Aubrey a good day to you how are you to you I am excellent how are you doing Jessica I'm
fantastic guys I want to remind you that uh we put all of these podcasts on our YouTube channel
IELTS energy TV um and my positive Focus today because here at Euler's English every time we talk
to each other we always start with a positive focus and I love this as an idea for everyone
out there but my positive focus is my earrings you can see them on YouTube they're so cool my
son found them for me and they're made from old photograph negatives so if you don't know what
that is go to YouTube and you'll find out because you'll see it on my earrings um anyway so very
positive day today what are we talking about today Aubrey this is exciting you guys we got
um a really good question about something that happened to one of our listeners on their IELTS
speaking exam that could definitely happen to you guys we want to make sure that you're prepared and
know exactly what to do so this is going to be very helpful but first we want to make sure that
you guys are aware of our IELTS speaking challenge starting tomorrow yes yeah so stay tuned you guys
for the details because we will be revealing the details tomorrow I think it's perfect we're
talking about difficulty on IELTS speaking part two today because if you challenge yourself right
to become fluent by speaking out loud every day by doing more in English if we can help
you do that guys we want to so we have designed a Whole 30 day challenge for you guys and we will
tell you about that tomorrow we just want to tell you to stay tuned don't miss tomorrow's episode
um okay Aubry can you read this listener's question please Aubry and I are so delighted
with this question that was an excellent question I think it's going to be very helpful for everyone
list listening so here's a question I watch all your videos well thanks and today was
my IELTS speaking exam I tried to do well but unfortunately in the two-minute topic so part
two I was off topic The Examiner asked me about my favorite traditional product and I told her about
a traditional watch I got confused because I did not know the meaning of tradition can you please
tell me how can I guess and how can I guess what my speaking band would be unfortunately we get
that question a lot like what score am I going to get which is impossible to say without having
heard your whole exam but we can tell you how that mistake can affect your score exactly so
this mistake and yeah look spoiler alert I don't think it's a mistake but this mistake possible
that it was just fine yeah right so um but we'll get into that this is why we're so delighted
today because this is like such a fun thing to talk about but um if you do make a mistake like
this you misunderstand a word in the question it could affect your fluency score of course
um but what if like your vocab and your Grammar are fantastic and you're only slightly off topic
then you could still get a really good score remember guys the four categories that you're
graded on in speaking fluency grammar vocab pronunciation they're all of equal importance
so if one is a little iffy like you misunderstand a word and you go off topic a little bit you could
still get a pretty good score if the other three categories are you know Well Done yes exactly so
that's why it's impossible for us to know what score you could have got you know gotten based
on one thing like this but right here's something interesting when we're going to dive into the
vocabulary here tradition and traditional this is a tricky word imagine if this student had talked
about a Christmas tradition or you know maybe Christmas stockings or Christmas trees thinking
of those as traditional products yes this is a very off topic right that tradition in that sense
is a very different meaning but it's possible that this student by talking about a traditional
watch was actually on topic yeah so we definitely want to dive in that we're going to share that
for you guys but first we want to share some very important advice which is what you should
do if you hear a word and a question that you do not understand you do not know what it means and
you think that you need to know what that word means in order to provide an on topic answer you
have to ask the examiner what that word means um guys and this is especially important in part two
because there's no no time to waste okay when the examiner gives you the topic card in the booklet
and the examiner says the topic out loud like I would like you to describe a traditional product
um excuse me as soon as you get that card from The Examiner and the examiner finishes telling you
what to describe the examiner starts the timer you have one minute to take notes that time does not
stop for you to ask a question okay so if you are if you're looking at this for too long and you're
thinking should I ask should I not ask I don't know what this means and you're wasting the whole
minute just wondering then that's you completely wasted the whole thing right so you need to ask
immediately it's not going to hurt your score it'll use up a little bit of that minute but it's
better for you to be on topic than off topic right yes if you spend that whole minute preparing what
you think might possibly be the on topic answer and then think I'm just gonna make sure and ask
about this word and then it turns out out you misunderstood and you spent that time preparing
an answer that's off topic how devastating would that be ask first ask right in the beginning that
would be so sad I mean I know it is because I've seen students do that and it just it kind of takes
them out of the whole thing for the rest of the test like not only are you unprepared for part two
um so you probably do not fill that two minutes fluently or confidently right so that obviously
brings down your score but then you're just like deflated for part three as well because you're
just like in your head about it and like oh my God I ruined my score what am I gonna do it's so hard
to pull yourself out of that headspace right if you feel like you screwed up in a big way that's
a really hard thing to do to be like stop and feel confident now so I know avoid the mistake in the
first place yeah I wish we had control over our brains like that like stop you're nervous don't
be nervous be confident go like if any of you have the trick to do that let us know oh
um but really the only way to do that is to be as prepared as possible listen to us so we can
tell you what to do if you don't know a word ask immediately and that's not just for part
two that's for anything on the speaking test and I think this is such a good note because I know a
lot of students that assume asking what a word means asking for a question to be repeated is
for sure going to affect their score so we're here to tell you Jessica with her 14 years of
experience as an examiner it does not it doesn't if you have to ask every word to be defined that's
a different story if you have one word maybe two words you don't understand absolutely ask that's
not pulling down your score exactly so let's get into this because this is a weird topic honestly
like yes I'm wondering if this listener remembered all the words correctly um but I know that IELTS
comes out with some super weird questions so it is possible that this was the part two topic
describe your favorite traditional Pro product I I'm assuming like it would be from your country
you know that makes more sense to me describe your favorite traditional product from your country um
so I think the student interpreted this as correct it would be um a product an item a good that is um
considered like retro considered like old because there are more modern versions of this product
like whatever this thing is this object is it existed in a form for a long time but now we have
updated it and we don't really use that anymore all right I have a good example where I use I
still use a mortar and pestle if you guys haven't heard of that it's where you have something flat
and then you have something that crushes in it and you can use it to crush herbs or garlic and it has
definitely been updated we now have garlic presses we have all these other things but a traditional
product that some people still use is the good old-fashioned mortar and pestle and I could
imagine I thought it was pestle no it's well it's pronounced pestle but there is a t in the word
I've always mortar and pestle with a silent tea but I wonder if both are accepted pronunciations
I've never heard pastel that is some great bonus traditional object vocab for you guys
um so long story short guys I think this person's guess was correct I think describing like an old
watch it would be like an analog watch right with like numbers on it and a clock face that would be
a traditional product because we don't use that as much anymore I mean again so if you're watching us
on YouTube You'll see um but you're gonna show us the smart one I have yeah I have a Fitbit and
it's just like this black band around my wrist oh my gosh I love it so much I had my to-do list
tattooed on my hand that's not traditional I'm a fun mix between Traditions but anyway guys so like
um this like a smart watch or a Fitbit like these things are the modern equivalent of this Old
Clock face tradition product thing he's talking about so I think his interpretation was correct
um but as just like a last sort of piece of advice Aubry I think this is the hardest part
to type to get is describing an object do you have any uh hints for our students any strategies for
how they get through here for that because that's definitely the hardest one is hard you're right to
fill two minutes describing an object is not easy I definitely recommend comparing and contrasting
you're going to be able to use lots of great linking words we recently covered a lot of linking
words for comparing and contrasting go back and check it out if you missed that right speaking of
this it's you know um having said that we shared those and if you do for example the watch compare
smart watches to this traditional watch that you love or if you talk about a mortar and pestle
talk about the updated gadgets and why you pervert prefer something more traditional or even if you
don't why why nobody does because this isn't oh it is my favorite traditional product you would want
to share why why is this your favorite product why do you prefer it over other things and you
can definitely fill 2 min minutes when you start comparing it to other things and sharing why you
like it better totally um and my piece of advice guys is to choose a product that you actually
have that you have owned or do own because then you'll have some sort of story about it um like
in the beginning of the episode I described you know my earrings you know what I mean and I could
tell you the whole story of how I got them and the event that we were at in this place called
Halloweentown and everything we did there like go to a haunted house and I wore my new earrings the
whole time and I mean there's always like if you choose something personal in part two you will
always have more to say there will be some sort of story that you can do as long as you describe
it you can then go into other details that are at all related I love that your earrings are so
perfect for this because like the slide in it the negative is so traditional and oh my God but the
earrings are actually so modern I've never seen anything like them they're so so cool it'd be like
the perfect thing to describe to make like the Home Alone face because um oh my gosh everything
is coming together today that's so true because photo negatives nobody takes photographs like that
anymore with negatives ah okay anyway guys find this video on YouTube there's a lot to see today
um IELTS energy TV on YouTube and if this is your first episode welcome remember to hit
follow wherever you're listening Amazon music Spotify or apple podcasts and remember tomorrow
guys we have a very special announcement of a brand new IELTS speaking challenge so remember
to listen tomorrow all right awesome Aubry I'll see you then yep see you tomorrow bye foreign