Spoken English Let Us Review Something Ep 243

Spoken English

Today we improve our spoken English by listening to a podcast which is all about theme parks and LEGO. Not only will you learn some great everyday English vocabulary, but if you ever decide you want to visit a UK theme park, you will learn all about the Lego Windsor theme park.

LEGO is very popular in most parts of the world. In the US in the Christmas season they sell 27 boxes of LEGO every second! [source] I’ve read that there are 8 bricks of LEGO for every human on earth! I dread to think where all this plastic ends up in the environment.

LEGO is now much more than the small plastic bricks that it began as over 50 years ago. Today you have LEGO films, action figures, computer games, costumes and even theme parks.

So today's podcast will talk about LEGO and a review of the LEGO theme park in the UK. We will learn about the theme park and improve our spoken English at the same time.

If you want to learn more about why listening to native English speakers talking about interesting topics will help you speak English more fluently, then please sign up to our Free 7 Rules of Adept English course available here: https://7rules.adeptenglish.com/ it explains why learning English can be fun, and much easier than traditional English language learning approaches.

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Transcript: Spoken English Let Us Review Something

Hi there and welcome to this podcast from Adept English. As ever, if you want to improve your understanding of authentic spoken English, then listen to this podcast a number of times. Each time you listen, you will understand more of the words – and you will get used to listening and perhaps not understanding everything you hear. That is like real life – when you listen to real-life English conversation, you won’t understand everything first time there either. So it’s good practice for that reason – and with repeat listening, you will understand more each time you listen to the podcast, probably without needing to translate or at least you’ll need to translate less. That is the best way to practice.

What is a review?

So what shall we do today? How about I do a review? A review, R-E-V-I-E-W is something that you see a lot of online. ‘Review’ is one of those words in English which is both a verb and a noun. There’s ‘to review’ and ‘a review’. It simply comes from the shorter word ‘to view’ or ‘a view’, spelt V-I-E-W. A ‘view’ can mean your opinion on something or a ‘view’ can mean what you can see through your window or from the top of a mountain. We might say ‘Ooh, it’s a really good view’ or through your window, ‘It’s a very pleasant view’. So a ‘review’ means effectively you’re looking again at something – wherever there’s a re-, an R-E- in front of a word in English, it means ‘again’.

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So an online review is where people give their opinion on something that they’ve bought or somewhere that they’ve been. I get automatic messages on my phone when I’ve been somewhere. My phone knows where I’ve been by geolocation, I guess, and then it asks me to review the restaurant or the shop or whatever it is that I’ve just been to. And sometimes this happens when I haven’t even been there, I’ve just walked past!

Spoken English Let Us Review Something Ep 243 Article Image

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A photograph of a man holding a baby you cannot tell the gender of the baby. Used to help explain English grammar she, he and they.

©️ Adept English 2019

What is a ‘Theme Park’?

So how about I do a short review for practice vocabulary today? So hopefully the review will be interesting, but the purpose is really to get you used to hearing this kind of vocabulary in English. So here goes. We went a couple of days ago to Legoland in Windsor. If you ever come to the UK as a visitor and look online at the lists of ‘things to do in and around London’, then you’ll notice Legoland, Windsor on the list – or Legoland Windsor Resort. So this is what is called in English ‘a theme park’ and it’s basically along the same lines as Disneyland or Disney World, but not quite so fantastic as those places!

So obviously Legoland Windsor is one of a number of ‘theme parks’ in the UK. There’s also Chessington World of Adventure and if you like big rides, there’s Thorpe Park – these two are also quite close to London. And in the north of the country, the main theme park there is Alton Towers. If you like what we call ‘thrills’ - T-H-R-I-L-L-S, so that’s when something makes your heart beat fast, because it’s so exciting – then visiting one of these theme parks and going on the rides may be on your list when you visit the UK.

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Review of Legoland Windsor

So back to my review of Legoland, Windsor. What did I think of it? Well, it’s not the first time that I’ve been. But I went years ago, when my daughters were little – and I was much more impressed with it back then. There were fantastic things, buildings, and recreated famous buildings made out of Lego. Now my son is 10, he’s a little bit old for some of it, which surprised me, because Lego is one of those toys which older children still like to play with. So it was a bit disappointing in that respect. And the rides – so by ‘rides’, R-I-D-E-S, I mean when you get on a train in a theme park and it takes you somewhere or it gives you an experience.

So again ‘to ride’ is a verb and it’s what you do when you get on a train or a bus – ‘you go for a ride’. It’s also what you do if you get onto the back of a horse, ‘you ride’. So ‘ride’, R-I-D-E, is also a noun – and this is what you’re paying for when you go to somewhere like Legoland.

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However, I was much less impressed by Legoland this time. A lot of the Lego models look a bit old and dirty – they could do with an update. Some of them had faded in the sun – and they don’t look very nice. The rides were OK – we managed to go on six rides altogether. But be warned – if you don’t like waiting, if you don’t like being in a queue – then there are long queue times at a lot of the rides. So a typical example would be that you queue for say 40 minutes to go on a ride which lasts around 5-7 minutes. For me, and note theme parks aren’t really my thing – for me, it’s got to be a pretty good ride to make that worth the wait!

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So we liked a couple of the rides – they made your heart go fast – the Jolly Rocker was good and the Dragon was slightly scary. And it’s always fun to be on water – so the Pirate Falls and the Viking River Splash were good. If your children are under 10 years old, I would say that it’s a good introduction to theme park rides. They’re a little bit exciting, but not too scary. There are some thrills, but nothing too dramatic. There are of course good facilities like toilets and you can buy food. And as with all UK theme parks, the safety record is good – you don’t have accidents there – always nice to know. But there’s also the feeling that they are trying to take as much money from you as they possibly can. And although they do frequent special offers on the ticket prices – there are all kinds of ways that you get the offer of a reduced ticket price – I think it’s still expensive for what it is. It costs too much, in my opinion.

My Conclusion

So if you have children under 10 – it would be quite good them, then there is a lot of fun to be had at Legoland, even though it’s a little bit run-down and the Lego models could do with an update.

But if your child is 10 or over, I would suggested you save your money and buy tickets to one of the other attractions, one of the other tourist places to visit instead.

Goodbye

So there we are, there is my mini-review of our trip to Legoland. If you would like me to include other reviews in my podcasts of places to visit in the UK, as long as I’ve been there myself, I’m very happy to do it. Just let me know. You can get in touch on Facebook or just email me if you prefer – using hilary @ adeptenglish.com. Look forward to hearing from you.

Enough for now. Have a lovely day. Speak to you again soon. Goodbye.

Links

https://www.legoland.co.uk/ https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/review https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amusement_park https://www.natgeokids.com/uk/kids-club/entertainment/general-entertainment/ten-top-lego-facts/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vikings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buccaneer

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