Welcome to English as a Second Language podcast number 617, Buying Bathroom Supplies.
This is English as a Second Language podcast episode 617.
I'm your host, Dr Jeff McQuillan, coming to you from the Center for Educational Development in beautiful Los Angeles, California.
Our website is eslpod.com.
You probably know that, but did you know that you can download a learning guide for this episode?
You did?
Oh, all right.
Well, this episode is a dialogue between Tim and Jan about buying things that you would need in your bathroom.
We all need bathrooms and there are things you need to buy for them.
Let's get started.
We're almost done.
We just need to get some bathroom supplies for Kimberly.
Okay, here are some towels, a bath mat, and a bathroom scale.
Don't forget the cleaning supplies.
She'll need some rubber gloves, disinfectant, bowl cleaner, and a plunger.
All right, we have all that.
Where are you going?
She'll need a soap dish and a toothbrush holder.
She'll need a trash can, too.
Okay, I think we're all done.
Kimberly is moving into an apartment with college roommates, not starting her own bathroom supply store.
Let's not go overboard.
I'm buying her ten packages of toilet paper and twenty boxes of Kleenex.
She'll be living on her own for the first time, and she'll need all that.
10 packages of toilet paper and 20 boxes of Kleenex?
She can shop for herself, you know.
You don't need to buy her a six-month supply.
Clearly, you don't know college students.
They'll go through that in a week.
Shan begins our dialogue by saying we're almost done, meaning we're almost finished.
We've almost completed our job, our task.
We just need to get some bathroom supplies for Kimberly.
Supply S-U-P-P-L-Y is something that you need to do a particular activity or for a particular purpose.
So if you are going to climb a mountain, you would probably need certain supplies, such as food water, Clothing.
I hope.
Well, the supplies that Jan and Tim are buying are for Kimberly's bathroom.
Kimberly is, I guess, their daughter.
Tim says, okay, here are some towels, a bath mat, and a bathroom scale.
A towel is a large piece of fabric, something that absorbs water, and you use it to dry yourself or to dry something else.
Most towels are made of what we would call cloth.
You could also have towels made of paper, paper towels.
But for the bathroom, you probably aren't going to use paper towels.
A bath mat B-A-T-H-M-A-T.
One word is something you put on the ground in front of your shower or your bathtub, which is where you wash yourself.
The bath mat helps prevent the floor from getting wet from the water.
That would, of course, come off of you if you took a shower or a bath.
A bathroom scale S-C-A-L-E is something you put on the floor and You stand on it and it tells you how much you weigh.
That is, how many pounds or how many kilos.
I personally like to weigh myself in kilos because it's always a smaller number than pounds.
Tim says don't forget the cleaning supplies, the things you would need to clean a bathroom.
He says that Kimberly will need some rubber gloves, disinfectant, bowl cleaner, and a plunger.
Gloves are things you put on your hands. that cover your fingers and your hand.
Rubber gloves are gloves made either from a plant or artificially, we would say synthetically.
Rubber is what you usually see on tires.
Tires are made of rubber.
Tires for your car.
Well, this is rubber gloves made to keep your hands dry.
The other things that Tim thinks they need to buy include disinfectant.
Disinfectant.
D-I-S-I-N-F-E-C-T-A-N-T is typically a liquid cleaning product, something that will kill bacteria, will kill things that might harm you.
To disinfect something is to remove the bacteria, the germs G-E-R-M-S that might be on that surface, things that could make you sick.
A bowl cleaner is also recommended by Tim.
The bowl here refers to the toilet bowl.
So a bowl cleaner is cleaner that will clean the inside of the toilet.
Finally, he recommends a plunger, which is not a cleaning supply.
A plunger P-L-U-N-G-E-R is something that has a long, typically wooden stick and at the end of the stick is a round piece of rubber.
And you use this if you have a toilet that is not flushing, that is, the water is not taking away what's inside the toilet bowl.
You use a plunger to create pressure, to push what is preventing the water from leaving the toilet bowl out into the pipes which take the water from the toilet bowl down into your city's sewer system.
A sewer, S-E-W-E-R, is a system of pipes that take dirty water away from your house.
So that's what a plunger is, and Tim thinks that Kimberly needs one.
Jan says, all right, we have all that.
Where are you going?
Tim says she'll need a soap dish and a toothbrush holder.
You can buy soap for your bathroom that is a liquid.
You can also buy a solid form of soap, what we would call a bar, B-A-R, of soap.
But you need a place to put the bar of soap so that it doesn't slide around, it doesn't move around.
That little container is called a soap dish.
Dish like you use for food.
But this is one for soap.
A toothbrush is what you use to clean your teeth.
Tooth is the singular of teeth.
A toothbrush holder is a place to put your toothbrush.
Usually it's something that has holes in it that you can put a toothbrush in so that it will hold it.
A toothbrush holder.
Tim also says that she'll need a trash can.
Trash.
T-R-A-S-H is another word for garbage, things that you are throwing away, that you don't want anymore.
A trash can is where you put that garbage, those things.
Jan says, OK, I think we're all done.
We're all finished.
Kimberly is moving into an apartment with college roommates, people that she went to college with.
Her roommates are sharing the apartment.
She's joking.
She thinks Tim is buying too many things.
She says let's not go overboard.
The expression to go overboard O-V-E-R-B-O-A-R-D, one word means to do too much of something, to go to an extreme about something to do too much.
Tim says, I just need to get a couple more things done.
Jan says, what?
Tim says, I'm buying her 10 packages of toilet paper and 20 boxes of Kleenex.
Toilet paper is soft paper that you use when you are going to the bathroom, when you are using the toilet.
I think you know how that works.
Kleenex K-L-E-E-N-E-X is technically a type of what we would otherwise call tissues or facial tissues.
But this particular company's product has become so popular that people just call facial tissues Kleenex, even if it isn't made by that company.
It's what you use, for example, if you are going to blow your nose or if you need to wipe your eyes after you've been crying.
Then you would want to have some Kleenex.
Notice we typically say boxes of Kleenex.
We sometimes refer to the toilet paper as rolls of toilet paper, because the paper is wrapped around in a circle.
Tim says that Kimberly will be living on her own for the first time and she'll need all that, all of those things.
To live on your own means, to live outside of your family's house, to live by yourself without any relatives.
It can also mean without any roommates, although that isn't what Tim means here.
Jan says, 10 packages of toilet paper and 20 boxes of Kleenex?
She can shop for herself, you know.
She can buy things for herself.
She says you don't need to buy her a six-month supply.
That is, enough toilet paper for six months.
Tim says clearly you don't know college students.
They'll go through that in a week.
So it seems that Kim is still in college.
I said before, she was living with people she went past tense to college with, but I guess she's still in college.
Because Tim says that Jan doesn't know college students.
She doesn't have experience, information about them.
Tim says they'll go through that in a week.
To go through something is a two-word phrasal verb meaning to use all of something so that there is nothing left.
If you work in an office and you have to print out a lot of letters and reports, you will go through a lot of paper.
You will use up a lot of paper.
Go through has some other meanings in English, and those can be found in the learning guide.
Now let's listen to the dialogue, this time at a normal speed.
We're almost done.
We just need to get some bathroom supplies for Kimberly.
Okay, here are some towels, a bath mat, and a bathroom scale.
Don't forget the cleaning supplies.
She'll need some rubber gloves, disinfectant, bowl cleaner, and a plunger.
All right, we have all that.
Where are you going?
She'll need a soap dish and a toothbrush holder.
She'll need a trash can, too.
Okay, I think we're all done.
Kimberly is moving into an apartment with college roommates, not starting her own bathroom supply store.
Let's not go overboard.
I just need a couple more things.
What?
I'm buying her 10 packages of toilet paper and 20 boxes of Kleenex.
She'll be living on her own for the first time, and she'll need all that.
10 packages of toilet paper and 20 boxes of Kleenex?
She can shop for herself, you know.
You don't need to buy her a six-month supply.
Clearly you don't know college students.
They'll go through that in a week.
We try to make sure our scripts don't go overboard with too much vocabulary.
And that's thanks to our wonderful script writer, Dr. Lucy Say.
From Los Angeles, California, I'm Jeff McQuillan.
Thank you for listening.
Come back and listen to us next time on ESL Podcast.
English as a Second Language Podcast is written and produced by Dr. Lucy Say.
Hosted by Dr. Jeff McQuillan.
Copyright 2010 by the Center for Educational Development.
