Talking About Home Towns

Hello there and welcome to Real Easy English, the podcast where we have real conversations in easy English to help you learn. I'm Neil.

And I'm Beth. Remember, you can read along with this episode on our website: bbclearningenglish.com.

How’s your week going, Beth?

Yeah, very good, thank you, Neil. How are you?

I'm pretty good, thank you. What are we talking about today?

Well, today we are talking about our home towns, that is the places that we are from.

OK, So, where are you from, Beth?

I am from Cumbria, but specifically, I grew up in a very small, quiet village, almost in the middle of nowhere. What about you? Where did you grow up?

Well, I am originally from Portsmouth, which is a city on the south coast of England, but I've moved around quite a lot, not really lived in Portsmouth much.

OK. So, Neil, you lived in a lot of places when you were younger. But where would you say that you grew up? So, where did you live mostly when you were a child?

Well, I lived in Canada from the age of four until 10. So, I grew up a lot in Canada, but also then we moved back to England, and I did the rest of my growing up in the south of England.

Really interesting. So, when you lived in Canada, what was your home town like? What kind of place was it?

Well, it was a suburb so it was quite quiet. But it was quite close to a big city, Toronto, so you could go to the big city. But mostly when I was that age, I just stayed in my neighbourhood which was quite quiet and boring.

Yeah, I suppose I… I didn't live in a suburb. I lived in a village, but it was outside of a city, and that city was quite busy, so lots of people. But because I didn't spend loads of time there unless I went shopping, where I grew up was just quite quiet and small, maybe even boring to be honest.

So, Beth, do you miss your home town?

I really liked living in the countryside. There were loads of fields around and it was really easy to just have a nice walk and not see anybody. Whereas where I live now, there's lots of houses and lots of people so it's quite different. Do you miss growing up in Canada? Would you consider moving back there?

I don't know. It's a long time ago. I had a nice time as a child. There was lots of freedom and I could go and play in the woods and in fields with my friends, so that was really good fun. And there was loads of snow in the winter, which was brilliant because we always had a white Christmas.

Let's recap the vocabulary we heard during the conversation. We had grew up in, lived somewhere when you were a child.

And we heard lots of adjectives to describe places like busy, meaning lots of activity and people.

Quiet, not much noise or activity. For example, Beth, your village was quiet. There was not much happening there. And boring, not interesting.

Thanks for listening to Real Easy English. Find more programmes to help you with your English on our website: bbclearningenglish.com.

Next time, we'll talk about technology.

See you then!

Goodbye!