Hello and welcome to English as a second language podcast number 32 Welcome to English as a second language podcast number 32 I'm dr. Jeff McQuillen coming to you from Los Angeles, California and the Center for Educational Development. Visit our website at www .eslpod .com to learn more about this podcast. Today's topic is the post office, going to mail or send letters. I'm going to talk about my experience yesterday at the post office and then as usual we'll come back
and talk about it. Now let's get started. For me, things never go very smoothly at the local post office. I've learned that if you want to mail a letter, you'll have no problems. But if things get more complicated than that, well, watch out. Yesterday, I went there to mail a small package and to pick up a book of stamps. I waited my turn in line and when I get up to the window, the clerk asks me, what can I do for you? Well, I said, I need a book. No, make
that a roll of stamps. And I need to send this package priority to San Francisco. You want insurance with that? He asked me. Um, I don't know. What do you recommend? Well, he said, you can send it priority with tracking if you want to see when it gets there, or you can send it insured if the contents are valuable, or you can do both. Okay, I'll take the insurance. Then step aside to fill out the insurance form, he said, and bring it back up to me. when you're finished.
With that, I was waved aside to fill out my form. Next in line, the clerk called. When I finished filling out the form, I waited patiently until the gentleman being waited on was finished in front of me, and then stepped back up to the window. Sorry, the clerk said. I'm on break now. She can help you at the next window. Maybe it would be quicker just to drive my package to San Francisco. In talking about my trip to the post office, I said that things never go very
smoothly. To go smoothly means to take place without problems. How did your visit to the doctor go today? Oh, it went smoothly, meaning I didn't have any problems. Everything was done correctly and so forth. I said that if you want to mail a letter at my post office, you'll have no problems. To mail a letter, of course, means to send a letter. But if things get more complicated, I said, well, then watch out. Watch out is an expression meaning be careful. Here it means be careful
or be warned. Watch out can also mean the same as look out, meaning there may be something that is going to hit you. If you are standing near a golf course and someone says watch out, you should probably protect yourself. But here it means just to be careful. In going to the post office, I said I wanted to pick up a book of stamps. There are two terms we use in talking about stamps. One is book of stamps and the other
is a roll of stamps. A book of stamps comes in a very small little book, if you will, of usually 20 stamps. A roll of stamps has 100 stamps in it. I said I wanted to send a package priority. A package, of course, is anything that's bigger than a letter. A box or anything bigger than a letter we would say is a package. I said I wanted to send the package priority. There are different ways you can send a letter or a package
in the U .S. postal service. You can send it regular mail, what we sometimes call first class mail. That's your regular mail, nothing special about it. You can also send it priority. To send a package priority means that it will get there a little faster, usually in two to three days. You can also send a letter or a package express. To send something express means it should get there the next day or at most at the very most two days. I was sending my package priority to
San Francisco. The clerk asked me if I wanted insurance. To insure a letter or a package means that Just like any insurance, you pay extra and if they lose the package, then you can claim your insurance on it. To claim means to ask for the money that they're supposed to pay you if they lose it. I was given the option by the clerk
of sending it priority with tracking. to track a package means Comes from the expression to keep track to keep track of something means to To follow it to make sure that you know where it is and so when you send a letter or package priority or express You often get a tracking number and you can take that number Go to the internet and put it into a website and it will tell you where your package is now So if I was sending a package say from Los Angeles to New
York City It might stop in Las Vegas and then maybe Chicago before finally making it to New York City The tracking number I could look up on the website and it would tell me where it was I could also, according to the clerk, ensure my package if the contents were valuable. The contents means, of course, what's inside the package, the contents of something. The clerk asked me to step aside to fill out the form.
When someone says step aside, they mean move one way or another to move from in front of the other person. Step aside often is used if you want to get someone out of your way, for example. Please step aside means please move from the front to the side. Related to the term step aside is the expression wave aside. I said that I was waved aside to fill out my form. To wave means to take your hand and move it in the air, usually
to say hello or say goodbye to someone. I waved goodbye to my friend as he got on the train. To wave aside means to use your hand to tell someone to move aside, to step aside. after waving me aside called next in line. When you are waiting at the post office or any government building or you're at a store where you have to wait in line to return perhaps something you bought, the clerk working there will call people by the
expression next or simply next in line. meaning the next person who is in the line to be waited on. I said that I was waiting patiently until the gentleman being waited on in front of me was finished. This expression gentleman is still used in English to mean the man. The woman standing next to me The gentleman standing next to me it means the same thing It's a little more formal
than saying just man the gentleman. It's usually something of a term of respect for someone else I Then after waiting for the gentleman stepped back up to the window To step back up means to go back to where you were Usually we step up to something when we mean that we are coming to the front of a line and ready to be waited on. I stepped up to the counter to buy an airline ticket. Means I walked up, I moved up to the place where the tickets were being sold. That
is to step up. Unfortunately told me that he was on break now to be on break means to take a 15 maybe 20 minute break so that you don't work Usually every four hours or so if you're working in a eight hour day Every well, maybe every two or three hours people in American offices and workplaces, take a break, a 15, 10 or 15, maybe a 20 minute break where they don't work. They go get a cup of coffee, they go smoke a cigarette, et cetera. To be on break means that
you're not working right now. We also use that expression on break in the university between classes. For example, at Christmas time in December, schools have a break. They're on break, meaning they're not studying, they're not working. That's going to do it for today's English as a Second Language podcast. I want to thank you for listening and urge you, encourage you to email us at eslpod at esl... Thank you again for listening. We'll see you next time on English as a Second Language Podcast.