Tandem Hour Languages

Tandem Hour LanguagesCourse 03Getting around by train and bus

Elementary5 weeks5 lessons

Getting around by train and bus

This course covers tickets, platforms and directions using real station scenes. You learn to ask short questions and catch the one detail you need in the reply.

By the end you can

  1. Buy a single or return ticket
  2. Recognise platform and delay announcements
  3. Ask for directions and follow the answer
  4. Explain times using the 24-hour clock

Lessons

  1. At the ticket officeSingles, returns and asking about the next train.25 min
  2. Telling the timeThe 24-hour clock as stations announce it.20 min
  3. Listening to announcementsCatching the platform number and the word for delay.25 min
  4. Asking the wayLeft, right, straight on and how far.25 min
  5. Role-play: a missed connectionRebooking a train when plans go wrong.30 min

Station announcements are fast, crackly and full of words you were never taught. Most learners panic and try to understand all of it. That is the wrong job. You need the platform, the time and whether anything has changed.

Listening for the one thing that matters

This course teaches selective listening. Each lesson plays a real-sounding announcement or a ticket office exchange, and your teacher asks you to catch a single piece of information on the first hearing. Over the weeks the clips get longer and the background noise gets louder, much like a Friday evening at a busy terminus.

Speaking practice follows the same idea. You learn short questions that invite short answers, such as which platform, what time, is it direct. Asking well is often the easiest way to make the reply easy to follow, and the course spends a full lesson on phrasing questions so locals answer simply.

Directions get their own session, because a stranger's explanation of how to reach the old town can run to a minute of quick speech. You practise picking out left, right and the landmark, then repeating it back to check.

Fig. 03.3 — Small phrases join up into one confident café order

Course outline

Get the course outline by email

The full lesson list for each course, plus details of our level test and conversation clubs.

You are subscribed

Thanks for signing up. Look out for the first email from us.

We could not send this

Please try again. Your details are still here.