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Shopping Vocabulary in English: Tills, Trolleys and Refunds
Taught by Katie Wood — Cambridge CELTA · Cambridge DELTA · Cambridge-accredited Teacher Trainer
Recorded and taught by a team of British and North American English teachers, based in Oxford (UK) and Barcelona (Spain).
In this episode: Fifteen English shopping words with pronunciation practice, from receipts and aisles to store detectives, plus real talk about dodgy trolleys and self-service tills.
Check your understanding
Four questions on what is said in the recording. Every answer is in the audio. No sign-up, nothing to buy.
The workbook for this episode has more practice, with answers, and the full transcript. See what’s in the workbook
What you'll hear in this episode
Zapp! English Vocabulary & Pronunciation 3.30 is a recording of almost 21 minutes made of short, unscripted clips about shopping. Hannah and Katie talk about receipts, refunds, trolleys, baskets, checkouts and tills; Donnie talks about a shoplifter, browsing in bookshops, bargains in the sales, being overcharged and getting a discount. Each clip is played first with the key word beeped out and then complete.
You'll hear Hannah, Katie and Donnie in short unscripted clips, each played twice: first with a key word replaced by a beep so you can guess it, then complete so you can check.
The first set covers the mechanics of buying things. One speaker describes taking a pair of "really nice new black trousers" straight back to the shop and asking for a refund, ending up with "twenty Euros refunded to my po…er my pocket". Another compares supermarket baskets in Spain, which "all have wheels on", with British ones that "just have a handle, and they always end up breaking". Katie is unimpressed by self-service checkouts — "they're just rubbish, just something always goes wrong" — and remembers a till so temperamental that its drawer would "throw money all over the place".
The second set goes further into shop life. Donnie describes spotting a shoplifter hiding a bottle of whisky in his jacket and wondering whether to tell the store detective — and deciding not to. He also enjoys bookshops purely to browse, feels awkward leaving a supermarket without making a purchase, and recalls being charged over ten Euros for a bunch of bananas, grapes and a couple of apples: "I'm sure you've overcharged me for that". There's a good line on sale shopping, too: "It's only a bargain if you were going to buy it anyway."
Quick facts
Zapp! English Vocabulary & Pronunciation 3.30, Shopping, is a free English vocabulary lesson at upper-intermediate to advanced level (B2–C1). It runs 20 minutes 46 seconds and teaches fifteen shopping words and phrases through short clips from Hannah, Katie and Donnie. The workbook, with the full transcript and practice exercises, is part of the €39 all-in-one pack.
| Episode | 3.30 — Shopping |
| Pack | Vocabulary and Pronunciation 3 |
| Level | 3 |
| Duration | 20 minutes 46 seconds |
| Voices you'll hear | Hannah, Katie and Donnie |
| Vocabulary | 15 words and phrases |
| Workbook | Included in the all-in-one pack (€39) |
What you'll learn
In Zapp! English Vocabulary & Pronunciation 3.30 you learn fifteen words and phrases for shopping, from a receipt, a refund and a till to a shoplifter, a bargain and a discount, and you repeat each one after the teacher. You also practise working out a missing word from the rest of the sentence, and you learn that a British trolley is an American cart.
The beeped clips train you to use context rather than catching every syllable — when you hear that something is bigger, has wheels and gets pushed around a supermarket, you can name it before the answer arrives.
After each group of clips there's a meaning and pronunciation task: a question, an answer, and a beep for you to repeat into. The pronunciation points are specific and often the ones that trip learners up. The p in "receipt" is silent — /rɪ/ /siːt/. "Refund" changes stress depending on whether it's a noun or a verb: /riː/ for a refund, /rɪ/ for to refund. "Basket" ends in /ɪt/, not a long vowel. The last sound of "bargain" is not /eɪ/ but /ɪn/, which surprises a lot of people. The -er of "shoplifter" is the weak /ə/, and "browse" takes /aʊ/.
You'll also pick up the useful fixed phrases around all this: "I'd like a refund please", "Which checkout has the smallest queue?", "I'm just browsing", "When did you make the purchase madam?" And there's a British/American note where it matters — trolley in the UK, cart in the US.
The vocabulary
- a receipt /rɪsiːt/ — the piece of paper you get to show that you have paid for something; the thing nobody can find when they want to take something back
- to refund / a refund /riːfʌnd/ — the money you get back when you return something you bought, as with those black trousers
- a trolley (UK) / cart (US) /trɒli/ /kɑːt/ — the metal thing on wheels that you put your shopping in and push around the shop
- a basket /bɑːskɪt/ — the metal thing you carry around a shop and put a smaller amount of shopping in
- an aisle /aɪl/ — the space you walk down between shelves in a supermarket
- a checkout /tʃekaʊt/ — the place you pay in a shop
- a till /tɪl/ — the machine at the checkout that holds the money and adds up what you must pay
- a shoplifter /ʃɒplɪftə/ — a person who steals from shops
- a store detective /stɔːdɪtektɪv/ — the person who tries to catch or stop people stealing from shops
- to browse /braʊz/ — to look around a shop and see what they have
- to purchase / a purchase /pɜːtʃəs/ — to buy something, or the thing you buy (formal)
- a bargain /bɑːɡɪn/ — something you get for a good price
- to overcharge /əʊvətʃɑːdʒ/ — to ask someone to pay more than the correct price
- a discount /dɪskaʊnt/ — a reduction in price
- service /sɜːvɪs/ — the way you are treated in a shop, the help you receive from the staff
In the workbook
The workbook for 3.30 gives you the full transcript of every clip, including the versions with the beeps marked, plus the complete script of both pronunciation tasks so you can see the phonetic notes written down.
The Extra Materials add a glossary of all fifteen words with pronunciation and definitions, and three practice exercises. Practice 1 asks you to correct mistakes in sentences such as "Thanks, but I don't need any help, I'm just shoplifting" — a genuinely useful error to fix. Practice 2 is gap-fill: refund, checkout, bargain, discount, store detective. Practice 3 is pronunciation: in each group of words, one underlined sound is the odd one out — is it a bargain, a till or a receipt? Full answers follow, including the phonetic symbols, so you can mark your own work.
This workbook is part of the Zapp! English all-in-one pack, which collects the workbooks for every episode in one download for €39.
Get the complete courseAll workbooks and audio — €39
Questions
Is the audio scripted?
The clips in Zapp! English Vocabulary & Pronunciation 3.30 are not scripted: the hesitations, the laughter and the tangents about dodgy trolleys are all real. Only the teaching sections, which set up the tasks and give the answers, are scripted, so the instructions stay clear.
Do I need the workbook to follow the episode?
You do not need the workbook to follow Zapp! English Vocabulary & Pronunciation 3.30. The free audio works on its own, and the answers are given as you go. The workbook, part of the €39 all-in-one pack, helps if you want the transcript in front of you, the phonetic notes in writing or the three practice exercises.
Is this British or American English?
Zapp! English Vocabulary & Pronunciation 3.30 is in British English. The voices are British and so is the vocabulary, with words such as trolley, till and queue, but the episode also gives you cart as the American alternative to trolley.
How should I use the beeped clips?
With the beeped clips in Zapp! English Vocabulary & Pronunciation 3.30, guess the missing word out loud before the complete version plays. Getting it wrong is useful, because it tells you which word you knew passively but could not produce.
What if I can't say "receipt" or "bargain" correctly?
If you cannot say receipt or bargain correctly yet, use the repeat-at-the-beep sections of Zapp! English Vocabulary & Pronunciation 3.30, which are there for exactly that. Silent letters and weak endings, such as /ɪn/ in bargain and /ə/ in shoplifter, need saying aloud, not just reading.
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