Public Transportation: Advanced Vocabulary
| This is an entry in the “Public Transportation” series. You can find more information at the series’ main page.
This entry is available as a Adobe Acrobat file for printing or use in a class. This entry includes a listening exercise. You can dowload the MP3 or play it using the button below. (MP3) |
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The vocabulary we learned on Tuesday was a good start for describing public transportation, but it’s only enough to describe what kind of transportation you use. How you use it requires more vocabulary. But, don’t worry, you’ve come to the right place to improve your English.
Before You Listen to the Recording
Think about all the things connected to transportation. From the time you get on until you get off, there are different people and machines that you interact with. And there’s the question of where you get on and off. . .
In today’s recording, you’ll hear the following vocabulary. How much of it looks familiar to you? How much of it do you think you can use already?
Listen to the recording now to see how well you can use these words:
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Route
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Driver
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Stop
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Station
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Ticket / Ticket machine
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Turnstile
After You’ve Heard the Recording
Everything okay? Was this an easy listening exercise? How well can you use these words to make a similar description of the ways you use public transportation? Give it a try, and I’ll help you with your English in the comments.
Vocabulary
Route: The buses in Dresden drive the same way through the city every day. They stop at the same places, and they go at mostly the same times. That way, it’s possible for me to know which bus to take to go where. All this information: where the bus goes, where and when it stops, is the bus’s route. It’s important to know the routes of the public transportation in your city if you want to use it regularly.
Driver: In the front of my buses and trams is a man—or, often, a woman—who controls the bus or tram. This person is the driver. Usually, I don’t have any contact to my drivers, but when I do, they’re usually very polite.
Stop: If my tram had to stop at every house along it’s route, it would take forever to get where it was going. So, there are special places for the tram to stop. We call these ‘tram stops.’ Where the bus stops is called a ‘bus stop.’ When people are coming to visit me for the first time, I tell them which tram to take, and which stop they should get out at.
Station: Maybe you know the word ‘train station.’ And you might know the word ‘bus station.’ And now you’re hearing the word ‘bus stop’ for the first time and you want to know the difference between a bus stop and a bus station. The difference is simple: a bus stop is small, and a bus station has room for many buses. Most cities only have one bus station: it’s where all the buses start—often, very close to the train station—and many bus stops where the buses stop as they move through the city. Everywhere that a train stops is called a ‘train station.’
Ticket / Ticket machine: In Dresden, when you pay to use the tram or bus you get a piece of paper to prove that you paid. This piece of paper is a ticket and it’s not allowed for you to ride the bus or tram without a ticket. You can buy a ticket from the bus driver, or from the machines that you can see at many tram stops. The machines that sell tickets are called ticket machines.
Turnstile: In Paris, it’s not possible to even come close to a subway without a ticket. There are special ‘gates’ or ‘doors’ that only open once you’ve put your ticket in. We call these ‘doors,’ turnstiles. You can see turnstiles in many subway systems—I know they are in Washington and New York, too—as well as anywhere that they want to count how many people come and go.
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