The Basics
Here, you’ll find an interview, with facts and exercises related to it, at the A2 level of English — basic language points you may have forgotten or missed before. By VANESSA CLARK
Easy English
Interview
Every month, our interview partners from around the English-speaking world tell us about themselves. This month, we talk to Kate Tilley, a 17-yearold volunteer at an Oxfam shop.
How many hours do you work?
An hour and a half every week: Friday after school.
What does the shop sell?
We sell donations: what people give us. We have clothes, toys, household items, books and music.
What happens to the donations?
Everything is sorted into three groups: things to sell in the shop, things to throw away and things to send to auction. All the clothes are steamed, and the household items are dusted. The best items are sold at auction.
What are prices like?
Really cheap. I bought a dress for my school summer ball for £10.
What do you get out of working as a volunteer?
I’m more confident. All the people here are wonderful, really friendly and kind. It has inspired me to do more charity work and to shop in charity shops more often. It has been a great experience.
Show and tell
Discover more about Oxfam shops and what you can find there.
Selling second-hand items is a big business for UK charities. Oxfam is famous: it earns £92.5 million in its 640 shops every year.
Each Oxfam shop saves an average of 40 tonnes of old textiles every year by selling them or by sending them to be recycled.
Oxfam also has specialist shops for books and for music. One shop once found six original Mozart sonatas — printed when the musical genius was eight years old — in a box of other items.
When Thom Yorke of the Radiohead rock band gave a book to his local Oxfam shop, a sharp-eyed volunteer noticed the words of a Radiohead song handwritten on the pages. The book was worth more than £1,000.