Talking about fruit

Introduction Becca and Neil have a real conversation in easy English about fruit – the healthy and tasty food produced by flowering plants. Learn to talk about whether you like your fruit to be sweet or sour, how to tell when fruit is ripe, and if you prefer juicy or dried fruit. Vocabulary sour having a sharp or acidic taste ripe ready to eat, usually juicy juicy full of juice or liquid dried fruit fruit that has had most of its water removed, often by the sun, such as raisins or prunes Transcript Becca Hello and welcome to Real Easy English, where we have easy conversations to help you with your listening skills and learn new vocabulary. I'm Becca.   Neil And I'm Neil. If you'd like to see a video version of this podcast, you can find it on our website at bbclearningenglish.com. The video has subtitles, which can help you learn.   Becca Hi Neil. How are you doing today?   Neil I'm good, thank you. I feel great because I just ate a banana.   Becca Yum! Yeah, I saw you. You started off your day quite healthily this morning. I also had a banana.   Neil Yes, I saw you eating your banana, and I thought, I'm going to eat a banana.   Becca Ah really? Yes, bananas are delicious. And today we are actually talking about fruit.   Neil We are, yes, and I love eating fruit.   Becca Me too.   Neil What kind of fruit do you like? Becca Ooh, besides bananas, I really love berries. And I like green apples and red grapes. I like lots of fruit. How about you?   Neil Yeah, I really like fruit. I try to eat fruit every day and, like you, I like apples but not just green ones. The red ones – I like those too. And oranges. And I like frozen berries with my breakfast.   Becca So, you mentioned oranges. Oranges can be a little sweet, but they're actually more sour, aren't they?   Neil Yeah. Sour or sharp.   Becca Sharp, yeah.   Neil Yeah. That's the taste that you get from fruit like oranges, and more so with lemons or limes. These are called citrus fruit.   Becca Yeah, citrus fruit. They have more of a sour taste.   Neil Yeah. If you bite into a lemon, that's sour.   Becca Yeah. The face that you make....   Neil Yeah.   Becca ...when you bite into something citrus, yeah. Do you prefer sweet fruit or sour fruit?   Neil Yeah, I like sweet fruit. And probably I like fruit when it's ripe.   Becca OK. What does that mean – ripe?   Neil It means that it's ready to eat. It's at its sweetest usually, probably quite juicy. If fruit is juicy, it means juice comes from it. And juice is a liquid – watery. And it's... If it's ripe, it's just before it goes bad or goes off.   Becca Right, I see. So, if we're thinking about bananas, for example, a green-coloured banana perhaps isn't ready to eat. It's not ripe like a yellow banana.   Neil Yeah, but a yellow one with, sort of, brown bits on it. That's a ripe banana.   Becca Yeah, they're a bit too sweet for me. I kind of like that middle... Yeah, I like yellow bananas.   Neil How about dried fruit? Do you like dried fruit?   Becca Oh, I'm glad you asked. Yes, I really like dried fruit. So, I will often have raisins. So, raisins are dried grapes. And dried means that it doesn't have any of that juice or liquid.   Neil So, Becca, here is a really important and interesting question. If you could only eat one fruit for the rest of your life, which would you choose?   Becca Ooh, that is a very difficult question. We've talked a lot about the fruit that we love. But probably bananas because I do eat them every day. It feels quite strange to not eat a banana every day for me. And also I really enjoy banana bread and dried bananas. I completely forgot about those. They're really tasty. So yeah, there's lots of things you can do with bananas. Probably those. How about you? What fruit would you choose?   Neil I think maybe it sounds boring, but the apple is the perfect snack. You always feel good after an apple, and it makes a fantastic noise when you bite into an apple. That noise is called a crunch. And it's a very... it's a very nice sound.   Becca It is a nice sound. And so, we can describe apples as being crunchy. That's the adjective. Yeah.   Becca OK. It's time to recap the vocabulary that we've learned. And we'll start with sour. And that is the taste, for example, in lemon or in vinegar – it's not very sweet. Citrus fruits, for example, like grapefruit, oranges, limes – they are very sour.   Neil We used the word ripe. Ripe describes fruit which is ready to eat.   Becca We also had juicy, and that's an adjective to describe something that has juice or liquid. So, for example, a juicy fruit like a strawberry – when you bite into it, juice will come out of it.   Neil We also heard about dried fruit. Dried fruit has had all of the juice taken out of it, sometimes by the sun. So, for example, raisins are dried fruit.   Becca That's it for this week's episode of Real Easy English. You can find a free worksheet on our website to test what you've learned from this episode. That's at bbclearningenglish.com.   Neil And we'll be back next week with another episode of Real Easy English. Join us then. Goodbye for now.   Becca Bye! Now try this... Watch The London Letter Challenge. Download a free worksheet. Discover more programmes for your level.  Find all our latest programmes.