Name: 🎧 Learning English with Podcasts | Episode 025 Making A Dinner Reservation Daily life
Uploaded: 2026-03-25T06:34:10.000Z
Duration: 11 min 3 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...

Hello everyone, and welcome to English Pod.

Present continuous

My name is Catherine, and today, Marco, we're trying to make some plans.

We're trying to go to a restaurant, correct?

but before we have to call them to make sure that there is a space or room available for us.

All right, so we're going to hear a conversation between a person at a restaurant who works there and a person who would like to go to that restaurant.

I would like to make a reservation, please.

I'm sorry, sir, but we are fully booked tonight until 8:00.

Lastly, may I please know what name I should make the reservation under?

All right, we're back, so let's take a look at language takeaway.

So first up, Marco, we didn't hear the word "restaurant" in today's dialogue.

The name of the restaurant is actually Bruno Bistro.

So this restaurant, the type of restaurant this is, it's actually a bistro.

So Bruno is a name, like Marco or Catherine, but, uh, bistro is actually a special kind of small restaurant,

and I believe it comes from France, right?

So it's kind of small and intimate, maybe some candles and lots of wine,

Which usually, I found, it means that it's more expensive for some reason.

Because it's a bistro, it's automatically more expensive.

I think maybe in America it's more expensive.

Maybe in France it's the cheap option, but, uh, bistro is the kind of place we're at,

and we'd like to go, so it's probably a popular place.

So as you see there, we have a verb there, "to make." We want to make a reservation.

So let's take a look at the noun, a reservation.

So this word means to ask the restaurant to hold your seats.

So you say, "Listen, I would like to come to your restaurant tonight.

I don't want to wait when I come, so I will call in advance.

I'll call early and ask them to save a table for us." That's right.

You call to make a reservation, or you want to make a reservation.

So I could say, for example, "Hey, Marco, can you please make a reservation for dinner tonight?

I'm afraid there might not be any tables left if we wait." Okay, very good.

Now, we can use the verb "reserve" as well, right?

So I can say, "Hey, Marco, can you please reserve a table for dinner tonight?" Okay, so we can say to make a reservation or reserve a table,

You can't say, "I would like to reserve, please." No, you have to reserve something.

So if I'm going to a concert, a music concert, I can say, "I'd like to reserve two seats for the concert." But if I'm going to dinner, obviously we sit at a table, so I'm going to reserve a table.

Now, moving on to another verb, the waiter or the person in charge there asked us how many people will attend dinner tonight.

So it's actually a nicer way of saying to come.

Instead of him saying how many people will come tonight, he says, "How many people will attend?" All right, so that's a question for the person making the reservation.

You could say, "Hey, Marco, how many people do you think will attend your birthday party next week?" That's right.

So I can say, "Well, maybe 10 people will attend." 10 people will attend.

but just remember that it means to come or to be present at.

So let's take a look at our dialogue again,

and then we'll be back in a bit with Fluency Builder.

Subtitles ListPlay Video

🎧 Learning English with Podcasts | Episode 025 Making A Dinner Reservation Daily life

phrase

present

situation

basically