Why do you go to the coffee shop?
Hello I’m Catherine. Welcome to 6-minute English where we engage in some lively debate and discuss 6 stimulating items of vocabulary. Let’s start. Here is your cup of coffee Rob. Ah. thanks but what took you so long Catherine? Oh, sorry, Rob, I bumped into someone I knew in the cafe and we started for a chat. Well, that fits well with today’s show where we are talking about cafes or coffee houses. Did you know Catherine that coffee houses were originally a meeting place for lively debate and intellectual discussion? Really, Rob. I didn’t know that. And a debate, by the way, means a discussion a lot of people take part in. How long ago was this debating society? The first coffee house was set up in Oxford in 1650 but they quickly became popular and soon they were all over London too. You paid a Penny to get in and this included accesses to newspapers and stimulating conversation. If something is stimulating, it encourages ideas and enthusiasm. and( I expected the coffee home with) That certainly helps me the first thing in the morning. which brings me on today’s quiz question, Rob. How many cups of coffee do we consume in coffee shops or stores in the UK every year? consume, by the way, is another word for eat or drink. So is the answer A: 2.3 million B. 23 million C.23 billion. I don’t really know. but it’s gonna be a lot. I’m gonna go for C. 23 billion. That sounds like a lot of coffee. But I buy several cups a week. I expect you do too Catherine. I do indeed. But I have to say while I was getting out for a coffee earlier,there was nobody else talking except me and my friend. Everybody else was sitting on their own,taping away on their laptops. Let’s listen now to Doglas Frazer BBC Scotland’s business and economy editor describing the vibe or atmosphere in a typical 21 century cafe. “( 10 or so in the morning, the cafe has 5 people at the tables with their bags to the wall, each staring into the screen, plugged in, ears plugged, the flow of bytes through this coffee shop’s free wifi is transporting these customers to diverse destinations far from the person beside them. Collaborative working,research giant application, a potential blockbuster novel, and inevitably someone distracted by kitten pictures on social media.”
So the spirit of those 17th century coffee houses has disappeared then no more lively debate and intellectual discussion. It seems so, Rob. As Doglus Frazer says, many people sit alone ,plugged in to their laptops and they are all doing different things, working, writing, messing about on social media. I think the cafe owners should turn off the free WIFI and force these cafe squatters to move on. I don’t think people should be allowed to sit all day using the internet hogging tables not talking to anybody, especially when some of them don’t even buy coffee. ( 3:23)
That’s a bit extreme Rob. Cafe owners need customers and they encourage people to stay by having comfy sofas and newspapers to read and the free wifi. A squatter, by the way, is someone who lives in an empty building without paying rent. And if you hog something, you use most or all of it in a selfish way. I suppose you are right, Catherine. Now how about telling us the answer to today’s question then. .... Like() in the cafe using their free wifi to research the answer, I had a guess, I say 23 billion. Well you didn’t need the free wifi Rob. cos you are absolutely right. 23 billion coffees per year works out on average 45 cups per adult in the UK.
閱讀更多 英語如何learn 的文章
