those things in common. This applies to other situations too. But for those other situations, you might have different things in common with the person you want to start a conversation with. Generally you want to start with a simple comment, simple comment or question. Now, this could be about where we're going. We're going to New York. And so I might say vacation. Are you on a vacation? Are you going to New York for a vacation? That would be a simple question. Again, we'll go through some simple examples of these conversations starters. But that might be one thing. You might make a comment about something going on. There's a lot of turbulence in the air, which means the airplane is shaking a lot. The plane is going up and down. And then you might say, oh, that was fun. That's a sarcastic comment. That might get a response from them. Now, be aware of their responses, but simple comments, little remarks, something in contexts. Personally, I prefer questions. I'd like to begin a conversation with a question because I know it's going to get a response. And then based on that response, I can decide what to do next. Sometimes a little comment about their phone case or the book they're reading or the turbulence. Sometimes the other person will just nod or not say anything in response. Or if you made a little comment about the book they're reading, they might just say, Oh yeah, Oh thank you. If you gave a little compliment and not say anything else, maybe not because they're shy or they don't want to talk, they just don't know what to say next. And so I feel that questions are better because it kind of pushes them, it gives them something to say they have to answer the question. And usually the answer to the question can turn into another question a little more easily. Comments. So it's not that you can't use comments. It's just that I personally feel. My feeling is that questions are a bit easier, a little bit easier to get a conversation. Started. Speaking of questions, focus on asking questions. Focus on asking. The last thing you want to do generally is start a conversation. See that the other person may be interested in having a conversation. And then just talking and talking, and talking and talking and talking. That's not great. That is the new podcast that they're listening to. Instead, focus on getting them to talk, then there'll be more likely to enjoy the conversation and maybe start asking you questions. And then you can really get to know them. Get to know someone, and they're maybe from where you're going to visit. You might have your first local guide. This has happened to me on a number of occasions. I'm flying to a new place. I start a conversation after the conversation, whereas it gets started, I realized this person is a local and the place where I'm going and therefore knows many things. And because they know many things, I can ask what's interesting to do, what to locals do that maybe tourists don't do what cool, out of the way things. Can I find where are the best restaurants? What are the most interesting restaurants? What are the coolest neighborhoods I should visit? This is great information. I'm not saying that's the goal of the conversation. It goes where it goes. But that shows you the benefits of focusing on asking rather than just talking. So that's a good thing I think to keep in mind when you're asking questions, generally you want to use open questions. There's nothing wrong with saying, Are you from this place or do you like this, or have you seen that all of which would get yes-no answers. There's nothing wrong with it. But it's also good to ask open questions like, what do you think would be or how do you feel about or what's your advice about or why do you think Or why do you want to or can you tell me more about that? Can you tell me more about that is a yes, no question, but it functions like an open question because it gets the other person talking. If I say, can you tell me more about some of the interesting neighborhoods in Queens in New York. If you asked me that question and you're on a flight with me, I will talk and tell you some very cool things because I lived in Queens for quite a long time. So it's like an open question even though it looks like a yes, no question. So you have open and closed questions. Open questions. Get people talking and thinking about the question in that way, what questions should I ask to make this person want to say more? Explain more, talk about themselves, give an opinion that I think is very powerful conversation advice. It has helped me so many times. So this ties directly into the next thing which is using follow-up questions. Use follow up. And that is when you get an answer, when you ask somebody something and they tell you something about themselves, about where they live, about where they're going, about where they've been, the cool places they visited, something about their past, their history, their career, that they just retired from. Ask another question and use the thing that you just learned to get more information. If you do this, if you keep asking questions, you get a lot from that. And this is broader than just the flight situation. This is, I think general conversation advice in English. If you're really, if you get really good at asking open questions than listening, really listening to what the other person says. Then ask a follow-up question. You are showing them that you're interested in them. But also you're building a relationship with somebody who knows, who could become a friend. Or even if it's just on that flight to have a memorable experience, right? The most extreme case of this was for me on a, I think it was a five-hour flight. I heard I started here screams coming from farther up one of the seats in the front, yelling, screaming and crying. And then some woman was walked to the back of the plane where I was sitting at the time. And the flight attendants said because there were two seats beside me, Would it be okay if she sits here, she's very upset. And that turned into now that was an easy one to start asking her, are you okay? What happened right after she stopped crying, which she was crying intensely unable to breathe. I learned this whole long story about what was going on with her family. And she had just hosted a fashion show that was going to run when she was on the flight, but something had gone terribly wrong. And she thought at that moment that her career and her life was over and that on top of all of the problems she was having with her family and her health, just in that moment made her feel like the world was ending. And it was a it was a very unique experience that doesn't usually happen on a flight. But by focusing on just asking the next question and tell me more about this. And why do you think that wasn't just kept asking questions and she kept just talking it out. She slowly calmed down. She started to feel better. And eventually we started to just have a normal conversation after a couple hours of her crying out-of-control, reasonably so her she thought her life was completely over. And the airline at the end of the flight, everyone got off. The airline, came up to me at the end and said, We really appreciate what you did. This was an out-of-control passenger. We didn't know what to do. And by talking with her, we really helped her calm down. So they gave me a bunch of airline miles with that airline. I don't think I've used, but they were grateful for that and it's an extremely memorable conversation. Now that's not to say that's normal and you don't necessarily want that to happen maybe. But this reinforces for me, my belief in the power of questions for building relationships, especially right at the beginning when you first meet someone. But the other thing really is to not force it. Don't force it. If you feel that the other person is not interested in a conversation, you ask a simple question, You make a comment, and they just go back to reading or go back to sleep or don't pay any attention to you because they're watching a movie. And you can tell from their body language in their responses. Don't force it. Don't keep asking questions. Okay. They have told you that they don't want to have a conversation on this flight for whatever reason. And that's pretty common too. So do not force it or it could cause a situation. And sometimes that's me. Sometimes I'm on the flight. I do not want to have a conversation. I just want to relax and watch a movie or relax and sleep. So leave me alone, please. And I won't say leave me alone, but I'll just politely show that I don't want to have a conversation with my body language. The last thing I want to mention being wrong is, okay, there's nothing wrong with being wrong. If you say something that's incorrect in the middle of a conversation, something you assume you're visiting family? That's a yes, no question. I know. But the answer being no might prompt them to want to talk more, explained more, and allow you to get further into the conversation. This is true in general. I often find it very useful to intentionally say something that I know is probably wrong. Because I feel that people want to correct me more than they want to agree with me if I say something that's right. So I guess you're on business so that you can making some sort of comment. I actually know. And they explain the right way. They feel more passionate about that than if it's just yep. That's right. What you said is exactly right. There's nothing wrong with that. But think about that when you're making your comments, when you're saying things in general in the conversation, when you're asking questions. It's not, you don't have to have a lot of pressure on yourself to not make any mistakes or to say the wrong thing, or to assume something about them. Because most of the time, if you happen to assume the wrong thing, that maybe even better for the conversation, then if you said something that's completely correct. I've found that to be the case. Very often having conversations with people for the first time. So just a few things to keep in mind. These are my personal tips for starting conversations. These have worked for me very well. This is what I use to start conversations. You may have a slightly different way, so just things to keep in mind. But now we're going to get back to the sentences. Now let's look at some examples of some starter questions. Some starter comments that we could use to get a conversation started on the flight with a fellow passenger. 50. Conversation Starter Questions: Remember, when you start a conversation with a question, you can use what you know that you have in common with that person to make your first question. What brings you to New York? This is really common when you want to talk about the place. Why are you here? In this case? Why are you going here? You're going to New York. Well, it could be because you're from there and you're returning. It could be because you're on vacation from where we just left. And it's your first time. It could be that you're on a business trip and you go to New York every other Tuesday, you fly across the ocean to New York every other Tuesday for work, for whatever reason. I want to know about it. What brings you here is a common question that gets people to start talking about themselves. How long have you visiting New York? This doesn't ask that question. It's a completely different focus. Now it focuses on something very simple. Time, how long? Two days, three weeks. But it can lead to a lot of other things. Oh, just a few days and then maybe they'll add just a few days. And then I'm going to LA two and then they might start talking about why they're going to both places. Or you can ask a follow-up question. Okay. Well, what are you planning to do while you're there? Then you can ask questions about activities and things they have planned or if it's a business trip. Ask about their business. Ask about how they feel about New York. What are you planning to do in New York is a very common question, but I wouldn't start with that one. I think this one and this one are really good starter questions. And this might be a good second question, sort of a follow-up to one of these two. If we don't get the information in this question, when they answer this one, we might use this As a follow-up. Now this is just an example. I don't want to go too broad because we can ask 1 billion different questions in this situation. I feel that destination questions are easy because we're both going there. It's unavoidable. Every single person on this plane is going to the same place that might not be their final destination. Maybe it's a connection for them, but at least I know they're going there. Okay. Were you in London for a vacation? Now, I'm talking about the last place. I'm talking about where we're coming from. So we're flying from London to New York. And I'm just guessing. Now, this is an assumption. Remember, it's not necessarily bad to make assumptions. No, I was in London visiting my sister because I'm on summer break. I'm a student and I was visiting my sister in London because I haven't seen her in a few years. Oh, very cool. Now I can ask a follow-up question about the visit in London with the SR. I can ask a question about going back to New York because now I can guess this person is in or from, or living in, or lives in New York. Or I can ask you a question about school, about which university and majors and all of that stuff. So now I have three different directions based on that answer. Then this one, again, maybe not the best first question, maybe a good follow-up question. Once I've established that they are traveling to this place for a vacation or something like that, whatever reason actually, then I can ask how frequently they do this sort of thing. If it's business, How often do you travel on business? And again, the answer might be simple. It's a how often question, it's every few months question. But that can lead to a lot of other things. So these are good for first, second questions that can really start to get them talking, to get them to open up a little bit so that you can ask further questions or make comments, or maybe explore other areas based on what they say. I've been wanting to read that. Is it any good? Why do we have to only talk about the destination or where we're coming from. That's just one way to go. There are many others and I want to open up a few possibilities for you that we can explore to give you an idea of how else we might start a conversation on a flight. I've been wanting to read that. That's the book that you see them reading. You haven't read it, but you've heard about it and you're curious. Give me a review. Isn't any good. Now if they say it's good, Okay. This person doesn't want to have a conversation. I'll just say, nice. If they asked me a question. Great, but I'm not going to push it. I'm not going to force it. But if they say, Oh, it's one of the best books I've read in a while. And then they start talking about it, then we can start to have a conversation. I love talking about books, but what have I done? Have looked around for something that I have in common with this person. Besides where we're going, besides where we are coming from, right? So this is using what is immediately around us. This person has a book. I'm going to use that. That's the thing we have in common. Hopefully they remember our bags. It's been an issue recently. This is just a comment. But maybe we've heard or I've heard that a lot of bags are getting lost these days. That's something I actually have been hearing on the news. A lot of airports are losing bags and maybe we just found our seats. And I'm looking out the window at the lift that puts the luggage in the in the bottom of the airplane and it's putting luggage in and I don't see my bag. So I say hopefully they remember our bags. It's been an issue recently. Now, they might pick up on that if they say I'm okay. Again, not interested in the conversation. No problem. I've got other stuff to do. I can watch a movie. I don't have to have a conversation with you, but that comment opens the door and another comment comes back to me and then it becomes a little game of ping-pong, right? Going back and forth. And that can turn into questions. But this time I'm not starting with a question. I'm starting with a comment and I think that's totally fine. It looks like this is more personal. It looks like you in that bag have been through a lot together. So I see someone with a very beaten-up bag with a bunch of holes in it. And instead of saying, well, that's a disgusting bag, don't starve itself the x. So negative. Start with, it looks like you in that bag have been through a lot together. I'm acknowledging that it looks like a well-used bag, that it's very old. And that's interesting. A lot of people travel with very nice, perfect bags. And I can see that this person has done maybe a lot of traveling. Maybe they have some patches and stickers on it. I see a few that I recognize. That's a perfect thing to start with. Maybe backpacking through the Himalayas are driving from the Northern to the southern tip of Africa, which I heard some people have done. Which seems pretty cool. I've heard this story and it all starts with a comment or a question like this. That's a really cool phone case. Did you make that I'm making an assumption or at least I'm asking a question that is kind of assuming something homemade phone case. And then if that's true, wow, that's gonna be a very good start to a conversation because if somebody went to the trouble to make their own phone case, they are going to want to talk about it and they're going to feel very nice to have a complement. If the answer is no, that's okay too. I can ask where they got it. Maybe there can be a conversation beginning with that. So many possibilities. Again, I'm not talking about all the possibilities because that's not possible, because there are literally millions of possibilities. So you have to pay attention to the situation, the environment, what's going on. And then build that into your questions or comments. And always be aware of whether or not they're interested in the conversation. Don't push it. But it's really kind of like play, I think of it as ping-pong or hitting a ping pong ball back and forth. And that's, can be very fun. We're gonna look at one more, one more quick sets of questions. 51. Flight Conversation Dialogue: Now, just quickly before we move on to talk about immigration, very exciting immigration, we're gonna be doing a dialogue just quickly. I want to show you a sequence for how one of these conversations on a flight could go. I might ask, on the way to New York City from London. What brings you to New York? That's the question that I mentioned before. What brings you to New York? Why are you going to New York? Returning home or maybe you're visiting for the first time. I find out that you're returning to New York. Maybe this person says, actually, I live in the city. And that's the only thing they say. Actually, I live in the city. Okay. I know that there are local oh, well, I'm a local two. Okay. How long have you lived there? About seven years. I think I've been there awhile. And so there I might think. Okay. I can ask where they're from, right? Because I know they're not from New York. That might be an interesting direction to go. Or I could ask a little bit more about New York because I live there too. Oh, which neighborhood do you live in? Which borough do you live in? Don't say what's your address, of course. But maybe we can get into neighborhoods. New Yorkers love to talk about which neighborhood they live in, the neighborhoods that they've lived in. And interesting neighborhoods because neighborhoods in New York are very unique, each neighborhood, e.g. in Brooklyn, is totally different from another. In Queens, totally different from another. Each area of Manhattan totally different from each other. So people like to talk about that. So I'm getting short answers. But because I'm getting answers, I'm still asking simple questions. I would say if this question gives me a short answer from this person, I'm going to stop asking questions I've asked for already. It's enough. I'm starting to get a feeling, although this person is answering my questions, that they're not that interested in a conversation because they're not asking anything back to me. If they're not asking anything back to me, I'm going to just say, okay, I'm not going to say it, but I'm going to say to myself, okay. Enough for questions, maybe even too much to be honest. But okay. The answer, oh, actually, I live in Soho. I've been there for a few years before that I was living in green point in Brooklyn. Oh cool. I could go there. That's totally fine. If the answer is really short, probably I won't ask any more questions, but just e.g. they say Soho, I live in Soho. That's a really short answer. I could ask a question about SoHo. I can make a comment about Soho, but I'm going to try one more. Now. I think in real life, I probably wouldn't I would have given up already to be honest with you. But I'm going to try one more and I'm going to ask about London. Were you in London for a vacation? If the answer is yep. I'm done. I've asked for questions and I'm getting such short answers. This person doesn't want to have a conversation and that's totally fine. But if the answer is yeah, it was really interesting. We stayed in the London her and there's a lot of really interesting food near there. Although the trains, unfortunately the trains were running a little slowly. Some of the trains weren't running because of stuff that's happening there with the railway strikes. Oh, yeah, I heard about that. When we were there. I wasn't in London most of the time. Okay. So now we're having a conversation about that. You finally found something that this person wants to talk about. Maybe they didn't want to talk about where they're from in New York. They weren't interested in these first three things. So you have to be very flexible with this. You have to be ready to shift and change and find different threads. And I find that to be a very fun process, but it takes practice. So don't be afraid next time you think I'd like to have a conversation, I'd like to start a conversation. Don't be afraid to try. Start with a comment. Start with a question. Use what you have in common. Don't say, hello, My name is Luke. It's nice to meet you. Never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever start with that. That is very uncomfortable. Start with questions or comments based on what you have in common and go from there. Alright, so that's it for stuff that happens on the flight on the plane. Now, once we've landed, we're going to go through immigration. That's what we're going to talk about next. So I'll see you in the next lesson. 52. Going Through Immigration Overview and Vocabulary: At the end of a long and exhausting flight, we finally here an announcement over the speaker from the captain. Perhaps something like Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. This is your captain speaking. We're about to begin our approach. Begin our descent into JFK international airport will be landing in about 20 to 25 min. Please make sure your seat backs are in the upright position. Your tray tables are up and all electronic devices are switched off. At this time. The temperature at our destination is 63 degrees Fahrenheit and the local time is 735 PM. Thank you very much for Flying Cloud English airlines and we wish you a safe and pleasant journey. Something like that. Perhaps you hear something like that. I mean, you hear that language, it might not be phrased exactly like that. You might not get all of that information, but usually some sort of announcement to make sure you do the right things before landing. Takeoff, landing, takeoff, landing. And the dissent is going down, the ascent is going up, descent is going down. And sometimes that's called the approach, the approach to the destination that specific airport that you will arrive at or land at. And then usually reminders about your seat back to make sure it's up. Your tray table. The stuff that we talked about, but essentially the opposite, the stuff you have to do to make sure you're ready to land. Okay. Well, then you land. And sometimes in this process, the cabin crew are handing out arrival cards. You may need to fill that out as you're getting everything, recombine, ovulating everything into your bags, right? Maybe you fill out the arrival card. This often has to do with customs, and it depends on the country you're landing in. But you may have to make a customs declaration. We'll talk more about what that means in a bit once we go through security. But this is about stuff that you have with you or may have with you, that you have to announce that you have when you arrive. And it's usually separate from the process that you go through it to immigration, although sometimes the arrival card needs to be looked at by the immigration officer as well. Again, it depends. Things change over time. Sometimes they have them, sometimes they don't. Sometimes you have to show them to the immigration officers, sometimes you don't sometimes you don't have to show one at all. It all depends. So you just have to be ready to fill out a customs customs form. Now, once we've landed, the plane has landed. We get our bags, get off the plane, stretch our legs a bit sore, feeling of sitting down for 7.5 or 14.5 h and go to directly immigration. That's what it's called. That's the name of the department. They're responsible for letting people into the country. And so there's a process here. Now, it depends, of course, on where you go to. Different countries have different types of immigration processes. And it also of course, depends on the type of visa you have. It depends on whether you're a local or not. If you're a local in the country are arriving in and you're returning from a trip, you usually have nothing to worry about. You may not even need to answer any questions, e.g. whenever I come back to the United States, you just scan your passport. They don't ask you any questions, and you just go and then you can collect your bags at the baggage claim. But there have been times when I've visited other countries where I had to answer a lot of questions. And there's a back-and-forth process. Also, there have been times when coming back to the United States after a long period of time being gone, I was asked more questions and had to talk to the immigration officer and my wife who got her Green Card. I had to answer a lot of questions too. Usually coming back to the United States from a trip because she was not a United States citizen. And so often they would have to ask her a lot of questions in which got a little bit complicated. Maybe I can share a bit more about that later. What I like to do though, is give you a sense of what happens when you need to answer questions at immigration. We're going to talk about that and we're gonna do it as a dialogue, okay? You arrive in a new country, you need to answer questions, whether it's in the United States or not. Questions may be relatively similar, but we're going to use that as our example to make it a little simpler to talk about it in English and how you can express yourself if e.g. you are arriving in the United States at JFK or some other airport in the United States. And you need to answer these questions. Alright? So we're going to, we're going to hop over to the board and we're going to go through a, what I believe is a realistic dialogue. Some people feel a bit nervous about going through immigration. But if you know how to do it, it's really nothing to be nervous about. Really. The immigration officer just wants to make sure that they understand why you're visiting, that what you say matches what's going to really happen. And they need to, they need to check that and they use questions to do that. And they might look at some information as well. Then we'll talk about what information you may need when you, when you arrived. So you're going to another country. In this example, we're going to be talking about arriving in the United States. Why? Because I know that process better, because I have been through immigration many, many times and I've seen it from the other side to traveling with my wife, who has for a long time not been an American citizen. And the things that she had to experience going through immigration to. So first, we're going to talk about some tips. And these are things just to keep in mind. When you're going through immigration, then we're going to do a dialogue. Now, as with security, remember we talked about when you're going through the security check, you want to keep it as simple as possible. Don't tell long stories. As with that, you want to keep it very simple. So keep it simple, simple, simple answers. Don't tell stories. Do not tell. Stories. Tell long stories. No, no. Why not? Well, stories lead to more questions. Questions lead to more answers. More answers may not be wrong answers, but may continue to lead to more questions and increases the chance of the whole process taking longer. Not that you would not be allowed in, but that you have to answer a lot of questions that you wouldn't otherwise have to answer. Or they pull you aside and have to have an interview with you in a little room. It doesn't happen that often, but it does happen. And I know people who have gone through that. So the best thing to do is just say the answer to the question. What is four plus four? Eight. Okay, that's all you have to say. When someone says, What is four plus four, say, Well, now the reason I know this is because I went to primary school and my teacher used to put four apples together with four more apples. And then That's right. Don't do that. Answer the question very simply. And you will glide right through. They want you to answer simply as well because they're trying to like security. Move people along. Let's go, let's go next, next, next. They don't want to hold you there for a long time, but they have to do their job. They have to make sure that they're doing it responsibly. Have if you can have a return ticket with you, confirmation of the return the return ticket, the booking. If you have a confirmation of booking number, or you can show a printout or even on your phone or somewhere. You can show that you have booked a flight to leave. That's a very good thing to have, just in case sometimes they will ask that and you will have to show it or they would like you to they would like you to show it if you book a one-way flight. But you're on a vacation, you're just visiting for two weeks for vacation, but your flight is one way. They might think, well, are you really on vacation or are you planning to do something else? Often what they're trying to figure out is, are you coming here to work illegally? That is that is often one of the things. That is one of the main things they're trying to figure out. Because it happens, people come over, they overstay their visas and they work illegally. And that's a big issue for a lot of people in the United States. A lot of people don't, don't like that. Some people don't care. I don't really care, but that's often what they're trying to figure out. Among other things, of course, if you have this great and also if you have your hotel booking, if you can show that to whether it's on a piece of paper printed out or on your phone. And you can show that that is good. They might not ask for it, but they might ask if you have it. So it's definitely good to have. And this could be, this could be in the form of a confirmation as well. Now the other thing you want to keep in mind also like security, there are a lot of common things here. Follow instructions. Follow instructions immediately. Stand there. Okay. Remember if we want to do what they say, just say, Okay. Right. Remove your glasses. Okay. Take off your hat. Okay. Look into the camera. Okay. Place your thumb here. Okay. Stand over there. Okay. Just say, okay, and then do that. And again, that is going to make your life easier. And I think the main thing, the most important one is to just be honest. Be honest. Say why you're going, because they will ask that. Probably. Say if you're visiting someone who you're visiting, say how long you're going to be visiting when they asked that question. Just be honest. And that solves a lot of problems. Honestly. I could probably just get rid of the other suggestions, the other tips here and just circle this 11000 times. Just be honest, and you'll get through just fine. Although I do want to mention these other things because I don't want to cause you any delays when you're going through security. And that's why it's so important to keep it simple. That's why I would recommend having your return ticket, hotel, or conformations with you. That's why I recommend you just do what they asked you to do immediately. It's going to make your life better. And you'll be able to go through and carry on with your beautiful vacation that you have planned. This is coming from, I don't know how many times I've gone through different types of immigration in different countries. Many, many, many. This is the common thing that I see. Why they're asking the questions and the type of questions they're asking, and the things that allow the process to go more smoothly. Okay, now, I just want to say as a reminder, of course, different countries have different rules and policies and you have to adapt yourself to those depending on where you're going. We can't talk about all of them. So we're going with the United States. I'm just using it as an example of many there are common features that the US immigration checkpoint has with many other countries. And I will try to highlight those in the dialogue we go through. But of course there will always be differences. You want to look that up before you arrive. There is a website that you can check for most of them and you can read what they expect. And sometimes they even have the questions that you will be asked. Again. The main thing they're trying to verify is that you are visiting this country to do whatever matches with the type of visa you have. So if you have a business visa, then you are here to do business. If you have a tourist visa, you're here to do tourism. And that's what they're trying to check. Most of the time. I mentioned before that I've seen this process go slowly at times. There was a period of time where my wife had a green card. So that's before you get citizenship. For a period of time you have what's called a green card or a residence permit. But she was in the process of updating her Green Card. And so she didn't have it with her. Instead, she had a piece of paper from the government that said, this person is waiting for their green card. And this paper is a substitute of that. And then it had some kind of dates on it that were a bit confusing. And so that always cause problems. They would look at it and try to figure out the date says this and the deadline is this. And there's an extension there. It was a nightmare because they would always ask a bunch of questions. Sometimes she would have to go into a little room and answer questions. And it was all because she didn't have the green card with her. And they didn't quite understand this this paper extension thing that she had. So they're just trying to be responsible. But if they see something or hear something that doesn't match what they're looking at, your visa or whatever you have with you, then they're going to have to go through a process. Whether that means asking you more questions or pulling you aside or whatever, usually not turning you away. But those things are inconvenient and stressful. And we want to avoid them, of course. Okay, so let's now take a look at our immigration dialogue. 53. Immigration Dialogue Part 1: When you're standing in line to go through immigration, of course, you've got your passport out. You may have an arrival card which you filled out on the plane. Maybe you do, maybe you don't. You may have a confirmation ready to go on your phone to show that you have a return flight. And perhaps show that you have a hotel booked where you're going to be staying. That's optional but recommended in my view, you're just waiting now for that very important word. Next in line. That's what this sort of person, the immigration officer will say when they want the next person to step up. And you might hear that too. Next person, please. Next person, step up and maybe you were standing behind a yellow line. Now you need to step up. Now what should you call this person? Maybe you see on their name tag that says Sandra or Joe, should you say? Hi, Sandra. Hello, Joe. No. Go with the same thing we talked about before, sir. And miss. That's what I would recommend. Joe would be sir. And what did I say, Amanda, I can't remember the day I've made up. Sandra Sandra would probably be miss if you need to. You don't really have to say that because when you step up, you're just going to say hello. Hi, or hello will be fine. Now, what happens? Next? Let's begin with some of the common questions that they will ask you and how you can simply answer those questions. Hello, may I see your passport? Sure. Here you are. Yes. Here you are. You can say yes. You can say Sure, Or you can just say, here you are. If you want to make it a little more casual, you can do that. If you want. Then you can say Here you go. Here you go. Feels a little more casual. I usually go with Sure. Yes. Here you are. Sometimes. Okay. And that's fine. And handed over there, they might ask for sometimes they'll ask for an arrival card if there's one that is somehow related to immigration, that's not so common in my personal experience, not so common. And eventually, as I said, they may ask for confirmations if you have one with you. Most important question right here, right at the beginning, what is the purpose of your visit? What is the purpose of your visit? Now remember my suggestion. Do not tell a story here. Try to keep it simple. I'm visiting a friend in New York. We don't even have to say New York. You can just say I'm visiting a friend. Visiting a friend. You don't even have to say complete sentence. You can just say visiting a friend. Okay? Alright, What if it's that plus you're going to do some tourism. You're going to see some sites visiting a friend and tourism. You can say two things. Keep it simple. Now what if it's business? You can say business or I'm here on business, I am. I am here, I am here on business. Or maybe you want to say a specific thing that you're going to do. Attending attending a conference. Attending a conference. Okay. Attending an exhibition, something like that. Can you just say tourism? Yeah. You can just say tourism. If you just say that, that's true, that's fine. Again, say whatever is reflected on the visa that you have visiting family. You're visiting family. Okay. Do you have the address of your friend? Now? If you're visiting your friend and you're not staying in a hotel, having the address of your friend, they're ready would be the equivalent of having a booking confirmation for a hotel. Sometimes they want to know where you're going to be and they want to know that you know where you're going to be. Because if you say I have no idea where I'm staying, it's not a good look. I can say that generally, you want to know where you're going to be staying. And if that is your friend's house, you should have your friend's address ready to go. Here it is. You can show them that on your phone or on a piece of paper. Or you could say it's it's to to to East 86th Street or something like that. Whatever the address happens to be. I don't know if that's a real address. I don't live there. So if it is I'm sorry to that person, I really don't know if that's a real address. Next most important question, very important. How long do you plan to stay in America? Okay, how long? So what is the purpose? Number one, most important question, what is the purpose of your visit? Answer simply. Number two, most important question, how long do you plan to stay here? How long are you staying? How long will you be staying? There are variations of the question, but it is the same question. Start with the number. That's my recommendation. If you want to say the number and then the end date, that's okay. That's in this example. But start with the number, just say seven days, 16 days, three weeks, two weeks, a month, six months. Say that first. And then you can add e.g. your return date. That's a good thing to add specifically three weeks. I'm leaving on the 15th of next month. That means leaving to go home. I'm returning. I'm going home. Leaving is fine too. So all of those are fine. So we now know how to answer the two most important questions. And it's not hard, right? Very simple. Well, hopefully that gives you some relief. If you thought, oh, I have to explain a lot. No, The less you explain, the better, the more simply you answer the better because that's going to get you through the process faster. You always want to be clear, of course, don't be sneaky or cryptic or avoid answering, say the answer and if they ask another question to follow up, say the answer to that. But don't start with the long and detailed story is my point. So the most important thing here is to just say the time right at the start. And then if you want to add something, say it after you have said the time, okay. 54. Immigration Dialogue Part 2: If you're asked by the immigration officer if you have a return ticket, again, the answer is just yes. And then show them. And if you don't, it gets a little more complicated. So we'll talk about that in a second. Do you have a return ticket? Yes. Here is the flight itinerary or yes. Here is the confirmation here is that's what we use to hand things over. If you don't have it, meaning you don't have the confirmation, you can say yes. It's on the and say that date back to and say the place. It's on the 28th, back to Copenhagen or wherever you're going back to how they might have a follow-up question. What is the flight number or can you show me a confirmation? Now if the answer is no, it gets a little more complicated. Of course, you might say when it is and where you're going back to. So you could say I have a return flight booked on the 28th going back to Copenhagen, going back to wherever you're going. If you don't have it, you might be able to pull it up on your phone. I've had someone asked me that before. Could you show me your return flight confirmation? Oh, I don't have it with me. Do you have it in your phone? Maybe it's in an email and you can check your email and see if it's in there. That's going to cause delays. Number one, if you find it, fantastic. If you don't have it and you don't have a connection, you don't have signal, then you have to just hope that they believe you and accept your answer. So a strong recommendation than to have some kind of confirmation ready with you when you step up to the counter at immigration. Strong recommendation. Will you visit other cities? Common question. That means, I know you're visiting this place, but are you're going to be traveling around New York. I also plan to visit Boston and Philadelphia. Sometimes that's enough. And they'll just say, okay, sometimes they'll ask a question like, do you have the addresses of the hotels or the long version? Do you have the addresses of the hotels where you'll be staying? Do you have the addresses of the hotels in those cities? And it would be good if you have them. I've said this many times already. This is more travel advice. But when it comes to travel, especially for this sort of thing, being over-prepared is better than being under prepared. Things happen, unexpected things come up. It's better to have something just in case, then not have it when you really need it. So here's one answer we could give to this question. I'll be staying with my friend in New York. Okay. There I probably need to provide my friend's address. You could then say right after that sentence, his or her, a dress is and say what it is very simply, right? That's a good answer. I have booked my hotel in Boston or I have booked the hotel in Boston, but I don't know the address. Here's the booking confirmation. So perhaps the confirmation doesn't show the address of the place. Maybe. Again, this is just an example situation. If you're able to show the confirmation, they may just say, Okay, fine or fine. Great. Thank you. If you can show if you can show that, but if you have the addresses also, great. I'll be staying with my friend in New York. I've booked the hotel in Boston. The address is let me see. And then you check and then you say or show the address. And then in Philadelphia, I haven't booked my hotel yet. Well, that's pretty understandable. If you haven't booked it yet, you've got the other places arranged or booked. So it's probably going to be fine if you don't have all of them booked in advance, they probably won't mind too much. Again, ideally, yes, you have it. Just a simple variation to this question. Will you visit other cities? Instead, they might say something like, where will you be visiting? And you could give the same answers to that question. New York, I also plan to visit Boston and Philadelphia. So it's the same thing. The question just may be different. This one may have a variation to do you have your return ticket? Do you have a return ticket? Have you booked have you booked a return ticket? And maybe the answer to that is yes. And they might say then, okay, and that's all, that's it. But I'm trying to get you into the mindset of being ready for anything, right? So that's why we're exploring a few of these variations. And we're going to be looking at more variations of the dialogue in a moment. 55. Immigration Dialogue Part 3: If the questions continue beyond the very simple things like, what is the purpose of your visit? How long will you be staying? And do you have a return flight and your accommodation booked? The basics. It may go to things about profession, things about work. They might ask, if I may ask, this would be very polite of them to use. What is your profession? What is your job? Why would they ask that? Well, they might want to make sure that you have a way of supporting yourself. Not that you have to have a job to get into a country, of course, but it may come up. I've been asked this a few times, so you want to be ready for it. But if you're a stay-at-home mom, you say you're a stay-at-home mom. If your students say you're a student, right? If the answer to this is, I don't have a job, I'm a students say I'm a student, there's nothing wrong with with answering the question honestly. Again, be honest. It's just a question. If I may ask, what is your profession? What is your job? I'm a medical researcher. I'm a stay at home. Mom. I'm a I'm a student. I'm a dentist. I'm retired. I'm an astronaut, I'm an investor. Whatever it is, just say it. It's not a big deal. I see. And do you have any other acquaintances or people you know? So if you hear that word, it might sound strange. Acquaintances. If you don't know that word just means people you know. Do you know anyone else in this country that you're visiting? I see. And do you have any other acquaintances in the US besides your friend in New York, you're visiting your friend in New York? Medical researcher. I've got that information. Do you know anyone else? Why would I want to ask that question? As the immigration officer? Maybe I'm concerned in the back of my mind that you're not telling me the whole truth for some reason. I want to make sure I know everybody you know here, or at least I know about them. I don't need to meet them. I need to know about them because I want to check your story, right? I want to make sure I know you're telling the truth. That's why they're asking these questions. They want to make sure that they know the reasons and that you're being honest. Okay. I have a friend in Florida, but I won't be visiting her. I have a couple of friends in California. And then maybe a follow-up question. Will you be visiting them as well as well because you're visiting friends in New York? No, I'm not planning to. Okay. Okay. Okay. Do you have any plan to work during your stay? Now, this is a very important question. If you have a visa that allows you to work and you plan to work? Of course. You want to answer. Yes. I'm attending a conference. I have a few meetings with colleagues who live here. I'm going to be staying here for six months on a research program. These all match my visa type, right? Business visa. There are different types of visas depending on where you go, but visas allow you to travel and have fun. Or they may allow you to work, or they may allow you to do business, or they may allow you to visit family, different types. So if your visa says that it's a tourist visa and you say, yes, I plan to work. They're going to tell you to go away. They're not going to let you in the country. You want to say no to that, being honest, of course you want to say no. Just say no. Don't tell a long story. Just clearly say no. Unless the answer is yes. Then you say yes and explain what you're going to be doing. The research program or the conferences, or the events that you're going to be running during your visit, whatever it is. Okay. This is fairly straightforward. They probably won't go beyond this and less. They're suspicious of something. They think that you're not being totally honest. Your story doesn't line up quite right. You tell me or the immigration officer, not me. You tell the immigration officer is something that doesn't quite add up, doesn't quite make sense. It doesn't add up. Well then it can go to other places. 99.9% of the time, almost all the time. It's fine. And the worst that can happen is a delay. So again, just follow those basic tips after this. Usually what they will say is, okay, welcome to the United States. Okay, Welcome to this country. They'll say the name of the country or just okay, Welcome. Or they could be a little more technical and say, okay, walkthrough. Maybe they don't want to say that. Okay, walk through next. And you walk through and you're good to go. Hopefully they say welcome to the United States. You want to have a friendly greeting, right? I like that. I like when they say that, sometimes they don't, what should you say to that? Thank you. Thank you. Have a nice day. Thank you. Have a nice day. So we're going to just quickly because I want to make sure you feel really comfortable with this. Do a variation. So we're going to run through a variation. Dialogue of the immigration situation. 56. Immigration Dialogue Variation: We're going to fly through this immigration dialogue variation because we've already covered it. We've already talked about the beats, the main types of questions, the tips. I just want to do this quickly to give you another view, another angle to make you feel really comfortable with it. I don't want to spend a lot of time on it. We're going to fly right through at 10,000 mi an hour. So here we go. Next step up, passport and arrival card. This is a more serious immigration officer. And they don't even say hello, they just say passport and arrival card. I tell you what they want. There you go. What's the purpose of your trip? What's the verb is I've ever driven business. I'm attending a conference in Seattle. So first state what it is business-related, it's tourism, it's visiting family. And then you can provide a little more detail. If you just say business, they might ask the follow-up what kind of business? I'm attending a conference in Seattle or business? I'm attending a conference in Seattle. They don't need to ask that follow-up question. You have to find the line between providing too much detail. You don't want to tell a story and providing enough detail so that they don't have to ask the follow-up question so that you can get through faster. There's a line and it's a fine line. And I think this is on the side of useful information. Not too much. What's your occupation? This immigration person is so serious all the time. No friendly, friendly questions or jokes. Sometimes immigration officers are really friendly, so don't get the impression that they're all like this mature occupation. Some of them are making jokes and saying, Hey, how's it going? Oh, do you have a good flight? I've I've met all different types. Sometimes they're really serious, very severe. Sometimes they're a little more goofy, a little more fun. If I were an immigration officer, I would be the fun type. Tell me a five-hour story about your five-hour flight. I'd get fired immediately. What's your occupation? What's your occupation? I'm a consultant for a design company. Very simple, straightforward answer. I'm a consultant for a design company. Okay. So far so good. Let's keep going. How long is your visit? What is the duration of your visit? Now that sounds a little too stiff. How long is your visit? How long will you be visiting? How long are you visiting? Nine days. I will be at the conference and then I'm going to visit, see a friend. What data are you leaving? This could also be departure date. What data are you leaving would be, I have a flight back to Beijing on the 23rd. Now we assume it's the 23rd of this month maybe today is the oh, I don't want to do that calculation in my head. Today is nine days before the 23rd, and so we assume that it's this month, not the 23rd of next month or the following month because otherwise, I would say that like we talked about earlier, it's the 28th of next month. It's the fifth of next month. Or if it's two months away, then you would say something like the 23rd of August, 23, September, say the month, unless it's next month, then you would say next month instead of the name of the month. And this month, then you don't have to say the name of the month, then you just say the 23rd. And I know the immigration officer knows that that means this month. Do you need to see the confirmation confirmation of the flight? No. I don't need to see it often. They don't want to see it. Again. I was just telling you that to be prepared, but I'm not saying they will always ask for it, so don't get upset at me if you printed that out or have that ready and they don't ask and you say, My teacher, trick to me, he made me more prepared than I needed to be. So sorry. I'm so sorry. But also you're welcome. No. Where's your friend located? Where's your friend? Also in Seattle. Okay. In the Seattle is the same place as the conference that I'm going to. So same location. Great. Okay. Fine. No problem. Then final question. Where are you going to stay? Where will you be staying? Where are you staying? All variations. During the conference, I'll be staying at the Marriott. That's the name of a hotel and then I'll stay with my friend for a few days. Very clear. Right. You may have the confirmation right there to show or just say the Marriott because that's a hotel that most people know. And so it's not a confusing thing to say. And then follow with and then I'll stay with my friend for a few days. This is a very simple one, a very simple interaction. And usually they are very simple. If you follow the tips that I mentioned after this, then after. Where are you going to stay? During the conference? I'll be staying at the Marriott and then I'll stay with my friend for a few days. They might say. Okay, then welcome. Then next. Move along next. Okay. Thank you. Next next person, step-up, please. That's what you'll hear, which is a good thing to hear because that means you are good to go. Now that we've been through immigration, we're going to talk a little bit about one more thing that we have to do at the airport before we actually leave and find our hotel or whatever accommodation we've booked. So we need to talk about customs a bit. Now. Most of the time we don't need to worry about that, but we might have that arrival card which may have something to do with customs. So we're going to talk a little bit about that. Very simple. Then we're going to go on to the next part of our course. We're going to be talking about accommodation. We're going to be talking about how to handle things in the hotel. So if you have any questions, let me know. I hope you're working on your own dialogues. Roleplays, very important to practice. What you learned. I hope you're taking notes as you go along. Again. Don't hesitate to ask me questions if you need help. Okay. Let's talk about customs. 57. Customs Overview and Vocabulary: We are at our destination feeling a bit tired from the long flight, but thankfully, through immigration successfully. And now just one more step until we're out of the airport on the way to the hotel. Or maybe the Airbnb, or maybe our friend's house, or a guest house, or a bed and breakfast, or a resort. A lot of different things. That's a little teaser for what's coming up in the course. That last little step is, of course, customs. But it's usually not a big deal. And there's usually not a lot to say. But I want to just quickly talk about something that could be asked at customs maybe. And then actually take a quick look at a sample form again, just so that you're familiar with it. So that you have a general understanding of customs, what it is, what it's for, and what you can expect if you haven't experienced it before. So let's pop over to the Blackboard. Now, what's the difference between customs and immigration? Are they the same? Are they integrated? Well, sometimes they are talked about as a single thing, customs and immigration. And sometimes the processes are integrated, all the questions are asked together. You may get a customs question. In immigration maybe hasn't really happened to me before, but I've heard about it happening. The purpose for both of them is to really act as a check, right? They want to make sure that if you're visiting this country, you are who you say you are, and you have good intentions or the intentions that you say that you have. Something like that, right? But also they want to make sure that something coming from another country doesn't cause a problem. In this country. Like you bring $200,000 in cash, you don't let them know, well, that's going to have an impact on the economy a little bit, right? Or a bunch of gold. That is something you have to declare. You have to say that you have it or maybe fruit. And who knows the fruit? The fresh fruit has some little bugs in it and that causes a problem. And the bugs jump out and then they go and now they're in this country. This is what customs is for to make sure the stuff coming in is okay, basically. And if it's something like money or jewelry that it's declared. Declared means you say you have it when you're coming here and now we know that you have it. Not that you can't have it, but it has to be declared. And that is the word that you usually hear. To declare things at customs is to say, I have this I have $200,000 in cash in this bag. I have a bunch of gold jewelry. Maybe for a specific reason, I'm allowed to have it perhaps. But I have a bunch of gold jewelry that's worth about $5,000. And so I'm just going to declare I have it, they might check it. I'm going to share a quick example of a customer's experience I had because I think it sheds a little light on what could happen. But most of the time you won't be asked a question about this stuff, about what you have with you. Most of the time, what you're going to do is complete a customs form. That is your declaration, that declares what you have or don't have Declaration. And that is often what is on your card that you have to complete, the arrival card, maybe customs related, you have to fill that out with your name and your flight number and then answer some questions that are customs related about stuff you may or may not have with you bringing this into the country that you're visiting, that if you do that, then you're probably not going to be asked anything. If you have nothing to declare, usually you can just walk right past where customs is and they're not going to stop you. But it does happen. I've been stopped at customs twice. Sometimes they do random checks and they stop you and say we'd like to check your bag and they might just look through your bag or take you into a room and check your bag. Sometimes it's totally random. Random checks. So be ready for that. But you don't usually have to answer many questions. They're just going to look through your bag and make sure that you didn't bring anything that you are supposed to declare. That you didn't declare, right? Make sure everything's okay. They might say, Do you have any fresh fruit in your bags? And so the answers to those questions would be very simple, yes or no, right? Did you bring any wildlife or maybe any dried fruit or any unpackaged herbs? Unpackaged herbs. Maybe they're not sealed, e.g. well, that could be a concern. That might be something they don't allow. And so if you have that and you didn't declare it, I don't think it's that you're going to go to jail or anything, but they might ask you about it and then if it's not allowed, they might confiscate it. That happens too. What does the form look like? First of all, let's just take a very quick look at a sample form from US Customs. I just want you to know what it looks like. And then I want to share my little story. 58. Customs Form and Wrap-up: Alright, so here we go. This is a customs declaration form that I downloaded on the internet from the website of US Customs and Border Patrol on their website and I downloaded it. You can take a look. So this would be a good way also to know If you're not supposed to bring something, right? Those baby ficus seeds that you are planning on bringing maybe don't bring them, or else you might have you might have to give them up. They might be confiscated. I don't know if that's allowed. I'm not an expert on customs policies. I just want to familiarize you with what this looks like. Each arriving traveler or responsible family member must provide the following information. Only one written declaration per family is required. So you put in your family name, first name, your first name. My first name is Luke. My family name or my LastName is pretty so I would put that their birth date, put month, day, year. That's the format that is used in the United States. A lot of people are confused by that one because of the order. It's first month, then day than year. Interesting number of family members where you're going to be visiting. You have to have the address there. You have to have the passport country where it's from, the number where you are a resident, which usually is where you're from unless you're a resident of another country, rights. Where else you're visiting the airline or flight number or vessel name, that's probably going to be your flight number. Aka be flight aka be 48. Right. Is the one I made up before. Then. You get some immigration questions. Well, one immigration question, the primary purpose of this trip is business. If it's not business, then you check no, it's business then yes, I am. We are bringing now the customs questions come. Fruits, vegetables, plants, seeds, food, insects. If I have those little baby ficus seeds, then that's going to be a yes. Right? Meets animals animal wildlife products. I brought my stuffed cat. Oh, no. So that's a yes. If I select Yes for all these, then they're probably going to have to have a conversation with me, right? Disease agents, cell cultures, snails. What about diseased snails? Yes. Alright, and I have the host. So most of the time, probably if you're well-prepared, you're gonna be checking no. On all of these. And so you just walk straight through. You don't need to worry about it. But if you have these, then you may need to have your bags checked or talk with someone or answer a few simple questions. They ask the currency questions. I am carrying currency or monetary instruments over $10,000 or foreign equivalent. So what I'm carrying is worth more than that e.g. and could be sold. They want to know about it. Not that you can't have it, but they want to know about it. And then they have questions for both residents and visitors. For visitors, the total value of all articles that will remain in the US, including commercial merchandise, is what you're bringing that you will not take back with you. What is the total value? They want to know that, and then you sign it. And this form has another page, but my purpose is not to give you a complete and full understanding of this because that's not really that's not really what I'm here for. I'm here to make sure you feel comfortable in these situations, in these travel situations, make sure you know how to handle yourself in terms of the language. Just by the way, why I'm here to answer your questions. If there's something I didn't talk about and you have a question about it. Ask away. I want to make sure that you know what's coming up. I will have to go through customs of that. That's what that looks like. I want to make you feel comfortable with every part of a journey so that nothing is terribly surprising or causes you inconvenience. I want you to enjoy traveling, whether it's for work or business. Work in business, that could be the same. Work, or tourism or for relaxation or for visiting friends, whatever the purpose is. Now, one time, I had a friend have dried a giant bag of dried blueberries delivered to where I was staying in another country. So I was staying in another country, not my home country of the United States. And someone said, Hey, Luke, I'm going to have a giant bag of dried blueberries delivered to you where you're staying. And I want you to bring them bring them from their back with you to the United States, then ship them to me. Which is a weird thing to do. To be honest. I want you to bring this giant bag with you, which is very inconvenient and then ship it to me because I want to save $3. So I put the dried blueberries in my in my suitcase. And I had them in the bag. And when I was filling in the customs card, I checked yes. On one of them because I did have fruit with me. Right. So when I handed over my form my customs declaration, at some point, I don't remember exactly when they called me into a room and they said we'd like to check your bags. And so they did, they took out the blueberries and this process, then figuring out these blueberries, they're not sealed, are they safe? We need to make sure there are no diseases on them. We need to swap them. We need to ask the blueberries questions individually. What's the purpose of your visit? What's the purpose of your visit? That didn't happen, but imagine, right. It was very inconvenient. I was waiting for hours in customs because these blueberries were weird, they looked weird, they smelled weird. They were in a weird bag. I wanted them to just confiscate the blueberries. I didn't care about them, right? I wanted them to just take them away. And I said, Hey, if I'm not supposed to have those, please take them. I want this to be over with, but they wanted to check them and then they gave them back to me and I got them. And then when I got home, that person said, I brought the blueberries. I went through all of this pain and they said, the shipping is too expensive. Forget about it. Ah, so I went through all of that for nothing. And I had dried blueberries in my house for the next several months before I threw them in the trash. And that is my customs story. Well, there was one other thing. When I moved from another country. One time I was living in another country. I got cats in that other country and brought the cats to the United States. There was a bit of a process there, but it was still pretty simple. I had to show a special form that I got when they were born and checked by the vet there, we had to get a special forum and I showed that to the immigration officer. No. I showed that to the customs officer and they looked at it. They looked at the two cats. 12 it looked at it. Looked at the two cats and said, okay, you are good to go. You're good to go. Now, if I hadn't gone through the process of getting that special certification to make sure that they could go abroad? It would have been a longer process. I don't know what the process would have been. I don t think it would have been very fun, but it was fairly easy because I got that certification that allowed me to travel with my with my cats. And so it's very easy. So the lesson is it's good to prepare, especially when it comes to this official stuff like security, immigration, and customs. And if you do everything right, if you prepare, if you have everything ready, the confirmations, when things happen, when you get asked questions, it's a quick yes, no, usually and you go straight through and it's no problem, or it's a few simple questions that you easily answer and then you go straight through. And that is why you should always be ready for this sort of thing. Okay, well that is it for this section of the course, we have covered a lot of stuff. You should be practicing. Making dialogues, making role-plays as a way to remember what you learn. Also, if you have questions, feel free to ask. I'm happy to answer your questions. I hope you're taking notes along the way. Next, we're going to talk about stuff that happens once we finally leave the airport. Stuff that happens at e.g. our hotel. So I'll see you in the next lesson. 59. Different Types of Accommodation: In this section of the course, we're going to talk about hotels and accommodation. Now, why do I say hotels and accommodation? Isn't a hotel a type of accommodation? Yes, that's true. But it is the most common. So it's a good one to focus on for this section. And a lot of the words and phrases we're going to talk about will be useful or applicable for other types of accommodation. What does accommodation mean? This is a place that we stay when we're traveling. And we'll talk about some of the different types, whether it's a business trip or vacation, the different kinds of places we can stay. That's what we mean by that. Now in this section of the course, we're going to look at some different types of accommodation or accommodations. By the way, you'll hear it both ways. Accommodation or accommodations. And honestly either one is. Okay. So we'll talk about some of the different types briefly. We'll look at some important vocabulary that we need to understand to build the foundation. We'll talk about the check-in situation. We did that for the airport. Now we need to check into the hotel. Very important thing to know how to do. And we'll look at some different aspects different from our airport check-in situation. We're going to actually look at a dialogue for that one. We'll talk about how to ask questions and how to express concerns or complain about problems you're having an issue that's quite common as well. How do you do that? Of course, those phrases will be useful in all kinds of other situations too. As with most things in this course, we look at one situation and we think about how else could I use these phrases? Where else could I use these things? Of course, many other places. We'll talk about getting recommendations. When you're traveling somewhere, you often need to talk about recommendations and get recommendations from others. And we'll go over the checkout situation and getting clarification on things before we actually leave and then leave the section and go on to actually going out to do stuff, getting around that sort of thing. So we're going to start with different types of accommodation. We're going to build up our foundation and then get into the first dialogue. So let's hop over to the Blackboard. First, a common question I get pretty often from students. What's the difference between a hotel and a motel? He may have heard of a motel. They're not everywhere right there. I mean, you see them around, but not every place around the world has motels. So if you're not familiar, maybe you are already, But if you're not, what is it? Well, a hotel is a more general word. This is usually a larger building. It has between three and I don't know, 100 floors. Some of them are very tall and there's usually a big lobby. You go into the hotel, there's a lobby and you check in and then you go up you go up the elevator. Usually a smaller hotel, maybe you go up a flight of stairs. And that's not a hard definition, but that's generally what people think of when they think of a hotel. A motel is similar because you're staying in a room, you have your room, just like you do in a hotel. And the rooms may look exactly the same on the inside perhaps. But usually a motel is one, maybe two, I don't think 31 or two stories, two floors and not a tall building. And it's accessible in a different way. Instead of going into the main lobby and then going up the elevator, you drive your car to the door of your room. Then you walk into the room. And usually hotels, there are more nice hotels than there are nice motels. Motels. Generally we have the idea that they're more budget, more lower-cost. Not quite as nice as hotels can be. I think general impression people get. I'm sure that there are beautiful motels out there. Just I just haven't seen them or I haven't stayed at one. No. I've stayed at one or two pretty nice pretty nice motels, but I don t think of four or five-star motel exists. I could be wrong, but I don't think so. So you see these wings and it's sort of like a long row of rooms with doors on the front like this. And then right in front of the door, you have the parking spots. So you park your car right here, right here, right here, and then go directly into the room. Okay. So you're at a motel and the hotel is just more it's more general. Now, what about a hostile now hostel? I I'm a big fan of hostels. I used to work at a hostel and it was a great, a great experience. I've stayed in many hostels. It's an interesting experience because you can meet a lot of people in a hotel. It's hard to meet people and socialize. Hostels tend to be for younger people. Generally, older people stay in hostels too, but tend to be for younger travelers. Often backpackers, often, but not always, back packers, people traveling with backpacks instead of suitcases. And that's it. That's a K. Believe it or not, a backpacker. Maybe I should write that a little bigger. I'll write that one more time. A little larger back pack. Alright. And some of them are very nice. But often you're staying in a dormitory style room. Hostels may have private rooms and the rooms may be very nice. The one I worked at, they had some really nice rooms, especially the private ones. But then the rooms, some rooms will have bunk beds. There'll be some rooms with bunk beds where you're staying in the room and there may be other people in the room as well. And there's a usually a common area. And people will hang out there. Maybe people will meet and go out together and do something together in the, once they meet in the common area, they might, travelers may go out to dinner together or go have a drink together. It's more common to see that then at a hotel, I think it's very interesting. I'm I'm a fan. I'm a fan. The one I worked at also had a movie theater, a library. Really cool actually. Then you'll have home stays. And I'm gonna, I'm gonna do guest houses and bed and breakfasts. Actually get rid of the S there. Guest house. Homestay is exactly as it sounds. You're staying in someone's home and they're they're probably you're staying in one room of their home. And sometimes there are arrangements where you would stay with them for a long period of time. They might rent out a room for you to stay in or you're traveling. And that's just a, a cheaper way to get accommodation. It might be more affordable then doing a hotel every night. And it might be more interesting because that person may be local. So staying in their house, you get to hear about interesting stuff to do. You can get good recommendations. Now that is very similar to some bed and breakfasts. A bed and breakfast is also usually someone's private home that has been set up for visitors. So the focus, maybe on a homestay might be that you're just living with people, right? With a bed and breakfast. The focus is on that place being a place for people to stay. The owners may live there too. But there's more it's more of a business than a homestay. When you get up in the morning, you have breakfast. Usually. That's why it's called a bed and breakfast. So it usually you get breakfast and it's usually very comfortable and relaxing. Maybe you go to a place in the countryside. It's more of a relaxed feeling compared to a hotel. Now, this is kind of changing the idea of a bed and breakfast because of one that's popular right now. A platform that's popular right now called Airbnb. Probably be. That's why it's called BNB. Because the N stands for and sometimes n replaces and Air BnB. Well, a lot of those bed and breakfasts, those AirBNB is now they're just called Airbnb is, and they're not called bed and breakfasts anymore. Although B and B stands for bed and breakfast. Don't have breakfast, that people are not there. Maybe it's run by someone else. And so there's the traditional bed and breakfast and then there's the Airbnb. Airbnb is, can be a really beautiful experience. There are a lot of great AirBNB is I've stayed at. Where you get a five-star place and it's all yours. You stay there in an apartment or a house, you rent out the whole thing, and you get that experience. Maybe there's a pool. Some of them are really expensive, but usually there's a wide range and people can do that as a business. A lot of people will have their second home become an Airbnb. Or another one is called, Let's popular here is called, I think it's spelled VRBO. Vrbo might be VRBO, VRBO. I think that one is becoming quite popular as well. Nice houses that you can rent out for a period of time when you're traveling. Some people might like to do that. I know people who only do Airbnb is now instead of going to hotels, they don't even look at hotels because they feel it's a little bit more comfortable, maybe a little more relaxing. Because it's a real house. Instead of being a room in an Airbnb, there's a kitchen, there's a living room and TV. You can play video games. Maybe. There's a horse a horse in the backyard. I don't know. Just a couple more, two more I want to talk about quickly, a holiday home. Holiday home is what I would think of as a VRBO is a really nice place that you would go to stay. The lines between these things are not very clear. Holiday home, AirBNB, I could say that those are actually the same thing. But there are really nice AirBNB is that I would call holiday homes. And some AirBNB is that I would call more bed and breakfasts, which is where the name comes from. And some that feel more like guesthouses. So it's a little fuzzy here. But I'm trying to just give you the basic idea so that you have a rough picture of the different types of accommodations. And then finally, a resort. And a resort is an all-in-one. And that means that you pay one price usually for a period of time at that place. You go there and you may not even leave. You may not leave the resort because it includes entertainment. It includes maybe a beach area, meals, the hotel room, the room you're staying in. So it includes the hotel and includes all of the things, the music, the stand-up comedy in the evening, and the stuff to do, the mini golf, the pool, the ocean. And usually the resorts are quite large. It's a large area that may, may even have a fence around it. You can leave. But a lot of people who go to resorts don't. They'll stay in the resort for the whole vacation. And then when they're done, they'll go home because it's all-inclusive. Remember that word? It's all inclusive. And usually it's all part of the price that you pay up front. So that's it for accommodations, I suppose I should mention probably a tent here as well. You can stay in a tent. That's a type of accommodation. So if you have any questions about those, let me know. Now we're going to jump into the real meat of this section. We're going to talk about the check-in situation at a hotel. So see you in the next lesson. 60. Hotel Check-in Overview and Vocabulary: A quick note before we start with our check-in dialogue. Situations. Very it's different in every situation. And I know that's kind of obvious, but I feel that I should mention it. What I'm trying to get across to you are the important steps in the process that you need to know. And then some options for how to express yourself in that situation or the other situations we're talking about in this course. So there will be variations. Sometimes the person at the desk is very casual, and sometimes the person at the front desk is very formal. And you don't know which one you're going to get. And it could be somewhere in the middle, anywhere in the middle. Sometimes they're in a hurry and they don't say anything and they just grab your passport and scan it and take your card and swipe it and do everything very quickly. Which is not very good if I do that. Right. So just be aware of that. I'm trying to give you a blueprint for how to handle this situation. Now, I did say front desk. So that's just something to mention quickly. The front desk is the place where you go when you check in, where you go, when you need help, where you go, when you have questions, where you go when you check out. This is also called often reception. Front desk and reception are the same thing. But front desk is specific to hotels or different types of accommodation, but especially hotels. And reception is broader. You can have reception in a lot of different types of businesses. So you may have a call center with a reception area, but that won't be called the front desk. The front desk is a reception. In a hotel. Reception is a more general word. Now you will hear this person sometimes called a front desk clerk, but that is a little old fashion. Sometimes this person is called a receptionist. It depends on the situation. Again, that's a broader word. Sometimes this person could be called the front desk associates. Sometimes this person has a manager badge and their front desk manager. I actually had this job. I mentioned that I used to work at a hostel when I was in my very early twenties. And I worked at the front desk and I did it overnight it from midnight until 08:00 A.M. I saw a lot of interesting things. This was in Seattle and it was really interesting. I really enjoyed it. But part of the job is checking people in, although there's a lot more to it as well, especially at a hostel. The process of the front desk, by the way, persons sometimes to the process of dealing with the front desk person, whether it's a hotel or hostel or a motel, is relatively, relatively the same. So you can use this for a lot of different, a lot of different situations at different types of accommodation. Now I also mentioned the big area that the front desk is in. And this is usually the ground floor and it's the lobby. That's what it's called. This area is called the lobby. It's the big area. There may be chairs there, there may be a little bar there. Depending on the type of place. There may be a little coffee station there and the front desk will be there. And the person at the front desk will be there. If they're if they're doing their job, they should be there. Now, there are few other, just quick words to note and then I promise we're going to get into the dialogue. You have housekeeping and this is the Department of the hotel that cleans it. And they clean your room. And when they knock on the door, they might say housekeeping. They want to clean your room in the morning and after you leave, after you check out, they will be the ones to do that. Of course, we have check-in, but we also have check out, check-in, check-out. Sometimes this is written with a hyphen, sometimes it's just written like this. This word, by the way, also used at a supermarket when you pay for stuff. You are at the checkout. That is checkout, check in. Checkout, check-in, check-out. If it's a, let's say fancier hotel, then there may be a concierge. And the concierge is a person who can give you recommendations, help you arrange things while you're there at the hotel with whatever you need, you need to get tickets to an event. You want to get a dinner reservation. You want to know interesting things or cool things to do. You need help with stuff that's sort of out of the ordinary, that might be up to the concierge. Although not every hotel has a concierge, usually it's a higher, higher level, let's say higher-level hotel and nicer nicer hotels. Certainly not a motel and definitely not a tent. Then you have a valet? Some hotels have a valet. And the valet is the one who parked your car. They might be waiting outside of the hotel. You give them your keys and they park your car for you. And when you need to go somewhere, you call down to reception with a little phone in your room and you say, I need my car in 10 min and they bring it out for you. And this person is called the valet. Usually you will tip them. You should tip the valet if you're in the United States, tipping is an important part of the culture for some reason. So those are just a few keywords. Now. Now, for sure For real, we're going to get into the dialogue. I wasn't trying to trick you with these keywords. I just want to make sure you know them and there will be a couple more as we go along. But now for real, we're going to get into the dialogue. 61. Hotel Check-in Part 1: First question, when you go up to the front desk in the lobby of the hotel and you want to check in. They can see that you have bags that you are ready to check in. But they still might ask, it's fairly obvious from what's happening here that that's what you're doing. But they still might say hello, sir. Hello, miss. Or if it's two people, hello. Or perhaps Good afternoon or high there to be more friendly and relaxed. A greeting of some kind. So there's a greeting and then a question, and you can return the greeting. Good morning, good afternoon. Hi there. That's quite polite. Now, in some cases, you will be asked, how can I help you? And the reason I don't have this one here is because it's obvious. And how can I help you, uh, feels like I really don't know, right? So in a shop, if you're going somewhere in a shop, you might hear, how can I help you? If they really don't know what you're going to ask and they really don't know how they can help you. Alright? A shop assistant, e.g. how can I help you? Or you call a help line of some kind? How can I help you? Yeah. Okay. I'll tell you how you can help me. But this one probably not. You might hear it but probably not. Are you checking in sounds a little direct, but it's possible that you're not checking in. It's possible that you're checking out. Maybe I just didn't notice you before. You've been staying here for three days? I was on a small vacation. I just came back to work. I'm at reception. I didn't see you before. I see you walk up to the desk, maybe you're checking out. I don't know. So I ask, I think you're checking in. I'll make sure. Are you checking in? Yes. Okay. Great. Or if it is obvious to me and I don't need to ask the receptionist. The front desk person will say, Do you have a booking? Do you have a reservation? Either one of those is fine. Do you have a booking? Do you have a reservation? It doesn't matter which one. But that's not always true. For hotel, yes. For a restaurant probably going to be reservation, maybe booking, but much less often. The answer then would be, I do three nights under pretty now, what is going on here? What is this under? Whenever you give your name for a reservation or a booking, you can say under and then the family or last name. The family or last name tells them what to look for to find your reservation or your booking. So I do have one and I'm giving you a bit more information. It's three nights under and then this name, that's all they need. They'll probably searched PRI and then it will pop up because there aren't that many rooms available. How many people's family names start with PRI staying here tonight? Probably not that many. And then they can see that it is three nights, remember we say nights, not days. And so they know which person I am, they know which reservation I am. I've confirmed it with the information. If I just say under pretty it's fine. I like to give a bit more information when I answer the do you have a booking? Do you have a reservation question? Because I think it saves time and it's a little more efficient. Yes, it's a queen room. Look pretty. It's another way to say it. It's a little bit more broken up. Queen room. Is that remember the type of bed? Why did I draw an arrow downward? Put a bed here, I guess. That's a queen bed. It's a queen room, That's the type of room. So another way to confirm it, three nights confirms it. Queen room confirms that. You don't have to say all the details. It's fine. Then I give the full name, which maybe that's okay. If you wanted to confirm it another way, you might say checking out the 28th and you would say the date, that would be okay. I suppose. How about are you checking in? Well, then the answer would be yes, followed by yes. It's under pretty three nights. The order doesn't really matter in my opinion. Now, if I don't give that, they might say what name is your booking under. So here they're asking the question pretty, pretty, pretty. And maybe I have to spell it for them. We'll talk about that in a second. What name did you book under? Same exact thing. What name did you book under? I think these questions are equally common. What's the name for your bookings? So instead of under, we have four. What's the name for your booking? It's the same thing. If you want to give the family name. That's fine. Just that if you say the full name, loop pretty that's okay too. I don't tell them look pretty. That's my name. That's my name, not your name. Probably. Who knows? Maybe if your name is Luke pretty well. Great, cool, fantastic, amazing. Wow. Could I get your last name? They want to be very clear. They want to know last name because that's usually more unique than the firstName. Usually, sometimes not like Jones or smith. But first names tend to be more common than last names. I would imagine there are a lot more Steve's out there than prettiness or Joneses. I don't know. I don't know. Often they asked the last name and the last name is the family name. The first name is your given name. First is your given name, but you may need to spell it. So let's look at how we can spell the name. More difficult on the phone. So we'll talk about maybe how we can do it there too. But in this case, we still may need to spell spell it out. 62. Hotel Check-in Part 2: If I can just say the family name, then I'll say it's pretty it's the same thing for a dinner reservation. If you go into a restaurant, you made a reservation, not a booking, a reservation, not an appointment. A reservation. And they say, what name is your reservation under? You don't have to say my name. No. You can just say it's pretty it's and say the name. Now because my name is weird, I might need to spell it out because a lot of people don't know how to spell my name. They'll think it's maybe PRE TTY. I've told this story before. But it's pronounced very similar, pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, right? So it's understandable. I walked into a dentist's office once for an appointment. So I can say appointment for a dentist's office, not a restaurant. And the girl at the reception desk at the dentist's office said, Do you have an appointment? I said Yes. And she said, What's the name? And I said, look pretty. And she said, Well, thank you. It makes me laugh every time I think about it. It's the only time it's happened. I'm surprised it hasn't happened more. She's she thought I said, You look pretty. You look pretty. Wouldn't be a strange thing to say when you walk into a dental office and the first thing you say is you look pretty? She said, Oh, thank you. And I said no. Luke, pretty. She I think she was a little embarrassed. So I might say it should be under pretty and then spell it. P, r, i, d, d, y under pretty should be, should be, should be. This allows for the possibility that it isn't, but it's just a common way to phrase it. Instead of it's under pretty. It should be under pretty. And then spell it. Now, if you're on the phone, this is different because p sounds like T and D sounds like B, right? So and I've talked about this elsewhere. So if you already know this, forgive me. But there you would say the letter followed by a word that starts with that letter. So P, as in penguin, don't do that face-to-face, spell it. They can hear just fine. They can see your mouth moving right there. The receptionist at the front desk person. But on the phone, it can be difficult. So it's a good idea to use this spelling system. You may wonder, do I have to learn the whole code? There is an official, I think it's a military code that they use for all of the letters? No. You don't need to learn Alpha, Bravo. I don't know what comes after bravo. I don t know it. I just make up my own. But don't choose a confusing word. Don't say P as in PEA. Pea or something. Don't use that one. It's a little strange. So choose a word that's very recognizable, like penguin or deborah. People know the word deborah, the name Debra, right? Now. They might then confirm it and say three nights and the queen room, right? Just to make sure that they're right, instead of me confirming it. Now, this front desk person is confirming it. Three nights and the queen room, right. Looks like you booked three nights in the standard room. And they don't have to say right. They might not say it at all. Looks like means that's what I'm seeing. I'm seeing that it's very common. It looks like it's going to rain. It looks like you owe me $573. Looks like these shoes are a bit tight. It looks like short for that but looks like is a shortened version of that and it's fine. It's not necessarily formal or informal. How do you confirm? That's right? Yes, that's right. Exactly correct. Right. Universal ways to confirm. Now we've confirmed things. We've got the names, we've got the confirmation of which reservation it is. This is the initial interaction. Now we must proceed to a few important things that need to be taken care of. Once I know as the receptionist, as the front desk person that you are the right person. This is your booking. I'm talking to the right person. Now. I need to take care of business to make sure that you are successfully checked in so that you can go up to your room and relax. So let's talk about that. 63. Hotel Check-in Part 3: Usually the first question when you're traveling internationally, especially after it's been established that this is you and it's your reservation is I need to see your ID, please. Could I have your passport? Do you have your passport? Now, this is very familiar. This is essentially what we talked about for the airport check-in. So nothing really that we need to focus on here other than one interesting point. Sometimes when we say things like, Do you have your passport? The suggestion or implication is if yes, of course give it to me. And really what this question means is please give me your passport. It's just a different way to say the same thing. So you have your passport. Could I have your passport? I need to see your ID might be for domestic travel. Some places will not assume you have a passport. A lot of people don't have a passport, but they will ask for some form of ID to confirm that you are the person you say you are. And sometimes because they need that for legal reasons, they can't they can't give you a room unless they have your ID. Now they might once they've taken that and looked at it, they might ask you if you want to upgrade. Sometimes they have special offers on different types of rooms. They might say, Would you be interested in upgrading? Would you like to upgrade? And then they'll say they'll explain something. They won't usually say. Would you be interested in upgrading? Yes or no. They'll say Would you be interested in upgrading? We currently have a special for our sweet rooms where you can upgrade from the queen room to the suite room for only $40 a night. Extra UX sounds good, very attractive, very appealing. So they're just letting you know that they have this available. May do it, they may not do it. And you then would ask about the price. How much extra would it be if they don't tell you what the price is? And if you're not interested, you book the room you wanted, right? Why would you want to upgrade? No, thank you. No, thank you is the best way to say no. But we're going to look at another way to say no in a moment, which is very common. Now, they have some things to go over. Often they will explain rules and talk about amenities. Remember amenities, things that are available onsite at the hotel like the pool and the gym. They'll talk about these things. But they might ask you, if you want to add things, they might give you some options. Would you like to add breakfast? Will you be needing breakfast? I recently stayed at a hotel in the UK, and this is what they asked me immediately after we serve they said we serve breakfast every morning, 830-10 am. But it is not included in your room price. Would you like to add breakfast? Would you be interested in adding breakfast? A really nice, really good breakfast. And I said, I think I had a question. I think I said, how much extra is it? And they said, If you add it, now, it's I forget 20 pounds extra per night. And I wasn't sure if I wanted breakfast every day. So I said can we pay for breakfast in the morning if we want it? And they said yes, but it is a little more expensive. But I thought, well, if I pay for breakfast every night, now, I pay as part of the price that I pay breakfast for every morning that I wake up, right? If I do that, what if I don't want breakfast one morning, then that's a waste. I said That's okay. I think we're good. I think we're good. Doesn't mean Yes, I'm good. If someone offers you something, would you like a piece of chocolate? I'm good. I'm good. Do you want some more? I'm good. I'm good. Do you like another drink? I'm good. Would you like breakfast? I think we're good. So what I meant by that was, each morning I get up, I'll decide if I want breakfast or not. And if I want breakfast every day, then I will end up paying more. But each day I have the option. And I won't be in the situation where I paid for something that I didn't actually use, maybe. So it depends, of course, they may ask that or not. Sometimes breakfast is remember how we say this included? It is included. Is access to the pool included? Yes, that is included. Okay. Now, we're going to take a look at some final information that we may get before we actually go up to the room. And this is the last part, usually the last part of checking in. 64. Hotel Check-in Part 4: Most of the time when you're checking in at the hotel, this will be the last thing. The front desk person hand you the key card or key cards, depending on how many guests there are, you and one other person or to other people. And that will be for your room or rooms, depending on how many room you have. They might say something. They might give you a little extra information. And this could be before, this could be after. So I don't want to put these in a very strict order. Okay. Well, we'll talk about questions we can ask as an option next, but I just want to I would just want to share the most common sort of last things that happened before. You're able to go up to, you're able to go up to your room. Here are your key cards universally handing something over. Here it is, Here they are. We know that already very familiar with that. Your room is on the 10th floor up the elevator and turn left. That could be the last thing. Very clearly, yes. It's written on the room card, but typically they will tell you that you need to go over there, you need to take the elevator, it's on the first floor. They'll tell you where to go. Your room is on the 10th floor and they might add turn left out of the elevator, elevator or lift depending on where you go. Or they might say it like this after up the elevator and turn left. You might say, well, that's not a complete sentence. That's right. We're talking about speech. So things may start like this, up the elevator, up to lift and turn left off the elevator up the lift and to your right. And they might say the room number up the elevator and turn left. Room ten J. Room ten J. Or they might say you are in room ten J on the tenth floor, urine room, Jay, room ten J on the tenth floor. Or they might just say you're in room ten j up the elevator and turn left. And then you would just say, Great, thank you so much. Thank you so much. I appreciate that. That might be the end of it. We're going to explore a few more things, but that's a pretty common interaction. That's how it happens most of the time. Now before or after they might add information before or after. A quick note. Breakfast is 630-10 AM or PM. Am. They don't need to specify morning or evening. Breakfast is 630-10. Of course, in the morning. The pool is open from 06:00 A.M. to midnight. The gym is open, 247. So they might want to mention some of the amenities if they're closed, sometimes, particularly the pool and the gym. They'll say the hours here. The pool is open from 06:00 A.M. to midnight, and the gym never closes, so it's open 247. Now I've noticed that this 24-seven is more of an American thing. So you might say 24 h 247 means 24 h a day, seven days a week. It's the same thing. It's just a common American way to write that. I believe that's fairly unique to America. I haven't seen it in a lot of other places. Then checkout is at 11:00 A.M. very important information to know when checkout is. You could ask the question, what time is checkout? What time is checkout? Sometimes you'll see this written like this or like this as one word. Pretty, pretty common. Sometimes you'll see a hyphen between them. Checkout. Is that 11? If they don't say am, it also means morning because nobody checks out at 11:00 P.M. so some of this stuff, especially when they give hours and times. Some of it is contextual, meaning, you know that it's morning 630 to ten of course. Checkout is at 11. Of course, that's in the morning. And that may be the end of it. A quick thank you so much. I appreciate it. It's fine. Have a great day. Thanks you too. Right. Okay. But what if we want to ask some questions? So let's just review a few more interactions that might happen in the check-in situation that might happen. But in most cases, perhaps not. I just want to go over a few things so that you know them in case you need to use them. 65. Last Minute Front Desk Questions: There are a few things we could call last minute questions, or perhaps quick, quick questions. And maybe the front desk person will ask before they give you the key card and tell you that your room is on the 10th floor. Do you have any questions? Do you have any questions? This might be a great time to ask a quick question. A simple thing that you want to know that's important to you. And maybe it's that they give you something or do something for you. Maybe it's information. So we're going to fly through some of these just so you have them in mind. I just want you to know them. Okay? Then we're going to wrap up the checkup situation so that we can talk about a few other very common hotel situations. Could we get an extra key card? The card that opens your room door. Maybe a friend is coming or maybe we're afraid we'll lose one. Could we get, Could I get an extra key card? Could we have an extra key card? We've learned how to ask for things. So this is nothing special. Would it be okay to get an extra key card? Very common is breakfast included if they didn't mention that, we talked about that. Do you serve complimentary breakfast is another way to ask. And if you remember, complimentary is a word that means free. It just sounds a little fancier, little more formal for things related to services, especially a hotel. Complimentary is extremely common. Then there's the what and when and where questions that we could ask. What are the pool hours? When is the pool open? What about the gym? This is where we've already asked a question. We've asked, when is the pool open or what are the pool hours? And they've answered and as a follow up question, we say what about the gym? You wouldn't use that as a first question. You wouldn't say, what about the gym? They might guess what you mean by that, but you should ask a question first. And then when you want to know the answer to the same question about something else, you say, what about what about what about what about what about what time does the pool open? 630. What about the gym? 630. What about the bar to 30? What about the concierge desk? 24-seven. Oh, nice. Great. Fantastic. Probably not though. What time is checkout? We know that one. We want to know the time if they don't tell us, but usually they're going to. And again, you could call and ask that. You could call the reception desk, the front desk, and say Yes, Excuse me. What time is checkout? Where is the concierge desk? Where is it? Is it over there? Is it over there? I need to know where's the concierge station or desk? Where is it located? That sounds a little violent. Where is it? Usually it would just be a quick, simple question. Okay. Let's look at a few more. 66. Quick COULD and WOULD Questions: Could and would questions are also very common for asking quick questions at the front desk. Could we possibly upgrade to a deluxe? Sounds very polite, very respectful. Anytime you hear, could and would would it be okay? Could we would it be okay? Could we very common? Would it be possible, even more formal sounding to say possible instead of would it be okay, which is fine. Would it be possible? More formal. I liked that one. Could we check in early sometimes the check-in is 02:00 P.M. and we're exhausted and our flight arrived at 07:00 A.M. we finally got to the hotel at ten. We just want to sleep but you're telling me that the check-in doesn't happen? I can't check in and till two, which is 4 h away. Could we check in early when will the room be ready? You could ask what time will housekeeping finished cleaning the room. What time do you think the room will be ready? And if they say to to to well, are all the rooms done being cleaned exactly at two? If one is ready, could I possibly check in a little early? Because well, I'm exhausted. I want to rest. I recently went on a trip where they wouldn't let me check in early and I was so tired and the check-in was 03:00 P.M. and so I had to take a nap in the lobby leaning up against my hand like that. It was very uncomfortable and I did not have a very good experience at that hotel. And my review mentioned that point for sure because I knew that the rooms, some rooms, we're probably ready, but they were very strict and not very polite about it to be totally honest. So in addition to the could we check in early, you may have other requests. Could we maybe the most useful way to make requests? Could we leave our bags until check-in time? That's a very common thing to do. They will put your bag in a storage room. That's an extremely common request. And I've never been refused that one. Then in our question, why not? Are you able to store our bags until we check in? It's just another way to ask the same question. Are you able to, are you able to use very respectful and very polite sounding? But so is this one, maybe not quite as much. I would say this one is more common. This one sounds more respectful. And perhaps in this situation, less direct, although sometimes are you able is used in a very direct way in this case, are you able to do this? Are you able to do that when you want help from someone is quite respectful and less direct. Now, we've gone through the questions that we may want to ask, the quick questions, they've answered those questions, right? And we say, thank you very much, We've got all the answers that we need. We understand everything that we want to understand, right? So we've talked about this. Great. Thank you. Thank you. So much. Even stronger, right? We we are. I really appreciate it. I appreciate it. I really appreciate it. Okay. Now, they might ask because we asked a question, right? They might want to make sure there aren't any other questions. So this is going to be the new final thing we do. Very common question related to service industry jobs. When helping someone is if you are in an online chat or calling a customer service person, this is often what you hear. Is there anything else I can help you with? Very respectful. Is there anything else? Sounds a little I don't care. It sounds a little distant. It sounds kinda rude. Is there anything else? But is there anything else I can help you with? Totally different tone, very formal sounding, very respectful and polite. So just adding those few extra words changes the feeling completely. Whereas if we say, Is there anything else? Sounds like you're impatient and you want to end this conversation as soon as possible and let them know that. Now what do you say to this? If there's nothing else, then you can say no and then Thank you. Or you can say, I don't think so. I don't think so. That's what I usually say. When someone asked me this question. I don't think so. And then again, thank you very much. Have a good day. Then I go up to my room. If I do have another question, I might a curiosity, I might say Yes. I was just wondering there I might ask a question about the city we're in. I was just wondering, is there an old city district nearby with old buildings? They might know the local area. It might have a question totally unrelated to my stay at the hotel. Right. Okay. I'm just curious if and actually, I don't know why I need a question mark here. This is a statement. I'm just wondering if there is an old city district with old buildings. I was just wondering if there's a district with old buildings anywhere nearby or I'm just curious if there are any good places to get Mexican food around here. I'm just curious. I was just wondering was just makes it sound less direct. Sound a bit softer. This is not direct or anything. It's just less direct if we say I was just instead of I am just for whatever reason, I'm not even sure. One question. One question, one more a lot of questions. One more question, then you ask your question, okay? So that's it. That should be the end of this interaction. There shouldn't be anything else. So you head up to the room and relax. Oh, but what if there are problems? What if things go wrong? How can you express that? Well, that's what we're going to talk about in the next lesson. 67. Room Problems Overview: Have you ever heard the expression, the squeaky wheel gets the grease? If you've heard it and you know it, you probably know why I'm talking about it. We're going to be focusing on how we can express issues that we have. How we can, well, for lack of a better word, complain. But why do we complain? We complain because we want to solve a problem. Perhaps we want to enjoy our state. We're talking about a hotel, things can go wrong. Now there are different ways to complain or express if we want to say it lighter, express issues. And this could even be making requests. There are different ways to do this. We can do it directly, saying very clear what we want with no indirect soft polite language. Or we could be a little more indirect. We could be a little more gentle. And we're going to look at both ways to do this. Now, the reason I mentioned the squeaky wheel gets the grease is that's kind of what it's about. Not to say that every hotel will only help people who complain about issues. But usually I'm not recommending that you complain either. This is really about raising issues. Usually, they're not that is the hotel or any kind of service. They're not focusing on issues that you may have that you don't mention because they don t know that you have those issues, right? If you go into your room and you're not happy about something, that's not what you expected and you don't say anything, then they have no reason to help you fix it because they don't know it's a problem for you. But if you mention it to them, then maybe they can help you find a solution. My guess would be that they would rather help you find a solution. When you're there. Then have you write a negative review after you leave you? There was something that you are putting up with that you didn't really like about your stay, whether it was the Airbnb or the hotel or the hostel, you whatever accommodation you chose, right? And you just said, Fine, I'll deal with it. But then after you left you alone whenever I hated this, this, this and that. Well, that's going to hurt their business. Negative reviews are bad for her businesses, right? Positive reviews are good. So they'll probably want to help you if you have concerns, if you have issues, if you have specific requests, the squeaky wheel gets the grease. Now how squeaky is the wheel? Right? You can be very squeaky and that might be complaining rudely, very directly, or you can be a little squeaky and that might be the more indirect approach. So we've done this intro, we're going to take a look at some of the common beginnings we could use to express issues. To make requests. To be the squeaky wheel a little bit. 68. Polite Requests: I want to go through these indirect beginnings relatively quickly because many of them will be familiar to you already. We've talked about some of these, so you should feel pretty comfortable with them. I want to put it in the hotel. Issues complaint situation. When you have a request when you went to complain about something, you have an issue, you need something to be solved. Many of them will be familiar to you, but then we're going to look at them in full examples. We're going to look at them side-by-side with the direct version of that. In other words, how do I say this? If I want to be respectful, polite, indirect, Right? I just want to mention this and maybe it will get solved. And how do I say it? If I want to be the very squeaky wheel to say it very directly and maybe show a little anger or frustration by doing that, perhaps get the issue solved even faster. I'm not recommending it. I'm just saying people who complain a little bit more loudly with more frustration tend to have their issues solved faster. I personally am not a fan of that approach. I don't really like to use it myself, but the results do speak for themselves. Could we possibly could we possibly and maybe this is just a simple request, not a complaint. Get a few more towels. Now. Maybe I'm indirectly expressing a complaint. There weren't enough towels. That's an issue. Right. So instead of saying, Hey, there aren't enough towels, bringing more towels very direct, right? I might say could we possibly get a few more towels? That is implying it without saying it directly. So if you want to be very respectful, polite, you don't necessarily have to say what the issue is. If you know what the solution is, you might just make the request. Would it be possible would it be possible to change rooms? Would it be possible to change rooms? Now for that one, you probably have to explain why, because I doubt the hotel wants to change rooms for no reason. That's fairly inconvenient for them. So there has to be a reason oh, yes. Is there an issue with the room? Yes. We went into the room and we saw that the floors were a bit dirty and it's not what we were expecting, So we would like to change rooms if possible. Would it be possible to change rooms? We would like to change rooms if possible. Oh, yes, of course. Okay. You might have to follow up with an explanation about why you want to do that. Would you mind would you mind taking usually an I-N-G here? I-n-g verb. Taking a look at the TV, it's not working. Absolutely. I'll send someone up right away. Now when I go down to express this issue, probably you get in the room, you look around, the floors are kind of dirty. We don't have enough towels. The TV doesn't work. And then you just go over to the phone. If there's a phone, sometimes there's an intercom box. There are different ways of doing it, but let's say there's the phone, you pick it up and you push the reception number, whatever it is, put that in and then just tell them that issue. Hi. Yeah. This is Luke from room ten, be 502. Do you think do you think we could get do you think we could get fresh sheets? And then I might express why hours are looking a bit musty. Ours are a bit musty. Maybe they have a strange smell. They don't look like they're fresh sheets. I'm not happy about that. Do you think we could get would you mind? Would you mind is about an action you want them to take? Would you mind taking a look at the TV? Oh, yes. Is there an issue? Yeah. There's an issue. It's not working. Yeah. But these are all very polite. These are all indirect. These are ones I'm sharing with you because it's my preference. I tend to err on the side of indirect. But for those of you who liked to be the super squeaky wheel, don't worry, we will get to the super, super, super, super direct ones. Don't worry about that. I'm wondering and then usually I'm wondering if if it's a request, if there's a problem. Right. I'm wondering if we could upgrade. Now we might want to upgrade because we're not happy with the room or we might want to upgrade just because once we got into the room, we realized, Hey, we're on vacation. This is not what we want. We want a better room, a cool room. Okay. So we might request that maybe we go downstairs and say, I'm wondering if we could it doesn't have to be followed by if. We might say, I'm wondering, and then you have a question. We're not talking about questions here. We're talking about requests expressing issues and concerns. So the if would be the most common for that. But if you have a general question, I'm wondering what time I'm wondering what time you serve breakfast would be, how you make the question. I think there may then express an issue usually followed by B. I think there may be an issue with the AAC. I think there may be an issue with the AAC making a strange noise and there's not a lot of cool air coming out of it. It's a bit hot in here. So it's not to say that when you start this sentence, you have to stop right away. You can express it, you can explain it. Clearly. Say what's wrong, say the issue. But starting this way is that natural indirect sound. Instead of saying the AC is the direct way, the AC is broken, please come fix it. Notice with the direct one, we don't have any of these little phrases around them. Could we possibly, would it be possible? Would you mind? Do you think we could? We just say the AC is broken. I need more towels. The sheets are musty. I need fresh sheets. The TV is broken. You just say it. Generally speaking. Again, we'll look at examples there. I think there may be an issue with the TV. What's the difference between issue and problem in this case, none. Issue sounds a little softer. Problem is okay too. It's a little more strong sounding, it's a little more direct. Okay. It would be great if we could. What do you want to say there? Let's just use change rooms. Change rooms. And again, you'll have to explain. We could is a common way to complete this one. If we could, if we could. A few issues. Now there are a few ways to use a few issues. You might use that as a beginning thing to be more direct. A few issues with the room. Number one, the AAC number to the TV. Number three, no towels. And that would be a little direct sounding. So that one is okay. But you're not starting with one of these phrases. You're starting a little bit abruptly. It's a bit abrupt, but if you change it to an ongoing thing, it might be a bit gentler. A few issues are happening. Now. This one would usually be for something that's ongoing, not that there are no towels, something's missing, but something doesn't work. We're trying to use it. The AC, the TV, it's going on in a way would be a common way to use that one. Now we might we might say simply there are a few issues. Number I said issues is softer with the room. There are a few issues with the room. If you want to make it a little even further gentler. We are experiencing a few issues that is very gentle and indirect. It looks like the room doesn't lock. It looks like the room doesn't lock. It looks like the room doesn't have any air conditioning. Okay. Is that direct? I don't think so. It looks like is better than saying well, less direct than saying the room doesn't lock. The room doesn't lock. It looks like the room doesn't lock. It looks like leaves room for me to be wrong. I might have missed the controls for the air conditioner. I didn't see it. Right. It looks like farm animals were living in here. Now, that's not something broken or wrong. That's expressing a subjective opinion. That is an issue. It looks like farm animals lived in here before us, is a way to express that it's very dirty. Maybe the floors are not nice and were not satisfied with the room. Oh, you weren't happy with the room? Yeah. It looks like farm animals have been living in there. Did you even clean it? Now that is going to be a little bit rude, but hey, the squeaky wheel gets the grease. I'd like to request a room change. So you can use change as a noun as well. A room change. I'd like to request a new room. That would be okay too. I'd like to request more towels and you can use a lot of these two. Just get things to you. I'd like to request a wine menu. I like to request a room service. I'd like to request that my car be brought out by the valet. I'd like to request a lot of things. I'm wondering if you could bring my car out. Do you think you could bring my car out? Would you mind bringing my car out? Would you mind sending up a few bottles of champagne? So yeah, you can use these to just ask questions, make requests about things you want to get. But we're focusing here on the issues and the problems. Now a few issues, it looks like some of these don't work for simple requests, like getting champagne sent to your room and only work for issues and problems. But hopefully now you have a general sense for how to use these. Now what we're going to do is take a look at both side-by-side, the indirect versus the direct way to express an issue. 69. Direct vs Indirect Complaints: If you're the squeaky wheel type and up to now, you've been saying to yourself, alright, Enough with the indirect phrases, tell me how to complain. Like I like to complain, okay? Okay. It's actually simpler. Why is it simpler? Because you just say the problem directly. It's almost like you're describing it. So if you know how to describe things, then you know how to complain directly. So we're gonna go through a few issues and look at both how we say them as a direct complaint and how we say them indirectly, less directly. Now of course, the direct way could come across as rude. And the indirect way may come across as or seem kind of gentle and soft. But that's not to say that the direct way is less effective. It may be, it may be. I see a lot of use squeaky wheels out there. I'm not really one of them myself. But I see a lot of you squeaky wheels out there and you're getting a lot of stuff done. And I know a lot of squeaky wheels and they get a lot of stuff done very quickly. So here we go. The floors in our room are absolutely filthy. We'd like to change rooms. So what's going on with this one? A simple and clear description with nothing else around it of the issue, the problem, the floors are filthy. Now we can increase the strength of it by adding a word like absolutely, totally, completely. So maybe very right to strengthen it even more. The floors are filthy. The floors are absolutely filthy. The floors are completely filthy. The floors are totally filthy. That gives it a bit more, a bit more punch. Then the next sentence is to say the solution you want. So you state the problem very clearly with nothing around it, no flowers and happy, happy frogs, happy little bunnies, nothing like that. You state the problem with a simple sentence. Usually this is a simple declarative sentence. Then you're going to state what you want. We'd like we want we'd like we want to change rooms. Okay. Very clear. Now, how do we say that same thing, less directly. We got to our room and noticed the floors are a bit dirty. Could we possibly change rooms? So we've learned this structure already. Could we possibly, we've already talked about that one. Now. A bit. A bit is a softener. I'm going to call it a softener. A softener. And what I mean by softener is that it makes it sound less direct. A bit. Kind of, sort of just, these are softening words usually, right? So instead of explaining what the problem is directly, we talk about the experience of seeing it kind of right. We got to our Roman noticed that the floors are a bit dirty instead of absolutely filthy. It's not so extreme. Then same thing we ask what we would like, could we possibly change rooms and possibly is also a softener. Okay. So there's one Let's take a look at another shower. Looks like it hasn't been cleaned. Could you send someone up to deal with it? Okay. Very direct. Right. And if you wanted to emphasize this, in years, the shower, it looks like it hasn't been cleaned in years. Could you send someone up to deal with it? Now, I would say asking it as a question, this request part is more polite, right? Instead of saying that if you want it to be stronger, you would say you would get rid of the could you? And you would say send someone up to deal with it. Get rid of the question. It's a command that now not asking, I'm telling it's a command that would make it much more, much more direct, much stronger. So the tone of this one I would say is annoyed. It sounds annoyed, right? The shower looks like it hasn't been cleaned. That sort of annoyed feeling. And then depending on how politely you want to say this, could you, Would you mind? Or if you want it to say it as a sentence, a command and soften it a little. Please. Simply use please send someone up to deal with it. Or this. Deal with deal with it. Sounds very direct. To help maybe resolve. It would be okay. Help resolve it. Probably fine. Okay. Now the indirect version of the same thing. I'm wondering we've talked about that one, right. I'm wondering if you could send someone from housekeeping to our room to tidy up the bathroom. I think they may have missed it. Okay. So the bathroom is where the shower is. Of course. We could say here the bathroom, same thing. Well, not the same thing, but the shower is in the bathroom. But if we have an issue with the shower, we might say the shower or we might more broadly say the bathroom. It's it's probably going to be the same no matter what we say. I'm wondering, of course we've talked about as a very soft way to phrase a request. I'm wondering followed by if you could. And you can also say if you can hear, if you want to send someone and you don't have to say from housekeeping because maybe it's not maybe it's maintenance if there's an issue broken, maybe you don't know the right person to send. So you would just say please send someone. Could you send someone to a room to tidy up, which means clean. Tidy up is a bit more formal sounding. It's a slightly more formal way to say clean. And then this, I think they housekeeping may have missed it. They did miss it. It's very clear, but we want to make it softer. I think there may be a problem with this. I think it may be that one. Okay. So we're softening things when we say may be and may have may as a great softener, sort of like just I think they may have missed it instead of I think they missed it. That would sound more direct. Can you get a feeling for the tone differences? I think they missed it. I think they may have missed it. It adds a little bit of uncertainty. And even though I'm not uncertain, I'm certain they missed it. I phrase it in a way that sounds less certain to leave room for the possibility that I've made a mistake. And that's generally the trend that a more or less direct way of saying something would follow, right? Whereas the more direct way is going to have punch because it doesn't have any of those extra flowery things. It doesn't leave room for uncertainty. A direct approach, the squeaky wheel approach, is going to be confident, certain, and a very clear and not admit that there's any room for misunderstandings. Okay. Let's take a look at another. Has there been a mistake? We booked a king, but our room is a queen. Asking the question, has there been a mistake? Is I think a clear way to start a complaint. You could start with a statement. There has been a mistake and that would be even stronger, I think. But has there been, I think is quite engaging. And you're asking them to think about whether or not there has been, right. And then you want to say directly what you think the mistake is, we booked a king, but our room is a queen. We booked a sweet, but this room is not as sweet, but it goes against your expectation. Generally, you might say what the expectation is first and then say the thing you think is incorrect, just like this one. This is a good a good structure. I think there may have been a mistake with our booking. Think is maybe feeling my opinion it's just my opinion May is soft have been a mistake with our booking. We booked a king, but the room we just checked into looks like a queen, looks like is possibly wrong. Again, I may be certain, but I might say it like I'm possibly wrong. It looks like instead of it is, you can imagine why that softer. It looks like instead of it is. Would it be possible, again, familiar, very familiar with that. Very gentle. Would it be possible to change? Would it be possible to change rooms? I think you're starting to get the feel for these. Maybe next time you're in this situation, try out both, see which one works better. I want to look at one more very quickly before we move on to recommendations. The room is absolutely unacceptable. This is a broad statement before we say what the issue is, what the problems are, right? We're making a very clear, very strong statement that we are extremely dissatisfied. You could say we are very unhappy with the room, unhappy with. They're unhappy with the room. It's unacceptable. The room is unacceptable. Again, absolutely makes it stronger. Then we might give some examples. But we want to emphasize that the important thing to keep in mind is that generally I'm on unsatisfied. It doesn't matter. Maybe what all the details are. You have to solve this. Maybe you have to refund me. You have to give me a new room. Barely working AC slow internet, gross towels. I want a refund. That couldn't be more clear right here. We're not even putting it into sentences. Essentially, what this is doing is giving a list of things that are bad, giving a list of things that are wrong, giving a list of problems. Barely working, AC, slow internet, gross towels. And you could do 510 to 100, however many things you need there and you don't have to worry about sentences. Then at the end you say, we could call it the call to action. The thing that I want to happen, I want a refund now want is a lot more direct than I would like to soften that. It would be maybe I would like a refund. I would appreciate a refund, but that's somehow doesn't match with what we're doing here, right? This is maybe the strongest one we've talked about so far. So if we suddenly say after a very direct, strong complaint, I would like a refund. Could I please have a refund? I would really appreciate a refund. It doesn't fit, right? So we want a punchy, powerful ending thing that states, what will solve this problem? And maybe it will work. Maybe not, maybe they won't give a refund, but they will change rooms or give you the best room in the whole hotel. The indirect way to say this, we got to our room and noticed a few issues. Issues is softer than problems. Remember? And notice this common pattern of talking about the experience. We walked into the room, we went into the room. We got to our room. Once we walked into a room where we're talking about what we saw, instead of just saying the issue, right, the room is not acceptable, the AC doesn't work. I got into the room and noticed the AAC doesn't work. So you're telling a bit more of a story. They're providing a bit more context, which could be a very good and powerful thing to do if you're trying to get the other person to empathize with the situation you are in, to empathize with your dissatisfaction. It looks like again, we have this. It looks like it is, It's not working, but it looks like, okay, that's softens it. The AC and Internet aren't working well and I'm not sure the towels are clean. This is a very passive way to say the towels or dirty. The towels or dirty. I'm not sure the towels are clean. I'm not sure. I like that. Instead of I don't like that. I'm not sure I really like that. It sounds much more passive. It sounds more like I'm standing back from it and that has its use. I'm not really pushing one way or the other. Both of these have their utility and have their advantage. We'd like again, we're familiar with that to request. Request is a very formal I have a request I'd like to request could we request We'd like to request a refund. Okay, So we say what we want, just like this, but listen to the difference. I want to refund. We'd like to request a refund. I want a refund. We'd like to request a refund. The room is just we've talked about this word as a softener, right? This is a softener. It's just not what I was expecting. It's just not quite right. Okay. Well, that's to just end not quite. Putting together extremely soft. The room is just not what we were expecting. So it's not that it's absolutely unacceptable, although maybe it is, maybe the way that it feels is the same. But instead of saying absolutely unacceptable, I say not what I was expecting, just not what I was expecting. It's because it's unacceptable, but I'm not saying it that way. So these are just for your consideration when you need to express complaints, when you need to request things, when you need to get things done, when you have issues that you need to be solved. And someone else has to help you solve that issue, has to help you deal with it or resolve it. You choose how you express yourself. The way you choose to express yourself will shape the interaction. We'll make. What you want to happen, happen more or less effectively, or improve the relationship with this person or not, or give a certain impression that you may or may not want. So just things to keep in mind when you have issues, when you have concerns, make sure you're writing your own dialogues. Make sure you're practicing these dialogues and role-plays if you can. It can be a lot of fun to make up a role-play on the spot, right? Throughout this course, I've been doing a lot of role-playing with myself, right? It's actually kind of fun to go back and forth and it forces you to be creative. Think on the spot. And by using the language that you're learning, putting it into realistic situations in your own head or writing it down, you're going to get a better feeling for them. And when you really need to use them, it's going to come out naturally, right? You're not going to have any issues. You're not going to think, what was that thing I learned in that course. It's going to be right there and you're going to be able to use it anytime you need it. So practice, let me know if you have any questions. Let's go to the next lesson. We're going to be talking about getting recommendations or asking for recommendations. 70. Recommendations Overview and Vocabulary: Now that you've checked into your room, resolved any issues you may have had. It might be time to have some fun. Maybe you've booked a tour. Maybe you're going to go hiking. Maybe you're going to visit some historical sites. Maybe you just want to walk around. Maybe you want to do some shopping. Maybe you want to find a coffee shop, relax, drink some coffee, and read. Well, we'll get into activities and getting around and all of that stuff later on. What I like to talk about now is getting recommendations. You're not sure what you want to do. You're not sure where you want to go. Maybe a good restaurant. You don't know the best restaurants. Maybe you can get a recommendation from people, you know, people around you, people who have been to the city before, or even people who work at the hotel you're staying. Now this might be even better if e.g. you're staying in a bed and breakfast or something like that because that person lives there. They might live there and so they know the immediate area very well. But that may also be the case at a hotel. It may also be the case at a hostel depending on where you're staying, of course. But the key question is, how do you ask for recommendations? And that's what we're going to spend a little bit of time on. You want them to tell you what they think you would enjoy or what they think you should do, or where they think you should eat lunch. So we're gonna look at some key vocabulary. And then we're going to of course, get into some very common expressions. Now, just a few things around recommendations, right? We have preferences and this is where we don't have maybe a strong feeling one way or the other, but it's not 5050. If you asked me about cuisines, maybe I like Asian cuisine a little more than I like western cuisine or I like italian cuisine. But they're close. So that would be a preference. That's not a strong preference. It's a preference. If you have a strong preference, that means you like it much more than the other thing. You prefer it much more than the other thing. You may also want to ask about nightlife. What's the difference between nightlife and entertainment? Well, nightlife might be bars, clubs, things like that. And usually that involves alcohol and involves drinking. That's typically what people think of when they think of nightlife, going to a nightclub and dancing and drinking, or going to a bar or a pub. And entertainment is just much broader. It's a broader word. It can include anything that is entertaining. But specifically, if we're talking about recommendations, getting recommendations in a new city, a place you haven't been before. It, it may be movies, shows, and could even include Museums, events, local events, things like that. Stuff that's happening, that's entertaining stuff that people do. And this may be a live show. E.g. a lot of people visit New York City so that they can watch a Broadway show. That's a very, very famous thing. Broadway. Broadway is actually a big street in Manhattan. And a lot of the theaters where those shows happen or on Broadway, but not all of them are actually, many of them are just near. It's a District, It's an area. Now we might also want to know about Tours and sightseeing. Now what's the difference between a tour and sightseeing? Well, it can get a little fuzzy. A tour is usually a specific guided experience. You will have a tour guide. The guide is the person leading the tour, and it has a very clear beginning and end. We leave at 07:30, we get back at 03:30 and we're going to go to places a, B, C, and D. And then when we get back, the tour is done. So it's a single experience, usually focused on something. Maybe you hit historical tour. So your tour, some ruins or An old village or some important historical site like a battlefield. Or perhaps it's a tour based on an interest like wine or coffee. One of the best Tours I've ever been on was in Colombia was a coffee tour. And we got to see the entire process from beginning to end, picking our own their barriers, their red berries, picking our own coffee. Berries that turn into beans that then you roast. And it's a really interesting, a really interesting process. So that was a tour and I think it lasted about five. Hours. Now, a tour is a type, could be a type of sightseeing. So maybe on a tour, you see some interesting sites, but generally sightseeing is a broader activity. This is just seeing interesting places. Maybe going to the Statue of Liberty or the pyramids in Giza or something like that. Sightseeing is just going around to usually well-known places and looking at them. You may be on a tour or not. You may go there by yourself. You may not want to tour guide. Some people don't like tours, and that's, of course, fine. It's just a broader It's a broader activity, it's a more general activity. What about destinations versus spots? Also a bit of fuzziness here. But let's talk about these two destinations versus spots. You may hear in a recommendation, oh, that is a really cool spot for lunch. That is a really cool spot in town. If you go there, That's such a cool spot. It's a great spot to read. What I say. That's a great destination to read. That's a great destination for lunch. Definitely not. So what's the difference? The feeling, the connotation for these is, yes, destination is where you're going on your trip. So that's one way of talking about a destination. What is the destination? We're going to Turkey, or you might say the specific city. We're going to Chicago, we're going to Tokyo, right? That's your destination. But once you get there, then there might be destinations in terms of places to go. So let me again talk about New York. I know I talk about New York a lot, but that's because I live there. I know it well. Visit New York. There are a lot of great destinations. If of course you want to see the most famous things in New York, you can check out the Empire State Building, should you? I don't know, It's up to you, but that is a well-known destination. And sometimes you see tourist destination, travel destinations. If you go to China, you might go to the great wall. If you go to India, you might see the Taj Mahal. If you go to the southwest of the United States, you might see the Grand Canyon. These are all places we plan to go to see something that is well known. Now can get a little fuzzier there, e.g. the cherry blossoms in Japan. Is that really a destination? Well, it's happening all over the place. So maybe not, that's more of an event than a destination. Something happening on a specific day or during a specific period. Probably not a destination like the one in Thailand to the festival, right? That one is a thing that happens over a period of time. It doesn't happen all year and it's not at a specific place, so it's not a destination, it's a kind of cultural events that you can go and experience. So things like that. I have an admission to make. I've never been in the Empire State Building in my many years of living in New York, I've never been to the Statue of Liberty. I have been to Central Park many times because it's a nice place to walk around. So that's cool. I like Central Park, but I've not been to many famous destinations. So then a spot would be something smaller, maybe not so famous, but just a way to describe a place that is attractive or I think is attractive for some reason, what I'm recommending it, I might use the word spot, I might use the word place, either one. Alright, that's a great place to eat, That's a great spot. It's a very relaxing spot. Often you'll have adjectives in front of it. Relaxing spot, peaceful spot, beautiful spot, things like that. Okay, so that's the general difference. Now a couple other things I want to make sure we talk about before we get into the expressions were flying through these as fast as we can. Venues. These are events spaces. Maybe this is where a concerts are held or maybe where you would go to see shows. A well-known place where events or things happen, like concerts would be a venue. And then you might have questions about things that are going on on-site. And this one comes up a lot for resorts. So on-site entertainment, things that happen on-site comedy shows, juggling clowns, performances that might happen if you go on e.g. a. Cruise. There are a lot of things that happen on the cruise on the resort. At the resort, those are on-site. And again, you can talk about more general things at the hotel, e.g. at the Airbnb or the bed and breakfast or the guest house, what things are specifically there where you're staying at your accommodation? They have maybe a backyard with a barbecue. They have maybe laundry machines, onsite onsite laundry machines. So it just means it's there. It's a thing that's there and that is often similar to a word we talked about before, which is amenities. If you remember, we talked about amenities, the things that this place has which are attractive. Well, those things that, that place has which are attractive are on site. But the difference might be that we can use that onsite to talk about more than just amenities we can talk about, as I mentioned, things like performances and entertainment and cool stuff that happens. Maybe we have live shows onsite all summer long. It happens there where you are staying. Now. I did also mentioned I just want to make sure you know this word concierge. We talked about this one, but this is the person who's going to help you get things done. Usually at a hotel, usually at a nicer hotel, maybe a four or five-star hotel. There will be a concierge to help you book tickets to shows, to help you find nice places to go to, help arrange things for you. Basically the person whose job is to get things done for the guests to make sure their experience is as enjoyable as possible. Okay, So we've gone through a few keywords. We've got a foundation. Let's get into a few examples. 71. Common Ways to Ask for Recommendations: How do we ask for recommendations? How do we get suggestions on what to do, what to eat, what to see, what to experience in a place that we are visiting. Even if it's a business trip. You might want to relax in the evening and you might want to know a good place to get a drink, a good place to get some curry, a good place to relax, a good place to see a show, right? So very simply, and you can use this for all kinds of other situations, not just this one, of course, I say that a lot, but I want you to keep that in mind. We're learning things in specific situations that we can use elsewhere in other situations. Could you recommend? And let's use the word spot because we talked about that. A good a good barbecue spot. So maybe you go to Texas and you're in Austin, Texas. And you've never been there before. You're visiting Austin? Well, Austin, Texas in general is famous for barbecue. So could you recommend a good barbecue spot? I love to have some barbecue. Could you recommend a good place to get barbecue? Could you recommend usually followed by a or some. Could you recommend some good sushi restaurants? Could you recommend good Thai restaurant? Okay. Where would you suggest going for? Now here you could say a lot of different things. Where would you suggest going for maybe a relaxing evening? You have criteria. These are your criteria that you're giving with the question when you ask for recommendations, when you ask a question that you're going to get feedback about, you may provide criteria because then it's not just a wild, random answer. Can you recommend me something? I recommend? You asked me a more specific question. So you have to, it's a good idea to provide some criteria in your question or in your request in order to make it a little narrower so that the thing that you get back, the recommendation you get back is better. Write a good barbecue spot. I don't want to just eat anything. I want barbecue in Austin, Texas. Okay. Where would you suggest going for a relaxing evening With friends? Where would you recommend going for a relaxing evening with friends is going to narrow down the choices. And of course it's still subjective. Whoever you ask is going to be giving their opinion, right? And you can ask this to anybody, not just the person working in the hotel. Whoever might have a good answer or be able to provide good recommendations if you visit New York, you can ask me, I have lots of great recommendations, particularly in terms of cuisine. Yes. Okay, so this is my criteria. And there I might get a couple of suggestions, but I could be simpler with this. I could say, Where would you suggest going for brunch? People like to have brunch maybe on a Saturday morning. Ah, there's a very famous brunch spot. I went to a great brunch place in London called I think it's called beam. And that was really good. Someone recommended it to me. Oh, for brunch, I would recommend. And sometimes the answer goes like that. For, for that, I would suggest, I would recommend, I would say try this place, try Beam. Oh, it's very good. They have great. I can't remember what I ordered, but I liked it. I went there twice. I'm looking for I'm looking for a good tour to go on. And then you could add with my kids. So it's a family trip, family vacation. I'm looking for a tour to go on with my kids. Now, you might say, okay, Is that a question? No. It's suggesting a question. You can add to that. Any any any suggestions, but you don't have to add that if you want to add any suggestions to make sure that they know it's a question for them. That's alright, right? But this should be enough to get them to give you a few good suggestions. I'm looking for a good tour to go and I'm looking for a good spot to work. Maybe that's a coffee shop. Oh, there's a great coffee shop. They might just say immediately what it is. Oh, there's a great coffee shop on this street and this street called Say the name, remember the name. And it's usually pretty quiet during the day, that would be a good place to work. Okay. Thank you for the suggestion. Thanks a lot for the recommendation. I'm looking for a good bookstore. Looking for a good bookstore. There's a very good bookstore. It's called the strand. A lot of people like that one, it's huge, so it has a great selection and it's not too far away. Okay? There are all kinds of things you can add there. These first three are so powerful, such great ways to ask for recommendations. You could get along with just those three, no matter what you need to ask about. Now, we're getting a little more specific though we'd like to book. Okay, so now I'm not talking to just a random person on the street or a friend. If you talk to me and say, Hey Luke, I'd like to book Whoa, I'm not able to book anything for you. If you want me to give you a suggestion or a recommendation? Yes. Sure. No problem. But I can't I can't book anything for you. You have to book it yourself. Oh, but if you're talking to a person who works at the front desk of a hotel. If you're talking to a person who works at a guest house and their job is to help you book things or you're talking to the concierge and they can help you do that, then this would be a good thing to say. We'd like to book tickets to Wicked. There's a well-known show. I don't know if it's still running, but it's a pretty famous show. It's called Wicked on Broadway. We'd like to book tickets to Wicked on Friday. Then if you want it to make it a request because it kind of is, then you would go to the requests which we talked about. Could you could you help us with that? Could you help us with that? Do you think you could help us with that? Would you mind helping us with that? Could you possibly help us with that? Okay. We know how to do that, right? We'd like to book you could phrase it another way. Could we possibly book, book a tour booked tickets, book something that the hotel has, maybe the hotel, one of the amenities is that they provide, they have a spar and they provide massages and you go down to the front desk and say, yeah, we'd like to book a massage for some time this evening. Okay. Would seven B. Okay. Yes, absolutely. A 30-minute or one-hour massage. You could do the one-hour massage for both of you? Yes. That would be great. Alright. And then they'll take care of that for you. So you're booking a service at the hotel that you probably have to pay for extra if it's not included in your room. Although for a resort, it may be included because a lot of those resorts are all inclusive. Do you have suggestions for good hiking spots? Do you have suggestions for good hiking spots? Do you have a good suggestion if you wanted to make it singular, you could. A good suggestion for a place to hike. Do you have suggestions for maybe a place to see nature or some nature areas? Do you have suggestions for maybe fun things to do on weekends? Do you have maybe do you have suggestions for goods shows to see? We were thinking about going to see a Broadway show. Do you have suggestions for extreme activities, all of those sorts of things. You're of course going to get a subjective answer. But you might ask, what's popular? What do people tend to like? Oh, there are a lot of interesting activities in the area. We have tours and shows, a lot of things going on. There's a farmer's markets happening in a street fair going on tomorrow. Then you might say, well, which of those is most popular? What do people usually enjoy most? Which is most popular? What do people tend to enjoy most then? It's subjective according to them, yes, but they're also telling you what other people think about it and you can search the tours and experiences and things like that, usually in a local place and read reviews, which is what I like to do. Where's the best place to get dumplings? Where's the best place to get dumplings? Or now that's a tricky one because maybe they don't know, right? Where's the best place to get sushi? Where's the best place to get Mexican food? Where's the best place to get Italian food? Where's the best bar? Where's the best breakfast spot? You don't have to say place. It's tricky though, because if they don't know the place, they don't know the best place, you might have to ask a different question, but usually usually someone who works here, we'll know the area fairly well, right? Best place is very common. But if you want to say, where's the best Indian restaurant, that's fine. Where's the best coffee shop? You can say the thing directly or place to get, which is also very common. Alright? So now you have some very useful phrases for booking things and asking for recommendations. These are really powerful, really common. Be prepared to have a conversation when you use them. Make sure you're practicing them in the next lesson, which is the last lesson. In this section, we're going to be talking about the checkout process. How do you check out? A few things that we may need to do to get clarification before we go on to our next section, which I think is going to be a very interesting section. We're going to be talking about going out to do stuff, actually getting around, finding our way around and getting some help if we need it. Okay, so I'll see you in the next lesson. 72. Checking Out: Just quickly before we go on to our next section about getting around on a trip, I want to explore the last step in the process in terms of accommodation. And that is checking out. Checking out when you leave your key card with the front desk at the hotel. And there's a similar process for different types of accommodation. Well, what do you say in this situation? Is it complicated? Is it difficult? It's actually extremely simple. Sometimes so simple that there's nothing to do. In some cases, e.g. at a hostel, you can toss your key card the front desk and leave. And they will know you have checked out because you you were supposed to do that at a certain time? Maybe no one was at the front desk when you went down to the lobby. So you throw them on the front desk and left. Now, at a hotel, there is often a bit more of a process because maybe you had some extra charges. Maybe you had a couple of questions and maybe you don't want to just throw the cards on the front desk and leave. In fact, I don't recommend you do that even if you can have that personal interaction. So what do you say when you want to check out? Well, that's it. We'd like to check out. We'd like to check out, please. Now, you knew what time checkout was because you asked what time is checkout? What is checkout time? Remember, we talked about the one-word, two-word thing. If you use it as a noun, then it's one word. What is, what is checkout time? When is checkout? One word as a noun, two words, when we're using it as a verb, we'd like to check out. If you want to add a pleased to it. Go ahead, Adam, please. Now you could say that or you could say that and follow it with, I think you can guess this by now. You should be by now feeling like, okay, I think I know these phrases where I say what I want and where I ask questions, simple questions, I know how to do this. I'm familiar with it. Do we need more? Well, good. I'm glad you feel that way. If you feel that way, that means you're getting really comfortable with the phrases, the expressions we've been talking about. So if you feel really good about this, you know, this stuff, okay, I get it. That is fantastic. Here are the or our key cards. You can use just keys. That's okay too. So simple things. Now, I want to provide just a few simple questions that you may want to ask around the time of checkout. Maybe before checkout, if you want to extend a little bit, maybe at checkout, what are some things you might wonder about around this process of checking out, this very simple process. So let's just quickly go through a few. You might say, would it be okay to checkout in our late. Now they might have a policy around this. They might say, It's okay. But there's a fee, There's a ten pound fee, there is a 200 dollar fee that would be extremely high. There might be some kind of fee extra that you have to pay. Sometimes they'll just be cool with it. There'll be okay and they'll say That's fine. Sometimes they're on a very tight schedule. They have to get the rooms clean for the next guest and they want you to check out on time. And if you don't check out, they might call your room and say, yes. Are you planning to check out by 11:00 A.M. 11:00 A.M. in my experience, is the most common checkout time. 12 is pretty common as well, ten I've experienced, but that seems way too early for me to check out at ten unless you have a reason to leave early. One. I don't think I've experienced a 1PM checkout before. So would it be okay, we're wondering this right? You're familiar with this way to phrase it, to check out an hour late, and then you respond based on what they say. Could we leave our bags at reception? This is the same as the check-in process we talked about. This question is just in the opposite case. Now, our flight is at 08:00 P.M. we have to check out at 11. So from 11 until the time we go to the airport around five, we're going to just walk around the city. We're going to go out for lunch. We're gonna do some shopping, pickup, some souvenirs for our friends. Usually you do that on the last day before you go back some gifts for your friends to say, hey, I got you something I was thinking about you. You do it five-minutes before you leave, right? You know it, you know, you do. It's not just me, right. So do you want to take your bags with you the whole day? No, absolutely not. Usually, it's fine to leave them. At reception or at the front desk, would you mind arranging a taxi to the airport? Would you mind we're familiar with this phrasing again, nothing new here, nothing we haven't talked about. Just in a slightly different context. The checkout situation. Is it okay, again, familiar to charge my card, the extra meals. Maybe you're asking, you know, you have to pay $83 extra because you ate some meals at the hotel and that wasn't part of your stay. So you have a few extra charges, which is fairly common, and you just put it on the room when you're staying in the room, during your stay, if you get something extra, the waiter, if there's a restaurant there may say, Would you like me to put that on the room? Would you like me to put it on your room? Or you could ask, could you just put that on our room? Maybe you'll get a drink. Maybe you have breakfast and it's not included, right? And then when you check out, they will charge you for that because they have your credit card on file already. When you checked in, they got your credit card or when you booked the room, it's on file, then they can just charge that directly, probably. But sometimes they might ask you to pay there and you may want to pay cash. There are different ways to do that, so I want them to charge my card. Is it okay to charge my card for the extra meals? Are there any remaining charges? Maybe I want to check. I don't think there are. The last thing I want is to get home and then see there's a 237 dollar charge and I forgot about that thing. It's going to kind of make me think badly about my stay there. I might have a slight negative feeling, so no surprises. Okay. Are there any remaining charges? Any charges left? Same thing. Any charges left? Left remaining. Same thing. Stuff that I need to pay, stuff that hasn't been paid, remaining in left here would be the same thing. Now, we may have some when questions. There might be some where questions, there might be some wind questions. Again, you're familiar with how to, how to bring those up, how to ask those. But if you get a when question, it might be, when does the airport shuttle leave? When does the airport shuttle leave? Maybe it leaves every 30 min. Maybe it leaves every hour. I want to make sure I have checked out in time to catch my flight. I want to get on the shuttle that the hotel provides to the airport. Okay. When will when will my deposit? It has a weird maya. The y is far away from the m. My deposit be refunded. So maybe there was a deposit when you checked in. Often a hotel will take a deposit, a certain amount of money, and then refund that when you check out in case you destroy the room for some reason, right? They want to protect themselves. So you might want to know when that will be returned to your card and maybe it's within three days, within seven days. Sometimes it doesn't happen for seven days after you originally get charged the deposits. So those are fairly straightforward and the where questions would be similar. Where does the airport shuttle leave from? I don't know where it will be where I should wait for the airport shuttle. Right? So you know how to ask those questions. Now, what if I want to express something simple as I leave? I've got my bags, I've checked out, I've turned over or handed in my key card. What do I say when I leave? Well, the same thing you might say in any situation where you had a good experience. Thanks. This is what I like to say. Thanks for everything. Thanks for everything. I had a dinner at a friend's house yesterday and as I was leaving, I said thanks for everything. So it's not just for a hotel, is not just for a restaurant. Anytime you were at some thing or doing something and something was provided to you and you feel grateful and you're now leaving, right? This is a great thing to say. Thanks for everything. Bye, See you. Thank you, Right. We we hope now this one I could not have used yesterday. We hope to stay again, stay at the hotel again. I'm expressing a wish and I'm also telling them that I enjoyed my stay because if I say I want to stay again, that means I probably enjoyed it unless I'm just being nice. Right? Unless I'm just being extra polite. You wouldn't say that at a friend's house though because you're not staying there. And if you were, that would be like inviting yourself pack. Yet, wait until you invite me to another dinner. That would be a little strange, right? A similar variation of this. I really enjoyed someone staying by themselves, right? I really enjoyed, of course, when I say we hear that suggests that it's me and someone else. If I say I, it's just me, it should reflect the situation. If it's one person or if it's several people staying together. I really enjoyed my stay. And then a simple thank you and bye and take care. They would say probably something like that. Travel safe is a common thing to say. Safe travels, travel safe, have a good flight, right? That's a nice common wish. Have a have a nice flight. And I hope, we hope you enjoy the rest of your trip. Maybe they know that I'm going to another place next. We hope you enjoy the rest of your trip. You might hear that sort of thing. Good wishes, right? Positive comments. Take care, be safe, have fun. Have fun is a little bit casual, but all of these are sort of similar as part of what we could call a farewell or a goodbye that we could use in this sort of situation. Okay, So we're familiar with that now we've completed the accommodation experience. If you have any questions about any of this stuff, we focused on the hotel situation because that's the most common. And also because a lot of the stuff we've learned is applicable to similar types of accommodation. The ones that we talked about, a resort, a cruise, although probably not a tent, unless you're talking to the animals of the forest, Let's suppose. But if you have any questions about this, just ask. I would be happy to explain more about specific things that may happen when you're staying somewhere. If there's anything you're really curious about, let me know. And of course, I hope you're practicing. Write a dialogue with the phrases that we're learning for each situation. Write your own dialogues like I did. You can follow mine as a general guide, but make it unique to you. And if you really want to challenge yourself, do a role-play. Don't write it down in advance. You can write down a few of the phrases you want to use, but do it live with yourself. Play both parts that can actually be quite fun. Record it, and then give yourself some feedback. Listen to the recording, and give yourself feedback. Okay, so good luck with your practice. Let me know if you have any questions and I will see you in the next lesson. 73. Section Overview and Transportation Verbs: When you're on a trip, especially a vacation, you want to enjoy yourself. You don't want unexpected things to happen. You want things to go according to plan. If it's a business trip, you need to make sure that you can go where you need to go on time, so that you're not late for some important thing which can cause all kinds of problems, right? So in this section of the course, we're going to be focusing on this stuff. On getting around, getting where you need to go, talking about, getting where you need to go, about transportation and directions, and asking for help in some situations, right? We're gonna be talking about what happens when things go wrong. How do you express that? How do you explain that? We're going to be doing descriptions. We're going to be looking at specific situations. Of course, a lot of words and phrases, as we have been talking about so far. We're going to start with an overview of transportation. Then we're going to do a deep dive of the topic, how to talk about different types of transportation, including very common and useful vocabulary and phrases, stuff that you really need if you want to get around. So let's hop over to the Blackboard. What we're going to look at first in this overview are a few key things that you need to know that you need to keep in mind when you're talking about transportation, when you're talking about getting around. Getting around as often a phrase we use to talk about going from place to place. How do you usually get around? If you live in a city, maybe that's transportation. If you live in the countryside, maybe that's by bicycle, by car. And we're going to talk about all of that stuff. Of course, not just that basic vocabulary, but how to talk about it. But a few important things to keep in mind that I want to make sure that you that you don't forget because sometimes when you're in those situations, it's easy to forget in the moment, right? The first is about verbs. When it comes to talking about transportation, verbs are really important, the verbs you choose. But the nice thing is, there are a few which are extremely common. And I want to mention those so that you're aware of them. They are the common ones grab. And I should say this is especially American English. I should mention that take maybe the best one, get, catch. Sometimes, oops, there we go. Sometimes hop. And we always have on here to hop on and forget. I'm gonna put, get on or in. Okay? So these are the most common verbs that you're going to see associated with travelling around and going places. And this is going to be connected to usually the way you get there. The mode of transportation, which again we will talk about. So grab what? A, grab us something, grab a taxi, right? Maybe grab a bus. What is the feeling of Grab though? And we use that. It's got a very casual, quick unplanned connotation as though, oh, I'll just grab one of those. I'll just grab a taxi, grab an Uber, let me just quickly grab a bus. Right. And it's not like you scheduled it in advance now, it doesn't mean that you didn't schedule it in advance. But the feeling that we get when we say grab, we use grab when we go to the supermarket, I'm going to grab a few things. I'm going to grab some candy, I'm going to grab a bottle of water. It's a quick feeling and it's kind of casual. It's a snappy kind of thing. Take is more neutral, then take just connects us to whatever that is. Take the subway, take a bus, take the bus, take a ferry. Okay? Now, there are some things we can take and some things we cannot take. Usually e.g. we wouldn't say take a car if we're driving the car. So we are along for the ride, but usually someone else's in control of that. So you can Take a taxi and you can take an Uber, and you can take a ferry, and you can take a plane. You can take a lot of things. But you're not the one driving it, right? We would use take as a way to connect ourselves to transportation, mode of transportation, mode of transportation under someone else's control. Get now, this one is about usually about where we are. It's about our relationship to that thing we're grabbing take are just about that being the way we get to the place, right? That's the mode. It's a bicycle, It's a taxi, it's a bus, it's a subway, it's a train, a train. And we can use get that way. So if you say, if you say Get a train, if you say Get a train, get the, get the F. We'll talk about that in a second. That would be the name of e.g. a. Subway train. That's okay. It has the same feeling as Grab and we can use that, use that usually in the same way. But then we say on an end, and that's different. That's about our relationship to that thing. So get on. What do we get on the plane? We talked about that, right? We board the plane, we get on the plane, get in, well, what do we get in a taxi? Now? Why would we use one rather than the other? Why would we use for on it? It's usually a big thing, a ferry, a plane, right? We're talking about our relationship between ourselves and that big thing. Or in again, physically I'm inside of the taxi. Right. Why would we use that instead of the one that's the same as Grab? Well, it depends on how we want to describe what we're doing. If I'm on the phone and I say, Oh, I'm about to get on the subway and I'm on the phone, then, you know, maybe I won't have reception or it's going to be noisy. You won't be able to hear me very well. I'm talking about what my body is about to do, rather than just talking about how I'm going to get there. So it's a little bit more immediate, it's a little bit more personal. I'm about to get in a taxi. I'm about to get on the subway. I'm about to get on my flight. We have to turn our phones off. I'm about to get on my flight. I was just about to get on my flight when I got a very important call that my son was being born, so I had to cancel and leave. You're talking about there action that you're taking and not focusing so much on the mode itself. I hope you can get what I mean by that. Catch feels very quick. Often catch is for things that are fast. So things that are by the way on roots often will use catch to talk about something that has a set path. Subway, train, bus, bright, catch a taxi would be okay. It's not wrong to say catch a taxi. But my sense is that it would be more often used for something that has a set path. And for taxi would be more common. Again, this is just me, more common to use, grab or take or even get. Now hop on. Well, we know on is only for specific things. We wouldn't hop on a taxi, we would hop in a taxi and that would be fine. Right? So on would be something large or small if it's the right thing. We would say hop on the bus. We would say hop on the subway, the underground, the tube. The same thing, right? What I say, hop on my flight. Hop on the plane? Probably not. But you said Get on is okay to get on my flight. Why can't I say hop on my flight, hop on the plane. It's, the feeling of hop. Hop is very much like get. It's very sort of quick casual. Hey, look, there's, there's the train, let's run and hop on. Maybe we planned it, maybe we didn't. But, but we may not need to do all the stuff that we have to do around a flight that we talked about. So because it's so planned out ahead, we book the tickets months in advance. We wouldn't say hop on because it doesn't feel very quick. It doesn't feel like a thing. You just go and do quickly, right? So we probably wouldn't use hop for a flight. It's just not one of those quick things. Now, we're going to be exploring this in more detail, but I want to just give you this sense about the verbs and how important they are. But we have this nice set of really common ones. Now, quickly, we're going to take a look at the importance of adjectives. 74. Naming Transportation: When we're trying to go from point a to point B, we don't want to waste a lot of words. We don't want to have to say a lot of extra stuff. So the cool thing is that a lot of names of things can become adjectives for the mode of transportation. Dr. about the modes. Trains, buses, train lines, planes. What am I missing? Taxis. You get the idea, right? The different modes. Well, what about something like this? The F train? This would be e.g. the subway in New York City. I use New York a lot because I live there as I said. But the idea is instead of saying anything after this, you use the name of the thing before train. Sometimes it's line here. If it's the subway or different places have different names. The F is the name of that, but that becomes the adjective. Now you might say, okay, I'm pretty familiar with that idea. The one line, the sixth line, the J line, the f trained, That's pretty familiar. But what about something like a fairy? Well, perfect example would be the Staten Island ferry. Now there's nothing wrong with saying the ferry to Staten Island. That's where it goes. It goes back and forth. Usually a ferry is just back-and-forth here, here, here, here, here like that. There's nothing wrong with it. But to be more efficient, we make Staten Island the adjective, really, it's an adjective in front of fairy. What kind of variable? It's the Staten Island ferry, right? And you could even extend that two trains. It gets a little more complicated because sometimes we talk about the specific line of the train and sometimes we talk about the destination where we're going, but we can explore that. So e.g. get on a Metro, Metro North train. And if I say Get on a Metro North train and then say where to two Poughkeepsie or someplace like that. Well, you know which train to get on now. And if I say two and then the name of the place, you know, where to get off everything. Hop on a Metro North trained to Beacon. Done, you know, everything you need to know in that very short sentence, I've given you an instruction. Just hop on the metro north trained to Beacon. When you go to the train station, you see Metro North. There it is. You get on it, you buy a ticket, you get on and you know where to get off as well. You know, everything you need to know. So that's pretty cool. It's very efficient. Sometimes though the destination can be included, e.g. good, say the uptown train. Now, that might just be a direction. So sometimes you have names that are just the direction. There's an uptown one, that means one going that way, or a downtown one. But sometimes you might see something like this. The Boston, the Boston, I don't have room here. Bus, the Boston shuttle, the airport shuttle we talked about. Remember, where does the shuttle go? It goes back and forth. It goes to the airport. The Boston bus. The Boston bus. The Boston bus, yes. Or maybe it's the company called I think it's called Mega bus, the Boston Mega bus. Okay. So omega bus might go to different places and I'm on the Boston one, the one that goes to Boston. There you go, Right? So this sort of thing works for many types of transportation. The key there is to use the name of the place, the name of the direction, the name of the line. To efficiently have that there in front of the mode of transportation in order to simply express which one to get on, which one to get in. Now, this doesn't work for things that can go all over the place. Like a taxi. Well, what's a taxi? There are some ways you could use that, e.g. if a taxi goes in a specific direction, right? Or there are different types of taxes, e.g. some taxes in I'll use New York City again are yellow and some are green. Well, the green ones go to a certain place and the yellow ones stay in a certain place and so they have different functions. So if I said getting a yellow taxi, getting a green taxi, that might tell you something, just kind of be aware of this lookout for it and be ready to put the name of that thing in front of the mode of transportation so that you can then use the rest of your sentence to say something else, to say the destination. And that makes for a very efficient, very simple and clear sentence. 75. TO and FROM: Now I think you may already know this, but it's worth mentioning because we're in our overview. It's a good time to cover stuff to make sure you've got it, to make sure we're on the same page. Write to and from are really important when you're talking about traveling around a taxi from Queens to Manhattan. Queens, from Queens to Manhattan. It's the easiest way to talk about direction, the beginning and end point, right? Now, notice how fast I say it from Queens to Manhattan. Queens. Pronunciation point there would be, when you want to express this. You don't have to say from Queens to Manhattan to Manhattan, There's a little two there too. It's called a schwa sound. You can learn more about that in my pronunciation courses if you like. But the basic idea is that it's a quick thing. It's just a marker to tell you what the a and the B points are. You don't have to use both of them. The train to Poughkeepsie leaves in 10 min. Now you might be wondering, Hey, we talked about using the place as an adjective. Could I say the Poughkeepsie train leaves and 10 min? Probably. Yeah. Yeah. That would actually be pretty common for a lot of those. As I said, you can put the place name as an adjective in front of it. Or if you want to, it's fine to say where it goes the train to the bus, to the plane to taxi to no, probably not shuttle to. It's gotta be a place that has a destination. And with a taxi, you say what the destination is when you get in, right? Okay. Now, the next one, it takes 10 min to get from here to the airport by bus. If you want it to flip this around. From here to the airport by bus, takes 10 min without it. So if you start with it, that's probably the most common way to do it. It takes anytime you're talking about time, it takes it takes 10 min. And that's not talking about distance, that's talking about time. It takes an hour, it takes 30 min to get. And you could say from two, if the starting point is assumed as here, then you might not have to save from, right. It takes 10 min to get to the airport by bus. From where? Well, we're talking from here, so from here. So you don't have to say it if it's implied. If you can assume it, if that's an implied fact, right? And you want to talk about how long it takes, right? You don't have to say from and two every time. So don't be too strict about that. I said it here just so you're comfortable with how to say it from here to the airport by bus, it takes 10 min. And again, you can flip it around. You can start with from or you can start with it takes, I think it's more common to say it takes this by at the end is very useful because it allows you to insert any type of transportation in there that you like by taxi, by car. But the car, taxi car, same. Well, a taxi is a car, but the car is not necessarily a taxi. Right? By, by ferry, by bike, ride a bicycle to the airport. That seems a little weird to me. Now, which one doesn't use by Dino? You know, it's walking. Well, how do we say it? To the airport? Walking? No. Kind of weird. It's on foot. On foot. It takes 10 min to get from here to the airport on foot, on foot. And by the way, you can flip these around two to get to the airport from here. So they're usually reversible and that's fine too from, from to just have to get it straight in your head. You'll know which one it is. The variations would be something like it takes 10 min to get from here to the airport by bus. It takes 10 min to get to the airport from here by bus. It takes 10 min to get from here by bus to the airport. It takes 10 min to get to the airport by bus from here. Those are all variations. And then of course from here to the airport by bus takes 10 min. So a lot of different ways you can say it, mix and match, as long as you're clear which one you're talking about, you should be. Okay. 76. Hyphens for Duration: This overview wouldn't be complete without one very useful thing. And that is hyphens to talk about duration, hyphens to talk about time. What is a hyphen? Hyphen is that little dash you get between some words that makes them one word. The interesting thing about adjectives is that they can't be plural. You can't have more than one of them. Why? Because there are adjectives not nouns. How can you have two yellows? Well, what if I want to make an adjective that includes a number about time? Should I say a 25 min drive? No, Because minutes would be plural, more than one. You can't do that. Well, how do I do that? Because I know I've heard somebody say something like that before. I want to know how to say that. Well, the first thing to know is that you have to make it one word by using hyphens. If it's 25 and minute, then you put 25 hyphen minute and you do not add the S, even though hop 25, that's minutes. That's plural. That's more than one. No. Not if you're using it as an adjective. So 25-minute drive from here, right? The airport is a 25-minute drive from here. It might sound weird at first, but it's actually extremely common and is a great way to talk about things that have a number, especially time, especially duration, but other things too have a number, but you don't want to mention them after you say the noun, I just finished a 400 page novel, my 98 year old grandmother, right? Now notice that's all hyphens and there's no plural or no S insight because it's an adjective. Now, we're gonna look at a couple of examples. Let's bring it back to a trip. Traveling, okay. It's a 25-minute Uber ride. Okay. Could you get rid of Uber and or ride? Yeah. You could get rid of either. It's a 25-minute Uber. It's a 25-minute ride. Now, here you can replace whatever whatever ride-sharing service is around you. Uber is the one that's around me that I use fairly often that's popular at the moment. Who knows, right? When you're watching this, it could be 200 years in the future. And does another one that's popular. Or maybe wherever you live, it's a different one. And it's not Uber. I'm just using that as an example. Fill in whatever you like their taxi bus bus ride. And you could just say a 25-minute bus, a 25-minute ride, a 25-minute trip. You can replace a lot of things there. I'm not excited about this eight hour drive. An eight hour drive does not sound fun. That was such a terrible nine hour flight. Yeah. So anytime you have a trip, you can talk about it as a ride or drive or something like that. But then before you put the number there with the hyphen, and then the thing that's usually a noun without the plural. To make it an adjective, very useful. My hotel is, notice they are there to write this. You have to have that there to market as a noun. What's the noun? Right? What's the noun? Dr? What's the noun? Walk? Walk is the noun. My hotel is five minute, minutes walk from here. Perfect. And we know how to use from we talked about to and from. So now you have the big picture tools. These are the things I just want you to keep in mind the importance of the verbs that you choose. The importance of to and from. The importance of adding destination or direction. As an adjective in front of the mode of transportation. The importance of things like this, being able to make your own adjectives and of course using to and from. Now, there's one quick thing I want to mention. I talked about those important verbs. We need. I want to throw one in quickly. As I was talking through this, I thought should I include that, should I not? I'm just going to throw it in here at the end. And that is rent to rent a bike, to rent a motorcycle, to rent a car. So that would be similar to what we talked about, take, Grab, get, hop on. We talked about those rent is in there with that group. Worth mentioning. I don't know if it's nearly as common as those others. That's why I didn't include it, but I wanted to just throw it in just so that you know so you're aware of it, that it is one of those, although not as common as most of the others. Alright, so now that we've done our overview, we've got the foundation. We've got the parts that we need to start describing how to get around clearly. But we need to put it into practice. We need to actually do it. So let's go on and start with our examples to describe how to get around. 77. Describing How to Get Around Part 1: Let's now spend some time going through some examples of descriptions about how to get around. We're going to be putting together in a natural way. The pieces that we've been talking about. Some of the things that I asked you to keep in mind. Now when we put it together, it's not that complicated. But I want to make sure you can see how it all fits together so that you can start getting a feel for it, so that you can start using it naturally yourself. So I hope you're taking notes and I would strongly recommend doing variations of the ones that I take you through so that you can get a better feel for it. Make it local. Do one in your city or your town, or a place that you visited recently, or a place that you plan to go make it unique to you. The ones I gave you are just to give you a very clear sense for this. But I'm choosing things that are local to me. I'm choosing things that I know, right? So make sure you're working on your examples. Make sure you're taking notes. Okay, So let's go through our first set here. And this is going to be directions, someone telling another person how to get somewhere and which transportation to take. Alright. So you can hop on, remember, hop on the F train, remember the adjective there for the name of the thing before train to the 42nd street stop. Now there we want it to stop. We could say Station, the 42nd street stop, station interchangeable, then walk to Times Square from there. Now this is pretty simple, right? What are we doing here? You can, if we want it to get rid of this, we could, but it makes it sound a little more laid back, relaxed, right? You can, you could. And we'll look at if I were you in the next one, right? Hop on. And we talked about these get on. If we use take, we don't say on, right. We talked about that. The F train, That's the line the name of the train to. Okay. We don't need from because we're talking about from here. It's implied we don't need it. The 42nd Street Station stop. We have then which says it's the next step. And that's so simple, right? You're not telling a complicated story when you're giving directions, when you're explaining transportation, what you're doing is being as clear as possible, avoiding misunderstandings, right? So if you just say do this, then this, then this, then this, that's fine. That's a crime in storytelling. Can't do that if you're telling a nice story. But for transportation, you don't need to tell a beautiful story. You need to be as clear as possible. A, and then B and then C and then D, right, in order. So then is the perfect word. If you want to use something else you could say after that. I think then is better than after that. And you can use from there, which we'll look at in the next example. Those are okay too. I prefer then I think it's so simple. Then walk. So hop on is the action here and walk as the action here. Notice that we start with the verb, do this, do that, hop on, get on, take walk, ride. Walk to Time Square from there. Okay. Perfect. From where? From the 42nd street stop. Okay. If I were you know, this is saying that there's more than one way, you don't have to follow me, you don't have to do what I say. But this is my strong recommendation. If you're hearing it from a local, that might be a good recommendation. I would get a taxi to Grand Central Station. From there, you can get a Metro North train. Now again, using get so much is a crime in good writing and a crime in storytelling. But when you're being clear, that's not what you're really focused on, right? You're not focused on making it beautiful and not being repetitive. So it's fine to say get, get. If you wanted to use a different one, you could say take or Grab or hop on. Metro North train tells me there isn't only one. They're leaving maybe every hour. So if you get on the 02:00 P.M. or the 03:10 P.M. or the 04:30 P.M. then that's all fine. That's all. Okay. With times. Did I say was that an order? I don't know. Right. Again, can hear is giving an option if I were you, you can you could. That's just softening it a little bit. If you're describing something to someone and you don't want to be too direct or too pushy and saying you take this and go there, can could if I were you is just a little softer, not necessary, but I like it. Okay. We talked about this from there. That's going to be the second point. There is never here. Here is where we're starting, right? So if you wanted to add that, it would be this point. If I were you from here, I would get a taxi to Grand Central maybe where that close Grand Central Station is a big train station, right? It's redundant. It's not necessary to say from here. Again, this is just to give you a sense of how we fit all these pieces together, make it your own. Let's look at a few more examples here. 78. Describing How to Get Around Part 2: The Met just take the MAT six bus, three stops uptown. You hear someone asked this, this is what you would say, or this is what you would hear. Of course, we're learning this in the context of you traveling, right? So this may be the type of language you hear. And that's why I want to talk about it in terms of someone giving you instructions, someone giving you a description. Now if you're wondering, hey, how do I actually ask about e.g. where to go? We're going to go to the asking part after this because it's pretty simple. It's fairly easy once you know the right phrases. But do you know how to process the information you get when someone tells you where to go. Or that can be tricky if you don't know the language, e.g. the verbs and things like this. Just, just take the MAT six bus three stops, uptown white, just, well, we learned earlier in the course that just is a softener. It downplays things that makes it feel less. This is a suggestion that it's very simple. There's an I there, right there. It's very simple to do. It's not a difficult process. Just do this. Just hop on this bus, just take a taxi. Three stops uptown, that's the direction, not the place. Generally. Uptown, downtown when you're in the downtown, downtown is, tends to be more of an American thing, often used in the same way as city-center. But once you're actually there, then you have an uptown, downtown, uptown, downtown direction thing going on, which is a little bit, can be a little bit confusing. New York has an uptown, downtown and midtown and those are three areas. But then if you're going that way North, you're going uptown, and if you're going that way south, you're going downtown. So a lot of American cities tend to not use city-center, but rather downtown to talk about the bigger city center area. Although in New York City That's Midtown. Well, put that aside. But the idea, I think you get the next one here during rush hour, your best bet is probably the subway. Take the F and change to the R at 34th Street. Lot happening here during rush hour, qualifies it. If it were a different time we were talking about, I would give you different directions right in the morning, in the afternoon, late at night, during rush hour, during lunchtime. Your best bet. This is maybe a recommendation. I just recommend it. I just suggest, suggest it, but hey, I could be wrong. This is a great way to separate yourself from a recommendation. Your best bet would be to, and then you give some advice or recommendation. But if it doesn't work out, I just told you my experience and it didn't work out. So sorry. Don't be angry at me. The feeling we get, I like to use your best bet is probably the subway, probably the metro, probably a train, probably a taxi. Take the F train. Take the F train, take the f, take the Staten Island ferry, and change to the r Again train. And this could also be line train, line either way. Well, it depends on what it's called, of course, at 34th Street. Now, do we need to say stop or station here? For trains, we can usually either say stop or station, not necessary. The focus is on the name 34th Street is the name of that stop where that station. So that's fine. We don't usually need to say it. Stop or station. For the subways often used interchangeably for a bus. Often the little stops along the way are the little things that you stop at are called stops and stations. We tend to get a feeling that they're larger, right? But for the metro or the subway, we can often use stop and station interchangeably if we want to use either of those. In this case, we don't really need to at 34th Street and it would be the same if you were giving walking directions, turn left at 34th Street in this case though, it's a station or a stop. So this one is pretty straightforward. Pay attention to some of the interesting phrases here. Best bet and when it happens, right? But otherwise, there's nothing special going on here that we haven't talked about already with the verbs. This one, if we wanted to replace change with what? With another one, we could use transfer. Transfer feels a little more formal than change. Change to the m 35 bus, transfer to the m 3d5 bus. It's pretty much the same, but changes just a little more conversational, little more laid back. That's my sense. Okay, so now that we've looked at a few of these examples, putting together the pieces we've been talking about. I like to do some more general, broader descriptions about getting around again, just so that you feel familiar with the language. Before we talk about how to actually ask for directions on how to do that naturally in different ways. 79. General Descriptions: The example descriptions we've been looking at feel more like directions, how to get from a to B. They are kind of like that. But how about more general descriptions of getting around? How do you describe e.g. where you live, how people tend to get around, or how convenient and area is. So let's just dive into a few examples to get a feel for this. It's not very convenient to get around LA to get around a place, right, is to find transportation, but it could include driving, it could include walking. If you think generally it's not easy. We, we say not that convenient to get around. You could say easy if you want to. That's okay. I mean, this is called getting around. We're talking about getting around. That's the general phrase we use to talk broadly about transportation, walking, convenience, moving within a city, e.g. especially within a city or a town. Everything in downtown is pretty walkable. What is this word walkable? Well, that means that you can walk to most of the places you may not need to take the subway or the metro, or a bus, or a taxi or ride a bike. It, it's not that hard to walk to a nice restaurant. It takes 10 min to walk to an interesting coffee shop or to the supermarket. It's walkable. Everything you need is within a 20-minute walk would be in my view, walkable. I really liked that word Personally. I think it's cool. There are a few good restaurants within walking distance. Within walking distance, that means you can walk to these restaurants pretty easily. Well, everything is within walking distance. You can walk around the world if you want to. Yes. But usually around, I don't know. 15, maybe 20 min at the most, is what people consider to be walking distance. 20 min, maybe even too much, maybe 15 at the most. I guess people have a different idea about what walking distance is. But could we say driving distance? Because we say training distance. Now, we could say driving distance or walking distance. Although walking distance is much more common, you'll find everything you need within a few subway stops. So again, this is about convenience, right? But now it's not so walkable because the subway can go a lot faster than you can go on foot, right? So here's where you are and you arrive at a new hotel in a new city and you hear everything is within walking distance. Oh, great. What does that mean? Well, that means you can walk everywhere you need. Oh, great. Okay. I will. It's not really convenient to walk. Not many things in walking distance, but everything is within a few subway stops. Alright, so now that I know which kind of transportation I need to get around, I can plan accordingly. So there's a good park here, and there's a good restaurant here and some cool stuff here, and a museum here. And all of these are within a reasonable radius for taking a train. So okay, that's good information, although it would be nice if it were within walking distance, usually that's preferable when you're when you're traveling around, right? I feel I like to walk around personally. Let's look at a couple more examples. 80. "How do people usually get around?": If you've just arrived on the first day of your trip, you go down to the lobby of the hotel and you ask the person at the front desk, how do people usually get around to a lot of people drive or do they take taxis? Some places taxes are really common. Other places, not really. Some places. Everybody rides a bike. Other places, not really. Some places. It's all about public transportation, getting on the underground or the subway. Other places, not so much. Some places it's all about buses, buses, buses, buses, other places. Not much. There are these trends and it's useful to know, I always ask this because I want to get around the way that most people get around because the people who live here, locals will know it best, right? They'll know the best way to get around. Locals know best. So what locals do, most people tend to, that's what they tend to do. Tend to get around by bus or bicycle. Okay. Now I'm locking into bus bicycle mode. Now I know I can get one of those shared bikes perhaps or maybe I could rent a bike or maybe I should be looking at bus routes to go where I need to go. Maybe I thought I was going to be taking the subway. But now that I know that most people take a bus or ride a bike, I have to change plans a little bit. I don't have to. I may want to because maybe that's actually more convenient. Parking in the city center is a nightmare. So your best bet is the subway. Remember, best bet, that's a good one. Parking is a nightmare. Parking is a nightmare means, okay. You probably won't enjoy the experience of renting a car, because everywhere you need to go, you'll have to figure out where to park and that's going to be really inconvenient, not very fun. So keep that in mind. Renting a car sounds great sometimes, but sometimes it's really not fun. I've had some very bad car rental experiences, some good ones, but also some bad ones. And parking is often the cause of the bad ones having no available spots because there's so many cars around. Well, how do you describe that? A nightmare. Public transportation is a nightmare. Okay. That's not what you want to hear. Public transportation usually meaning buses and the subway, and maybe fairies. And often the ones, the places where you can use the local card or the tokens, different places have different ways to pay, but that's often considered public transportation, right? And if that's a nightmare, well, that's going to be bad. Maybe then I will just take Buber's instead of public transportation. Taxis are pretty affordable if you don't go out to the suburbs, suburbs or the area right around the city. So you have the city-center and then the area outside or the suburbs kind of still in the city, but not as dense. And often a different style of homes, right? Often homes that are a little bit bigger, maybe quieter streets. Different suburbs look different of course. But in the United States and a lot of suburbs, maybe it will be a stand-alone house with a two car garage and a yard. Whereas in cities it's going to be obviously mostly apartment buildings, right? So you don't want to go all the way out to the suburbs because that will be a very expensive taxi. But as long as you stay in the city, you should be okay. Pretty affordable. There were talking about how much you generally have to pay. Okay. So just wanted to give you some general descriptions of getting around. But now I want to get into the meat of the interaction. So we've been looking at the descriptions without focusing too much on the back-and-forth on the interaction part. But now we're going to get to the interaction, back to the interactions. And that would be when you need to get somewhere, when you need to get around, what do you say? How do you ask for directions? How do you explain yourself? How do you get help with that? So let's go on to talk about asking for directions. 81. Directions Overview and Phrases for Asking: I think it goes without saying that most of us, when we want to go somewhere, don't ask a person. If I wanted to go somewhere. I put the name of that place in my Google Maps and it tells me where to go. Sometimes Google Maps, Apple Maps, ways, whenever you use write. It tells me where to go step-by-step. I just say directions to the Empire State Building. And then it tells me step-by-step how to go there. I can get walking directions, driving directions, public transportation directions. And that's going to be 99.9% of the time, right? But in case you find yourself in a situation where you don't have a signal is not working for some reason. You're confused anyway, or you just want to have the interaction. Some people like to do that. I'm going to tell you how you can interact with other human beings to get directions. Knowing that it will be probably, probably not something you do on most trips in most situations because you've got the world's knowledge available to you. And all you have to do is say directions to and it's all there. That's better than someone telling you how to go somewhere. I still think that it's useful to at least have the knowledge of how to ask, right? So we're going to go step-by-step, talk about how you can get someone's attention or interrupt someone if they're talking to someone else, right? But let's say get their attention and then make the request, ask them to give you directions. So lets hop over to the board. Now if you see someone in public, someone you don't know and you want to get their attention, what should you say? Should you say, Hey, hey, hey, you know, it's so rude, right? That they might either runaway or chase after you with a walking stick or just feel deeply offended or give you the wrong directions. If someone said, hey, tell me how to go there. Do you know what I would do? I would give the wrong directions for spite because that's That's the kind of guy I am. Right. But if you want to do it politely, respectfully, you might say, excuse me. And that's a great one. That's a classic in any situation, excuse me. Sometimes people say, just sorry to bother you or just sorry. Sorry. But I think that's a little short. I prefer sorry to bother you. Excuse me. Sorry to bother you. And sometimes people put them together. Excuse me, sorry to bother you. And then ask your question. Could you tell me? Do you think you could tell me? Could you please we'll talk about that Next. When you're not talking to Google Maps. So these are both extremely common. We also have Pardon me. Now pardon me, feels more formal and it's used in other situations too. Pardon me? Would be when you make a mistake or you said the wrong thing and you want someone to forgive you, write. And it could use it when you're walking through a crowd of people, pardon me? Pardon me, pardon me, you're trying to get out of the subway car e.g. and you want to kind of elbow people out of the way, pardon me? Pardon me? Would be common, but you could use excuse me there too. That would be fine. Right? It's really just when you're inconveniencing people, you're putting them in a situation where they have to move or do something or respond pardon me? An excuse me, are fine. I definitely prefer this one. I think it's more formal. It's very neutral, it's very polite. This feels a little bit formal for this specific situation. And you might instead do a greeting. You might say hi there, hi there. And you can combine these. You could say Hi there, excuse me. Excuse me. Hi there. Hi there. Sorry to bother you. Sorry to bother you. Hi there. Pardon me. Hi there. And then make your request and then say what you want. These if you have just these four and don't say, hey, then you will be absolutely fine. So then how do we actually get started with the question or the request rather, because sometimes it's not a question. We've talked about implied questions where we make a statement and we expect someone to respond to us. Yes, we do that here too. I'm looking for I'm looking for what place I'm looking for Bryant Park. I'm looking for Bryant Park and then you may continue. I'm looking for Bryant Park. Could you tell me how to get there? Could you point me in the right direction? We'll look at some more specifics in a moment. But you might just say the place there or if you're asking for advice, I'm looking for a good coffee shop. And there you may not be asking for directions there you may be asking for a recommendation. So the line is a little fuzzy. I'm looking for is useful for both since we're focused on directions. I think you could just say I'm looking for Bryant Park and then follow that with something, either a question or a request right after it. But first you want to state the place. I'm in the process of this, please help me. It's like saying helped me do this thing I'm trying to do. I'm trying to find Brian Park. Could you do you think you could would you mind some things that we're very familiar with already? I'm trying to get to now. Fine. Could be my dog. Have you seen him? Fine, could be my tour group to find is more general, but trying to get to is specifically a location. I'm not usually trying to get to my tour group while I am. But that would be a slightly odd way to say it, right? Finding dog, finding a place, finding a tour group broader than trying to get to you wouldn't say I'm trying to get to my dog. My dog is probably running all over the place. A, it's a it's a German shepherd wearing a tiny blue hat. Have you seen him? I'm trying to find but not I'm trying to get to this is only for places. Only for places. I'm trying to get to 34th Street. Now you could say, Oh, that's not a place, that's a whole street. Okay. Now, that's fair. I suppose it is a place, right? Okay. It's that way. It's that way. After I'm trying to get to 34th Street, you could say could you point me in the right direction? In the right direction. Okay. Then maybe, uh, we we need to get to we need to get to Bryant Park. We need to get to sixth and 14th. Where do you need to get to? It could be a specific location like this, which is an intersection. Or it could be the name of a place. Need to get to a place called hole in the wall, which is a brunch restaurant. We need to get to a place called, get to a cafe called. If you want to say that the kind of place it is, right, we need to get to a theater called, we need to get to a park called. That would be okay. If it's a park, it's probably well-known. So you'd put the name of the park in front of it like Bryant Park. But for other places there are many, many cafes. And I want a specific one. Maybe it's better to say get to a cafe called. And then you would try to find out if they know at first and if they say they do know, but then maybe you can ask for directions. First you state your intention. What am I trying to do? I'm trying to get to a cafe called hole in the wall. And then they say, Oh yeah, I know that. Then you would say, Do you think you could could you please give me directions? Could you point me in the right direction? Right. So I recommend you start with intention. You start with the problem, you start with what you're trying to do, then figure out if they know that or not. And if they don't say thank you so much and then go. If they do, then proceed, then ask for help. Okay. Hi. Excuse me. We need to get to the met. Could you point me in the right direction? Could you tell me how to get there? And then I'll get directions, one of which might be yeah, hop on the MAT six bus and go three stops uptown or toward uptown. I'm not sure if that's accurate, so don't fact check me on that. I'm just giving an example. We might be told to take public transportation. You see that bus stop over there, wait there for the M something something bus go three stops north, go three stops uptown. And then you will see the Met right across the street. Oh, great. Thank you so much. Okay. This is for intention. Now, we're going to look at some more in-depth full examples because we're just looking at the beginnings of how we can ask for both directions and direction. In other words, point me to which way is correct. You don't need to give me the detailed thing. That is, by the way, the difference between direction and directions. Direction is that way. That way, that way directions would be a step-by-step instructions. So let's take a look at a few of those examples. 82. Getting Direction: These examples could be combined with the intentions that we just talked about. Some could, some Couldn't. We may have to make some changes to e.g. I'm looking for the Met. Okay. If I say I'm looking for the Met and then they say, Oh, yes. Then I say, do you know which way the Met is? That's a little weird because I've already said I'm looking for the Met. We're trying to find the mat. We're trying to get to the Met. So if you put both of those together, if you want to do that, It's okay. Hi. Yes. Excuse me. I'm trying to find the Met. Oh, yes. Do you know which way it is? So if you've already set it for this first one, Don't say it again because we know what we're talking about, but you can still use it to clearly ask for the direction. Remember again, direction is that way, that way toward their Toward there. That is direction. And directions are step-by-step instructions. Do you know which way it is? Now if you're not using one of those we've talked about, I'm trying to find I'm looking for we're looking for right. Then you could say, Excuse me. Yes. Do you know which way the Met is and that will be totally fine. Start with that. That's fine. You don't have to state what you're trying to do. You don't have to state what your intention is, but it can be helpful. So it's up to you. Either one is okay if you just start with, do you know which way the Met is? That might be simpler. It's an easier back-and-forth. If they don't know, they'll just say, I'm not sure, and that's it. Okay, Problem solved. Well, not your problem. The problem of this interaction is salt. It's over and look for somebody else. Do you happen to know which direction eighth Avenue is? Okay. Do you happen to know is very soft, very gentle? Very soft, not direct at all. Do you know which direction eighth Avenue is does sound a little pointy like you're pointing at them and it's kind of on the spot. Do you happen to know just makes it sound a little gentler. Choose to use it or not. If you say, Do you know which direction eighth Avenue is? That's okay too. Again, this one is just direction. So that way it's that way. It's that way. It's that way. Walk that way. Do you think you could point me toward downtown? Point me toward that's literally asking you to do that, right? Yes. It's that way or yes, it's that way. So it's very useful if you're not too concerned about the step-by-step directions and you just feel a little turned around. Maybe you have your phone here and you're looking at the directions, but you're not sure which way you're pointing. You might ask this one just to have somebody say yeah, that way, not that way, or walk toward that big building over there. Right. I'm wondering if you could tell me which way Central Park is. Same thing. Again, all of these are just pointing. But now that we've looked at these, and again, we can combine these with the intention phrases we talked about the beginnings. We talked about. Maybe we want directions, maybe we want someone to tell a step-by-step. My phone really is dead. I need help. How do we ask that? So let's look at some of those examples. 83. Asking for Directions: We know how to ask about general direction, which way something is. But what about when we need directions? The step-by-step instructions? My phone is dead. I really need help getting to moma because I'm supposed to meet my friends there. I need help. I need to know how to get there step-by-step. I have no other way. Okay. So one way to do that is it do you know question. Do you know how to get to moma from here? Now the answer might be yes and then nothing. To which you would then say, could you please tell me how to get there or no? To which you would then say, okay, thanks Anyway. Thanks. Anyway, a great little phrase for when someone can't help you and you appreciate that they at least interacted with you, right? But most people, when they hear this question, if they know, will begin to give you those step-by-step instructions, they will give you directions. We'll look at an example of that in a second. In a way we've already done an example with our transportation transportation directions. I'm wondering if you could give me directions to the Whitney, another museum. Now, this could result in oh, I'm sorry, I don't I don't know how to get there. So sorry. Two which again, you would say, Okay, thanks anyway, right? So you can still get a negative answer to this, even though you're asking someone directly to just give you the directions. But it's fairly easy to resolve because you have this oh, I'm sorry. I don't know. Thanks anyway, sort of thing. Very easy to get out of that. If they don't know. In this case, if they do know, they might not, they have no opportunity to say yes, and then nothing. They're going to start giving you the directions too. Whitney. Pretty straightforward. Okay, so this might be preferable if you want to come off as polite. I'm wondering if, right. But maybe are in a bit of a hurry. Maybe you really want to get somewhere quickly and you want to kind of let them know that they can go ahead and start giving you directions if they know. And I think either one would be okay. But I might use this one more often if I'm in a bit of a rush, do you know where H Mart is? H Mart is a really good Korean supermarket that I go to quite often. Do you know where H Mart is? Now again, we could say a yes. Now this one could be a little tricky because it could be that someone would say yes and then they say it's that way or it's that way they give you the general direction, right? I think most people in this situation will know that they should tell you how to get there. But a great way to follow up would be do you know where H Mart is? Yes. And then follow that with a could you please tell me how to get there? Now you will sometimes instead of getting a a set of instructions, instead of getting the directions, you will get something like a cross street. So then you have to either know what that means or let them know that you don't know what that means. So e.g. do you know where H Mart is? A common answer to that question would be yes. It's it's on thirty-seconds streets near the corner of thirty-seconds and Fifth Avenue. I think that's right. Sounds right. Now. If you know what that means, great. They've told you what here, not the direction, directions, but rather position. And so this depends on your knowledge of the city. If you know that position, e.g. if someone tells me Oh, that's on Fifth Avenue and 48 street, I know where that is because I know that in New York City there's a grid. And the avenues go this way, and the streets go this way. And it's all just numbers most of the time, right? So that's pretty straightforward for me. That's the position. But what if I'm visiting a place? By the way, most cities are not as simple as Manhattan is, right? It's gets a little complicated. Maybe I'm in a new place. I don't know any of that stuff. I don't know anything. So there I want to be very clear. I don't want you to tell me the position because that doesn't help me. I don't know how to get to that position. I want you to tell me how to get there. I want directions. So they say, Oh, yes, it's on thirty-seconds street near the corner of 30-second. And what did I say? Fifth Avenue and then I say, Okay, could you please tell me how to get there then you would follow it up with that. That lets them know I need step-by-step instructions because that position you just told me that's something that A local might know, or someone who goes to this place regularly might know, but I don t know. Right. If you say if you're in another place oh yeah. It's next to the and then a famous building right next to the CN Tower. Okay, Well, maybe I don't know exactly where that is. That might be a bad example because that's really tall, would probably see it from everywhere. But you get the idea, right? You don't always know where that position is. A great follow-up. Could you please could you please tell me how to get there? And you could also say, how could can I get there from here? Or you could just ask, how could or can I get there? How can I get there? How can I get there? Okay, Now they're going to go into directions mode. And then might then say, alright, first, you walked down this street for about 5 min, you'll come to a large intersection. Turn left onto and they'll say the name of the street or Avenue. You'll see a big red building, things like that. They'll use landmarks. They'll use landmarks. They might include modes of transportation, like we've talked about, walking instructions, how long you need to walk, all of that stuff mixed in hopefully as clearly as possible so that you actually know how to get there. So just to be clear again, these are really doing different things, but all around the same type of thing. This one. A great way to get a yes or a no, maybe followed by something like this. This one. A good way to ask when you're in a bit of a hurry, but still politely, how to get somewhere. Very clearly, I need directions. I'm asking for directions. Do you know where it is? Might be a good way to get a position. But if you don't know the position to follow up with something like this. And this generally, of course after excuse me, as a great way to get directions, how to get there, give me directions. These are the two most common for directions. How to get there, how to get to H Mart, give me directions to of course. Before that, I'm wondering if you could could you please give me directions after excuse me. Hi. Sorry to bother you. After something like that. Of course, you don't want to just run up to someone and say, Hey, how do I get? I get to H Mart? That could be probably is a bit rude. Alright, so now that we've really explored this, now that I hope you're pretty comfortable with asking for directions and a direction. Let's look at a few examples of directions. I want to make sure you're familiar with that. Before we go on to what happens when things go wrong. What can you say? When things go wrong? 84. Directions Example 1: Here's the situation. You are on a trip in New York City and suddenly you have a craving and intense craving for kimchi. So you open up your phone and you search Korean supermarkets or Korean markets. You find one. And there it is. Near Midtown, it is called H Mart. I'm gonna go there. Great. You leave your hotel. And then you realize very quickly that your phone is nearly dead. After 2 min. It is completely dead. But that does not quench your craving for kimchi. Sometimes I crave it. I have to go downstairs. I always have it in my fridge and get some Immediately. I may have to do it in the middle of this lesson. So if I disappear for a second, you'll know. Anyway, okay, what do you do? Do you go back to your room, walk 10 min, back to your hotel, charge your phone for 15 min and then go out again. Why not do it the old fashioned way? So you see someone and you're close by, you're not too far away, right? You see someone who's just sitting on a bench reading a magazine or juggling. Maybe someone is juggling some kittens. You see someone juggling kittens. And wouldn't be, it would not be too shocking to see that you see cool, crazy stuff in New York City. And you say, Hi there, excuse me. Could you please tell me how to get to H Mart from here? Now this might be a slight risk because they might not know where it is. Even though you're pretty close by. There are a lot of places, a lot of restaurants, shops, even in that area. So you may want to go with do you know right. Do you know where H Mart is first? And then say, could you please tell me how to get there? So that would be fine. But you're feeling adventurous. And this overpowering craving for kimchi is making you a little bit impatient. So you say Hi there, excuse me. Could you please tell me how to get to H Mart from here? The cat juggler stops, puts down the cats are rare. They start walking around. And then he or she says, Sure, head down this Streets, which is Seventh Avenue, and turn left at 30-second, walk two blocks. And between 5th and 6th, I read that wrong. Sixth and fifth, same thing. Avenue. You'll see H Mart on your right. Okay. Now, is there anything difficult going on here? Not particularly. You have to know that 30-second means street. If they don't say it, right, if they say fifth and six, you have to know that means Avenue, even if it's not their fifth and sixth, sixth, and fifth. Why did I do it this way? I don't know. I guess that would be the direction you're going, right? It is between fifth and six, but since you're starting at seventh, you would see sixth first, so it makes sense, okay? Okay, between sixth and fifth, without avenue, we have to know that means avenues, so we need to know what we're looking out for. So you have to be able to fill in the blanks a bit in your head. And if you don't know, you could say avenue, street like that with a question tone. Now, head down. What is this? Does that mean I have to have my head down when I'm walking there? No, that just means go straight. Go straight. Or sometimes that's an H walk along, walk along this street. Then they might say very clearly, which is Seventh Avenue. That's nice to know. If I don t know which one I'm on. And you might say, wait, a second Street, Avenue. Yeah, if you're on this street, sometimes you'll say this street, even though the name of this street is something, something avenues. So don't get confused. If we're talking about this one, this one here, we'll say this street along the street across the street. Usually people won't say yeah, Across the avenue. But when you say the name, you'll use avenue if that's what it's called. Two blocks, what's that? Not every city has clear blocks. Many do, some don't. But it's generally where you have a block, something shaped like this, and then there's an avenue here or a street there. And I have no Harris Street there. And then a straight this way, in a straight this way, it makes a block. So you count 12. So that would be 12. That's two blocks. Alright, Good to know. So that's how you get there. Now, they could use landmarks here. And that would be usually set off by a, you'll see or an action at turn left, at turn left at the big cube. There's a big cube somewhere St. Mark's place, I think. Turn left at the big cube, at the big thing you see, or you'll see a big cube turn left there. That's a way to use things that are easily recognizable. You'll see a big red building go straight to pass the big red building. Go straight past the big red building. Okay, great. That just makes things a little more clear. So that can be very helpful. Now, as I said, sometimes include public transportation, but it wouldn't be more complicated than what we've already talked about. Hop on the train or grab something bus and go three stops, get off at the name of the stop and then walk too. So it's really just including what we've already learned inside of this, which is this simple set of instructions to make sure you've really got it. I want to very quickly go over one more example. 85. Directions Example 2: It's the last day of your trip to New York. And you've been so busy trying all of the different restaurants and cuisines in the city that you've completely forgotten to do anything. Touristy. You're a foodie. You're a foodie. And you forgot to do a traditional tourist activity, something people would do when they visit a place, right? Well, you scratch your head and think, if I don't do anything like that and I just eat the entire trip. What will I tell my friends when I get back? They'll ask me what I did and I'll say I just 8.8 and ate and slept. So you say to yourself, I'm going to go to a museum. That's something people do, right? I'm gonna go to, I'm gonna go to the Whitney. I've heard about that. I've heard it's pretty cool. Once again, somehow you have lost your ability to look that up. You leave the hotel, you go to the general area that you know the Whitney is in, and then you realize, I forgot to charge my phone again. What's wrong with you? Seriously? How can you do it again? Well, anyway, luckily, you know the language you need. So you look for the nearest person and you run over to them at top speed. Now that would be strange. You walk over kind of casually with a friendly expression on your face. And you say to this elderly woman sitting on a bench feeding pigeons, no squirrels. She's feeding squirrels. There are 35 squirrels surrounding her all looking at her. And she's sort of tossing out nuts, almonds, breadcrumbs, and they're just loving it, right? And you kind of step around the squirrels, you accidentally step on one of their tails and it looks at you with an expression of pure rage. And then it goes back to eating. It's gigantic walnut that it hasn't, it's too little hands. And you say to the lady there, the elderly woman in her late seventies. You don't know that, but I know that. Hello there. Sorry to bother you. I'm wondering if you could give me directions to the Whitney. Now notice, we don't need the question mark there because it's an expression of your intent. It is a request, not a question, but it works like a question. Right? It functions like a question. We've talked about how to do that. Now, you might add things around it. You might make comments, might be a great time to make a friend with a cool lady who loves to feed squirrels. You might say, Wow, how did you get them to like you so much? Or you might say, Wow, I've never seen so many squirrels in my life. Just a comment that might kick off a conversation to make a new friend. Why not? Right? But you might add some context to your request. You might say, I know I know the Whitney is nearby, but I'm not sure where it is. I'm wondering if you could give me directions. Now. If you mentioned the Whitney once, you don't need to say it again. So just be aware of that. Usually you don't have to repeat yourself. There is flexibility here with everything we're talking about in this course. There is flexibility that's very important. And then she looks up from feeding the squirrels. And she says, of course, she knows the area. Of course, go through this intersection. And that means go straight, walk straight. She might even say walk straight through, go straight through. Do not turn left, turn right there you have to pay attention to the gesture. That way. That way there's an intersection there and there's one there. So that one, so you have to watch for that and observe, right. Go through this intersection or maybe that pointing that this intersection and at the next 11, what intersection? Anytime you hear one, it's usually going to be in this kind of situation, a repeat of the same thing that was just mentioned. Corner intersection. By the way, corner might be here as well. Go straight through this intersection and at the next corner, turn right corner and intersection are basically the same thing. The intersection is the roads that cross and the corners are the things that are made by the roads. There are four corners at every intersection. At the next one, at the next intersection, turn right onto Hudson Street. Well, that's good to hear. Turn right onto and then you have a street name because you want to make sure you know which one it is, right? So pay attention to the names there. If you just hear turn right, you might forget what was the name of that? Is this this is this the one I was supposed to go through or turn right at. I forget. So having the name as great, then walk about 10 min. Now, that depends on different people. Of course, you might walk faster than a squirrel feeding elderly woman in her late seventies, right? But more or less at a normal walking pace for a human being walking about 10 min and turn left at our great, another name, right? Again, sport. I believe that's how it's pronounced. So what is that a street? What is gans board? Well, if nothing else has been mentioned, it's probably going to be the name of a street. If it's a building and it's called ligands for building, then she should say at the gans vote building, and that would be another landmark. But since no other noun was mentioned then gans board is going to be the name of a street. I'm not sure how many blocks it is. Okay. So that's okay. We're not paying attention to blocks, but that can be a useful counting device. Not a lot of people carry it around in their heads. How many blocks? 345, right. So okay. Put that aside. That's fine. So we can use landmarks. You'll see it up ahead on your right on the corner. Washington and Gans board. Okay. So as I'm walking, she's basically making the picture for me. She's allowing me to have a kind of imagination of what I will see. You will see it. You will see it up ahead. Up ahead, I'm visualizing this on your right, on the right, on the corner, there's a corner of now we say that two street names, Washington and Gans for it. So I walk on Washington or walk on Gansevoort until I reach Washington. There it is. Now she wants to say that it's extremely obvious. Actually the Whitney is quite obvious. It's fairly big, large museum. So you can't miss. It is just a follow-up expression. Again, there could be any number of variations of this. This is just some of the language that you hear. Walking straight and turning left at and you'll see up ahead corner intersection, all of that stuff. And that combined with the transportation stuff, the stuff we talked about could make it a little more complicated, but hopefully not too complicated. And there you would just say, Okay, great, thanks. Or if you have a follow-up question, you would say, okay, so once I turn on to Hudson, then you have another question that you can ask, right? But when you leave, Thank you so much. Thanks again. I really appreciate it. All of those would be fine. Or you start a conversation about squirrels. Either way, it's up to you, Okay? Now, you should be feeling quite comfortable with all the language you need to get around on a trip, or indeed anywhere no matter where you are. In English. If you have any questions about this, please let me know. I'm happy to answer your questions. Also, make sure you're practicing. Make your own dialogues like I've done here. I've imagined this situation. You can do the same. And going through that exercise is very powerful because it forces the language to stick in your head, which is what you want. Of course, if you really want to take it to the next level, make it a role-play, freestyle role-play. Just make sure you're using some of the phrases, the words, the expressions, the structures we've been talking about in this section. Next, we're going to go on and talk about how to talk about when things go wrong. 86. Reacting to Bad News: No matter how well you prepare for a trip, things can go wrong. When things don't go as you expected, or things go very wrong, it can be extremely stressful and frustrating. So we're going to spend a little time talking about that. Not because I love to focus on negative things, but because That's when you need language most. When you're frustrated, when you need to solve something quickly, we're going to talk about how you express that. Something has happened. How do you express that feeling, first of all, and then how do you solve it? How do you get other people to help you solve it? If you need help? Not as simple as could you please give me directions to? Yeah, That's help. But what if it's a really urgent situation? What if you need a big favor or a lot of help? And it's much more than just getting some directions somewhere. So we'll talk about both of those things. We're gonna go over a couple of situations. We're going to talk about some useful vocabulary and of course, how you can express this stuff. Some of the common expressions you can use, some of the sentences that you might use when things go wrong. So let's hop over to the Blackboard. So how about this? This is something that was very real for a lot of people. Luckily it didn't happen to me. But for a lot of people they experienced this, you're about to leave for a two or three-week trip. You've been looking forward to it. You've got all your tickets booked, hotels, resorts, Wherever you are going to be staying, tours, all the stuff that you're going to be doing. Okay. Everything's taken care of, and then something happens. You find out that there's a new travel restriction in place due to a global pandemic. This happened, right? So now what? I've got to cancel my flights, can I get a refund? Can I change it? What about my hotel and all of this stuff I booked, right? What do I do? So frustrating now that's just one thing that could happen. There are a number of things that could go wrong when you're planning a trip. That's just an example that a lot of people went through the pandemic causing many travel disruptions. Okay. So how do you express first the feeling that immediate, That sort of immediate feeling. In English, we might say what? How, how, I guess I should capitalize that as a capital H. How I'm going to write that with the exclamation and a question mark. What tau? Now, maybe I don't really wonder how, but it's just the expression of the emotion of disbelief. What, how you find this out three days before you're supposed to leave, right? And of course you can use this for a lot of other things that go wrong as you're beginning to process it. Oh my god. Very common. Capitalize that if you like. I'm not sure if it's supposed to be capitalized for the expression, but I'll just leave it lowercase for now. Oh my God, oh my God. That's a very common one as well. You may have seen OMG, but don't say that. That's only for texting. Okay, those are common. Now we're just at the initial reaction stage so far. We're not solving anything. We're just upset or frustrated. How do you express frustration? That's the immediate response, right? What about Are you are you kidding me? Are you kidding me? Exclamation point question mark, are you kidding me Now the other person doesn't have to say yes. They just saw the news. Hey, it looks like we're not going to be able to go on our trip because of this thing that happened. And your responses. Are you kidding me? They could answer. No, I'm not. But it's also rhetorical, which means it's just an expression to express your feelings, your emotion, your negative emotion. One that's a little more interesting, I think, is, if it does happen to you often, why does this always happen to me or us? Why does this always happen to us? Why does this always happen to me? What does pandemics know? But maybe bad luck. You feel like every time you have everything planned and it's just write, something goes wrong. And you want to express that frustration. Why does this always happen to me? This would be more the reaction of shock. Are you kidding me? Or the oh my god, or what? Right. That's the initial reaction. And then why does this always happen to me is, as you're processing it. You are competent to you on your bad luck there. And that's more frustration than shock or surprise. And then you'll often hear also, what are we supposed to do now? Meaning I'm expressing that I don't have an immediate plan. Not that you need to tell me what it is right away. But I'm expressing this feeling of frustration being lost. There's a moment where you're just in the void and you don't have an answer and you don't know what to do. What are we or what MI same thing supposed to do now. Supposed to do now. Anytime something goes wrong and you feel that feeling of being lost for a moment, there's nothing to hold onto. Frustration, sadness mixed together. Maybe you've just been fired. Something has happened, right? You're completely lost. Your tour guide left you. And the hotel you booked is completely full and there are no more rooms. What are we supposed to do now? What are we supposed to do now? Then you might settle down and find a solution, which is what we're talking about next, of course, I can't believe this. I can't believe this. Now that's less, again, less shock and more of a comment as you're kind of coming down from the rage and you're just sitting with it and you still don't feel happy about it, but you're processing it. I don't believe this. Sometimes we use that for a kind of low anger, right? Your boss asks you to do something on Friday afternoon and it's going to take you 6 h and you realize you're going to have to cancel your evening plans. You are looking forward to a beautiful Friday and then you realize you have to work until 10:00 P.M. I can't believe this. You say of course, after your boss has left, this is what you might say. What? Terrible timing. Now you might not say that one out of anger. You might say that one out of a sense of just, Well, there's nothing we can do about it. Of course I'm not happy about it, but things happen, right? This may be when you're planning to go somewhere and there's a natural disaster. Of course, it's tragic. It's a terrible thing when natural disasters happen and often that interrupts travel plans and that of course, affects your plans. What do you say? Oh, no. What about me, right? Well, yes. But what terrible timing allows you to express that without being insensitive to any victims? There may be. Right. It's just that the timing is bad. Even if you're saying it to yourself. I always I always feel wrong when I make comments to myself that don't consider any victims involved. I almost had this thought when I was on a trip recently in the UK and a bunch of workers went on strike. The railway system, the network went on strike. So they weren't going to work because they wanted to negotiate for higher wages. So that shut down the entire, almost the entire railway network. I couldn't go where I want it to go and it's my vacation. And I wanted to take a train to that place. And now I can't. My initial response might be, Are you kidding me? Then? After a few seconds of thought, Well, okay, the entire world doesn't have to revolve around me, although it should, what terrible timing it could have happened after we left. But then you don't want to go beyond it. It's just another way to express frustration and focus on when it happens rather than what happened. And then you might express a sense going back to the bad luck thing of a feeling that you had, right? Had a feeling you knew, you knew something was going to happen. It was too perfect. You'll hear people say it was it, it was too perfect. Everything was going well and you just felt like something's going to go wrong, which has a bad attitude to have maybe something's going to go wrong. It was too perfect. I knew it. Then you might say, that's why you hear many native English speakers say, I knew it. You had a suspicion or a feeling before. I knew something would go I knew something would go wrong. A negative expression. It's a bit dim, right? It's a bit dark and pessimistic. But if you want to express that feeling of nothing ever goes my way, I have bad luck. That would be a good one to use. Okay, So this is just to give you a sense of how you can express your frustration. But now we want to get to the solutions, the good stuff, right? How do you get help? How do you solve any problem that may come up before a trip or on a trip. 87. Asking for Help from Familiar and Unfamiliar People: When something unexpected happens, when something goes wrong, even if it's not a big thing, you may need to ask somebody for help. If you can solve it completely by yourself, then do it, solve it, and then it will be solved. But often you need help. Now, we may ask for help differently depending on who we're talking to. It may be a complete a complete stranger. It may be someone we're familiar with, but someone we don't know very well, could very well be the front desk person, right? I don't know them well, but their job is to help me with things. Right? So let's say someone who's familiar, then we have people who are close, let's say friends, family, some kind of close relationship. And we might, depending on who we're talking to, use different kinds of expressions. We've already talked about being lost. Well, what went wrong there? My phone died. I lost my phone, it was stolen, something happened. I can't use my navigation app. I have to ask a complete stranger, the lady feeding the squirrels or the guy juggling the cats. And there we talked about saying, Excuse me, excuse me, pardon me. As a perfectly natural way to begin that interaction. I don t know you, so excuse me. Pardon me. Hi, sorry to bother you, right? That would be fine. Now, if it's someone familiar, we might still say, excuse me, but let's go with the front desk person. Let's go with the flight attendant. On the flight. Let's go with a waiter at a restaurant. Let's go with my tour guide, our tour guide who's taking us on the tour. Let's go with someone. I'm on a backpacking excursion with a hike with I don t know. Well, maybe I won't say excuse me, pardon me. Maybe I start with I'm sorry to bother you. I'm sorry. Sorry to bother you. That's a little hard to read, but there might be a few other expressions to use in that case as well. And if it's for family and friends or close relationship, I might use favor. Right? Because even with someone close, we don't want to really inconvenience them unless we have to write. So asking for favors. And we'll talk about how to do that. I don't want to keep it too strict with these different groups, but we will mention who we might be talking to as we go through these. So for the complete stranger, I recommend the ones we've talked about already. Now let's take a look at a few other expressions, especially for these people we are familiar with, but don't know well, and people we have a close relationship to. Now I've broken these up into those two categories, although it's not exclusive. I'm just trying to give you a sense for when we might use these. And let's call this first group familiar. And you might use these for total strangers in some cases depending on the situation. And this is I'm just going to use close. Close. Okay. I hate to ask this now. Is that bigger than asking for directions? Yes. Probably. It's going to be more of an inconvenience to ask this person for help. I hate to ask this, but we're in a bit of a hurry. We left one of our bags up in the room. Would you mind going up to get it? So that person who's at the front desk will actually go up to the room, get the bag, bring it down, which is an effort. It's more than a simple thing. You could use that to for the situations we talked about before. The room is filthy mess, then we wouldn't say hate to ask this because that's more polite. I hate to ask this, but we're not really happy with the room. The floors are kind of dirty. Could we please change rooms? And that would be fine as well. So I'm familiar with that person. I'm sorry to bother you. Now, this one might be when something else is going on and you have to interrupt it because something happened. And I don't want to say it has to be a major thing. It could be minor. So we're on a tour. There's a tour guide and we're ready to move along. Everybody's ready to move along. But I see that my son really needs to use the restroom. He's telling me he really needs to go to the restroom. So I say to the guide, I'm sorry to bother you, but could you make everybody wait for a few minutes while my son goes to the restroom. Right. That's an inconvenience to the whole group, but it's a good way to mention that it's a good way to bring it up. It's much better than saying, everybody, wait here, stop. My son has to go to the bathroom. No. Mention it to the tour guide. Would it be okay to have everybody wait here for a few minutes? Sorry to Bother You. My son really needs to use the restroom. Could we wait a few more minutes instead of moving on? Okay. No problem. Forgive. The intrusion. Feels a bit more formal, for sure, more formal. But there there is definitely an intrusion. Intrusion means you're walking into something that somebody else is doing, you are interrupting them. Well, you wouldn't do that unless it were important, right? Yes. Sometimes you can do that if you're at a conference and people are giving a presentation and you really have something to say, forgive the intrusion. I'd like to point out that that number is wrong. Well, maybe don't say it quite like that, but forgive the intrusion is a way to interrupt something, right? Forgive the intrusion. Does anybody have a couple of Band-Aids? My son scraped his knee and it's bleeding. Does anyone have a couple of Band-Aids? So maybe the tour guide was up there talking, blah, blah, blah. And I need to cut in. I need to stop What was going on because something has happened. I need this to be solved first, it's more urgent or more important than what you're doing. And often, once somebody does that, they see that that is more important and they're willing to help. Forgive the intrusion. Does anyone have band-aids? Oh, what happened? My son scraped his his knee or more serious. Forgive the intrusion. Could you please call an ambulance? My son has cut his knee and I think he may need stitches. So they will then hopefully stop what they're doing. Call the ambulance call, maybe it's 911 or some other number and then get him an I and everybody else. We're all going together to the hospital so that he can get stitches to fix his cut, right? So these are really simple expressions but very powerful when you want to get something done because something unexpected has happened. Now, these are more common for people we know well, but you could use them. I don't want to make these very hard lines between them. You could use these in this kind of situation as well. It's okay. It really depends on the situation you're in. I'm just trying to give you a sense in my head. There are these three groupings people I don't know at all. People I'm kind of familiar with people who are around me and people I'm close to. Okay. I need to ask a huge favor. Huge favor. What's that? Well, that might be driving all the way to the airport with the passport. I forgot. And it's an hour-and-a-half away. Oh, that's a huge favor. A huge favor is a major inconvenience, usually for the other person. That's why it's a huge favor. A favor is what you do for someone else. Now, could I ask the tour guide a huge favor? Yes, but huge might be different for the tour guide than it would be for a family member who needs to drive an hour-and-a-half to bring me the passport I forgot, right? Huge for the tour guide or huge for the front desk person, might be quite different than huge for someone who's close to me, someone who's close to me, a friend or a family member, they're probably much more willing to help me. A huge favor is going to be huge. But going up to get my bag that I forgot. Maybe a huge favor to the front desk person. That's not their job normally. I've asked them that huge favor. But if I were to ask that to my family member, that same thing, could you go up and get my bag? That would be no problem. So it's relative. It's relative. Huge is relative. It depends on who you're talking to. Can I ask a big favor? Same thing, different way to say it. Would you please do me a favor now? This one could be for minor things. Would you please do me a favor? Could you please open my email? Maybe you're at the airport and you forgot the confirmation number for your flight, you don't have it with you. And so someone who is at home who didn't or isn't traveling with you, they can check for you. Could you do me a favor? Could you open my email and then search the airlines and let me know the confirmation number for my return flight. That might take them five-minutes. It's not a big deal. Would you please do me a favor? Could you do me a favor? Same thing. Something came up, I really need a hand. Now really here makes it stronger. It enforces that it's fairly urgent. Something came up. It means it's an unexpected thing or something just came up. I'm sorry. I can't something came up. I can attend your birthday party. I was planning to go, but something came up. It could be a good excuse, write something unplanned, happened. Something came up. I really need a hand. Often. This is for physical help, but it could be for something like this. Something came up. I really need a hand. I am at the airport trying to check in for my flight and they said that I need to have a return ticket booked, but I haven't booked my return ticket yet. Would you mind going online and booking a return flight for me under my name and then letting me know that confirmation number. Would you mind? Well, that is a hand. I need a hand. That is a big one. Would you mind doing me a huge favor? I need a return flight and I didn't book one yet. Could you help me out with that? Could you help me out? Could you do me a favor? I really need a hand. Could you give me a hand? Although give me a hand is often an in-person thing. I'm carrying something and it's too heavy handed with this would be more common for an in-person situation. I don't know who else to ask. This is usually a big one. This is when it's a huge crisis of some kind and were very upset or frustrated. And we're looking for help from people we know. And then we turn to someone we wouldn't normally ask. I don't know who else to ask. I didn't know who else I could ask. There are variations here. I really need a favor. Could you please do me a huge favor? I could really use your help. This really is making it much stronger. Now this might be for someone we know quite well, I need your help. Hey, Greg, I need your help. Someone you're so familiar with a spouse, a brother, sister, a very close friend, a roommate, right? Greg, I need your help. Get on my e-mail telling me the confirmation number of my flight, right? No formality there at all. Very direct, but you have a good relationship with them. So just say what you need and of course, they will help because they have to help because that's what family and friends and roommates, maybe roommates. That's what we do. Now we've looked at these simple sentences. I want to try to fit these into some slightly larger examples. Let's take a quick look at a few of those before we move on to our next section. 88. When it's Urgent (or Not): That guy just took my backpack, call the police. Well, I didn't use forgive the intrusion there, did I? No. Why not? Because it's so urgent. There's no time for any of that. So in some cases, hopefully extremely rare cases or not at all. In some cases, people need to ask for help from someone by yelling. And that would be something like this. Something gets stolen, somebody runs away with something, somebody left something. The taxi drove off with something. You have to yell, hey, stop. My passport is in the back seat. That guy just took my backpack. Call the police. You need help immediately. There's no time for anything else there. You just say exactly what you need to say to hopefully get help. I hate to ask this, but my phone just died and I need to call a taxi. Could I borrow your phone? Now this might be for someone familiar or not. It could be the host of the Airbnb. It could be the front desk person. It could be a colleague from a conference, someone we don't even know very well. Maybe the tour guide or a stranger on the street. But we would probably start with excuse me, pardon me. Hi, sorry to bother you. Sorry for the intrusion, and then hate to ask this, but my phone just died. An extra layer of sort of inserting yourself into that person's space, into their life before you ask for the favor. Just a couple more examples. 89. Full Help Request Examples: I'm sorry to Bother You. Would it be possible to get a few of those nausea pills? We thought we can hack it, but we can't. Maybe we're on a boat tour or a fairy or a cruise of some kind. And we felt pretty confident. Yeah, we don't we don't think we're going to get sea sick, It's going to be fine. And someone had earlier offered us nausea pills, seasickness pills, and case. We've got sea sick. I don't get sea sick. I'm very lucky, but some people do and they tell me it's very bad. Throw up over the side of the boat. I'm sorry to bother you. You're talking to a person you spoke to earlier. This is the person who offered you nausea pills. Would you like some nausea pills? No, We'll be fine. Okay. 20 min later, would it be possible to get a few of those nausea pills? We thought we could hack it, but we can't. That's just a little bit of context. I'm referencing what happened before when I said No, I don't need it. I'll I'll be fine. I'm referencing that we thought we could hack it. That means handle it, deal with it. Wouldn't get sick, but we can't. Okay. I'm sorry to Bother You. Could be used for complete strangers, but more often used for people, at least we've interacted with once before, someone's somewhat familiar. Forgive the intrusion. Have you seen two passports sitting around anywhere? We can't find hours anywhere. And this is the last place we remember having them forgive the intrusion. We remember that one. Something's going on to people having a conversation at a table. Now I haven't really interacted with them before, right? But we're at the same restaurant so we share a context. And I had left 10 min ago, and I came back into the restaurant when I realized that I left my passport. Okay. Well, passports, right. I said passports to passports. Okay. So I asked the waitress, can I go to the table and look for them. And so I go over there and I say forgive the intrusion. Excuse me. Maybe both. That's fine. Excuse me. Forgive the intrusion. Have you seen two passports? Right. And then if they've seen them, they've seen them. If not, then not. But that's a good way to enter the conversation, right? Again, I don't know them. I haven't met them. I'm not familiar with them, but we share a context and this is what I want to interrupt their conversation, right? I could say that to the waiter or waitress or host or hostess at the restaurant to when I go in, I forgot something, right? I go in and they're doing something, scheduling something or on the phone or helping someone and I say, Hi, Excuse me. Now I could just say hi, excuse me. Have you seen but if I say instead, Hi, excuse me, forgive the intrusion. Have you seen two passports? We would have left them at our table where we left them at our table about 10 min ago. Oh, yeah, they're right here. Here you go. Can you show me your ID that probably asked that that happened to me recently at a restaurant with my credit card. I left it there. I went in and I said, Hi, excuse me. Sorry to bother you. I think I said Sorry to Bother You. Have you seen a credit card, a blue credit card, and then I told them the name on it. They asked for my ID and so I told them, I showed them my ID. And they said, here it is. Here you go. And I said thanks a lot, thank you so much, I appreciate it. So there's always a way to solve it. Just be aware that these are flexible. You can use them in a lot of different situations. But there's a general feeling for favors that it is someone we already know, usually not all the time. And that the less we know someone or the less familiar we are with someone, the more we may want to add things like pardon me, excuse me, forgive the intrusion. Okay. Let me know if you have any questions about these or any other expressions or sentences, examples we've gone over in this lesson and in this section and in this course. In fact, I hope you've been taking notes and I hope you're working on your own examples. The next section we're going to be talking about talking about the trip we took. We're gonna be talking about how it was, what it was like, what we recommend, what went well, what didn't go so well. Okay, so I'll see you in the next lesson. 90. Section Overview and Travel Suggestions: We're getting very close to the end of our journey together in this course. We've covered a lot and I hope you've enjoyed it thus far. I certainly, I certainly have. Now in this section we're going to be talking about stuff that happens when you get home from your trip. And that means particularly talking about it, right? We've covered a lot of things, situations and the language you need to communicate with other people, right? Solving problems, getting places, communicating, right? All of those travel English communication situations. But what about when you want to share your experiences? When you want to recommend a place. Oh, when you go to that city, I really want you to visit this specific spot. How do you say that naturally, right? So we're going to talk about the good and we're going to talk about the bad and how we can make those recommendations. But first, I'd like to spend just a little bit of time giving some general suggestions based on my own experience traveling around the world so that you can get the most out of your trips. Particularly when it comes to meeting people, having interactions, having memorable experiences, and using the English language. Now these tips are not specifically about English, right? But I think if you follow them, it will encourage you to push yourself to use English and make connections and build relationships. And as I said, have a more memorable experience. Okay, so we're just going to go through a few of those before we talk about the good and the bad experiences we may have had on a trip. So let's hop over to the board. Don't let me be the one to tell you how to travel, right? Of course, these are just my suggestions. And this is really the only part of the course where I share something that's not only English related. So if you're just here for the phrases, the expressions, the dialogues, and the situations, you are welcome to skip this lesson. But, but I think if you just pay attention to these tips, maybe use a few of them. You will have more interesting interactions, particularly in English. So here are my general suggestions from traveling around the world. You've probably heard the expression when in Rome. And the whole thing is when in Rome do as the Romans do, right? So kind of put aside your feelings about what's normal. Faux pas, what's awkward? Pauses, social mistake. Putting those aside can be a very interesting way to explore another culture. When you explore another culture, you're also sort of immersing yourself in its language, its ideas, its food, it's art, right? Really do that. You have to be, I think it's a good idea to jump into it and swim around without the lens of, oh, that's weird, that's weird. That's different from what I'm used to. Because if you're always doing that, you're not really enjoying it, right? And that's not to say do everything that locals are doing. If something makes you uncomfortable, you know, fine. I don't want to eat sheep's brain, maybe. That's one experience I had that was uncomfortable for me in terms of foods, so I didn't do that. Right. But within reason, I think it's a great little mindset to have to get the most out of a trip because you learn so much new perspectives, new language, new culture, and it's a great way to make new friends. I think that kind of leads to the other point, which is to get off the beaten path. I really can't help teaching English. I have to even with the tips, I share, at least teaching expression when in Rome that's an expression off the beaten path. That's an expression. You'll see places that are very touristy and. We've talked a lot about New York City in this course. That would be Time Square, e.g. or maybe in England that would be around the London Eye in Buckingham Palace. And every place has its touristy area. And it's great to visit those places. Awesome. But also try to spend some time off the beaten path in some place where there are more local people. Because again, you have the opportunity to meet people from there. And then you can get recommendations about the real stuff people do, the really cool stuff. People do. Actual real people do not tourists, right? And again, nothing wrong with doing touristy stuff. But I've had really interesting experiences going off the beaten path and then meeting really interesting people who will take me somewhere cool or give me recommendations. Tell me where I should eat. An interesting place that most people don't know about. A neighborhood that most people don't know about or most visitors don't know about. I've experienced and discovered so many really cool things just by following this one to get off the beaten path and sometimes do stuff that's not so touristy. And when you're off the beaten path, you'll have a lot of opportunities for conversations. And I would really strongly encourage you to start conversations. Now how do you do that? Well, we talked about it. Remember the lesson on the airplane. How do you start a conversation? Find something in common, and use a comment or a question based on that thing that you have in common. And then it goes from there, right, in review that lesson if you don't remember, right? But that's what it is. And in my experience, starting conversations usually results in a very memorable experience. A good conversation, a new friend, learning all kinds of new stuff. Again, it's also the people you meet. If you're just spending time by herself or only with the people in your group. That's great. That feels safe, that feels nice. But are you traveling only to feel safe? Maybe. Maybe if that's why you like to travel, you like to relax. You wanna go to a resort or on a cruise and you just want to add just let me relax because I'm not at work now. I just want to hang out, sleep, read, and eat. Okay. Okay. Fine. I like that too. But but I would say it's a good idea to start conversations when you can, not just on airplanes, but also then, because that can lead to all kinds of very interesting things. I, because of this, have friends and connections all over the world. If I go somewhere, I can say, Hey, do you want to meet up for coffee and reconnect? And that's a really cool thing. It feels really good to know people all over the world. Now, one interesting idea, and this is actually not just for travel, is to find interest groups. Now there's one that's called meetup and there are other local events that regularly happened and you have to search them based on where you're going, right? Every place you go may have meetup events. That's actually a, a platform. There are there are similar ones as well. Or you can just search local events near me online and you can usually find stuff that's going on. And they might have concerts. There may be book readings, some tours happening. Maybe there's a book club. I go to a book club pretty regularly and sometimes we have people attending who are only going to attend once because they're visiting the city. And they say, I just went on Meetup and I searched interesting book clubs or something like that. And I found this one. And this has been a great experience. And you meet somebody new, you have an interesting conversation. But there are meetups around hiking, they're meetups around food, activities, pottery, yoga, all that sort of stuff. Local events to around if it's a business trip and you want to network, networking events and maybe events where people pitch, right? They pitch their company ideas and you can give feedback. So they have all kinds of cool stuff all around the world. I've been to a lot of them and it's really interesting. It's much better to do that, I think, than just sitting in the hotel. Then going out and walking around, then maybe going on a tour, and then going back to the hotel. It's fine too. I sometimes do that too, but it's good to know more options right. Now speaking of tours, just a couple more things I want to mention. Not all tours are touristy. Some tours are kind of dry. Here's this thing and this thing. And that can be interesting. But if you look out for reviews and you read a lot of reviews around each tour, you can find some really cool stuff. Maybe it's around a specific interests. Maybe it's around something historical. But not every tour is the same, and not every tour fields very touristy, right? So I would say choose tours carefully and use reviews when you're choosing them. Because some are great and some are terrible. I've been on both great and terrible tours. And the thing that the great ones have in common, I think. Or there's a level of interaction and it's really well-planned. And the host, the person leading the tour, is they know what they're doing, they know everything about it. They know how to create an experience. I went on a tour, a really interesting tour in Colombia, a coffee tour. And that was fantastic. We got to watch the entire process and participate in the whole process of picking the coffee, berries, the fruit, and then drying them and then roasting them and then drinking coffee. It was very interactive. It's really interesting and very well-planned. So the best way to find the best tours is to, I think, read a lot of reviews, do research. Don't just randomly pick one because picking a great tour, if you're a tour type of person can make a trip. That means it can make the trip even more memorable than it would otherwise have been. Now, we did spend a fair amount of time in this course talking about hotels stuff because it is very common, right? Hotels. But I would encourage you to maybe get off the beaten path and checkout a guest house, a bed and breakfast, something like an Airbnb, and maybe hostile and experience a different side of a place. Those places, in particular, I think hostels and Airbnb bees and maybe guesthouses. If you can find a good one. In particular, you can get a sort of feeling of living there so that it's not just, Oh, I'm way up high in a hotel room by myself looking at a TV, right? More interactive experiences. I used to work at a hostel in Seattle, and I got to interact with all the guests. We would go out together, we would watch movies together. And it was very social and communal. And the people who visited the hostile vague got a great experience. Because everybody who worked there like me, wanted to hang out with them, which is totally different from a hotel. Hotels are great. I like hotels, but just consider that sort of thing. Same thing with something like an Airbnb. There have been some great Airbnb hosts who will tell you everything about the area. It can sometimes be more of a feeling of really being there, really living there. Which can be very interesting. And again, I like all different types of accommodation. But that's one when I want to really explore a place that I often look to, particularly Airbnb bees and hostels. So that's just a few tips. I wanted to pass along at least something to consider when you're planning your next trip. Of course, I'm not telling you how to travel. Everybody has their own style and I think that is awesome. But when you're traveling, it's good to at least consider all the options right? Now. Next we're going to be talking about how we talk about the trip when we get home, or perhaps on the way back. How do you share your experiences? How do you talk about the positive, the negative, and making recommendations? So I'll see you in the next lesson. 91. The Bad: So you get back from your vacation and you feel kind of bittersweet. It's nice to be back, but that means the vacation is over. And you want to reflect on it. You want to think about it, reflect. And maybe you do that with a friend. So whether you're chatting on the phone or a friend comes over it, you tell them about your trip. People love to ask that. How was your trip? What did you like about the trip? What did you think about the trip? Right? I don't know why, but that is a very common topic of conversation. Okay, great. Now I want to talk about both the bad and the good. Because sometimes things don't go so well. Or sometimes we want to include the negative with the positive, right? So we're going to start with how we can say some stuff that wasn't so great, so let's call it bad. And then how we can combine that with stuff that's good. And then we'll talk about the positive comments. So we're going to look at both sides of the coin here. Okay, So let's, let's start with the bad. Now. Maybe we could talk about specific cities we went to within a country, okay. And we went together. Okay. And we're telling someone else who's asking us about it. We weren't crazy about maybe, maybe this is a vacation to, let's say, let's say Japan, we weren't crazy about Tokyo. But we absolutely loved Osaka. And that's of course very subjective because people like things for different reasons. And then you could explain why you might like one or another. Crazy about doesn't mean it's bad, or rather not crazy about doesn't mean it's bad. It just means it wasn't what we expected. It wasn't for us. We didn't enjoy it that much, right? There are things you might enjoy and things you might not enjoy. We weren't crazy about Tokyo because you could go on and explain because it's quite crowded and it's very noisy. And well, sock on the other hand, is so quiet with really interesting food. And everybody we met there was really interesting and cool. So of course that's just an example. That's not my real opinion. That's how you could do that when you want to talk about both. But you don't have to say cities here. You could say other aspects of the trip. Maybe you only went to one place. Okay. We weren't crazy about we weren't crazy about the food. We weren't crazy about the room the hotel room. You stayed in the same hotel the whole time? We weren't crazy about the room then. Uh, but you don't have to say that. But if you just want to say the negative, we weren't crazy about the room. We weren't crazy about the food. We didn't really like that. The food, the room, the place. But I like to add a positive after it. But the scenery was amazing. Same thing here. The city was underwhelming. But the natural beauty was absolutely mind-blowing. The natural beauty, I should add outside the city, right? The city itself. Sometimes you'll hear itself, the city itself was underwhelming. That's not a very strong negative. It's just not that great. Some people would say most cities are just, they're just cities, right? I think that's not true. I really like different cities and different environments. I think that's really interesting. But the city itself was underwhelming. Not that great. It's not as strong criticism, however, but the natural beauty outside the city was absolutely amazing. Okay, let's do, let's do a new York one. We've been talking about New York. Manhattan. No, no, no, that's not fair. Come on. Midtown. Hopes midtown is overrated, honestly. But other neighborhoods like SoHo, the village, Upper West Side, but other neighborhoods like Soho are very interesting. We really enjoyed visiting those. So what is overrated compared to underwhelming? Well, underwhelming is kind of just a feeling of not being very impressed and feeling it's kind of men. But Of overrated means that many people say, it's great. Many people say, oh, it's amazing. But if you actually go there, in my opinion, it's not that great. People say it's great, but actually it's not that great. Right there. A lot of things that are overrated. So popular, everybody likes it. You go to see the Mona Lisa. I think it's overrated. I think it's overrated. I've actually never seen the Mona Lisa in person, so I can't say right. But who knows? Maybe it's overrated, Maybe not. I don't know. I suspect that I might think it's overrated. Okay. Why don't we just do that. The visited Paris, the Eiffel Tower wasn't all it's cracked up to be. But we enjoyed the move that famous museum where the Mona Lisa is. Okay, wasn't all it's cracked up to be pretty much the same as overrated. That means people say, Oh, it's great. You see all those pictures of the Eiffel Tower. Everybody takes a selfie in front of the Eiffel Tower. Wasn't all it's cracked up to be. I wasn't that impressed with it. Again, you can replace all kinds of things here. If you want to say, if you want to say Paris wasn't all it was cracked up to be or wasn't all it's cracked up to be. But we really enjoyed traveling through the countryside. So it could be a place compared to an experience place. Paris. Paris wasn't all, it's cracked up to be. But we really enjoyed traveling through the countryside. That's more of an experience, kind of a journey. Yeah, you can compare different types of things. Paris wasn't all it's cracked up to be, but we had some great wine. Fine. Perfect. You can do that. It's very flexible. Okay, let's go. I don't want to say negative things about places. Okay. These are just examples, but I'm going to choose Sydney. Sydney. Sydney was, was a bit of a letdown, although, and maybe we're travelling around Asia. And also we went to Australia, Australia, and parts of Asia. But Although same thing, but although Cambodia was stunning or a specific place in Cambodia, Angkor Wat, is that where the temples are? Maybe you went there and that blew your mind. Okay, we went to Sydney and we went to several places throughout Asia and the most memorable, Cambodia, especially the temples at Angkor Wat. Mind-blowing, absolutely mind-blowing. So whatever you want to put there, you don't have to put the positive. You can just say the negative if you want to. And you don't have to make it strong, weren't crazy about underwhelming overrated. Not all it's cracked up to be right. These are these are not too strong. And if you want to then add something that can be a nice way to make it feel balanced. Personally, I like to balance it with something good as well. I think that makes me sound like less of a negative person, even when I want to say something negative. Now let's, let's look at ways to describe the good. 92. The Good: Let's now look at some expressions or sentences we can use to describe things we really, really enjoyed about the trip without mentioning the negative, just the positive. Alright. So something is a blast. Maybe this is an experience. Maybe this is a place you could say the tour the wine to her we did was a blast and you could add absolute there was such such a blast. But maybe it's a specific place that you visited. Okay. Maybe you went to, go Goa was a blast. That means the experiences you had in Goa were extremely fun. Whatever you did there, whenever you didn't go was very fun. So it was a blast. This is similar to very fun. Now what if it's just interesting, right? I went on a trip recently and I visited a lot of museums. Now, was that a blast for me? That's not the word I would choose. It was interesting. It was thought provoking. It was fascinating. I wouldn't call it a blast. That would be for partying and tours and excursions and hiking and cave diving and all of that stuff. That's fun, right? Skydiving and zip lining. Fun stuff is fun and is a blast. Maybe a slower trip where you're just relaxing, reading by the pool and on a cruise, or at a resort, or going to a lot of museums, or doing a historical survey or on a business trip. These are probably not going to be described as a blast. Okay. Well, this one is usually about a place. Usually it could be a place within a country, within a city. It could be a region, an area that could be a country and entire country. So maybe you went to all these places and you, One of the places you plan to visit Vietnam. You didn't have any expectations. You've never been there before you visit and wow, it was an unexpected gem. It's like you've found something that you didn't realize was so great. And you got there and it's so great, right? But that could be a city instead of a country, you could say, what would be a gym? A shaman in China, Salomon is, or was an unexpected gem, actually live there for a little while, or Chengdu as an unexpected gem. A region the Southwest of the United States is an unexpected gems for people who don't know much about it. They're usually shocked by how beautiful it is. Now this place is again, region, city, country, maybe state. The most memorable place could be within the city as well. Maybe we could say the old town was the most memorable place. So you're in a city, How was your trip to that city or when you were there? How was your trip? Right? Well, it was okay. It was good. But the Old Town is the most memorable place for the Old Town was the most memorable place we visited. Memorable is good. It's positive, but it's not like it's woo hoo, woo hoo fun. It's just a positive experience. It's what sticks in your mind and maybe that's just the name of the district in the city or the place. The food was mind-blowing. That would be describing it more holistically, right? Again, you can focus on a place there, but maybe for the whole trip, the food was mind-blowing. Mind-blowing is good. Mind-blowing is not bad. Usually, it's usually used in a very positive way. The scenery is stunning. Scenery is stunning. Why is, was there, right? Well, you can often use e as in was interchangeably like this, right? It is an unexpected gem, would be fine because it's still there, right? But some things have to be in the past, e.g. it being a blast. If you went a second time, it might not be a blast because you might do different things. So that should be was, you should say was, was the most memorable place. Again, should probably be in the past because yes, the places there. But if you went a second time, it may not be as memorable because you would have different experiences, right? The scenery is stunning and it probably will always be stunning. No matter when you go, if you go in a year or two years, if you go to the same place and it's not pouring down rain or something, it's probably still going to be stunning. So you could use was there the scenery was stunning because you're focusing on your experiences there. But it's fine to use is they're often interchangeable. But you also have to think about was that Is that a was maybe because I'm focusing on those past experiences I had. Or is it better to use an is to say that That's just the way it is. This is a place with beautiful scenery, no matter when you go, right? And I think e.g. this one would be an either or case, but this one would not be an either or case. The tour we did was so fun. That has to be a was because who knows if it's always going to be fun? It was so fun and then we could talk about it. Once you've said these things, then you could go on and tell a story, explain why it was so fun. These are really just the high level impression. Then we go into the details, of course. Alright, so now that we have a good sense for talking about the bad and the good, when we're talking about a trip, maybe we can give recommendations. When you go to this place, you should do this. Well, how do we say that naturally? So let's go on and look at how we can give recommendations based on our trip. 93. Giving Recommendations Part 1: Now we're going to go through a few examples of recommendations we can give based on the experiences we had when we traveled somewhere. Now I'm going to give personal experiences, real recommendations from me based on my experiences. Alright, so I would highly recommend doing a coffee tour in metagenome. So I don't always love to do tours, but I've been on some really good ones. I mentioned that before. And the ones that are really good are really good. And that the coffee tour I did there was great because a whole experience, very interactive, very organic, natural, nothing forced. And it just felt like really learning it rather than being told a bunch of things, right? So I would go on to explain it. And highly recommend adds a little bit of strength to it. So if you want to kind of push it a little more, you can say, highly recommend going to this place. I would highly recommend this restaurant. I would highly recommend this tour. I would highly recommend this country, the city, anything, whether it's an experience or a place, you can highly recommend. Then we do the if style, if you do this. So I'm not telling you you have to do this, but if you do it, this is my recommendation. So this is a kind of, I guess we could call it a nested, nested recommendation or a conditional recommendation. It lives inside of that choice. If you don't go there, then ignore what I'm saying. But if you go to India, you have to visit Russia cash. Now am I saying you have to visit Rishi cash and if you don't, we can't be friends anymore. Now again, this just adds strength to it. You have to do it, you have to try it. It is a little pushy. It can sound a little pushy, but it's not like I'm going to force you to do that, right? Of course not. I'm just expressing a strong feeling that I really enjoyed it and I think you would enjoy it too, right? So this is just another way to recommend. Thailand is one of my absolute favorite places to visit. Now that's a general statement, right? But if someone is thinking about where I should go for my vacation, or I'm thinking about living abroad, or I'm thinking about going to another country to live for a few months. I might just say Thailand is one of my absolute favorite places to visit. It is one of my go-to go to vacation spots. My wife and I love to go there because they have great food. Everybody's very friendly. The weather is usually beautiful. You can walk around and just buy fruit on the street. It's so relaxing, It's so nice. And there are a lot of different regions that are totally different. You can rent a motorcycle and drive around the countryside. And they're all kinds of things to do. It's very cool. So I'm building my recommendation. I start with a statement like this. Just a statement to say, I like this. This is one of my absolute favorite places. Notice when we're giving recommendations, we might add things that give it some strength. Again. You have to visit. I highly recommend one of my absolute favorite places. It just adds a little bit of power to it instead of saying my favorite places, right? Just a bit more. So let's look at just a few more examples. 94. Giving Recommendations Part 2: If you're a foodie like IM, you'll love Naples. There's another if, but instead of it being in, if you visit this place, if you're like me, if you're adventurous like me. If you enjoy hiking, like me. If you enjoy looking at art, if you really like history, like me, if you're a foodie, like me, if you're an explorer like me did I already say that one? Those kinds of things to describe yourself. If you enjoy this, if you like this, if you are this, a foodie is someone who enjoys cuisine. If you're a wine, a wine lover, like me. If you're a thrill, a thrill seeker. If you're a thrill seeker like me, any thing like that, then you add the thing that satisfies that. If you're this like I am, you don't have to add like I am, but it can be right to say that we're the same. You could just say if you're a foodie, you'll love Naples. So you will love this if, if you meet my requirement or my criteria that I set up, that your wine lover, that you're a foodie, that you're a thrill seeker, that you love the outdoors, if you love the outdoors. So there are a lot of variations of that. One. If you love nature, I think you'll really enjoy South Africa, or I think you'll really enjoy New Zealand, so many different variations for that one. Be sure, Be sure to, be sure to stop back, be sure to do something is just a little push to remind somebody to say, Hey, I think you should do this, right? It's very friendly. It's sounds nice. Be sure to check out. This is sort of like C, visit experience. Be sure to check out flushing if you're ever in New York. So again, there's an if there, notice that these many of these have IFS nested. If you're in New York, be sure to do this, doesn't have to be to visit a place. Be sure you try this restaurant. Be sure you go to this park. Be sure you go to Central Park. Be sure to stay away from something. Don't go there. Be sure to stay away from from midtown, e.g. not a great place in my opinion. And yet that's where most people tend to go. Weird. We really loved volunteering with monkeys in South Africa. That's it. Another shared experience. I'm saying I liked doing that. If that's the kind of thing you love. Maybe someone says, I really want to do one of those volunteer trips where it's not about fun, it's not about relaxation. I want to spend a month or two months volunteering with animals or helping in some way. A lot of people like to do animal volunteering. So then I could share an experience. Oh, we, my wife and I really loved volunteering with monkeys in South Africa. Here are some pictures of me with cute monkeys. Then you can show some pictures of your experience. So sometimes a recommendation is just sharing a memory and then the other person deciding, yeah, that sounds like something I would like to do to based on the little story that you share, the Southwestern US, United States has unbelievable scenery. I've been thinking about going on a road trip but not sure where to go. Well, the Southwestern United States, or also known as the Southwest, has unbelievable scenery. I would recommend if you visit the United States, checkout the Southwest, it is beautiful and perfect for a road trip. I've been on several road trips there and every time it blows my mind. Alright. So that's it for recommendations to talk about your experiences on trips, talking about the good and the bad. If you have any questions about this, let me know. Practice your own examples based on the traveling that you've done. And I will see you in the next and final video. 95. Course Recap: Well, you made it to the end of the course. Congratulations, it is a big achievement to complete a course like this. I hope you've learned a lot. I hope you've enjoyed yourself. It's been really fun for me to be your guide. Throughout this course. We've covered a lot. We've talked about all the stuff that happens before the trip, deciding where to go, going to a travel agency and answering common travel agency questions, talking about preferences, booking things, booking a flight, making sure we're ready for the trip. We haven't forgotten anything. Going to the airport, checking in, going through the security check and then getting to the gate and all the stuff that happens there. Of course. Then getting on the flight, handling everything on the plane, asking questions, making requests, understanding instructions, and of course, having conversations. If you want to do that, how do you have Smalltalk? How do you begin a conversation on a plane or in fact anywhere? And then once you land, how do you go through immigration? What types of questions might they ask? How do you answer those questions? And then going through customs, which thankfully is relatively simple compared to everything else. Most of the time. Then getting to your accommodation, whether it's a hotel or hostel or a resort or some other place, how do you handle the check-in process? How do you ask questions and complain about things if you need to make requests, how do you get recommendations? How do you check out of your hotel or your accommodation? Then once you arrive at your destination, talking about how to get around different modes of transportation. Asking for help, asking for directions, or which way to go. Explaining different types of transportation clearly. To avoid misunderstandings, of course, solving unexpected problems, expressing your frustration, right? Getting help from others, and then talking about the trip. Once you get home. We've covered a lot and if you have any questions about it, anything we've covered, make sure to ask if there are any gaps. Anything you feel that has been missed, you want to know about a specific situation. Feel free to ask me. I would love to fill in that gap for you to maybe give you a few expressions or a few helpful words to use in that situation. Now, if you want to continue your English learning journey, I have a lot of other courses you can check out. Pronunciation, grammar, idioms and phrases, thinking in English, business English, emails and writing, all kinds of things. So feel free to check those out if you would like to continue your English learning journey with me. Also, I would love to hear from you so you can leave a review. Let me know how you felt about the course and that is it from me. All that's left to say is, I hope on your next trip, you feel more confident to handle any kind of travel situation naturally, with ease, with confidence, fluently, of course. And just know that if you have any difficulties along the way, I will be right there with you. Again. Thank you so much for taking the course. Check out the other ones. If you want to continue the journey, leave a review and I will see you in the next one.