Hello everyone, welcome to English Pod. My name is Marco.
My name is Catherine and today we're talking about something that I haven't actually seen in a long time but is very common in the states.
Especially in suburban areas. That's right.
We're gonna get a subscription of as the title of the lesson says.
So we're gonna subscribe to magazines, newspapers, stuff like that.
Right, so there's a guy coming around to everyone's houses and He's offering different magazine subscriptions.
So let's take a listen to today's dialogue and we'll be back in a moment to talk about what's going on.
Good afternoon, ma'am. My name is Mike and I'm selling subscriptions to all sorts of periodicals.
No, thank you. I'm not interested. Please, ma'am.
If you could spare five minutes of your time, I'm sure we could find something that could interest you.
I wish I could, but I have to walk the dog and finish cooking, so if you'd excuse me.
We have a great variety of magazines all about cooking.
This one, for example, is a bimonte publication with recipes from all over the world.
Wow, well, that would be kind of useful.
Do you have any other cooking magazines?
Sure do. This one is a quarterly publication, but each issue has over 200 color pages of recipes and also many home decorating ideas.
Wow, this is nice! Okay, sign me up for both publications.
You mentioned you have a dog. Most pet owners sign up for this weekly newsletter that has information on dog care, pet shops and even pet sitters.
That's exactly what I needed. What else do you have?
Well, else I have. Alright we're back so as you saw Mike is well not very excited to be selling subscriptions but he has magazines about almost everything I think.
That's right, and he's actually a pretty good salesperson because it sounds like this customer is going to buy quite a few magazines.
Exactly, and so he used a lot of interesting vocabulary related to magazines and subscriptions, so let's take a look at those now in Language Takeaway.
Okay, so this first word is one that we've already said a couple of times in today's lesson.
This is the topic of the lesson. The word is subscription.
Okay, so if you get a subscription that means that you are paying money to receive something every month every week, etc.
That's right. So the time is fixed. Like you said, it could be weekly.
The time could change. But basically, you have a promise that after you pay this money, you'll receive something periodically.
So there are many things that you could have a subscription for, not just magazines.
Newspapers come in subscriptions. That's right or maybe you pay for satellite TV.
That's a subscription. So you pay every month and you receive channels like lots of channels.
Exactly or hopefully English pot you receive by subscription or you pay.
The subscription fee. Exactly. So with English pod you subscribe.
That would be the verb. A subscription is the noun.
You subscribe to a service like a newspaper magazine. and you receive the magazine or the service every month, every week, every day depending on what the subscription is like.
Okay, and so because subscriptions come at different time frames, so for example, English Bob, we have lessons three times a week.
Newspapers are often times every day. They come in different periods of time.
So we call these kinds of publications Periodicals, okay, so for example as you said a newspaper It comes every day.
That's the period of time, so it's a periodical.
The same as a magazine. Sometimes they are weekly.
Sometimes they are monthly. Is a book a periodical?
Pop quiz? No. Okay, no because you only get it once right so basically a periodical has to be something I guess that is That comes out every so often a new version a new edition Mm-hmm right it's continually updating okay So that is periodicals and subscriptions.
Now moving on to when he was trying to sell the magazines, he said we have a great variety of magazines all about cooking.
So what is a variety variety is a great word.
It's a word I personally am very a very big fan of I like to chew have many choices to choose from so variety means something something that has many options for example at the grocery store there's a great variety of food there are apples and crackers and cakes and So variety means there are many different kinds of something.
Okay, so many choices. So if you go to a bookstore, you can find a variety of books and magazines, for example.
Alright, now moving on to again when we're talking about the period of time, how often she's going to get this cooking magazine.
The one that he's showing her is a bi-monthly publication.
So what exactly does it mean if she receives a magazine bi-monthly?
Okay, so this is a bit confusing in English by monthly has two meanings, but what's important is The word by here or the prefix by mm-hmm that means to Okay.
Okay. So we could say buy monthly, buy weekly, buy annually.
These all mean two. So in this case, we're talking about something that I receive two times every month.
Okay or it can be that you get it once every two months.
Okay, so that might be confusing. Right.
In the first case, let's just say that it's the month of October, and I have this great subscription to a magazine.
So in October, I will receive it two times. exactly so you get it twice or It could also mean that you receive the magazine in October and then you don't receive another magazine until December.
So it's a bi-monthly publication. every two months.
So this is very confusing for us, it's probably confusing for you, but if you see this word bi-monthly or bi-weekly, You should ask the person who's offering the subscription what kind they mean.
Is it every month two times or is it every other month?
Alright, so exactly just remember the prefix by means to and then if it's by monthly by annual by weekly you have to more or less make sure that they specify what they mean because they can mean both and that's how ambiguous this word is.
The next one, the next one we have for you is not nearly as confusing.
It's a very, very common word in both periodicals and sales, but also in... and in marketing and business as well.
Right, we're talking about a quarterly publication or something that comes out once every quarter.
Right. So if you think about a year, a year has 12 months, a quarter of a year is three months.
So the first quarter is January, February, March.
Exactly. So a quarterly publication means that you will get a magazine four times in one year.
Okay, we could also talk about quarterly sales.
You know, this quarter our business did very well but last quarter was not so good.
So quarter means three months at a time.
Exactly. And for our last word on language takeaway today, we are talking about a weekly newsletter.
So weekly is pretty straightforward. You receive it once every week.
That's right. So weekly publications are very common.
What is a newsletter? A newsletter is important in periodicals because it's not a magazine, but it's not a letter either.
It's basically short update, a couple of pages maybe, or even one page.
That's on a piece of paper that gives you information about a group or a club or a community.
For example, we could say, The English pod newsletter comes out quarterly.
Exactly. Maybe in your offices you receive your company's newsletter so usually they will some companies will come out with a monthly or a quarterly newsletter where if you have many offices or many branches all over the country or the world then you will receive updates or news about what's going on in other places within your same company.
You can tell some people in your New York office that in Los Angeles, we have a new cafeteria or a new employee.
Exactly. So that is what a newsletter is basically for.
I think it's time now for us to listen to the dialogue again. and we'll be back to talk to you with four key phrases on Fluency Builder right after this.
Good afternoon, man. My name is Mike and I'm selling subscriptions to all sorts of periodicals.
No, thank you. I'm not interested. Please, ma'am, if you could spare five minutes of your time, I'm sure we could find something that could interest you.
I wish I could, but I have to walk the dog and finish cooking, so if you'd excuse me.
We have a great variety of magazines all about cooking.
This one, for example, is a bimonthly publication with recipes from all over the world.
Wow, well, that would be kind of useful.
Do you have any other cooking magazines?
Sure do. This one is a quarterly publication, but each issue has over 200 color pages of recipes and also many home decorating ideas.
Wow, this is nice! Okay, sign me up for both publications.
You mentioned you have a dog. Most pet owners sign up for this weekly newsletter that has information on dog care, pet shops, and even pet sitters.
That's exactly what I needed. What else do you have?
Well, I also have Alright, so now we have some sentences or ways that you can say things on Fluency Builder.
Fluency Builder. Okay, this first phrase is very very common among sales and salespeople because basically it's a way to be polite. and to ask someone to listen to you for a little while.
The salesperson says if you could spare five minutes of your time.
Okay, so let's start with that part. If you could spare So to spare something means do you have something extra?
Do you have enough of it? Yeah, so I could say, can you spare $5?
I forgot my wallet at home. So that means you have an extra $5 I could borrow.
Okay, very good. So if you're asking someone to spare five minutes of their time, you're asking them to give you five minutes of their time.
That's right. So if you could spare a second, or if you could spare five minutes of your time, I would like to talk to you.
Okay. So it's a very polite way to ask someone for their time now. for our next phrase the woman is also very polite she says you know what I have to walk the dog I have to finish cooking so if you would excuse me she's basically saying no in a very polite way if you could excuse me right i've got to go so this is a kind of a very indirect but polite way of saying I'm sorry I can't say I gotta go or I can't really talk to you right then.
That's right even if you're at a party for example and you're talking to somebody but you don't really want to talk to them anymore you could say It was nice talking to you if you could excuse me.
If I can leave now. So you can say if you could excuse me or if you would excuse me, both forms are pretty much the same.
Okay, and what about when she actually is convinced about the magazine?
She says wow, this is nice. Okay, sign me up for both publications Okay sign me up this means I would like a subscription.
Okay that means I would like you to take my information and I will give you some money.
But this is also a really nice phrase in English because it means I want to do this.
I'm interested. So if you would use this in another context, for example, a group of friends are going to the movies.
I say, oh, sign me up. I want to go. I heard that movie was awesome.
OK, very good. So sign me up is like include me.
I want to go to or I'm part of it of whatever you're doing.
Exactly. Okay, so that's all the phrases we have for you today.
I think they are they're really good. They're not specific for this circumstance of getting a subscription as we saw we can use them in many other situations so I think we should go back listen to the dialogue for the last time and we're back to talk a little bit more
Good afternoon, ma'am. My name is Mike, and I'm selling subscriptions to all sorts of periodicals.
No, thank you. I'm not interested. Please, ma'am, if you could spare five minutes of your time, I'm sure we could find something that could interest you.
I wish I could, but I have to walk the dog and finish cooking, so if you'd excuse me.
We have a great variety of magazines all about cooking.
This one, for example, is a bimonthic publication with recipes from all over the world.
Wow, well, that would be kind of useful.
Do you have any other cooking magazines?
Sure do. This one is a quarterly publication, but each issue has over 200 color pages of recipes and also many home decorating ideas.
Wow, this is nice! Okay, sign me up for both publications.
You mentioned you have a dog. Most pet owners sign up for this weekly newsletter that has information on dog care, pet shops, and even pet sitters.
That's exactly what I needed. What else do you have?
Alright, so subscriptions, periodicals, all this is very common as you said in the United States.
People get them through the mail every month, right?
That's right. And I have to say it's changing now.
You know, we used to get subscriptions at home when I was a kid.
We'd have magazine subscriptions and and even a newspaper subscription, but these days people are doing more and more on the internet, so you don't see the guy with the subscriptions coming from, you know, going from door to door to sell you this.
You do it yourself on the internet, so it's pretty common that way.
Do you have any web subscriptions? No, no, no.
I haven't signed up for any periodicals on the web.
I do receive the newspaper every day. And that's about it.
It's kind of hard to receive magazines where we are, but I am a big fan of magazines like National Geographic or Popular Mechanics.
I had that when I was a kid. My grandmother would always give us a subscription to National Geographic for Christmas.
It's a very good magazine and it's It's so colorful, full of pictures and really interesting articles, not only about animals, but about the world in general, so it's really cool.
And they always gave you a map that you could take out and open up.
And it was the best part of the whole magazine.
Exactly. So actually, I really enjoy having subscriptions to periodicals, magazines. newspapers, not a big fan of newsletters or things on the internet.
I kind of like to hold it, hold a magazine or take it with me if I'm on a trip.
Yeah, I totally agree. So yeah, but I think many of our listeners may have a subscription to their local newspaper, local magazines, or maybe as you said internet subscriptions i know some people sign up for the uh... like Harvard Business Review that's available online or even I think the New York Times has an online platform.
They do. They do so. You should let us know what subscriptions do you have, what periodicals do you like to read.
Our website, of course, is EnglishPod.com.
You can also purchase a subscription there.
We hope to see you on the website and until next time.
Alright, bye. you
