English Listening Guide: Expressing Frequency and Price in Consumer Behavior

In the previous interviews, the survey questions didn't ask anything about people's favorite brand of chocolate, just whether they liked premium chocolate. Were you surprised about that? Notice the expressions we used to talk about frequency, how often something happens, and also price. Once means one time, twice means two times. After that, we say three times a month or four times a month. To show that we're just estimating, we say about, which means that it is not exact. We also use adverbs of frequency like usually, always, or almost never to describe how often something occurs. Every day means all the days. Every other day or every two days means that you skip a day or maybe two days. You can also say every other week, every two months, or every other year to show that something alternates. For example, you do something one week but not the next week.

Notice the vocabulary related to price. We say it costs ten dollars a box or I spent four dollars for each bar. If you want to emphasize the individual item in a more formal business setting or in a price list, we use the word per to mean for each item, two dollars per bar. It's often difficult to hear the difference between numbers like thirteen and thirty. Thirteen usually has stress on the second syllable. If you can remember this, it's because the three is in the second position in the number. You can hear that sound because the syllable is stressed: thirteen. Thirty has stress on the first syllable. So you hear the sound 'third' clearly but you have a softer sound for the T. It's kind of between a T and a D. Thirty. Which number do you hear? Repeat and see if you were correct. Forty. Forty cents. Sixteen people. Seventeen dollars. Eighteen times. Ninety dollars.

Here's some ways that we express a limit. I sometimes pay up to five dollars a package. I never spend more than four dollars on coffee. The most I spend is ten dollars a week. So again, as you've seen above and in many examples in this lesson, we use about to show that an amount or frequency is not exact. For example, you can say, I go about once a month and I spend about thirty dollars. We also give a general estimate by expressing a range. When we write a price range, we put the currency symbol, like the dollar sign, before each amount. But when we talk, we only say the word dollars one time. I spend between three and four dollars. The words somewhere and anywhere in this case just emphasize that there's a range. It costs somewhere between twenty and thirty dollars. I pay anywhere from ten to fifteen dollars. Notice that we say between X and Y, but from X to Y.