Lesson 19

Lost in England: Asking for Directions and Giving Directions

Level: Pre-Intermediate

Lesson contents:

• "Can you tell me the way to...?"
• Go to x,turn right at y.
• It's straight up the road.
• A typical reply: "Go up to the lights and turn right, then turn left at the stop sign. It's the church on your right."

Always watch the video several times without subtitles first. Train your ears! Your pronunciation will be much better if you follow this simple rule.

Exercises for this lesson:

• Typical phrases, illustrated, 1
• Typical phrases, illustrated, 2
• Lost in England Dictation Exercise

How to do the lessons:

1. Watch the video without subtitles.
2. Do all the Exercises.
3. Come back to this page.
4. Watch the video with English Subtitles. Use the Pause button. People speak fast!

Problems? See general support or ask your question here.

Giving Directions

Watch this video, then click on Exercise 1

Same video with Precise Subtitles:

Teachers:

In our experience, most people give horrible directions. It's not just that the directions are often inaccurate. It seems as though concentration on the information subtracts from the coherency of the speech delivered. We had to spend a full 8-hour day filming over 220 people in order to get a dozen usable examples for this lesson.

In the editing room, we soon noticed that we had chosen the simplest replies to our questions because only the short replies were grammatically correct. Our interviewees decided for us that this lesson would be most accessible to beginners and pre-intermediate students instead of those at a truly intermediate level as we had originally thought.

Extra "quiz": one interviewee says left but points to the right. Who is it?