Welcome to Real Easy English, our easy podcast where we have real conversations in easy English.
I'm Neil.
And I'm Beth.
You can watch a video version of this podcast over on our website, and you'll find a free worksheet there as well.
Hi Beth, how are you?
I'm good, thank you, although I was late to work this morning.
Oh no.
The traffic was bad.
Ah, we're talking about driving today.
We are, and sometimes I drive to work, and I did today, but I should have got the train because yeah, like I say, the traffic was bad.
So clearly you can drive.
Do you like driving?
It depends.
If I am commuting, so coming to work by car, I don't enjoy it. usually because of the traffic.
But if I have a long journey, like if I go to see a friend and I'm in the car for three hours, I actually really enjoy it because I listen to music podcasts, maybe an audio book, and I can relax and just drive along the motorway listening to something I like.
What about you?
You drive, don't you?
I drive, yeah, not that often because I live in London and I can use public transport.
That's one of the benefits of living in London, definitely.
Do you enjoy driving?
It's OK.
It's not a big love of mine.
But like you said, sometimes it's quite nice.
If you're somewhere maybe in the countryside on your own, you can listen to loud music and sing.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Singing in the car is good fun.
Are you good at driving or do you think people would say you're good at driving?
I don't know.
I think I'm OK.
I've never had an accident touch wood.
Oh, that's good.
That's good.
I haven't had an accident, but I did get caught speeding once and that means I was going too fast and I had to go on a speed awareness course and I haven't sped since.
Speeding speed limit.
So is there anything that you don't like about driving, neil?
Yeah, i don't really like parking, because in a busy city especially, it can be difficult to find somewhere to park, And also, when you do find somewhere to park, the space can be really small, and then you have to try to get your car into this little space.
Yeah.
Often with other people waiting for you to do it.
Yeah.
I don't like doing that when you're on a road and there's cars behind you.
Um, Outside of my house, we have to reverse into a parking space.
So reversing, going backwards for parking, I'm okay with now.
I didn't used to like it, but now it's fine because I have to do it whenever I drive.
Beth, did you find it difficult or easy to learn?
How good question.
I found it not easy, not difficult.
I remember thinking everyone I know can drive, so I know that I'm also going to be able to drive and that helped me.
But the driving on a road was fine, and even changing gears, that kind of thing was okay.
But I found parking when I was learning how to park and we have to, or we had to, reverse around a corner.
Those kind of maneuvers, they call them.
I found I found difficult, but I did pass my test first time.
What about you?
Did you find it easy to learn to drive?
I think it was quite easy.
I passed first time like you did.
But I remember the man who took the test was very critical of me at the end and even angry.
And I was scared.
I thought I must have failed the test.
And then he said, congratulations, you passed.
I think he just wanted to let me know that driving is dangerous and you shouldn't just relax now because you've passed, and that you will continue to learn after your test.
Definitely.
Let's recap the vocabulary we've learned in this podcast, starting with to commute, which means to travel to work either in a car, a train, a bus, some form of transport.
We also had speeding.
If you speed, you're going faster than you are allowed to – faster than the speed limit.
We heard to park, which means to move your car into a space where you can leave it for a while.
And the noun of that is parking.
When you reverse a car, you drive it backwards and when you are parking, you often need to reverse.
That's it for this episode of Real Easy English.
Why not test what you've learned with the free worksheet on our website, bbclearningenglish.com.
And we'll be back next week with another conversation in Easy English.
See you soon!
Goodbye.
