You are learning nyc subway: you will read the scene it happens in, take apart the pattern behind them (transit vocabulary), hear them in a conversation, rehearse them, and finish by saying one thing out loud to be graded.
The NYC subway runs 24 hours, 7 days, 472 stations, 245 miles of track. Pay by tapping a card or your phone. The Duke Ellington song was right — the A train is the fastest way to Harlem. Three phrases navigate the entire system.
The stranger needs to get from Midtown Manhattan to Park Slope, Brooklyn. He opens Google Maps. The A train to Jay Street, then the F to 7th Avenue. Simple enough.
At the 34th Street platform: "Excuse me — is this the uptown or downtown A?"
"Downtown." Good. He waits. The train arrives. He finds a seat. At Jay Street he transfers to the F — a different platform, same station. Two stops. "This is my stop!" He squeezes past three people who don't move enough.
7th Avenue, Park Slope. He comes up to sunlight: brownstones, trees, babies in strollers, a farmers market. It looks nothing like the Manhattan he's been living in for a month.
He thinks: New York is not one city. It is many cities sharing a subway system.