Transcript of Podcast 755

TRANSCRIPT OF PODCAST 755

British English Listening Practice:

Exploring The Amalfi Coast

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ENGLISH LISTENING PRACTICE: EXAMPLES & VOCABULARY TO DESCRIBE
PLACES IN ENGLISH

English Listening Practice: Examples &

Vocabulary To Describe Places In
English

British English listening practice for intermediate, and above, English

language learners. In today's English listening lesson we explore the Amalfi
coast's stunning scenery and history while enhancing your travel vocabulary
for describing places and experiences.

• 🛫 Learn travel vocabulary and phrases

• �홌 Practice grammar and pronunciation
• 🌊 Discover Italy’s Amalfi Coast and historical sites
• 🎧 Real-world context to boost your listening skills
• 📚 Interactive and immersive learning experience

✔️ Lesson transcript: https://adeptenglish.com/lessons/english-listening-

practice-travel-vocabulary-describing-places/

This isn't your average language English listening lesson - just like our
"Activate Your Listening" audio book course is'nt an average English listening
course! It's a thrilling journey through Italy's most breathtaking landscapes,
packed with rich vocabulary and real-world travel tips.

• Help us make more content with a donation https://adeptengli.sh/

donate

Discover hidden archaeological gems, navigate tricky traffic zones, and learn
to describe stunning vistas like a native speaker. Warning: This immersive
audio experience may cause severe wanderlust and rapid English
improvement. Listen at your own risk!

Follow and subscribe to our FREE English language podcast, wherever you
listen or watch your podcasts.

More About This Lesson

Embark on a thrilling journey through Italy's breathtaking Amalfi Coast! This

lesson combines stunning scenery, rich history, and essential travel
vocabulary to enhance your English skills and fuel your wanderlust.

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ENGLISH LISTENING PRACTICE: EXAMPLES & VOCABULARY TO DESCRIBE
PLACES IN ENGLISH

Here's what you'll gain from this immersive language experience:

1. Learn travel vocabulary and phrases for describing places and

experiences.
2. Gain insights into a personal travel experience, keeping you engaged.
3. Understand the term "area of outstanding natural beauty" and its
significance.
4. Learn vocabulary related to coastal geography, like "cliff" and "sheer
drops."
5. Discover terms for natural features like "rocky," "pine trees," and
"lemon groves."
6. Learn the verb "to perch" and its application to houses and birds.
7. Understand the geological term "volcanic" and its effects on coastlines.
8. Get familiar with historical sites like Pompeii and Herculaneum.
9. Learn vocabulary for archaeology, such as "ruins," "frescos," and
"mosaic."
10. Explore vocabulary related to human experiences and historical events.
11. Understand modern-day challenges like traffic restrictions in tourist
areas.
12. Get travel tips and practical advice for navigating difficult terrains.
13. Hear first-hand accounts of visiting popular tourist destinations.
14. Learn the impacts of terrain and weather on travel plans and activities.

This English listening practice lesson provides practical vocabulary for real-
life travel situations. You'll improve your ability to follow extended English
narratives. Listening to this blend of language and culture accelerates your
learning, because you stay interested and that helps you focus. You'll become
more accustomed to native speech patterns. All of which will help prepare
you for confident communication during your own travels.

Don't miss out on more exciting lessons! Subscribe to our podcast now and
boost your English with real-life stories and useful tips. Your journey to
fluent, confident communication starts here!

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

1. How can visiting the Amalfi Coast help improve my travel vocabulary in
English? Visiting the Amalfi Coast provides a rich context for learning
travel-related vocabulary. By describing your experiences and the
stunning scenery, you can practice terms such as "rugged,"
"picturesque," "archaeological," and "volcanic." Engaging with the local

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ENGLISH LISTENING PRACTICE: EXAMPLES & VOCABULARY TO DESCRIBE
PLACES IN ENGLISH

environment enhances your ability to describe places and experiences in

English.
2. What are some useful English terms for describing natural features seen
on the Amalfi Coast? When describing the natural beauty of the Amalfi
Coast, you can use terms like "cliff" to describe the vertical rock faces,
"rocky" for areas full of stones, and "grove" for plantations of trees like
lemons. These terms help convey the unique landscape of the region.
3. How can exploring historical sites like Pompeii and Herculaneum
enhance my English vocabulary? Exploring historical sites like Pompeii
and Herculaneum introduces you to archaeological vocabulary. Words
such as "ruins," "fresco," "impluvium," and "mosaic" become part of
your lexicon as you describe the preserved artifacts and ancient
architecture. This vocabulary is useful for discussing history and culture
in English.
4. What challenges might I face when travelling around the Amalfi Coast,
and how can I describe them in English? Travelling around the Amalfi
Coast can be challenging due to the "ZTL" (Zona Traffico Limitato) zones
and the steep, narrow roads. You can describe these difficulties using
terms like "restricted zones," "panoramic views," "windy roads," and
"terrain." These descriptions help convey the complexities of navigating
this region.
5. How can I practice my English by sharing my travel experiences?
Sharing your travel experiences helps you practice English by using
descriptive language and recounting personal stories. You can write or
speak about your visit to places like Amalfi, Conca dei Marini, and
Pompeii, incorporating new vocabulary and improving your fluency
through real-life contexts.
6. Additional Tip For more structured practice, consider using resources
like the "Activate Your Listening" course from Adept English. It offers
conversational practice with topics on the UK, food, and education,
helping you further enhance your English listening and speaking skills.

This lesson is a linguistic gondola ride, navigating through picturesque

vocabulary and historical ruins. You'll emerge with a panoramic view of travel
expressions, as breathtaking as the coast itself.

Most Unusual Words:

• Travelogue: A written or spoken description of someone's travel

experiences.
• Amalfi: A coastal area in Italy known for its natural beauty.

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TRANSCRIPT: BRITISH ENGLISH LISTENING PRACTICE EXPLORING THE
AMALFI COAST

• Rugged: Rough and uneven.

• Cliff: A steep, high face of rock.
• Perch: To sit or rest on something high.
• Volcanic: Related to volcanoes.
• Picturesque: Very pretty and charming.
• Fresco: A painting on a wall.
• Mosaic: A picture made from small pieces of coloured stone or glass.
• Terrain: The physical features of a piece of land.

Most Frequently Used Words:

Word Count
Amalfi 17
There 15
These 12
Because 10
Herculaneum 9
Difficult 7
Means 7
Houses 7
Where 7

Listen To The Audio Lesson Now

Transcript: British English Listening

Practice Exploring the Amalfi Coast
Let’s explore ‘Travelogue Vocabulary’ with Italy’s Amalfi
Coast

Hi there. Today let's do a travelogue. What's a 'travelogue'? It's an account of

a travelling experience. I've been on holiday last week so let's practise some
vocabulary for describing a place, describing a visit and an experience. And if
you're Italian, I'll be talking about part of your country. So hopefully this will
be interesting because it's personal experience, we know you like that and it
keeps you listening. But also some good general travel vocabulary today. And
keep listening to the end to hear my unique insights on the Amalfi Coast.
That's A-M-A-L-F-I. Some travel tips to sharpen your experience. This lesson

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TRANSCRIPT: BRITISH ENGLISH LISTENING PRACTICE EXPLORING THE
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promises to be a blend of real-life experience and practical language,

practical vocabulary.

Don’t forget New Activate Your Listening to boost your

English!

And don't forget if you would like to fast forward your English language
learning then our New Activate Your Listening Course is available. You can
practise your understanding of English conversation with two speakers on
topics such as the UK, Food and Education. Good universal topics. Lots of
vocabulary learning there. So go on, give your English a big boost. That's
New Activate Your Listening Course and it's on our Courses page at
adeptenglish.com.

Hello, I’m Hilary, and you’re listening to Adept English. We will help
you to speak English fluently. All you have to do is listen. So start
listening now and find out how it works.

What’s behind the photographs of beautiful Amalfi?

So you may look at the photographs and think that Amalfi or the Amalfi
Coast is all beauty and relaxation. This lesson covers the real Amalfi, rugged
terrain and some difficult travel. Hard to get around. Are you ready?

Amalfi - houses perched on the cliffs!

So I spent last week on the Amalfi Coast in Italy. A-M-A-L-F-I. I've been
there before but it was such a long time ago. And the Amalfi Coast is called
after a town in the region, Amalfi. And it's what we'd call in English an 'Area
of Outstanding Natural Beauty. They're A-O-N-Bs on our maps of the UK. An
'Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty' means that it's nature at its best. A
very beautiful area. And the particular sort of beauty that Amalfi is famous
for? Well this is a rugged coastal area on the west coast of Italy. Very high
cliffs and steep drops down into the sea. So a 'cliff', C-L-I-F-F, means 'a
vertical face of rock with a horizontal level high up'. That's a 'cliff'. A cliff is
usually made of rock and it's a little bit like a step on your staircase but
obviously much bigger! So Amalfi has a very rocky coastline with pine trees
and lemon groves and lots of little houses perched high up. So 'rocky' R-O-C-
K-Y just means 'full of rocks and stones'. 'Pines' are huge conifer trees, trees
that bear cones. And a 'lemon grove', well a 'grove', G-R-O-V-E just means 'a
collection of trees' and obviously lemon trees bear lemons as fruit. We also
saw olives growing, apricots, lots of vines with grapes on them and figs of

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TRANSCRIPT: BRITISH ENGLISH LISTENING PRACTICE EXPLORING THE
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course, F-I-G. And also oleanders everywhere. They grow very large lemons
in the Amalfi region! And houses perched high up? What does that mean?
Well the verb 'to perch' P-E-R-C-H means 'to sit on the edge of something
high up'. Typically birds perch up in trees or up there on rocks and here
we've got houses 'perching'.

You don’t go to Amalfi for the beaches!

There are beaches in Amalfi but they're often very small and hard to get to.
They tend not to be sandy beaches but much more likely pebbles and gray
shingle. After all, the Amalfi coast is just south of Sorento and the Bay of
Naples, Napoli in other words, where of course the volcano Vesuvius is
situated. So the coastline isn't sandy bays, it's a bit more volcanic looking
than that. And more often than not you'll find it's a sheer drop into the sea.
That's 'sheer' S-H-E-E-R meaning 'very steep, straight down'. So some of the
beaches you may be able to get to them by boat but they're very difficult to
access from the land. So although the scenery here is stunning, the beaches
are not the best in Italy.

So what did we do on the Amalfi coast?

Conca dei Marini

Well we stayed in a little village called Conca dei Marini, not far from Amalfi
and it was very picturesque. That's P-I-C-T-U-R-E-S-Q-U-E. When we use
that word it means we're describing a place that 'looks very pretty, very
appealing'. That's 'picturesque'. So we stayed in one of the houses perched
high on the hill and we had a beautiful terrace with a 180 degree view of the
sea. Very pleasant.

A bit of archaeology - Pompeii and Herculaneum

Our main trips, well they were archaeological in nature. We visited Pompeii,
that's P-O-M-P-E-I-I, the ancient city and Herculaneum or modern-day
Ercolano. The last eruption of the volcano Vesuvius happened in 79 AD and
the towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum were destroyed. People did escape
but many were killed. But one of the reasons why these two cities are so well
known, these two archaeological sites, they were effectively preserved by
lava or ash. And in fact when we visited Herculaneum, one of the things we
were told was that 'the science of archaeology was born with the discovery of
these sites'!

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AMALFI COAST

Of the two, Pompeii is the better known site and the much bigger one, or
rather more of it has been uncovered. It's quite a big Roman town and there
are lots of ruins for you to wander in. But it's hard to imagine what Pompeii
would actually have looked like. Most of the buildings don't have roofs,
though you can see the roads in the town which were impressive. Of the two,
we enjoyed Herculaneum much more. For one, it's less famous so it was less
busy, fewer visitors. But also because of the way the town was preserved.
We found Pompeii was not terribly well labelled, whereas in Herculaneum we
got an audio guide which meant we got much more out of our visit. But
actually there was much more to see in Herculaneum. Many of the buildings
have roofs and they were much more intact, much more remained of the
buildings in Herculaneum than the ones at Pompeii. In part this is because of
the way the town was preserved. In Herculaneum, high heat from the
volcanic eruption was the first effect followed by layers and layers of ash.
That's A-S-H. or burnt material. In fact the level of the ground was raised
significantly. You can see that when you look at the modern-day
Herculaneum above it's at a different level to the ancient site. So many of
the buildings here are really quite well preserved. There are frescoes on the
walls, that's F-R-E-S-C-O, that's Roman wall paintings, very beautiful some of
them. And you can see much more of the layout of a Roman house with the
gardens in squares in the middle of the house open to the air. And the
'impluvium', that's a stone bath, a square bath, often in the entrance hall
which had a hole in the roof above it and which collected rainwater. Most of
the houses seem to have one of these. And there were lots of lovely mosaic
floors, that's 'mosaic' M-O-S-I-A-C, that's when a surface is covered with lots
of tiny tiles. Again very decorative, very beautiful.

Herculaneum - a human tragedy visible nearly 2000 years

on

So Herculaneum was hit by something called a 'pyroclastic flow'. That means

a wave of super hot air came as the volcano erupted and this was followed
by ash, layers and layers of it which solidified into rock. And this had the
effect of preserving Herculaneum.

The part of Herculaneum which you perhaps see last is the boat houses
where there are skeletons S-K-E-L-E-T-O-N. These are skeletons of people
who died in the eruption, who were sitting waiting, hoping for boats to come
and take them away across the sea. They were hoping to catch a boat to
safety out of town but they were killed instantly when the 'pyroclastic flow'
came and can be seen huddled still in the boat houses. You get a real sense

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of the human tragedy from these figures. You also get a sense of how the
landscape changed. These boat houses are nowhere near the sea now. The
sea moved further out because of all the ash. And you can see that the
modern day city of Herculano is raised up. The level is way above the level of
ancient Herculaneum because of the amount of ash which dropped.

Is it fair to call Amalfi ‘a tourist trap’?

So what about the rest of the area? What about the rest of Amalfi? Well it
was very hot when we were there so we didn't want to rush around and we
spent quite a few days at the house resting and relaxing and reading. We did
visit Amalfi town but it was a bit disappointing. We found it a bit of a tourist
trap although the bus journey was very interesting getting there. Where
might have been better? The beautiful town of Ravello high up on the cliffs
above Amalfi where there are beautiful gardens and sea views. And Positano
is another place worth visiting. I have been there before but we didn't make
it on this trip.

So those were our trips and the positives about the area.

Amalfi roads need careful driving

What else is there to say? Well I think that actually it was quite difficult to
get around. We had a hire car otherwise it would have been difficult to get
from Napoli airport to the house. The road from Naples or Napoli goes over
the top of mountains and down to the sea so it's very windy and panoramic.
A beautiful drive but quite challenging in places and I suggest if you rent a
car in the region rent a small one because you'll often find yourself squeezing
by narrow spaces with cars coming the other direction.

Are ZTL zones a good idea for reducing traffic in tourist

areas? Yes…

I think we found the terrain and some of the traffic restrictions difficult to
navigate. We were made pretty quickly aware during our stay of the so-
called ZTLs. That's the Zona Traffico Limitato. So these are areas where the
traffic is restricted. If you're local, a delivery driver or an emergency worker
you're fine but if you're a tourist especially in a hire car - no go! You can't go
into these areas and if you accidentally do then it's between 100 and 350
euro fine. Quite steep. But if you're a tourist especially one in a rented car
you need to watch out. These zones are all over the place and although

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they're signed it's really easy for people to cross accidentally into one. You
can then get a fine of 100 euros up to 350 euros. Stressful then.

But ZTLs possibly damage the tourism industry

Although I can understand why this is necessary, certainly in Amalfi where

the roads are narrow and incredibly busy in the summer I understand the
need for restrictions and in fact we did use the local SITA bus in preference
on a few occasions. So it had the desired effect. But these ZTL restrictions
did make getting around very difficult. For example we booked a car park in
Pompeii and then were unable to use it because it was in one of these zones.
We tried to book Vesuvius but we gave up because it was just too difficult to
coordinate everything. Three different tickets were needed and we also gave
up on visiting one of the local attractions in Conca dei Marini where we were
staying, the Grotto Smeraldo. Although this was just down from our house,
probably half a mile away, because of a ZTL we'd have had to drive all the
way to Amalfi and back, a 40 mile round trip to access it. So we weren't
going to do that. Why not walk you might say? Well we did or at least we
tried but the steepness of the terrain was difficult to believe. There are paths,
there are ways in between the roads that wiggle down to the sea but they're
basically like a long staircase, certainly a 45 degree angle upwards with
hundreds of stairs very steep. So my son and I did walk down to the sea a
couple of times using these but it was 35 degrees, 38 at times. You need big
leg muscles and good lungs to get about in Conca dei Marini because the
terrain is so steep. So a swim in the sea was possible to cool down but then a
42 minute walk almost vertically up steps meant that you were hot and
sweaty again by the time that you got to the house! I think the residents of
Conca dei Marini must be extremely fit. Going up and down those stairs all
the time, big leg muscles and huge lungs. So there you have it, that's my
travel experience in Amalfi last week. My view of a tiny part of Italy for you.

Goodbye

Let us know your travel experiences or what you think of what I've said.
We'd love to hear from you especially if you're Italian on this one.

Enough for now, have a lovely day, speak to you again soon. Goodbye.

Thank you so much for listening. Please help me tell others about
this podcast by reviewing or rating it. And, please share it on social
media. You can find more listening lessons and a free English
course at adeptenglish.com

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AMALFI COAST

Links

• ZTL in Italy
• Amalfi Coast
• Things to Do on the Amalfi Coast
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