Hi, everyone. Nesse episódio do podcast Inglês Online eu vou falar sobre a expressão “olhar vitrine” em inglês, e também reviso a estrutura “go (verb)ing” com vários exemplos.

Transcrição

Hello – how have you been? Today we have a new episode of the inglesonline podcast. Please subscribe to this podcast using the Podcasts app for iPhone or iPad, or listen to the episodes using the Inglesonline Android app. To download or just listen to other episodes and download transcripts, go to inglesonline.com.br and click Podcast Inglesonline.

So let’s talk about a term in English that describes something that many women love to do: window-shopping. Yeah, maybe there are men who enjoy doing that a little bit, but I think it’s more of a woman thing. Many women get out of the house when they wanna kill time and go window-shopping. And what does that mean? That means you go out to where the shops are and you look at lots of store windows – well, you actually look at the objects behind the store windows but you don’t really buy anything. A store window is that big chunk of glass behind which goods for sale are exposed. So you just go walking down the street and looking at the objects for sale behind the store windows… and you don’t actually buy anything. You are just window-shopping.

OK, now I wanna know:  who enjoys going window-shopping? Is that you? This could be your hobby: window-shopping on the weekend. Maybe you go window-shopping every Saturday morning. And notice that I’m using the following expression, “go window-shopping”. Maybe you go window-shopping every Saturday, that’s what you enjoy doing.

Let’s take the opportunity to recap a few expressions that follow the same structure: GO, followed by a verb in “ING” form. Many activities in English are referred to in their ING form. What I mean by that is, it’s as though their name was the ING form. Let me give you examples: some popular weekend activities include dancing, playing soccer, swimming, going to the beach, drinking beer… I have just listed out a few activities, haven’t I? Dancing, playing soccer, swimming, going to the beach, drinking beer. These are like the names of the activities – the ING forms. I’m not gonna get into too much detail about this, because there’s a post at Inglês Online that covers that.

What I am going to do in this episode is give you lots more examples that use this structure. The reason is, I think this is considered a basic structure – I remember it was in one of the lessons of the English book I used to teach from – and yet, I don’t see many Brazilians using it. So let’s dive right into it: I guess there’s no better way to present examples of this structure than to talk about popular activities, like fishing, dancing, swimming, kayaking and bowling.

The activities I just mentioned are all examples of things you GO doing. My grandfather used to GO fishing almost every weekend. He really enjoyed fishing – that means “ele gostava de pescar, de pescaria”. He used to go fishing almost every weekend. Now that means “Ele costumava ‘ir pescar’ quase todo fim de semana”.

There are many, many people who enjoy dancing. They enjoy it so much that, if they could, they would go dancing every night at a nightclub, or at a dance club or something. I know people who go dancing as often as they can. They just love it. They try to go dancing every Friday and /or Saturday. Now, what about swimming? Are you a swimmer? Do you go swimming with any kind of regularity? I never go swimming, really, but I know people who do, regularly. Are you a regular swimmer?