Monthly subscriptions: giving advice and managing finances

Monthly subscriptions β€” a B1 English lesson. Practise verbs followed by gerunds and infinitives and expand vocabulary around personal finance.

Monthly subscriptions: giving advice and managing finances
Photo by Marques Thomas / Unsplash

Summary

This ESL lesson for B1 English students explores Personal finance. Using a real video as the basis for discussion, students develop reading and listening comprehension, vocabulary, and grammar skills across a 90-minute class.

The grammar focus is Verbs followed by gerunds (-ing) or infinitives (to + verb). Key vocabulary includes subscription (noun), out of hand (idiom), gadgets (noun) and more, all drawn directly from the source material. The practical English section gives students useful phrases for real-life situations: You need to call a company's customer service department to cancel a subscription you no longer use..

Activities

00:04 it started simple our money was sucked
00:08 up monthly or yearly for a newspaper or
00:11 magazine subscription and for a video
00:13 streaming subscription and for a music
00:18 subscription but now it seems there's no
00:25 object or thing that doesn't seem to
00:27 come with a money sucking subscription
00:29 attached yes it's getting out of hand
00:36 more and more of your money is going to
00:40 monthly and yearly subscriptions for all
00:42 types of things and they're only going
00:44 to be more subscriptions coming
00:46 especially from the gadgets and things
00:48 around you here's why and what you can
00:51 do to clean up your subscription list
00:54 [Music]
00:57 there are two reasons companies
00:59 everywhere have turned to charging us on
01:01 a monthly or yearly basis technology and
01:04 money allow me to use my internet
01:07 connected ring doorbell
01:08 to illustrate the technology part it's
01:11 always streaming video to my phone and
01:13 being updated with new features thanks
01:15 to the cloud if I want to see recordings
01:17 of what's happened in the past say
01:19 catching some crazy with a vacuum in
01:21 front of my house
01:21 ring asks that I pay $3 a month it's
01:24 what the tech industry refers to as SAS
01:26 or software as a service and yes even
01:30 pass hardware as a service the whole
01:33 thing is always updating and working for
01:35 you until you stop paying as more and
01:41 more things connect to the Internet
01:42 they'll come with subscriptions everyone
01:44 from router makers to workout equipment
01:46 companies are doing it why not charge a
01:49 flat fee these companies and Wall Street
01:52 love the idea of recurring revenue they
01:55 can expect a certain amount every month
01:57 or year from a set number of people and
01:59 they bank literally on the fact that we
02:02 often don't cancel yes it's real easy to
02:06 forget what we're paying for
02:08 and what subscriptions we have in fact
02:10 84% of Americans underestimate what they
02:13 pay monthly for subscriptions so here's
02:16 what we're all going to do
02:17 now number one make a list of your
02:21 subscriptions log into your credit card
02:25 or bank accounts and then make a good
02:27 old-fashioned list of the things you get
02:29 charged for every month and the amount
02:31 you pay services like trim and true bill
02:34 will do this for you
02:35 but I'm personally not a fan of allowing
02:37 other services access to my bank account
02:39 number to cancel the ones you don't use
02:43 I got back $20 a month by canceling two
02:47 subscriptions I was rarely using some
02:50 companies make cancelling easier than
02:52 others thanks to a 2018 California law
02:54 that required a way to cancel
02:56 subscriptions online companies have made
02:58 this a lot easier still be strong when
03:00 trying to cancel if you have difficulty
03:03 try those customer service chat box it
03:06 can be quite helpful for getting money
03:07 back ok maybe not that helpful if you've
03:11 subscribed to a service through Apple's
03:13 App Store canceling is a lot easier on
03:15 the iPhone go to settings tap iTunes and
03:18 App Store then tap your Apple ID then
03:21 view Apple ID then tap subscriptions and
03:24 cancel from there number 3 set a
03:28 calendar reminder to do this on a yearly
03:30 basis put it in your calendar right now
03:33 because this is just the start of the
03:35 madness especially if you like me
03:37 sometimes fall prey to that free trial
03:40 that silently becomes a recurring
03:42 monthly charge believe me the money is
03:45 going to start to be sucked from places
03:47 you never expected
03:48 [Music]
03:53 nobody was lost or harmed in the making
03:54 of this video

Vocabulary focus

The vocabulary section introduces B1-level words and phrases related to Personal finance. Key terms include subscription (noun), out of hand (idiom), gadgets (noun), recurring revenue (noun phrase), cancel (verb). Students practise using these terms in context through exercises drawn from the source material.

Grammar focus

This lesson focuses on Verbs followed by gerunds (-ing) or infinitives (to + verb). In English, some verbs are followed by a gerund (the -ing form of a verb, like 'paying'), while others are followed by an infinitive ('to pay'). For example, we 'enjoy paying' but we 'want to pay'.

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