English for Your First Trip Abroad
Six weeks to airport, hotel, and restaurant survival using the right slices of the 1000.
- Step 1
Start with the travel band, not band one
If you have a trip in six weeks and limited time, break the usual order. Words 601-700 carry the airport, hotel, weather, and direction vocabulary: ticket, passport, station, gate, map. Do this band first at 15 words a day, then circle back to earlier bands with whatever time remains.
- Step 2
Add the food hundred
Words 501-600 are your restaurant insurance: rice, chicken, soup, cup, bottle, plus the body words for a pharmacy stop. Practice the food words with the audio button especially; you will need to say these, not just read them, and menu words you can pronounce get you what you actually ordered.
- Step 3
Build ten pocket sentences
Combine what you know into ten sentences you will certainly use: 'Where is the station?' 'How much is this?' 'One ticket, please.' 'The bill, please.' Say each aloud daily for the last two weeks. Under travel stress you will not build sentences from scratch; you will reach into your pocket, and these will be there.
- Step 4
Rehearse the three conversations
Almost all tourist English is three scenes: check-in (name, passport, nights), ordering (this one, please; water; card), and asking the way (where, left, right, near). Run each scene aloud, both roles, the week before you fly. It feels silly and works absurdly well. Every real version you meet will be a variation of a script you already know.