Shopping in English: BOGOFs, Sales and the High Street

You go in for toilet roll and you come out with forty-six rolls. That's what happens when you're a sucker for a BOGOF, as one of our hosts cheerfully admits in this episode — and the other one has never even heard the word. "You’ve never heard of BOGOFs?" Katie asks, before spelling it out: "Buy One Get One Free". Around that small moment of confusion, the conversations in this unit cover supermarkets, local shops, second-hand clothes and the particular horror of the January sales.

What you'll hear in this episode

There are four English conversations. In the first, Katie and Tom compare shopping habits in the UK and in Spain: twenty-four-hour supermarkets, doing the whole weekly shop in one place, and what the out-of-town hypermarkets have done to small towns. They talk about the reported "death of the High Street" and note that there's now "a bit of a backlash actually". One of them confesses to loving the supermarket — "I absolutely love going to the supermarket" — and to walking down every aisle whether or not there's anything wanted from it.

Then you hear Alec and Donnie speaking alone. Alec describes buying an unconventional set of pyjamas — a sweater and matching tracksuip bottoms, second-hand, for six euros. Donnie explains a New Year's resolution to go to the supermarket more often instead of buying sandwiches and coffee between classes: "I know it sounds pathetic", he says, but it's cheaper and he's cooking more.

Amanda and Cathy answer the same question — what was the last thing you bought? Amanda blew twenty-five or thirty euros on artisanal food and fancy stuffed olives, because "I tend to get carried away at the market". Cathy calls herself "much more of a spontaneous shopper" and buys shoes online.

Finally, Katie and Tom return to talk about sales. Asked if he likes them: "No I absolutely hate them" — he'd rather "pay double, and wait until everybody’s left the shops".

Quick facts

Episode	Zapp! English Listening 3.30 – Shopping
Episode number	3.30
Pack	Listening 3
Level	3
Duration	16 minutes 54 seconds
Workbook	Included in the all-in-one pack (€39)

What you'll learn

The first conversation is a good place to hear how native speakers hedge and soften what they say. "I'm ashamed and embarrassed to say...", "I'm kind of torn", "it's cost versus personality in the shopping stakes I suppose" — the opinions are strong, but they arrive wrapped in qualifiers. You'll also hear a lot of unfinished sentences that the other speaker completes, which is how real conversation works and one of the hardest things to follow at speed.

There's plenty of concrete shopping language: the weekly shop, the monthly shop, grocery shopping, household goods, cupboard goods, fruit and veg, a butcher's, a fishmonger, tills, queues, trolleys, discounts, half price. You'll hear Black Friday described as something brought over from the States, and the reasoning behind permanent sales: shops need to "stimulate" business, so the sale is now "here to stay".

The four tasks each set a listening goal before you press play — find two differences, work out what question two speakers are both answering, spot what the two hosts have in common. That last one is a genuinely useful skill: listening for agreement rather than for individual words. The extra listening questions in the workbook go back over detail you probably missed the first time, such as why Tom thinks British people drive to big out-of-town stores.

Vocabulary from the workbook

The glossary picks up words as they occur in the conversations:

posh (adjective, informal) – looks expensive or high quality, as in the "posh, snazzy kind of deli" where you can buy just meat or just fish
snazzy (adjective, informal) – attractive, not simple
backlash (noun) – a negative reaction to an idea or action, used about people turning against giant supermarkets
aisle (noun) – the long thin area between rows of seats or shelves that you walk down
sucker (noun, informal, pejorative) – somebody who will easily believe what people tell them and can easily be tricked or cheated
pathetic (adjective) – useless, not achieving anything, makes you feel sorry for them
spontaneous (adjective) – at that moment without planning
impulsive (adjective) – suddenly without thinking or planning
elbowed (past participle) – pushed with an elbow, as happens in the sales
punched (past simple) – hit with your hand made into a fist
stimulate (verb) – make something react or happen, cause, create a reaction

What's in the workbook

The workbook takes you through the four listening tasks in order, each with its question set before the audio and the answers given straight afterwards, so you can check yourself as you go. Every conversation is printed in full as a transcript, including the hesitations and interruptions, which makes it easy to see exactly where you lost the thread.

After the tasks come the extra materials: further listening questions on all four conversations (what BOGOF means, when Black Friday is, what bad thing happened at the sales in the UK) with answers at the end. Then a vocabulary exercise called Getting the meaning from context, where you match five lines lifted from the recording to definitions — two informal words for hitting someone, a phrase for going in front of people who are waiting, a word for spending money without worrying about it, and a word for work hours that are often at night. The glossary above closes the unit.

The audio is free. The workbook is part of the all-in-one pack, which covers every episode across all our courses for €39.

Get the complete courseAll workbooks and audio — €39

What level is this episode?

Level 3, from the Listening 3 pack. The speakers talk at natural speed and interrupt each other, so it suits learners who are comfortable with everyday conversation and want to work on following it in real time.

Is the audio scripted?

The conversations are unscripted — six different speakers talking about their own shopping habits. The teaching sections that set up the tasks and give the answers are scripted, so the instructions stay clear.

What is a BOGOF?

Buy One Get One Free, a supermarket offer in the UK. In the recording it's spelled out letter by letter, which makes it a useful bit of listening practice in itself.

Do I need the workbook to use the audio?

No. The English conversations work on their own. The workbook adds the questions, the answers, the full transcript and the vocabulary exercises, and it's included in the €39 pack.

How long is it?

16 minutes 54 seconds, split into four conversations, so you can stop after any one of them and come back later.

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