Name: Let's Learn English at the Strip Mall / Shopping Plaza
Uploaded: 2025-05-08T08:42:29.000Z
Duration: 13 min 8 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Well, hello and welcome to this English lesson that's going to be a little bit different than other lessons I've done.

I'm actually here at my local mall, what we might call a strip mall, because you walk along the outside and the store entrances are on the outside.

There's no inside part to this mall so we call it a strip mall.

And I'm going to walk by every single store and kinda describe the type of store it is.

So that will be today's English lesson, a bit of a walk and talk.

A hardware store is a store you would go to if you need to buy tools or what we call hardware, nuts and bolts, nails and screws, and those types of things.

I have to make sure I don't get run over here by a car.

But a hardware store is a place where you go if you need to buy a hammer, maybe you need to buy some little hinges because you need to fix a door.

You can see that right now they're also selling potted plants and chairs that you can use to sit outside because the weather is becoming a lot nicer here in Ontario, Canada.

The next store we have here, it might be a little bit of a giveaway with the name of the store.

This store is called Foodland and it is what we would call a grocery store or a supermarket.

Both words pretty much mean the same thing.

And you might have guessed it, you would go to this store when you need to buy groceries.

When you need carrots, or a can of soup, or maybe a loaf of bread, or some eggs, and some milk.

This would be the store that you would go to.

Now you might be wondering, you saw at the, maybe you can see way at the end there by the hardware store, and here there are lots of bags for sale.

Those bags are actually bags of dirt, or soil, or manure that people can use in their flower beds and in their gardens.

People in many parts of the world like to grow things in the warm season.

So you can see here we have some topsoil, and further down here I'm sure we'll have more topsoil.

We call these milk crates by the way, if you didn't know that.

Topsoil, topsoil, topsoil, wow there's a lot of topsoil.

Oh this is actually manure, or manure compost.

So that would work as a bit of a fertilizer.

I'm going to spin you around here to show you the direction we are going.

There's a large transport truck that is probably just finished doing a delivery.

A delivery is when you bring things to a store or to a house.

And then I'll slow, oh maybe we should talk about Tim Hortons.

So there's also a cafe or restaurant with a drive-thru where you can go if you want to buy a coffee or a donut or a treat.

A pet store is a place where you go to buy, maybe you go there to buy a pet, but most often you go there to either buy pet food, like dog food or cat food, or maybe you have some fish, and then you might also buy a collar or leash at the pet store.

This is called Pharmasave, so you might have an idea of what this is.

This is a pharmacy, or we sometimes call it a drugstore in Canada.

I think in Britain they might call it a chemist, but we call it a pharmacy or a drugstore.

If you went to the doctor they might give you a prescription, and you would go there to get your prescription filled, or you might go there to just buy over-the-counter medicine.

Medicine where you don't need a doctor's note or prescription to get it, like Tylenol or something like that.

We also just went by a dance studio, so if you have children who want to learn to dance, you would sign them up to go for dance lessons at the dance studio.

This is a laundromat, but it's also a place where you can buy water.

You might wonder why would people need to buy water in Ontario, Canada, and why would they do laundry here instead of at home?

Well if you can't afford a washing machine, you will more likely come to a laundromat and pay some money to pay to get your laundry done, to wash your clothes.

And we have a lot of people who live out in the country around here.

Jen and I get our water for free, because when you live out in the country you don't have clean drinking water available.

Here we have a dollar store, but it's actually vacant right now.

A dollar store is a place where you can buy things for only a dollar or two dollars, sometimes more.

But that dollar store is vacant, which means that they weren't doing well as a business and eventually they decided to leave.

So Bob from the future here, I realize that the dollar store is actually open.

That side is vacant, but this side is actually open.

So I wonder if they just reduced the size of the store.

It's half the size that it used to be, but it's definitely open.

Art, craft supplies, cell phone accessories, electronics and hardware, kitchen stuff, everything that you could want for less than, usually less than five dollars.

If you look you can see it's also in French on the sign.

A post office is a place where you go to send mail or to get your mail.

Probably the most common thing you would do at a post office is you would go there to get your mail.

You would go to the post office and you would have a little post office box and a key and you would open that to get your mail.

This is actually the post office where my post office box is.

So in Canada when you buy a car, you have to have insurance to drive it.

So if there's an accident, you're covered.

If you have a house, you need insurance so that if there's a storm and something gets damaged, your insurance company will pay for it.

So if you're having trouble with your hearing or you need a hearing aid, you would go there.

Next we have what we would call a hair salon.

So it says hair salon and spa, and they can take walk-ins.

I'm not sure if you can see that part of the sign.

So I could walk right in there and pay for a haircut.

I would probably have to wait a little bit though.

But you can also get your nails done there.

You can have a facial, a manicure, a pedicure, and they serve as, oh they'll take men, women, children, they'll take everybody.

So then we have what's called an employment help centre.

So this is where you would go if you were looking for a job.

In Ontario, Canada, we have places where if you don't have work, you can go there every week and you can find out if there are any new jobs available that you can apply for.

There are many restaurants slash bars in Canada where the front part of the, of the place is a restaurant, but at the back they do have an actual bar that you can go to.

Now there's a large truck here so we can't see, but this next place is a chiropractic office.

Let's see if we can see up behind there, see the sign a little bit.

Obviously they're getting a delivery, but a chiropractic office is a place where you would go, like let's say my back hurt.

I might go to a chiropractor and they might adjust my back.

They might do things to my back to make me feel better.

Oh and then we have, if I go back here, we have the dental centre.

More commonly we would just call this the dentist office.

You go to the dentist when you need to have your teeth cleaned or maybe you need a filling because you have a cavity.

You would make an appointment at the dentist's office.