Transport — B1 Vocabulary

B1 VOCABULARY · transport

Onions

PICTURE

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"It's not a traffic jam, it's a car park. A lorry had lost its load — onions, Cem."

Vehicles & public transport · road compound nouns · *How long does it take?* · *set off, end up, run out of*

Listening

Speaking

LEAD-IN

Rank your city

Best to worst: buses · trains and the underground · trams · cycling · walking · driving.

1. Defend your ranking in pairs.

2. What's the single worst thing about your commute?

3. What would you change first, with unlimited money?

PICTURE

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VOCABULARY · B1

Which word matches the definition?

Write the letter of the word next to each definition.

1. a big vehicle for transporting goods long-distance (US: truck)

2. a comfortable bus for long journeys between cities

3. a smaller vehicle for deliveries

4. a train that runs on rails in the street

5. the railway system under a city (US: subway)

6. a fast road with several lanes between cities

7. where you stand and wait for a train

8. one section of a train

9. a small two-wheeled motor vehicle

coach

lorry

van

tram

carriage

scooter

the underground

motorway

platform

VOCABULARY · B2

Compound nouns: match a word from the top row with a word from the bottom row.

Ten compound nouns. Four of them appear in the listening — which?

rush · traffic · seat · speed · zebra · petrol · taxi · parking · cycle · road ·

jam · hour · camera · belt · crossing · station · rank · fine · lane · works

BEFORE YOU LISTEN

Commuter confessions

A radio phone-in: listeners call in with their worst-ever journey to work. Halina drives; Doru does not.

LISTEN FOR

1. What went wrong for each caller?

2. Who had the worse morning?

PICTURE

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LISTENING

Tapescript: "Commuter confessions"

a radio phone-in

CEM ...twenty-two minutes past eight, you're listening to Morning City, and today we're doing commuter confessions: your worst journey to work, ever. Halina from the north side, you're on air.

HALINA Morning, Cem. So — last Tuesday. I set off at seven, nice and early, because they've got road works on the bridge again.

CEM Again? They finished in April!

HALINA They started again in May. Anyway — I get to the motorway, and it's not a traffic jam, it's a car park. Forty minutes, no movement. A lorry had lost its load — onions, Cem. Thousands of onions, right across three lanes.

CEM Onions.

HALINA People were getting out of their cars and taking photos. Some were taking onions. And here's the beautiful part — while we're all sitting there, absolutely still, the speed camera flashed at somebody. On a road where nobody had moved for half an hour!

CEM That camera deserves a promotion. How late were you in the end?

HALINA Two hours. And then I got a parking fine at work, because the car park was full and I ended up on the street, half a metre into the pedestrian zone. Half a metre!

LISTENING (continued)

Tapescript: "Commuter confessions"

CEM Brutal. OK — Doru, you're on next. Can you beat onions?

DORU I can beat onions. I don't drive — I take the tram, then the underground, two stops. Last Friday, tram's cancelled. Fine. I walk to the station — the platform's closed, some signal problem, everybody's squeezed onto one narrow platform like penguins. I finally get on a train so full my feet weren't touching the floor. I was just... held there. By strangers. Like luggage.

CEM A human sandwich.

DORU And then — then — I get out, borrow one of those electric scooters for the last kilometre, very pleased with myself, and it runs out of battery on the hill. Not at the bottom. Halfway up. So I'm pushing a dead scooter uphill, in the rain, in rush hour, past a hundred people in warm buses watching me.

CEM And how long does your journey normally take, Doru?

DORU Twenty-five minutes, door to door. That day? An hour and fifty. And when I finally walked in, soaked, pushing nothing because I'd abandoned the scooter — my boss looked up and said, "Half day, is it?"

CEM (laughing) Right, listeners, vote on the app: onions or the scooter of shame. And watch out on the bridge tomorrow, there's — of course there is — a burst water pipe. More after the news.

COMPREHENSION

Halina (H), Doru (D), or neither (N)?

1. Left home earlier than usual because of road works. ______

2. Was photographed by a speed camera while completely stationary. ______

3. Got a fine for stopping in a cycle lane. ______

4. Travelled in a dangerously crowded train. ______

5. Ran out of petrol on a hill. ______

6. Normally has a 25-minute journey. ______

LANGUAGE FOCUS

Phrasal verbs, "How long does it take?" and stress.

1. leave on a journey = set ________ · find yourself somewhere unexpected = end ________ · finish your supply = run ________ of · be careful! = ________ out!

2. Complete the pattern: How long ________ your journey ________ ? — It ________ twenty-five minutes.

3. Now make: (a) a question about your partner's commute; (b) a sentence about how long it took you to get here today.

4. Complete: It ________ (me) three hours to get home in the snow last year.

5. Compound noun stress: which half is stressed — TRAFFIC jam or traffic JAM? Test it with:

speed camera

parking fine

rush hour.

PRACTICE · F1

Complete the compound nouns.

1. Slow down — there's a speed ________ just after the bridge. 120 euros says hello.

2. Put your seat ________ on; I'm not moving until you do.

3. Never stop on a zebra ________ — pedestrians will judge you, correctly.

4. We're nearly empty. Is there a petrol ________ before the motorway?

5. I waited twenty minutes at the taxi ________ and then three arrived together.

6. Avoid the centre between five and seven — rush ________ is a nightmare.

7. The whole street is closed for road ________ until October. Allegedly.

8. He parked in a cycle ________ "for two minutes" and got a parking ________.

PRACTICE · F2

Complete with the correct phrasal verb in the correct form: set off · pick up · end up · run out of · watch out.

1. We ________ at six to beat the traffic and still arrived late.

2. Could you ________ me ________ from the station? The last bus has gone.

3. ________! That van isn't stopping at the lights!

4. I took the wrong night bus and ________ on the opposite side of the city at 2 a.m.

5. The scooter ________ battery exactly halfway up the hill. Exactly.

SPEAKING

Commuter confessions, live

Two minutes to prepare, then tell your group your own worst-ever journey — real or invented, but told as true.

• Use at least five compound nouns, one How long does it take / it took me..., and two phrasal verbs.

• The group votes: best story, and — separately — least believable.

• Then: "Fix the city." Unlimited budget, one year. Propose three changes to your city's transport.

PICTURE

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TEACHER'S REFERENCE · HIDE OR DELETE BEFORE CLASS

Answer key

B1 1 lorry · 2 coach · 3 van · 4 tram · 5 the underground · 6 motorway · 7 platform · 8 carriage · 9 scooter

B2 rush hour · traffic jam · seat belt · speed camera · zebra crossing · petrol station · taxi rank · parking fine · cycle lane · road works. In the listening: road works, traffic jam, speed camera, parking fine, pedestrian zone, rush hour (any four).

GIST Halina: the motorway blocked by a lorry's spilled onions — two hours late, plus a parking fine. Doru: cancelled tram, closed platform, a sardine train, then a dead scooter on the hill — an hour and fifty instead of twenty-five minutes. "Worse" is the class vote.

COMPREHENSION 1 H · 2 H · 3 N (it was the pedestrian zone, not a cycle lane) · 4 D · 5 N (the battery ran out, not petrol) · 6 D

LANGUAGE FOCUS set off · end up · run out of · watch out (look out). How long does your journey take? — It takes twenty-five minutes. It took me three hours... Stress falls on the FIRST element: TRAFfic jam, SPEED camera, PARKing fine, RUSH hour.

F1 1 camera · 2 belt · 3 crossing · 4 station · 5 rank · 6 hour · 7 works · 8 lane / fine

F2 1 set off · 2 pick ... up · 3 Watch out (Look out) · 4 ended up · 5 ran out of

HOMEWORK Write your commuter confession as a paragraph (100–120 words) — the version you would send to the radio show.