IELTS Speaking for Success - 🎷 Describe a friend of yours who is good at music/singing (Part 2) + Transcript

Episode Date: October 10, 2025

Get our premium episode archive: https://www.patreon.com/ieltssfs You should say: who he/she is, when/where you listen to his/her music/singing, what kind of music/songs he/she is good at, and explain how you feel when listening to his music/singing. 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: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Sign up for our archive to get access to the transcript⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 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

Hello, lovely. Welcome into IELD speaking part two. Describe a friend of yours who is good at music or singing. You should say who he or she is, when where you listen to him or her music or singing, what kind of music songs he or she is good at, and explain how you feel when listening to his music or singing. Rory, hello. Hello. Hello, while you are listening, dear listener, I have a challenge for you. Singing is not my favorite subject, so I must speak very vaguely about things,

and I will use specific phrases for talking vaguely about a subject. Can you identify them? We will find out if you are right or if you correctly identified them at the end. Are you ready, Maria? Rory, are you going to talk about me and my singing? No. Tonight's going to have myself. Really good time. No? No.

You see, dear listener, Rory never likes my singing. Why, I have no idea. Seriously. Just start your store. Oh, wow. I have a lot of friends who are pretty musical, actually. But one that sticks out in my mind in particular is my tenants. He's with me for the last year now, while he does his PhD in neglected tropical parasites, which is completely unrelated to his singing ability, of course. But I think having those interests or those mixed interests

is what makes him so interesting, for lack of a better term. Being able to sing is also more relatable than stuff about parasites. When it comes to when I listen to him, I'm sort of subjected to it every morning when he's in the shower. My office is just down the hall from the bathroom. So when I'm sitting writing lessons or putting things together for work, I often hear him sort of serenading the shower or something like that, which is extremely entertaining for me. In terms of the genre of music that he's into, I honestly have no idea.

I think just based on what I can hear, it's opera or something along those lines. It's very vocal and loud, whatever it is. Maybe sometimes it's like pop numbers, but I don't think it's, I don't think that's what you'd call what I usually hear anyway. Like I said, I'm not well-versed in the ins and outs of music genres. Regardless, it's pretty pleasant to listen to, at least I think so, possibly our neighbours have other opinions, to tell you more about how I feel about the whole thing. As I mentioned, it's pretty good fun to hear in the morning. I'm not sure it would be my usual choice, but it blez into the background nicely enough and doesn't distract me much. When he leaves next year, I'm sure it will be one of the things I miss the most.

If I didn't have Pete singing in my life, well, I'm pretty sure my wife would be pretty one of the mill. And that wouldn't be much fun or terribly interesting for me. It also would have given me nothing to talk about now. 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.

again, a new topic, describe a friend who is good at music or singing. So you should talk about a person who sings well or just not well but you like their singing or who is good at music, which means that this person plays the piano or plays the drums, play the piano, the drums. A person who plays any musical instrument or just, you know, maybe composes music, sings. So if you don't have such a person in your life, still Rory's story or imagine this person. And our usual start, I have a lot of friends who are pretty musical, but one that sticks out in my mind, in particular, is my friend, da-t-da, right?

Or is my colleague, da-da-da. So this person sticks out in my mind, this person is memorable. Yeah, we talked about this before. And we can say that this person is musical. They have musical abilities, right? Exactly. Like musical instruments, musical compositions. Actually, it's C1, Lori.

Is it? Yeah, if you use it in a context. If you're musical, you have a skill or a great liking for music. So my family all play instruments. They're very musical. Very nice. She's in this particular context. And this person,

Peter is Rory's tenant. So he lives in the same flat, in Rory's flat and pays money to live. He pays money to live with me. Crazy, crazy man that he is. Tenant. So it's C2, dear listener, Ben 9, a person who pays rent for the use of land or a building. So you have a flat, you live in one room, a person, another person lives in the other room, and pays money for the flat together with you, so a tenant.

And this pizza has a PhD in neglected tropical parasites. I've started Googling the thing. No, don't Google that. He doesn't have his PhD yet. Why don't you go to picture? No, because I thought I was interested in what kind of parasites they are. But it turns out you're not so interested anymore. No, no, it's disgusting awful stuff. Yeah, but whatever you need a topic. For studies, you can say that, oh, this person has a PhD in neglected tropical parasites.

And the examiner goes like, what? What is this? Why are they neglected? These are little awful creatures in the jungles and forests that kind of like go inside the people's bullies. However, none of this is related to someone's musical ability, so perhaps we should move on. Right, yes, yes. So, when it comes to when I listen to his singing, again, we change the topic, so we use a phrase, when it comes to when I listen to him, oho, every morning.

He sings in the shower, he sings while cooking breakfast, when I organize my work, I often overhear him singing. So when you hear someone singing, you can say, I overhear him. over here, him singing or serenading, you said. Serenading. It means many things, but I'm using it to mean sing to somebody or someone or something. Serenade is a piece, that means that play a piece of music or sing for someone, especially a woman. So it's kind of like romantic, like Romeo and Juliet.

So Romeo serenades Juliet in the Moonlight. and it's very entertaining for me. So I have fun, I like it, it's nice, it's pleasant, so it's entertaining. Again, we're changing the topic. In terms of the genre of music, he's inter, so he's inter-rap, he's inter-classical music. So in terms of the genre of music, he's inter, I have no idea. Or he likes classical music. He likes everything, right?

I think it's opera or something along those. lines. So if you're not sure, you can say, well, it might be rap or pop music, something along those lines, something like that. If something is vocal, what is it and what can be vocal? Well, I'm spoken. Like a piece of vocal music, some music which has words because not all music has words. It's pretty pleasant to listen to. So careful, I listen to music, I listen to music, and he's pretty pleasant to listen to. Or his music, his singing is pretty pleasant to listen to.

Again, we're changing the topic to tell you more about how I feel about the whole thing. I'm pretty happy with this, right? Or it's pretty good fun to hear it in the morning. It doesn't distract me much. So it distracts me from work, for example, Or it doesn't distract me. Oh, he lives next year, Rory. Why is he living? I know. It's very sad. We have like six months left together and then I need to find a new tenant.

So if anyone is interested in living with me for a year, then please get in touch. And then our conditional at the end is a very good idea to use the third conditional or the second conditional to wrap up your speaking part two. So here you can use the second conditional because we're talking about now and we're imagining. a situation now if I didn't have Pete in my life. But I do have Pete now. But imagine like I don't have Pete, if I didn't have Pete singing, I would have a boring life. So if I didn't have, if I didn't listen to his singing every day, my life would not be so fun, for example.

It would be a run of the mill. Run of the mill, boring, right? ordinarily, run of the mill. We spell this word with hyphons, run, hyphen of, hyphen, the hyphen mill. If you don't know what a hyphen means, just write run of the mill in Cambridge Online Dictionary. So ordinary, not special, exciting. Like I have a run of the mill life, a run of the mill film, speech, experience. If I didn't have his singing in my life, my life wouldn't be so much fun.

You can also talk about your friends who sing in a band, for example, or who just do singing singing classes. However, you might not be 100% sure about them. So, I have included some phrases for talking about things in a very vague way. However, Maria, did you hear any of them? Yes, I did. Something along those lines. Mm-hmm.

I also said, whatever it is, so it's very loud and vocal, whatever it is. I also said, I'm not well-versed in, and here, not well-versed in the ins and outs of music genres. So the ins and outs are the details of something. If you're not well-versed in it, you don't know much about it. Oh, what else was there? Nothing else. Quite useful for when we need to say something and we're not sure. Because remember, it's not a test of your knowledge about something.

It's a test of how well you handle the conversation. The ins and outs of something. Not well versed in something. These are idiomatic expressions. And if we think about the fixed expressions for things that are unclear, something along those lines is also quite useful. Thank you very much for listening. And we'll get back to you in our new super episode.

Okay. Bye. Describe a friend of yours who is good at music or singing. You should say who he or she is when where you listen to him or her music or singing, what kind of music songs he or she is good at and explain how you feel when listening to his music or singing. Oh wow. I have a lot of friends who are pretty musical actually. but one that sticks out in my mind in particular is my tenant. He's with me for the last year now while he does his PhD in neglected tropical parasites,

which is completely unrelated to his singing ability, of course. But I think having those interests or those mixed interests is what makes him so interesting, for lack of a better term. Being able to sing is also more relatable than stuff about parasites. When it comes to when I listen to him, I'm sort of subjected to it every morning when he's in the shower. My office is just down the hall from the bathroom. So when I'm sitting writing lessons or putting things together for work,

I often hear him sort of serenading the shower or something like that, which is extremely entertaining for me. In terms of the genre of music that he's into, I honestly have no idea. I think just based on what I can hear, it's opera or something along those lines. it's very vocal and loud, whatever it is. Maybe sometimes it's like pop numbers, but I don't think it's, I don't think that's what you'd call

what I usually hear anyway. Like I said, I'm not well versed in the ins and outs of music genres. Regardless, it's pretty pleasant to listen to. At least I think so, possibly our neighbours have other opinions. To tell you more about how I feel about the whole thing, as I mentioned, it's pretty good fun to hear in the morning. I'm not sure it would be my usual choice, but it blends into the background.

nicely enough and doesn't distract me much. When he leaves next year, I'm sure it will be one of the things I miss the most. If I didn't have Pete singing in my life, well, I'm pretty sure my ones would be pretty run of the mill. And that wouldn't be much fun or terribly interesting for me. It also would have given me nothing to talk about now.