Let me ask you something. Would you rather pay train fare or a highway
toll? Do you think the admission charge at the movie theater is reasonable in
your country? What percentage of a doctor's fee do patients usually need to pay?
In this podcast English Lesson, you're going to learn the difference between six
different types of things you can pay. Let's discuss. Welcome to another Happy
English podcast, coming to you from New York City. And here's your English
teacher, Michael. All right, thank you John, and thanks everyone.
It's Michael here from Happy English and I help people speak English better. And
this is Happy English Podcast, Episode seven oh four. Six things you can
pay charge, fee, fair, toll, dues, and tariff. We
use these six words to talk about an amount of money that you need to
pay, but the way that we use them is different. By the end
of this English lesson, you're going to know all the different ways that you
can use this vocabulary. Let's get the ball rolling. The first one is
charge. Basically, as a noun, a charge is the amount of money
you need to pay for goods and services. Here are some examples. I
was shocked when I saw the charge for room service at that hotel. The
admission charge for a matinee at the Broadway Theater is just nine dollars. That
teacher posts a lot of English lessons on his website which are free of charge.
We also use charge as a verb, and it means to ask a
certain amount for payment of something. For example, this high end supermarket charges
forty five dollars for a three literer can of olive oil. The new pizza
shop has great food, but they don't charge a lot for it. That
popular marketing expert charges two hundred thousand dollars to speak at an event. Next,
we have fee. A fee is a payment that you make for things
like professional services and memberships. For example, Jennifer said that the fee she
paid for her gym membership was high, but she believes it's worth it for
her health. The lawyer's fees for handling Mark's case were a lot higher than
he had originally thought they would be. You'll need to include the application fee
when you submit your college admission docums. The next one is fair. A
fair is the money you pay for public transportation, such as bus, train,
or taxi rides. You can say things like bus fair, train fare,
and for traveling by plane. We use airfare. Here are some examples.
Lisa checked the bus fair before boarding to be sure she had exact change.
The taxi driver quoted us a reasonable fare for the ride to the airport.
David said he got a good deal on the airfare for his trip to
Thailand. The next one is toll. A toll is a payment you give
in order to use a particular road, bridge, or tunnel. While some
roads are free to use, the ones that are not free are often called
called toll roads. Here are some examples. There are no tolls on any
of the bridges that go from Brooklyn in Queens to Manhattan in New York.
State. Highways that are called parkways are toll free, but you do need
to pay a toll on other highways. When I was a kid, you
could pay your toll by depositing coins in a basket at the toll booth.
The next one is dues. Dues are regular payments that happen monthly or yearly
that people pay to be members of an organization or a club. Keep in
mind the word dues is usually used in the plural form because there is generally
more than one payment. For example, all members of that labor union need
to pay monthly dues. If you live in a condominium, you're going to
need to pay monthly dues, which are used for the upkeep of the common
areas. Jack stopped going to his tennis club because the cost of the dues
doubled over the past two years. The last word for today is tariff.
Tariff is a government tax that is charged on imported or exported goods. Here
are some examples. The new tariff on foreign steel imports affects the prices of
construction materials. The government imposed a high tariff on luxury goods to encourage domestic
production. In general, imported cars are more expensive than domestically produced cars because
of import tariffs. Keep in mind the best way to remember this and any
vocabulary is to take the word or phrase, write it in a sentence that's
true for you or true in your world, and then memorize your sentences.
Well that's it for this English lesson podcast, which just happens to be free
of charge. By the way, if you'd like to get more practice using
your English, why don't you join my podcast Learner's Study Group. There you
can make new friends, join me for live group coaching every week, plus
get the PDF transcript and audio download for every Happy English podcast in the past
and in the future, and each episode has exercises where you can practice this
English point with speaking and writing checked by me. To learn more or to
see some of the example sentences from this lesson, just visit my Happy English
and choose podcast lesson seven oh four. Remember, learning another language is not
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