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Welcome to our Daily English Listening Practice with this week’s series:

Travel Vocabulary

How often do you get time to take a vacation? Do you only have time for a quick trip to the city or a full month to go traveling?

Please listen to the audio files for explanations.
Transcripts unavailable.

Notes from the Audio Files

National Holidays / Bank Holidays

• 3-day weekend, 4-day weekend: A national holiday which means people have Friday or Monday off, sometimes both.
• Long weekends: See above
• Bank holidays: National holidays on certain Mondays in the United Kingdom
• Good Friday: the Friday before Easter Sunday
• Eurostar: train line around Europe
• Memorial Day, Labor Day: early summer and fall holiday
• Plan ahead of time: plan in advance
• Floating holiday: when a national holiday falls on a weekend, employers can offer their employees to take that day off on another work day

How to use it:
“So we get the day off for Labor Day which makes it a 3-day weekend. We should definitely plan a trip somewhere!”
“Next Monday is a bank holiday, so the beaches will be pretty busy.”

Trip

• Business trip: A trip just for business, or paid for by your company/employer
• Short trip: A short trip, probably no longer than 1 week
• You go to one place, visit and come home again: The definition of a trip
• Trip to the supermarket
• Trip to the mall

How to use it:
“My mom’s out of town on a business trip this week, so it’s just me and my dad.”
“We’ve got a long weekend so we’re taking a trip across the Channel to Brussels, can’t wait!”

Vacation/Holiday

• How was your trip?
• Summer/winter holiday
• Summer/winter vacation

How to use it:
“How was your summer vacation? Did you go anywhere fun or did you just stay at home? – We took a few trips here and there, but I mostly worked part-time at the store.”
“Kids in England get about 6 weeks for their summer holiday. Parents are quite keen to send them back to school in September!”

Go Traveling

• Went traveling: more fun and more of an experience
• Travelled: travel for work, business, pleasure
• Knew my way around: Knew the roads, names and directions to places very easily
• Enrich your life: make your life better
• Broad meaning: more open in meaning

How to use it:
“What’d you get up to this summer? -Well, we went traveling through parts of Mexico, we hit up some big cities, traveled around by bus and finally ended up at the beach for a week, it was great!”
“After he graduated he decided to go travelling. He wanted to see the world before he settled down in the UK and started his professional life.”

Fly / Flight

• I fly: airplane is assumed, you don’t have to say it. We know you don’t have wings.
  • I flew from Houston to London.
  • I’ve flown over a million miles.
• I fly (airline name) e.g. “I always fly Lufthansa.” “I try to fly AirAsia whenever I can.”
• I’ve gotta catch my flight: I’ve got a flight to catch, I’m going to take a flight
• Takes off: plane leaves the ground.
• Lands: plane returns to the ground
• In flight, in air, mid-flight: After you have taken off and you are in the sky
• In-flight service, in-flight entertainment: Foods, snacks, drinks, movies and music etc. that is available to buy during the flight

How to use it:
“I usually fly Thai Airways when I go to Thailand, but Singapore Airlines was having a great promotion on flights to Bangkok, so I went with them instead.”
“We had a really comfortable flight. No was sitting in the two seats next to me, so I could lie down and sleep! Best flight ever!”

Do you plan your trips around holidays or do you take some time off to really get in a good vacation? Tell us about it!

Thanks,

Kat and Mark