Episode 0245

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 going to get a subscription as the title of the lesson says. So we're going to 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 bi-monthly publication with recipes from all over the world.

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.

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.

Well, I also have...

All right, 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.

Exactly. And so he used a lot of interesting vocabulary related to magazines and subscriptions.

So let's take a look at those now and language takeaway.

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. You like you said it could be weekly, the time could change. But basically you're your you have a promise that after you pay this money, you'll receive something periodically.

And so there are many things that you could have a subscription for, not just magazines, newspapers come in subscriptions.

That's right. Or maybe uh you pay for satellite TV. That's a subscription. So you pay every month and you receive channels, like lots of channels.

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, um English Pod, we have lessons three times a week. Um 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.

No.

Right. So basically a periodical it has to be something I guess that is uh that comes out every so often a new version, a new edition.

It's continuously updating.

Okay. So that is uh 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?

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 wine. So variety means there are many different kinds of something.

Okay, so many choices. So if you go to a bookstore, you can have uh you can find a variety of books and magazines, for example.

All right. Now moving on to again, when we're talking about the period of time, how often she's going to get this cooking magazine, um 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. Bi-monthly has two meanings. But what's important is um the word 'bi' here or the prefix 'bi'.

Okay.

Uh that means two. Okay? So we could say bi-monthly, bi-weekly, bi-annually.

Mhm.

Um 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.

In the first case, let's just say that it's month 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 um in October, and then you don't receive another magazine until December. So it's a bi-monthly publication.

Every other month.

Every two months.

Right. 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?

Mhm. All right, so exactly. Just remember the prefix 'bi' means two, and then if it's bi-monthly, bi-annual, bi-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.

It is.

But um the next one, the next word we have for you is not nearly as confusing. It's uh 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.

Mhm. 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, um 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 newsletters. So usually they will uh some companies will come out with a monthly or a quarterly newsletter where if you have many offices or many branches all over the the country or the world, then you will receive updates or news about what's going on in other places from within your same company.

That's right. So these are very useful for uh communication across the company.

You can tell some people in your in your New York office that in Los Angeles, we have a new cafeteria or new employee.

Exactly.

So that is what a newsletter is basically for.

Um 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, 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 bi-monthly publication with recipes from all over the world.

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.

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.

Well, I also have...

All right, 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 sales people because basically it's a way to be polite and to ask someone to listen to you for a little while.

Um 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? Is it do you have enough of it?

Yeah, so I could say, um, 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 uh 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, uh 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 kind of a a very indirect, but polite way of saying, uh, I'm sorry, I can't stay, I got to go or I can't really talk to you right now.

That's right. Even if you're at a 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. Means if I can leave now.

Okay. So you can say if you could excuse me or if you would excuse me. Both forms are are pretty much the same.

Okay. And uh 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.

So if you would use this, let's uh in another context, for example, a group of friends are going to the movies.

Okay, 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. Um I think they are they're 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 uh situations.

So uh I think we should go back, listen to the dialogue for the last time, and we'll be 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 bi-monthly publication with recipes from all over the world.

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.

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.

Well, I also have...

All right, so subscriptions, periodicals, all this is uh 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, um, it's changing now. You know, um, we used to get subscriptions at home when I was a kid, we'd have magazine subscriptions and uh and even a newspaper subscription. But these days, people are doing more and more on the internet. So you don't see the 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 um, it's pretty common that way. Do you have any web subscriptions?

Uh, no, no, no.

I don't 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.

Not a big fan of uh 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 um I think uh 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. Uh we hope to see you on the website and until next time. All right, bye.

The English Pod audio review.

Listen to the meaning, then say the vocabulary word.

A purchase by prepayment for goods or services.

Subscription.

Do you have, can you offer?

If you could spare.

At three-month intervals.

Quarterly.

A final publication such as a magazine.

Issue.

A person that takes care of your pet while you are.

Pet sitter.

Let's try that faster.

A purchase by prepayment for goods or services.

Subscription.

A person that takes care of your pet while you are.

Pet sitter.

Do you have, can you offer?

If you could spare.

At three-month intervals.

Quarterly.

A final publication such as a magazine.

Issue.

Now say the word and hear it in a sentence.

Subscription.

I have a subscription to several online newsletters.

Subscription.

I canceled my newspaper subscription for the month that I will be away.

Subscription.

My subscription to this TV channel has increased in price.

If you could spare.

If you could spare a minute of your time, I would like to give you some advice.

If you could spare.

I would greatly appreciate the help if you could spare the time.

If you could spare.

Hey roommate, if you could spare me some of your eggs and butter, I'll let you have a piece of the cake.

Quarterly.

The research journal is a quarterly publication.

Quarterly.

This magazine switched from being issued monthly to being issued quarterly in order to cut costs.

Quarterly.

We make a quarterly payment on our loan.

Issue.

Learn how to manage your time and how to cook a gourmet meal in 20 minutes in this month's issue of Easy Life.

Issue.

He picked up the most recent issue of his girlfriend's favorite magazine and added it to the gift basket.

Issue.

I much prefer the older issues of this magazine because the contents of the newer issues are no different than all the other magazines on the shelf.

Pet sitter.

We need a pet sitter for our two dogs while we're away.

Pet sitter.

Being a pet sitter for my neighbors is not hard at all. I just have to make sure that their birds have enough food and water in their dispensers.

Pet sitter.

Can you call the pet sitter and let her know that we will need her to look after the cats for a few more days.