Neil and Beth have a real conversation in easy English about what they buy at the supermarket. Learn to talk about what food you buy.

Vocabulary

shopping list

everything you want to buy written down so that you remember it

staple

a basic or common food such as bread, rice or pasta

Grammar tip

Many foods are uncountable nouns. This means we need something to describe what they are sold in.

For example:

• a bag of pasta
• a jar of honey
• a loaf of bread
• a tin of tuna
• a box of cereal

You can also say some + uncountable noun.

Other foods such as apples and bananas are countable nouns. That means we can buy one apple or five apples, and use a simple plural.

And some foods can be both countable and uncountable nouns.

For example:

• some chicken, parts of chicken such as legs or breasts
• a chicken, a whole chicken

Transcript

Beth

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

Neil

And I'm Neil. You can read along with this podcast and find a worksheet to help you learn on our website: bbclearningenglish.com.

Beth

Neil, how are you?

Neil

I'm really well, Beth. How are you?

Beth

I'm alright, thank you. Today we're talking about food shopping and we'll talk about the kinds of foods that we buy.

Neil

OK, let's get started. So, Beth, how often do you go food shopping?

Beth

Oh, quite often. I think I go maybe two or three times a week. I prefer to get smaller shops because then you get fresher ingredients rather than doing one big food shop. And it also gets me out of the house.

Neil

Right.

Beth

What about you?

Neil

I would like to go shopping once a week, but there isn't enough room in my fridge for all the food that I need for a week, and I'm not organised enough. So I go often. Every day, every other day maybe.

Beth

OK, so Neil, what sorts of foods do you buy every week generally?

Neil

Well, I buy staples. Things like pasta, rice, bread, potatoes, the basic parts of a meal that fill you up. And I usually think about what meals we want to have and then get the ingredients for those.

Beth

Yeah, I'm the same. I would say we normally buy a bag of pasta. And we normally have a loaf of bread once a week. But then if I buy something like cereal, we don't have that too often, so I might get a box of cereal maybe once a month. And that lasts us for the whole month.

Neil

I get a jar of marmalade every week.

Beth

What?

Neil

Because I love marmalade so much, and I'm the only person who eats it in my house.

Beth

You must have so much marmalade on your toast to go through one a week. That's crazy.

Neil

I love it.

Beth

OK. So, we've talked about bread. We both like a loaf of bread when we go shopping. But the grammar of that is quite interesting, isn't it?

Neil

Yes. So, when we have a noun like bread or rice or jam, which is uncountable, you can't count it, we need something to describe what it's in. So we have a loaf of bread, and that makes it countable. A loaf. A jar of honey or jam. A bag of pasta.

Beth

Yeah, exactly. We can't say pastas or breads or rices. It just sounds really weird. So you'd need to say, oh, please remember to buy a loaf of bread. Or you could say, please buy some bread.

Neil

Yeah. Now, some nouns are countable and uncountable. For example, if you say, I'm going to buy some chicken and I'm going to buy a chicken, what's the difference?

Beth

So, if you buy some chicken, it means parts of chicken, like maybe chicken legs or chicken breasts. Whereas if you say a chicken, it means a whole chicken.

Neil

A dead one.

Some food, though, is simpler grammatically. So, for example, you can count an apple or a banana. So you can say 'apples', 'bananas'. Just a normal plural.

Beth

Exactly. Yeah, I could buy an apple, or I could buy five apples. And that is very simple. Whereas something like tuna, you can't buy tunas. It has to be a tin of tuna.

Neil

Beth, when you go shopping, do you make a list?

Beth

No, I kind of have a list in my head, but then I go a bit crazy when I get there. You should never go shopping when you're hungry.

Neil

That's true.

Beth

What about you?

Neil

I always take a list. And even when I have a list, sometimes I forget things.

Beth

Oh dear.

Neil

And also, sometimes I can't read the words on the list that I've written.

Beth

Let's recap the vocabulary we heard during the conversation. We had shopping list, all the food you need to buy written down so you remember it.

Neil

And we talked about lots of foods we buy, which are uncountable nouns. So, when we buy these, we have some useful ways to talk about them. For example, we buy a loaf of bread.

Beth

A bag of pasta.

Neil

A jar of honey, or my favourite marmalade.

Beth

And some chicken. But you can also buy a chicken. That's a whole chicken. Then it would be a countable noun. Just like 'apples' and 'bananas'.

Neil

That's it for this episode of Real Easy English. To test what you've learned, try the worksheet on our website.

Beth

Next week, we'll be talking about houses.

Neil

See you then.

Beth

Bye!

Neil

Bye.

ref: https://www.bbc.co.uk/learningenglish/english/features/real-easy-english/250110