IELTS Speaking for Success - 🏎 Cars (Part 1) + Transcript

Episode Date: June 29, 2026

Get access to our episode archive: https://successwithielts.com/ Hate being behind the wheel? Rory reveals he's a 'passenger princess' and finds driving a 'nerve-wracking' experience. Find out why car color matters for safety and how to talk about transport you don't care for. Tune in and have a great day! - Book a class with Rory here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://successwithielts.com/rory⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Transcript: https://successwithielts.com/ Find an IELTS Speaking Partner: https://links.successwithielts.com/ieltspartner Our social media: https://linktr.ee/successwithielts © 2025 Podcourses Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey y'all, it's Kelly Clarkson with Wayfair. Ever order furniture online and wonder what if? Like, what if it doesn't hold up? That sofa was four days old. You should have ordered from Wayfair. With Wayfair, there's no what if. Just style you love and quality you can trust. Visit Wayfair. Wayfair, every style, every home. Hello, lovely. And I am unofficial Academy Award winner Rory Duncan, and we are the hosts of the IELT Speaking for Success podcast. The podcast that aims to help you improve your speaking skills as well as your listening skills along. the way. We've started this podcast to give you super grammar and fabulous vocabulary for your high old score. We're a band nine score. Oh, Rory. What are you now? Academy what? Unofficial Academy Award

winner. Oh, unofficial. Why are you unofficial? Because if you're unofficial, then you don't need to prove it. Right. Award winner. So it's kind of like an Oscar winner. Yes. It's exactly that, except it's unofficial. Okay. Right. It's a joke. Rory is a teacher, but every time he just makes up a new profession for himself, because he's bored and just he wants to add more fun into our episodes, okay, dear listener? Do you feel like you're having more fun? Oh, absolutely, yeah. You were an opera singer last week. Today you are like an award winner unofficially.

What was that noise, Rory? Oh, it's just cars on the street outside. Shall we talk about cars? These coincidences are driving me up the wall. Driving you up the wall. Right, dear listener, if you say it's driving me up the wall, it means it's annoying. It annoys me. Okay?

For example, cars drive me up the wall. They annoy me. They irritate me. I don't like it. Right. Mosquitoes drive me up the wall. Loud noises drive me up the wall. annoying. Let's talk about cars.

What type of cars do you like? Ones that work? I don't really know much about the different models and makes and brands, really. My main priority is that they don't break down so I can get from A to B. Do you prefer to be a driver or a passenger? I'd much rather be in the passenger seat. For me, driving is like a really nerve-wracking experience and I absolutely hate it. I always worry about other people in their own lane discipline and how they flout all the rules of the road with pretty much reckless abandon. It's not for me at all. I don't know how other people do it.

Did you enjoy travelling by car when you were a child? I think so. I remember getting car sick once or twice, but that wasn't a regular thing for me, so I didn't mind much. And it usually meant we got to places faster than if we had used public transport. Do you think cars are important? It depends who you ask, really. They're not terribly important for me at the moment, but then I live in a place with decent public transport infrastructure like buses and trains and taxis. If you're in the countryside, then it's probably a different story altogether. Do you think car colours are important? I don't know. I mean, they might be important if certain colours reflect heat more effectively

in a warm country or in a warmer time of year. But for me personally, that doesn't matter because I'm rarely in cars long enough for that to make a difference. What do you usually do when there's a traffic jam? Well, since I'm usually in the passenger seat in these situations, I just sit tight and wake them out with a book or by plastering about on my phone or something like that. There's not much else to do in those situations but kill time, is there? As you know,

we now release all of our premium content for free, and it's available for one month. After one month, it goes into our super secret archive. To sign up for the archive, click the link in the description below. See you soon.

Right, the listener. If you drive or if you don't drive, well, cars. You can say I enjoy toy cars, for example, if you don't drive. Rory makes a joke like, ha-ha, I enjoy cars that work. I don't know much about models and brands. I'm not into cars. It's not my thing.

Yeah, it's not my thing. But if you do enjoy cars... Then you're in luck. You could talk about the make or the model. Exactly. My favorite one is BMD. or I enjoy crossovers. I enjoy pickup trucks, hatchbacks. How do you say? Sedan? Sedan. But again, I don't know what those things are. Yeah, like I enjoy sedans. A car with seats for four or five people, two or four doors and a separate area in the back for bags, boxes and suitcases.

Why do you enjoy them? No, but for example, okay? But why would you enjoy something? I don't know. Like, our listener might enjoy them, right? Maybe our listener enjoys the mini-vans. Our listeners are very sensible people. I refuse to believe that. Okay, do you listen.

So there are like mini-vans, crossovers, sedans, hedgebacks. So if you enjoy cars, you know what I'm talking about. You might like trucks. Okay. Yeah. And then you say, like, oh, BMW. you is my favorite. I enjoy Lamborghini.

I would love to have a Ferrari. Yeah, and we say again, I'd love to have a Ferrari. I enjoy sports cars. Feel free to lie, the listener, right? So I enjoy sports cars. I enjoy luxury cars. Oh, you could just say, I don't know much about the difference models and brands. Rolls-Royce.

How do you say Rolls-Royce? Rolls-Royce. That's a British brand. but God only knows what the difference is. Also, they don't just do cars. They do jet engines as well, I think. Yeah, so BMW, Mercedes, luxury cars, luxury brands. But you can talk about the model or the make or the brand, and that will be okay.

I'd rather be in the passenger seat, a nice structure. I'd rather drive. So I choose to be the driver. I'd rather be a passenger. I'd rather be a driver. I'd rather be. I would rather be. Driving is nerve-wracking for me. So it's like I get nervous.

It's nerve-wracking. It's difficult for me. It causes a lot of worry. So I'm worried. I'm stressed. So driving is the most nerve-wracking thing for me. I hate it. I dislike it.

Or you can say I really enjoy it. I'm into driving. Okay. I'm a good driver. Right. What else can I say? I have no idea. I'm a terrible driver.

No, no. I mean, I enjoy driving. I'm very much a passenger princess. That's someone who likes to sit in the passenger seat and tell the driver what to do. I'm a passenger princess. Yeah, but if I'll listen is a man. Same idea. Oh, seriously?

Like, I'm a passenger princess. Uh-huh. It's not supposed to be a compliment. Okay. All right. I used to enjoy traveling by car when I was a child. So used to. Right. Maybe you don't enjoy it now. Or I didn't used to travel by car. I took a bus, so I trained. I didn't have a car. Or I always traveled by car. I remember getting car sick. So usually, like, oh, no, usually, sometimes children get car sick. sick is when your food gets out of your body

in a car well a classical situation so to get car sick you have a child he's just eaten and then you drive and then this happens right

oh well that could be part of it it's not always just eating though it could be part of motion sickness which is also the more complex way of describing that yeah so people sometimes get sea, sick, air, sick, so they get sick, on a boat, on a plane, in a car. Yeah, so I didn't enjoy it much.

I usually use the public transport instead. Or again, I always use the car. I started driving when I was 18, 21. I just drove a truck, a tractor, I don't know, a helicopter. Yeah, and different colors are important because the listener, Colors have an effect on safety. Do they? For example, yeah, yeah, the safest cars are...

One's not driven by me. So the safest cars are white, silver or yellow, because they are easier to spot in low light, heavy rain or fog. Yeah, so that car colors influence the safety of... passengers and the driver. No, I didn't know that, but that's because I don't drive. Do you know what else influences the safety? Not driving.

So car colors directly impact safety and, oh, maintenance of the car. So, like, you take care of your car. Maintenance, like darker colors, black show dirt scratches very easily. Yep. But lighter colors are better at hiding dirt and imperfection. There we go. Yeah, just like give these two ideas. DeLis now, you know.

But also you can say, like, car colors reflect personal style and psychology. And if you don't have a car, what does that reflect? The fact that you don't like driving. Yeah, for example, like, I would opt for a red car. It kind of suggests energy, you know. Black suggests power and elegance. White implies, like, it's clean, it's modern, it's stylish. Yeah.

Right, in a traffic jam. So if I'm stuck in traffic, I'm plastering about on my phone. So I'm fafing about. I'm plastering about. So plaster about is a phrase of a which means like, okay, I do nothing. I fath about. No, plaster about like Cambridge on like Dishini doesn't have this word. Oh, really?

It's slang, Rory. We say fath about. Fine. Faff or faffing about, plastering about. Fife about, like, do nothing. Spend time doing a lot of unimportant things. So I just, I faff about on my phone. I scroll through my social media.

So just to kill time. Lovely. Now we are ready for a joke. For a joke. Have we not had enough jokes? No, no, of course not. We already talked about being driven up the water. No, Rory, no.

So, please tell us we do need a word. So what do cars have? There are four wheels, and on these wheels we have... Tires. Yeah, tires. Okay, T-I-R-E, tires. What do you call a car that never stops? T-E-T-Less.

Oh. Oh. Right, the listener. So, a car has four tires, right? But tireless means working energetically, continuously. So not being tired, tireless. So for example, like Rory is a tireless worker. He works energetically nonstop, right?

So what do you call a car that never stops tireless? So it doesn't get tired. Oh, wow. And on that fun note, let's drive off into the sunset. Bye. Bye. This episode is brought to you by Accenture. When your advertising operations fall out of sync, everything else follows.

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I don't really know much about the different models and makes and brands, really. My main priority is that they don't break down so I can get from A to B. Do you prefer to be a driver or a passenger? I'd much rather be in the passenger seat. For me, driving is like a really nerve-wracking example. experience and I absolutely hate it. I always worry about other people in their own lane discipline and how they flout all the rules of the road with pretty much reckless abandon. It's not for me at all. I don't know how other people do it. Did you enjoy traveling by car when you were a child?

I think so. I remember getting car sick once or twice, but that wasn't a regular thing for me, so I didn't mind much. And it usually meant we got to places faster than if we had used public transport. Do you think cars are important? It depends who you ask, really. They're not terribly important for me at the moment, but then I live in a place with decent public transport infrastructure like buses and trains and taxis. If you're in the countryside, then it's probably a different story altogether. Do you think car colours are important? I don't know. I mean, they might be important if certain colours reflect heat more effectively

in a warm country or in a warmer time of year. But for me personally, that doesn't matter because I'm rarely in cars long enough for that to make a difference. What do you usually do when there's a traffic jam? Well, since I'm usually in the passenger seat in these situations, I just sit tight and wake them out with a book or by plastering about on my phone

or something like that, there's not much else to do in those situations but kill time, is there? You know,