IELTS Speaking for Success - 🧸 Childhood (Part 1) + Transcript

Episode Date: November 25, 2024

Our New Year Sale is live: https://successwithielts.com/sale What did you enjoy doing as a child? Did you enjoy your childhood? What are your best childhood memories? Did you have any plans for your life when you were a child? Tune in and have a great day! - Book a class with Rory here: https://successwithielts.com/rory Our course on Phrasal Verbs: https://successwithielts.com/podcourses Transcript: https://successwithielts.com/s11e12 Find an IELTS Speaking Partner: https://links.successwithielts.com/ieltspartner Our social media: https://linktr.ee/successwithielts © 2024 Podcourses Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, lovely. I'm Maria. And my name is Rory. I'm the host of the AILD 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 gorgeous grammar and fabulous vocabulary. For your high IEL score. Your band nine score. All Rory have a joke for us. Yes.

The tables have turned. What do you call a boomerang that will not come back? What? A stick. This is a joke for children, Rory. Yes, it is. And it's a great coincidence because today we're going to talk about childhood. Let's talk about childhood.

What did you enjoy doing as a child? Probably the same things as most children, I'd say. I did a lot of drawing and reading. but not as much outdoor play in sport as I could have since I wasn't terribly interested in it. Did you enjoy your childhood? Not as much as my adulthood, I think. I like the freedom of action and greater responsibility I have now compared to the relative, well, powerlessness of being a child.

What are your best childhood memories? I really liked spending time with older people, like my grandmother and our family friends. I think they allowed more room. to mature and grow compared to hanging out with people my own age. Though I do miss the times when I would create chaos as a teenager as well. Did you have any plans for your life when you were a child? I really wanted to be a teacher and a writer actually. And look what happened exactly that. I suppose that was inevitable really. I didn't have any pipe dreams like being a footballer or anything like that. 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. Hey, dear listener, childhood. The time when you wore a child. And you know, a child, how old is a child? How long is this piece of string to be on? with you. I would say

it goes from being born until you're, like, reach the age of majority. So that could be 16 in some countries, in other countries, it's 18. Yeah, do with them. So whatever, I was childhood, you know, like a good time when you were a child. When you were younger than you are now.

Yeah, yeah, pretty much, like, you know, you are 30 today, you know, last year it was childhood, like 29. Childhood. You can say like, oh, I'm still a child, you know. So, yeah, some strange questions. Like, did you enjoy your childhood?

But what if you didn't enjoy your childhood? Roy? Can I say, like, no, I was very unhappy in my childhood. Everybody bullied me. To be honest, that I was very tempted to say, like, no, I didn't like being child, actually. I hated it. But I think it's good to put a positive spin on these things. So I just said not as much as my adulthood, which is now I'm an adult, allegedly.

Yeah, de listener. So it's much better to say a couple of positive things about your childhood. But if you want, you can say like, oh no, I hated my childhood. But this would make the examiner uncomfortable, I think. We can say that, yes, I enjoyed my childhood. I enjoy being a child. I did a lot of drawing and reading. I did a lot of reading. Our Rory is a writer and he did a lot of reading when he was a child, you know.

other popular activities in our childhood are board games. Maybe you played board games. Or you rode your bicycle. Maybe you did sports. You played hide and seek, dear listener. You know, like this game, when everybody has to hide and you have to find them. Hide and seek. Or like you did puzzles.

Maybe you did a lot of jumping on trampolins. Like boom, boom, boom. We had a trampoline in our garden, actually. No, I think about it. How dangerous is that? You can also say that I did a lot of outdoor sports. Okay? I played a lot with my peers.

We have childhood and we have adulthood. So if you enjoy being an adult more, you can say, I enjoy my adulthood more. So we have childhood and then adulthood. Nothing in between, hurry? I think you could call that your adolescence, but there is some debate as to whether that's actually a real thing. Adolescence, yeah. An adolescent is a teenager.

Adolescence? Like, the time when you are a teenager. And you can say, yeah, I enjoy being an adult more because I like the freedom of action. adults have the freedom of action. We can do whatever you want. Scotland. And we have greater responsibility. But that just means we have to do more things.

But I like that. I like being responsible. Yay. But if you don't like it, you can say, well, I enjoyed my childhood because I hate this responsibility and I hate this freedom. Because it's very difficult to choose what to do. And you have to decide what to eat every day. Do you listen, every single day of our life, we are thinking, we think about what we'll eat.

Is that much of a difficult decision to make? Yes. Sometimes it's, you know, like... No, it's easy. We always have this food noise. Oh, what's for dinner? What's for lunch? What's for breakfast?

Oh, do I have food for tomorrow? Do I have food for the evening? Oh, there's no food. What do I do? Unless you're me, in which case you do a shop every Monday and everything is ready for you for the entire week and it's fine. Oh, Aurora you're so organized. I am so organized. When we are children, we are powerless. Well, relatively powerless.

We don't have much power. We don't have responsibility. We are given food. All right, and we have a choice to eat it or not. Food will be a running theme. And you can say that. I enjoy being an adult more because I don't like this powerlessness. Powerlessness, worry?

It's just when you don't have power. Or the idea of not being able to wield power. I've got the power. So we have power and no powerlessness. And I like the word relative too. I love that word because we're supposed to avoid generalizing for higher scores. So relative helps us avoid. this because it's in relation to other things. Relative to an adult, children are powerless.

They are relatively powerless. And you can say that I really, I don't enjoy feeling powerless, or I don't like this sense of powerlessness. Your best childhood memories. DeLisner, you should be ready to answer that, okay, for IELs. Or imagine, make it up. Okay, imagine, I don't know, a birthday party or your first day at school, but something nice. But speak about some positive things, okay? Yes, our childhood might be horrible, but well, let's talk positive. And we can say, I really liked doing something I enjoyed spending time with older people, Rory told us, like my grandmother, my family friends, my relatives, my grandparents.

This allowed Rory more room to mature. So to mature become an adult, to mature and grow. Or you can say, like, I used to hang out with people my own age. I used to, in the past, I don't do it now. So I used to hang out, hang out with my peers. My peers, people, my own age. Well, my age or at my social level. I created chaos as a teenager.

I enjoyed creating chaos. Chaos is this disorder where when you're running around all the time, you know, destroying all the house. Chaos. Maybe not that kind of chaos, but close enough to it. And we'd create chaos. We do not have chaos. Can we talk about the grammar?

Absolutely. Could you please talk about the grammar? So I said when, well, first of all, I said when, for a relative pronoun, when I would create chaos for the regular action in the past. It could be used to, but I said would. Why did you use wood? Why did I use wood? There's a reason. I've forgotten it.

Wood fits with, no, no, that's not true. Wood is more appropriate for talking about repeated past actions for certain kinds of verb. Maria will now explain which. that they are most useful for, because I have forgotten. Is it the difference between state verbs and action verbs? Is that what it is? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes.

Yeah, but the point is that when you did something repeatedly in the past, and it's an action verb like run, write, paint, laugh, you can use wood. So Rory created Cass every day when he was a teenager. So you can say, I would create chaos, meaning I created chaos in the past. You can say, I used to create chaos. I used to run every day. I used to go jogging every day. Or like every weekend I would go jogging, which means every weekend I went jogging.

So we can use wood about the past delisone. It's crazy. This English language is just insane. Crazy. And you can say like, I do miss the times when I would visit my grandparents. Or I do miss, like I really miss. I do miss the times when I would do something and give an action. And I use do here for emphasis.

Thank you for highlighting that. That was going to be my second point. I do miss this kind of thing. You could say I really miss, but I do miss, I think it will be higher level. It's got a special name this do, but I forget what it is. Band 9 phrase. Band 9 do. That's what it's called.

Yeah, you can say, like, I do miss being a child. Or I did enjoy riding my bicycle if it is in the past. Like, I do like it now. I do miss it now. But it's got to have the special emphasis with the stress for pronunciation, which we rarely talk about on this podcast. I had some plans for my life when I was a child. or I didn't have plans for my life.

Or you can say, I didn't know how my life would pan out. Like how my life would be. So as a child, I didn't know how my life would pan out how it would be like. Rory wanted to be a teacher and a writer when he was a child. And now look at Rory, he's a teacher and a writer. Wow. Dreams come true. Success.

Scottish dreams It was inevitable So like Rory wanted it It happened It was inevitable What are pipe dreams?

Well pipe dreams are just fantastical or unrealistic dreams For example Many young children We'd like to be famous footballers Or celebrities

But I did not want to do that When I was younger I just wanted to be a teacher It was a very realistic child. A pipe dream is an idea or plan that is impossible or very unlikely to happen. For example, if Rory wants to become president of the United States. First of all, he can't do this because he's Scottish. To be president, you have to be born in the States, if I'm not mistaken. Or to have an American passport, Rory has a Scottish passport. I don't have a Scottish passport. I have a British passport.

I have a British passport. Ah, okay. Right. So, if you have a British passport, all right. So, It's like his pipe dream. Could you give us a sentence with pipe dream? I didn't have many pipe dreams as a child. Or it could be something like, it would be great to be famous. Or it would be great to be a famous actor. But that's probably just a pipe dream now

because I haven't invested much in acting. Okay, can you say that when I was a child, I had a pipe dream of becoming an actor? No, I think you would say I used to dream. You wouldn't say like, I had a pipe dream because then you would know it was a pipe dream. But there are very few children who know that their dreams are pipe dreams. Mm-hmm.

So we can use it only in the negative. Like, I didn't have any pipe dreams or I had some dreams, but now I understand they were pipe dreams, right? Yes. I didn't understand they were pipe dreams at the time. Hmm. Yeah, Rory, and could you tell us, like, are there any synonyms for children? Because when I was a child, when I was a child, and also in essays, if I else essays are about children, do we just write children?

Can I paraphrase children? Okay, so for speaking, probably we want to say things like when I was little, when I was small, and you could talk about when I was a youngster, maybe. If we talk about writing, then children, adolescents, had a push. We're just younger people, relatively young people. Can I say the youth? Oh, the youth, the youth of today. You could also talk about youths, plural. Mm-hmm.

I think that's enough synonyms to get by on. How many are you going to need for a 250-word essay? No, no, no, that's fine. That's fine. Yes, Dele-Lis-Sin. We can't find any appropriate jokes about childhood. All right? So if you know any, let us know. Right, de Lisin,

hopefully you enjoyed your childhood, or feel free to lie that you did enjoy your childhood very much, okay? Or say that you like being an adult better. Being an adult is cool. Yeah. All this responsibility, thinking about food every day, earning your money, paying taxes, paying the rent. Yum, yum, yum, yum, yum, how delicious it is.

Thank you very much for listening, your listener. Yum, blah, blah, blah. Hey, hugs and kisses. Hi. What did you enjoy doing as a child? Probably the same things as most children, I'd say. I did a lot of drawing and reading, but not as much outdoor play in sport as I could have

since I wasn't terribly interested in it. Did you enjoy your childhood? Um, not as much as my adulthood, I think. I like the freedom of action and greater responsibility I have now compared to the relative, uh, well, powerlessness of being a child. What are your best childhood memories? I really like spending time with older people, like my grandmother and our family friends. I think they allowed more room to mature and grow compared to hanging out with people my own age.

Though I do miss the times when I would create chaos as a teenager as well. Did you have any plans for your life when you were a child? I really wanted to be a teacher and a writer, actually. And look what happened exactly that. I suppose that was inevitable, really. I didn't have any pipe dreams like being a footballer or anything like that.