General Listening Quiz

Listen to the recording on car insurance and read along with the conversation. Review the key vocabulary and the sample sentences.

Man: Honey. Where are my keys to the car? I need to go to work.

Woman: Here. Take this.

Man: What’s this?

Woman: It’s the bus schedule. You’d better hurry or you’ll miss it.

Man: What do you mean? I want to drive to work.

Woman: Well, you can’t, at least not today.

Man: Huh?

Woman: Listen. You’ve had two speeding tickets over the last couple months, and you had that car accident last week.

Man: What? That wasn’t my fault.

Woman: Really? You ran into a police car sitting alongside the road because you were distracted while texting on your phone.

Man: Wait! There’s more to the story than that.

Woman: And when I called the car insurance the other day, they said our insurance rates are going up a lot, especially if you stay on the insurance.

Man: A what? No.

Woman: But, you can still save us money if you take a defensive driving course.

Man: A what?

Woman: And it’s only $250 for the 15-hour class.

Man: What? That’s a rip off. I can’t fork out that kind of money for a course like that. Do they think I’m loaded or something?

Woman: And this is a course that you have to take in person. [Ugh!] You can’t take this one online.

Man: What?

Woman: Let’s talk about this after your bus ride home tonight.

• run into (verb): crash into
  – Unfortunately, we ran into a deer that jumped into the road.
• alongside (preposition): next to
  –  My wife drove her alongside me as I ran in the marathon.
• distracted (adjective): unable to concentrate
  – I was distracted by the loud music, and I didn’t see the stoplight.
• a rip off (noun): something that is very expensive
  – The car was a rip off. It broke down one week after I bought it. 
• fork out (or over) (verb): pay money
  – I had to fork out $3,000 to repair my car.
• (be) loaded (adjective): have a lot of money
  – Her boyfriend is loaded and buys her anything she wants.