Talking About Online Shopping - Spoken English Lesson

Hi, I’m Rich. Welcome to Oxford Online English! In this lesson, you can learn how  to talk about online shopping.

What was the last thing you bought online?  What are the best online shopping websites, in your opinion? Have you ever had a really good  – or bad – experience when shopping online? You’ll learn some useful language to talk about these  topics and answer these questions in this lesson.

One more thing: do you want to  watch this video with subtitles? You can! Turn them on now by  clicking the ‘CC’ icon; on a phone, find the subtitles by tapping the  settings button on your screen.

Now, let’s start your lesson. Hey – nice shirt! Thanks! Is it new? Yes, I bought it last week on Asos.

I’ve heard of Asos, but I’ve never  actually ordered anything from there. Would you recommend it? Yes, I think it’s great. I use it at least once  a month. They have a huge range of clothes and the prices are very reasonable. Some people  say their customer service is a nightmare,

but I’ve never had any trouble. Where do  you shop for clothes if you don’t use Asos? Well, I used to shop at Next, which is a shop  I’ve always liked. Their clothes have always been quite expensive, but over the last year  or two the quality has been going downhill.

So recently I started shopping at Zara. I think  the clothes are much better value for money. OK, so you would recommend  Zara as a good place to shop?

Yes. So far, so good. I only started using  their website two months ago, mind you… Here’s a question: do you know which prepositions  to use when you talk about online shopping?

When we talk about physical shops, we  use ‘at’ – so you can say, for example, ‘I bought it at Walmart’.

When we talk about online shops, we usually use  ‘on’ – so you can say ‘I bought it on Amazon’. This is because we talk  about being *on* a website.

We also say, ‘I bought it online’ or ‘I bought it  on the internet’. We often hear students making mistakes with these phrases, so be careful! In the dialogue, you heard some vocabulary to talk about online shopping.  Look at some phrases you heard.

What do these phrases mean? Could  you explain the meanings in English? Try it now! Pause the video. Imagine you’re an  English teacher, and you need to explain what these phrases mean in English. What would you say?  Pause the video and say your definitions aloud.