American Superstores

Intro

1. Learn Vocabulary - Learn some new vocabulary before you start the lesson.

• superstore
• appliances
• in bulk
• a million times

• pharmacy
• towering
• entices
• freezer

• rots
• in a sense
• jam-packed
• totally

• tactic

2. Read and Prepare - Read the introduction and prepare to hear the audio.

The U.S. is famous for doing things in a big way. Americans eat a lot of food, drive big cars and live in big houses. To support this lifestyle, Americans need big stores.
If you haven’t visited Costco, you’re in for an experience. Costco is America’s superstore. Customers buy everything from food to appliances in bulk, so the prices are lower.
Chad recently visited one of these stores to buy a bed. Here is a conversation between he and Nedra about his trip and the store.

Dialog

1. Listen and Read - Listen to the audio and read the dialog at the same time.

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2. Study - Read the dialog again to see how the vocab words are used.

Nedra

Chad

Nedra:  Chad, you’re looking a little tired. What were you doing last night?

Chad:  Well, I went to one of these huge, humongous superstores called Costco and just, you know, walked through the aisles a million times trying to look for some different foods, clothes… bought a book – seems like you can buy anything there.

Nedra:  Yeah. It’s amazing. I mean, you can go to the pharmacy, you can go to the meat market. It really has everything. And Fred Meyer’s is like that, too, almost but you can’t buy things in bulk, right?

Chad:  That’s true. I mean, in Costco you see these huge, you know, towering displays of fifty cubes of butter and it sort of makes you, entices you to want to buy it because you think you’re saving money…

Nedra:  Uh huh.

Chad:  ...but you really get home and it sits in your freezer for two years and it rots.

Nedra:  Or you don’t even have the space to store that stuff. I mean, I live with basically five other people in a sense, and our freezer’s jam-packed with food. We couldn’t even store, you know, fifty rolls of toilet paper if we wanted to.

Chad:  I know. It’s like you’re supposed to buy a whole new freezer and put it in your basement or something to store all this extra stuff that you’ll never use.

Nedra:  Yeah. It’s just ridiculous, but even stores like, uh, Home Depot. They’re the same way, like, they have everything you want to build your house or to fix things and I always get lost in them.

Chad:  Totally. I think it’s a tactic of these big, you know, commercialized corporations. They want you to buy more than you’re going to use.

Nedra:  I believe you. I think that sounds about right.

Quizzes

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Lesson MP3

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