Shopping is an activity that is enjoyed by many people, but there are also some people who hate shopping and say it is a vaste of time.
There are many kinds of shops – from large department stores, supermarkets and hypermarkets to small specialized shops as the bakery/baker´s, butcher´s, greengrocer´s, chemist´s, florist´s then there are bookshops, shoeshops and boutiques.
Small shops are called corner shops in Britain.
When entering a small shop, a shop-assistant can ask us: “What can I do for you?“, “Can I help you?“, “What would you like?“, “What will you have?“, “Is anyone serving you?“, “What can I show you?“. These are the most frequently questions heard in shops since morning till late evening.
Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of large supermarkets and small shops and boutiques.
Supermarkets:
Nowadays more and more customers prefer shopping in large supermarkets with self-service where everything can be found under one roof to shopping in small specialized shops.
I dislike shopping in huge supermarkets although/though lot of people enjoy it. Some new supermarkets have been built in our town. It took little time to build them, it must have cost lots of money.
Whenever I went to a supermarket, I spent too much time there. Once I met my friends there who were just buying some junk food there.
Last weekend I needed to buy some cooking ingredients, including a dozen eggs for a cake. I went to the nearest supermarket. Outside the supermarket there were many cars parked so I knew there would be lots of shoppers.
Supermarkets are usually situated outside a town and have got several advantages:
- Because they are so big, they can lower the prices, which means their products are cheaper than in small shops.
- They sell products having their own brands which are a lot cheaper too.
Small shops:
Smaller shops offer a face-to-face contact between a shop-assistant and a customer, that´s their advantage. They are usually located in town centres and are looked for especially by elderly people who don´t have a car to drive to a hypermarket which is usually a long way off their homes.
Boutiques:
Sometimes I go shopping to boutiques selling the latest fashion. Here mainly young people have a wide choice of dresses, suits, shirts, skirts, blouses, pullies and so on. Some of the boutiques also offer leather goods such as leather jackets, skirts, trousers, bags and belts.
Compare shopping habits in the past and in the present.
Past:
In the past people used to do shopping more often than these days. They bought mainly staple foods such as bread, milk, meat, fruit and vegetables in small local shops or later in self-service shops.
Present:
These days a lot of families have a big fridge and a freezer which are time saving so they go shopping less often.
Explain the differencies between services in GB and SR.
In Britain baby-sitting is very popular which means that a babysitter looks after/takes care of children in their house while their parents aren´t there, mainly in the evening.
In Slovakia there aren´t many families who are interested in such a service.
Delivering post and newspaper to British households is very frequent, mainly in the morning.
In Slovakia older children can earn some money by delivering newspapers and flyers to people´s homes.
In Britain there is also a milkman whose job is to deliver milk to some homes.
This service is not known in Slovakia but we used to have it many years ago.
Many services can be ordered by a telephone and by a special phone directory which is called Yellow pages, a similar one is also used in Slovakia.
Consumer society
When people talk about modern life, they often use the words consumer society. A consumer is someone who uses a product. A consumer society is a society in which material goods are very important, and in which the consumers themselves are very important and have a lot of power. People seem to have not only more money to spend but also less time to spend it. This is reflected in people´s habits and the things they buy.
Every day shopping
In the past, people would shop more often for staple foods such as fruit, vegetables, meat and bread. They would buy these in local shops in the town or village where they lived and carry them home in bags. Other things such as newspapers and magazines, cigarettes, sweets and milk could be bought even closer to home at the nearest corner shop.
Today, many families have a big freezer at home and a microwave. Ready prepared meals such as pizza pies and many other dishes which can be taken out of the freezer, heated up and ready to eat in just a few minutes, are becoming more and more popular with people who don´t have time to cook. Even people who do cook for themselves often use a lot of frozen or tinned vegetables. All this means that there is a growing trend for people to go shopping less often and to fill their cars with enough food to last all week or in some cases most of the month.
