Podcast 141 - B1 Talking about clothes

Vocabulary for students at B1 level English

Dialogue starts at 8:58

B1 - girl choosing clothes

This is a B1 session on clothes. I did a session on buying clothes at podcast 96 but this one looks at important B1 vocabulary describing clothes and talking about different parts of articles of clothing. Here we go...

The first thing to remember is that we cannot say a clothe - we don't really have a sigular form for this word so we say an article of clothing. Normally, we just refer to the plural form of the word.

I don't have any clothes to wear to the party tonight.

I always advise my students when you're talking about clothes in the Preliminary speaking test or writing parts of the Preliminary exam to use the verb 'wear' and not 'have'. For example,

He's wearing a shirt, trousers and shoes.

Of course we use the verb 'to wear' for all things we put on our bodies including jewellery, hats and caps, belt and glasses.

She's wearing a nice pair of earrings.
Mary's wearing a new bracelet.
He's wearing a cap and some glasses.
If I don't wear a belt, my trousers fall down.

However, we don't use the verb 'wear' for things we hold in our hand; we would use the verbs 'hold' or carry'.

She's holding a large leather handbag.
He's carrying a rucksack (or backpack) on his back.

It's often thought as strange by many students at B1 level how we use plurals for many articles of clothes. That's because they have two legs: trousers, shorts, underpants, tracksuit bottoms, tights, stockings, knickers.

He's wearing his new trousers.
My sister doesn't wear tights in summer.

On the other hand, we don't use the plural for clothes with two arms, of course.

I've got to iron a shirt to wear to work tomorrow.

The expression 'a pair of' is also possible when we are naming clothes that have two legs.

I need a new pair of trousers.
I've only got three pairs of knickers.

We would also use the word 'pair' when we talk about clothes we wear on our hands or feet.

I'm wearing a pair of my warmest gloves.
I've bought a pair of sandals for the beach.

And talking about shoes and other clothes, for that matter, we use the verb 'take' when talking about the size of the shoes or shirt, etc.

I take an extra large in shirt size.
I take a size 9 and a half in shoes.

That reminds me of something funny that my wife said once. My wife, who is Spanish, was looking for some shoes for me in a shoeshop. There were shelves with the left shoe of each model. My wife picked them up one by one, turned them upside down and read out the shoe sizes aloud.

Seven, half past seven, eight, half past eight, nine, half past nine. Ah! This one is your size, Mike!

So remember we say nine and a half and not half past nine (which we say when we're talking about the time, of course!).

And that comment reminds me of another very funny comedy sketch on television many years ago. It was sill, really, but funny at the same time. It was three men who came up to a shoe shop, looking very suspicious and holding large bags. Then they started stealing all the left shoes on the shelves. What was funny was that all three of them had just one leg - the left leg, of course!

And still on the subject of shoes. There're some B1 words that describe shoe types and parts of the shoe, such as the 'heel', which is the part which raises the back of the shoe off the ground. So you can have 'high' heels or 'low' heels and then a shoe with no heel at all can be called a 'flat' shoe.

Now, I mentioned earlier that 'wear' is the verb we use when we have clothes on - notice the preposition too - to have clothes 'on'. But the verb we use when we are in the act of putting on clothes is 'to dress' (and that's a B1 word) plus the preposition 'in'. So we say,

I want to dress in my best suit for the interview tomorrow.
She dressed in casual clothes for walking in the country.

Talking in general about the action of putting on clothes, we can say 'to get dressed',

Come on! Get dressed now. It's time to go to school!

I'm going to finish with a short dialogue, which contains a lot of B1 words on clothes. It's a short dialogue between two sisters, Jane and Kathy, who are going out and trying to decide what to wear. My question is, why is the dialogue funny? What joke does the sister, Kathy make?

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