In this tutorial, we're going to look at recent topics in the IELTS Speaking so these are the
question list basically, it's the question list that the examiners have been given and what
we're going to do is look at the questions, look at the topics, and listen to sample answers
let's jump straight into it so the first one on my list is A Time You Complained about
Something and Action was Easily Taken so let's go it's Describe a Time When You
Explained about -- When You Complained about Something and Action was Easily Taken
okay I would like to tell you about a time when I was in Bulgaria with my Spanish friends we
were sitting in the esplanade, the main esplanade in the middle of Sofia, and we sat there
and we're all laughing and talking waiting for our food and then they brought up the food but
the order was wrong there was a mistake so I remember this incident because I took action
and I think in Spain, it's like less likely to take direct action, but in England it's perfectly
acceptable to complain I think sometimes we might even be called a nation of complainers
anyway I said that the chips like the side order was delicious but then I said that the meat
seemed like it was undercooked and if they could just maybe grill it for a few more minutes
that would be fantastic so I tried to stay positive I wasn't rude I was very polite and I also
complimented them about the meal and they took the act -- they took action and it was very
prompt and they were polite about it as well and I think they were polite because I was
being polite too and I remember this incident because one of my Spanish friends he said,
“Ah that was very smooth” so this is why I remember the situation and yeah I complained
about the meat and they grilled it as I asked and it all turned out okay so you can see there
there's -- it's my small story it's real life that's what happened and I do remember it because
my Spanish friend was impressed and for me it just seemed like matter of fact it seemed
quite straightforward so maybe some collocations there, ‘took action’ you know some good
vocabulary, I was polite prompt action you know and then maybe a little anecdote about the
country, about the character, the culture so yeah it's just expanding your answers and
giving examples let's move on to the next thing so A Person You Never Met but Heard a Lot
about okay so I would like to describe a person I've never met but I heard a lot about his
name is Richard Branson, and you've probably heard about him as well he's got a very
large company he's a private entrepreneur his company's called Virgin, but he licenses his
brand out to lots of different endeavors and activities and businesses like Virgin Cola, Virgin
Galactic, Virgin Intergalactic, Virgin Atlantic, Virgin Brides, the range is incredible and I've
heard a lot about him through the media, through the news he's not published -- publicity-
shy he loves it actually, and that's how he gets a lot of his businesses off the ground he just
does a lot of publicity and gets free marketing basically, and I would really like to meet him
because I've read both his books and they were extremely interesting and in his books he
shares a lot he's very vulnerable in his books and also kind of adds to the amount of
information I know about this man but I still have never met so that was my small
description about a person who I've never met, but I've heard, read, and seen a lot about
him thank you so you can see there I did answer the question, but it wasn't like a robot
because I mentioned that I've read the books, that I've seen him on the news yeah I did
think about explaining about this character in an online forum that everybody talks about
and a few people are friends with and he does these kinds of businesses and he's a small
mini legend but I thought it would be just too complicated because his businesses are quite
technical as well so this is why I went for Richard Branson which is quite familiar especially
in the English-speaking world and it's easy to relate to you know, and I can talk about Virgin

Cola, Virgin Galactic all his businesses and the listener, the examiner is going to know
exactly what I'm talking about whereas if I talked about this character I had in my mind the
first one that came to my mind, then it's going to be complicated from the get-go and we
must bear in mind that this is a language test, not an intelligence test I don't want to impress
the examiner about telling, stringing a story about this mysterious person in an online forum
no let's just go for clarity, Richard Branson practically everybody knows Richard Branson
I’m just making my life easier and making the examiner's life easier as well let's move on An
Interesting Job You would Like to Do right so I would like to tell you about an interesting job
I'd like to do but perhaps you might not find it interesting but I've always been fascinated
with this line of work it's basically working on the roads and working with tarmac, laying
tarmac down or asphalt with you know, the high visibility vests, the spades, the lorries, the
trucks, the big heavy machinery, and I've always been fascinated by this line of work and
especially the big heavy machines you know, the steam rollers, the articulated lorries all of
this just fascinates me however, in my family and in my culture, which is England, there's
always been a tendency to move towards the service industries and away from the manual
work so this is why I ended up with a different job that wasn't working on the roads, but if
working on the roads paid as well as maybe the service sector, I would probably like to do it
anyway, I find it fascinating largely because I love the smell of tarmac but also I think there's
a lot of craft and art involved and plus working with my body work like a physical job is
something that I've always admired maybe because it's in my background I don't know but
yeah, I would it might not seem interesting to you but for me I've been fascinated with this
whole world since I was a child there we go that was my honest straightforward answer
now, I went for that answer because one, it was the truth two, I knew I could speak about it
because I am interested and it may sound weird, but I am interested in how they -- how
roads are made and I had lots of opportunity there to show the examiner my vocabulary
asphalt, tarmac, steamroller, manual work, articulated lorries all of this and I could tell I
could share anecdotes you know about my culture that it's more likely or preferred that
parents’ children going to get a degree and all the rest of it and also my personal or my
personal preference but also that I chose this -- I didn't choose it because of the low wages
associated with it so there's like lots of different reasons, and this is another useful
technique that I've been teaching to my online students for the -- who've taken the Speaking
course that I always say, “Look, after you've said your statement back it up with a because”
yeah the interesting job I'd like to do is work on the roads because yeah, it's like the IELTS
Task 2 once you've claimed your argument, once you've stated your arguments, you back
up your claim with a ‘because’ and you can also obviously like the Writing, you put in an
example or in our case an anecdote and we talk about the past yeah I mean it might seem
like I'm just going straight forward with these obviously it's my native language, but I want
you to pick up on the fact that I'm using ‘because’ I'm explaining I'm usually referencing
something from the past so I'm sharing my – I am sharing the knowledge of my tenses that I
know and giving examples, small anecdotes, stories, families, personal reasons, personal
motivations, all of this and you can do this as well and in fact, with my online students, I go
a step further and I give them the structures so for example, nowadays I work as an English
tutor in the past I used to work as a waiter in a restaurant can you see? we drill this
structure in to the students rather relentlessly so when it does come to using it, it sounds
much more automatic and much more natural so next speaking topic, Describe a Journey

okay I would like to describe a journey I took last year I was with some friends from Austria,
and once again, it was in Bulgaria and we were meeting at the airport and then we jumped
on the bus and then went to the festival however, on the bus, there was this girl from
England and she was a little bit strange maybe because she just kept on talking and talking
and talking and at first, we all thought she was chatty, talkative, and outgoing social and all
the rest of it, but then after about two hours, it was a six-hour coach ride, after the second
hour, we started to realize that this girl's got like a problem, a mental problem and it started
to make the journey really difficult one or two people got annoyed but after getting annoyed
and seeing that there was no reaction, no change of behavior, she started -- we all started
to realize that there was something else going on so we had to be a little bit more tolerant
anyway, going back to the journey, she made the journey feel like it was 20 hours and apart
from her, it could have been a really pleasant journey because these -- there were friends I
was travelling with I hadn't had a chance to talk with for a couple of years so we had lots to
catch up on but this girl, she was quite determined to keep on talking so that's the
description of a journey we took I'm sorry if I talked a little bit about a little bit more about the
person however, she was the major actor in my journey there we go so also I hope you're
realizing that I'm doing the introductions “I'd like to tell you about a journey we took” I'm
doing almost like a summary I'm signaling to the examiner that's the end and also in that
recent example, the most recent one I just did, I maybe focused on the girl a little bit more
than I should have done, but I corrected it and I also said yeah maybe it would have been a
better journey I did and I admitted that I talked a lot about her but she -- but then I justified it
by saying that it was a major part of the journey you know, so fair enough maybe I went
slightly off-topic, but I recognized it and I justified it and as soon as I sort of like recognized
it, I went back and talked about the journey you know I just got maybe a little bit carried
away so just to summarize what we've been doing so far is, so far and I teach very similar
technique, a very similar technique with the online students doing the Intensive Speaking
Fluency Program with me and we talk about introducing your talk, giving reasons why,
maybe telling a little anecdote, maybe sharing a story, an example I guess that comes into
anecdote giving reasons why and also when you've finished you summarize and you signal
to the examiner that you're done also what we do in the course is we do a lot of listening
exercise and that might seem strange, but it's perfectly logical and I know this works
because I've been doing it for a long time and we work on the listening because I want my
students to answer the correct question I don't want them to answer a question that they
think has been asked it's essential they answer a question they know has been asked I've
talked about this before but I'll just briefly mention it and it's more for Part 4 and for the
follow-on questions especially the follow-on questions in Part 3 for example if you -- if you
get a follow-on question such as do you think more people are taking more journeys
nowadays and then you answer, yes people will take more journeys nowadays it's okay but
it's not perfect and I want it to be perfect because now we're going to talk about the future
and we'll carry on talking about it and we haven't really answered the question and you will
be completely oblivious so this is why I say to all my students that the Speaking exam is a
Listening exam the Writing exam is a Reading exam because like Part 3 of just like the
Speaking we can go off topic and we end up in a completely different route to what we want
to take and the route we do want to take corresponds closely to task response right let's
move on to the final Speaking topic number two by the way, I hope that you are listening to

these we should have a transcript about these soon so check the site and yeah you can
listen to these and write down useful phrases, write down useful expressions so let's move
on: A Piece of Equipment You had Repaired right there so for me this is a very good
example actually of why the – why it’s a Listening exam or why we have to pay close
attention to the question because it's a piece of equipment you had repaired this is
incredibly sneaky because my automatic answer here was I was going to talk about a
mobile phone that I repaired and I had it in my mind about taking off the screen, buying the
special screwdriver pack, and all of this but it say -- it says, a piece of equipment you had
repaired so this implies that somebody else has repaired it for you yeah that you had
repaired I had my sunglasses repaired yesterday yeah so it just completely underlines what
I was saying before about reading the question carefully so I can't talk about my phone that
I wanted to share with you I wanted to tell you about how I bought this awesome
screwdriver pack off eBay then I disassembled my phone I found it really fascinating I can't
talk about that and I have to talk about something else so okay I would like to talk about a
piece of equipment I had repaired a few years ago I was in Ukraine and it -- the item I had
repaired was my mobile phone and since then I've repaired my mobile phone myself but at
that time, I didn't know that I could self -- that I could repair it myself so I took it to a shop in
the high street in Lviv, Ukraine and one of the reasons why I did it there was because it was
ridiculously cheap compared to getting it repaired in Western Europe, in a country such as
Spain or the UK and I was really surprised at how easy it was and how fast they could do it
and also the person in the shop told me a very interesting story about this new technique for
repairing the screens where they heat up the screens of the iPhone and they slide it off and
then they can stick a new one on and this was a new technique developed in China and the
shop assistant or technician who was telling me about this was really interested and really
loved sharing her knowledge about it and I also found it fascinating and yeah that's my
small description about an item I had repaired so there we go fortunately, or not fortunately,
actually but I've had a few phone screens smashed in my life it was quite easy just to talk
about another time when I had my phone repaired and this is a true story this actually
happened actually it's not true what I've done there is blended it because I met a girl at a
party who was telling me about how you get phone screens repaired nowadays and I did
have my phone repaired in Lviv in Ukraine but the shop assistant didn't tell me any story so
I just mixed to match my stories there just to make it more interesting and as I said before
this is a communication exam and I thought that if I explained that a girl in a party told me
about the mobile phone technique but the guy in the shop didn't do it he just fixed it there's
no story there and it's more complicated to explain so I just put the girl in the party I made
her out to be my shop assistant it doesn't matter and this just makes it easier for me to
communicate my story, and at the end of the day, this is a communication exam and now I
can talk about a shop assistant I could talk about it fascinated me I can use good adjectives
like fascinated and you know specialists and this new technique of heating it up and it's
really descriptive and you could tell I was semi-knowledgeable about it because I could you
know I could really just transfer the knowledge that the girl told me about you know sliding
off the screen and heating it up and all that so yeah I cannot give you sort of like I mean, I
can give you a set structure to follow and this is what I do with the lower students you know,
around 6.5 or the ones who get nervous but the best way I think is just to learn what you
need and to do this it's good to have interactions with a teacher you know for example, like

with some of my students, some of them are really talkative so they benefit from having a
structure to follow just so they don't bounce around and keep talking and go off topic other
students the conversation just comes naturally to them and they start talking, but also they
kind of go off topic so in this case what I say is I think and they were staffing as I say
staffing us stay on topic and this is why for her a summary and also starting with the
question as the first line helps her keep on track but she doesn't need the structure
afterwards because she knows where she studied and she knows where she's finishing and
she’s so naturally talkative she can fill in the in-between bit but for some students who just
go blank, then useful strategies such as ‘for example’, or ‘because’ just simple technique a
simple technique like this can help a student who gets nervous who doesn't know what to
say and we can even go more detailed like I said before we can say ‘this is because’ and
then we say ‘I used to do this but nowadays I do this’ you know, and we just work on
building up the structures and then at least then we can get a solid Task 2 in and then get
set up for Part 3 okay that's everything so if you're interested in those speaking classes at
the time, at this moment in time, it's me doing them in the future I will hire another teacher,
but I'm just refining in getting the techniques and improving them and getting them better
and then I will train the new teacher in these new techniques and these new tips and
strategies so if you're interested in the Intensive Speaking Program, the online classes with
myself, and in the future with the tutor, then have a look at the links in this post you go to
the blog go to the site and you probably see the advert there for the courses okay my name
is Ben Worthington thank you very much for listening if you found this tutorial helpful, please
share it with your friends and have a great day and just remember, if you keep practicing
there's no reason why you will not pass all the best and take care thanks for listening to
ieltspodcast.com