ESL Podcast 314 – Buying a Digital Audio (MP3) Player

Clerk: Can I help you?

Sandy: I’m looking for an MP3 player, but I don’t know a lot about them.

Clerk: We have a large selection, as you can see.

Sandy: Wow, I really don’t know where to begin.

Clerk: What do you want to be able to do?

Sandy: I just want something small and portable that I can use to listen to music that I rip from CDs. I also want to be able to download songs off the Internet.

Clerk: Most of the players you see here can do that. One thing you have to watch out for is that some music websites are proprietary¹. That means that you can only listen using certain types of players.

Sandy: That’s what I’m worried about.

Clerk: Well, this one plays music in a lot of different file formats² and is compatible with most of the major music download sites, both proprietary and open- source. It comes with an FM tuner, a built-in battery charger, and good quality headphones.

Sandy: What about it’s storage capacity and charge time?

Clerk: It has 30 gigabytes of memory and can hold about 7,500 songs. You get about 15 hours of music playback on one charge and it charges up in about four hours. It has a nice screen, too, that’s backlit.

Sandy: It looks like what I’ve been looking for. I’ll take it.


Script by Dr. Lucy Tse

1 proprietary   

n.所有权，所有的；独占的；业主

参考例句：

• We had to take action to protect the proprietary technology.我们必须采取措施保护专利技术。
• Proprietary right is the foundation of jus rerem.所有权是物权法之根基。

2 formats   

n.（出版物的）版式( format的名词复数 )；[电视]电视节目的总安排（或计划）

参考例句：

• They are producing books in all kinds of different formats. 他们出版各种不同开本的书籍。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• A true GUI includes standard formats for representing text and graphics. 真正的图形用户界面包括表示文字和图形的标准格式。 来自互联网