IELTS Speaking for Success - 👕 Describe a website or app you have used to buy or sell second-hand or recycled items (Part 2) + Transcript

Episode Date: August 9, 2026

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Hello, hello, dear listener and welcome into IEL speaking part two. Describer website or an app application you've used to buy or sell secondhand or recycled items. You should say what the website or app is, what kind of items it offers, how you used it, and explain why you found it useful. So pretty much you should talk about a website, an application you used to buy or sell secondhand products. So you wanted to sell your secondhand phone, what website or platform or application did you use? Rory, give us your story. Well, I've only ever used Amazon and eBay to do these things, so I suppose the one I'll focus on. is Amazon. I think it's part of a wider company owned by Jeff Bezos, who at least at the moment

is one of the world's richest men. Speaking about what kind of things you can get there, well, it's an online marketplace, so the sky is really the limit, to be honest. Not only have you got used books, but I'm pretty sure you can order clothes and even food on there, which is very handy, or it must be, I've never ordered food. So it's not exclusively for used goods. There are some brand new things on there too. I think you can even get things like refurbished laptops and the like as well. If we consider how I use it, then it's almost always to get my hands on various secondhand books, which is what I think it was originally used for, actually. Even though they aren't exactly in mint condition, they always have their pages intact and are perfectly legible. So it doesn't

bother me if they're, you know, if they're slightly dog-eared. So that's not really a thing that I worry about. Plus, it saves a fair amount of time as well. Why would I shell out for a pristine copy of a book I'm only going to read once anyway? When I think about why I find it useful, other than the things I already said, I suppose it's pretty convenient. You can get everything you want in just a couple of clicks, and if I've been particularly savvy, I can use a voucher from filling in market research surveys to pay for it all, so that's pretty handy. If the site didn't exist, I suppose I'd be reduced to using the second-hand bookshop up the road and I don't want to have to resort to that because their selection is completely rubbish

and they almost never have anything I'm interested in. So I'm quite happy I've got the choice of Amazon. 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. Sign up for the archive. Click the link in the description below. See you soon. Radio listen.

So second-hand items, like you've used them. So pretty much like used things. Usually people use Amazon, eBay. Maybe you have a local website. That in your country, people use this particular app application. But you can just steal Rory's idea and talk about Amazon. Or if you don't like Amazon and don't want to give them the time of day, then you can talk about another website which basically does what Amazon does. They're all the same.

Yeah, but I think eBay and Amazon are most popular ones, I guess. They're like big giants, right? I can't think of any other ones apart from those two. In Russia you have wild berries, but I don't know much about it, so I didn't talk about it. Well, we have another one, which is Avito. Oh, really? What do you do on there? How is that different? It's like a very local app, and you buy and sell used the products. There are all sorts of products and actually services as well, not used services, but yeah, you can find a teacher, you can buy something, you can sell anything you want, like used items. Yeah, do you listen.

So now, what app or website are you going to be talking about? If Amazon, go for Amazon and talk about books. I think this is the safest option for you. Books are very easy to describe. Use the books on Amazon. Okay, this is your idea. Items or products. And the task is in the present perfect.

So you've used this website. You have used it. So once I've used, yeah, at some point in the past. And then the story could be about the past. So last week, I did, I sold, I bought, I purchased, which is another synonym for buy, purchase, I bought, I purchased. Or I sold. Yeah, you can start off with I've used Amazon a couple of times, a few times, and I'll talk about Amazon. It's a popular site for used items, for secondhand items, products.

And the company is owned by Jeff Bezos. Yeah, but this is like a massive giant. It's a giant corporation, yeah. Oh, yeah. And it's all over the world. Oh, yeah, by Bezos. All right. If anyone is working for Amazon and listening to us, please give us a job.

Hmm. Yeah, Amazon, like, feel free to kind of join in together with McDonald's and Nike. You know, we are just welcome you. Nike, Gucci. Oh, yeah, Rolex, by the way. if you know. Yeah, Cartier, if you want to get in touch. Yeah, Jeff Bezos, Amazon's founder.

And he remains the face and the largest individual owner of the company. Nice. An American businessman. Good for him. Might not be good for the rest of the planet, but good for him. Well, why not? But, well, lots of products. And Amazon is the largest company in the world by revenue.

Really? Yeah, according to Google. It generates over, attention, $717 billion in sales. That's crazy. Yeah, so it's insane, dear listener. Speaking about what kind of things you get there, it's an online marketplace. It's a marketplace. Online marketplace.

So the sky is really the limit. So there is no limit. Like you can get anything there, there's no limit. There are endless possibilities. They have used books. You can order clothes, food, technology, everything. And pay attention to the preposition. Order things on the website.

It's not exclusively for used goods. There are some brand new things too. So goods, products, items. Yeah, they sell used products, but also brand new. New things, brand new. The same. You can say new books, brand new books. And then you talk how you used it.

You can use this phrase. If we consider how I used it, I bought some secondhand books or I sold some secondhand books. And you can stress the pronunciation. Because before I was talking about what people in general can do, but to switch the focus, when we talk about how I use it. And this is a very effective use of pronunciation. You highlight certain words, you emphasize certain words, and this is good for your pronunciation.

The books are not in mint condition. So when we talk about used books, They may not be in good condition. Yeah, they are not perfect. They are not new. Brand new. Brand new, yeah. So if something is in mint condition, it's perfect.

It's new. Oh, this book is in mint condition. Or if it's used, if it's, if the condition is not very good, you can say it's not in mint condition. Or not exactly. The car. is not in mint condition or they arrived in mint condition, in like ideal condition. Some books are not exactly in the mint conditions. Their pages might not be intact, like might not be complete.

Some pages are missing. Or they might be dog-eared, which just describes books where the edges of the paper are slightly folded in or they're not as straight as they were. Yeah, dog-eared books, dog and ear. Yeah, you have two ears. You use them to listen and hear things, yeah. So if a book or some paper is dog-eared, it has pages turned down at the corners. So kind of like when a person uses a book for a long time, it becomes dog-eared. You see, the listener, we talk about used books and we use very specific band nine vocabulary. Some books. Some books. are not in mint condition, their pages may not be intact, and sometimes they're dog-eared. But I'm okay with it. It doesn't bother me. So I'm fine with it.

Plus it saves a fair amount as well. So it saves money. So I'm fine. I don't want to shell out for some expensive books. shell out for something, pay a lot of money for something. A nice phrase of verb. Shell out, pay, give money for something, usually unwillingly. So this book is very expensive.

I don't want to shell out for this book. I'm going to get a second hand copy, which costs much less. We don't want to shell out for a pristine copy. That means like a copy in mint condition, one that's in perfect condition. Yeah. And some books are seriously expensive. They are like outrageously expensive. I was looking at a book the other day.

And it was this autobiography of an actor. And it was 5,000 pounds for a physical copy. It's like there's no way that anybody is going to pay that much for that book. It was crazy. I don't know what they were thinking. And then there was an online version of it for about £2.50. So there you go. It was just crazy.

When I think about why I find it useful, it's because this website is pretty convenient. So not comfortable. It's convenient to use the website, to find the book, to purchase it, to make an order, place an order. So it's really convenient to use the website or to use an app. Roy, you use the website or an app? I use the website. I don't really like using apps for that on my phone. Yeah.

but I think like they have an app. Yeah, so you can get everything you want in just a couple of clicks. Click, just, you know, click of a button. Bam, bum, bum. In just a couple of clicks, in a few clicks, you can get everything you want. It's very convenient. It's pretty convenient. I've been particularly savvy.

So savvy means like that you know stuff. You have practical knowledge and ability. Business savvy. I'm business savvy. I know about business. Savvy, yeah. Savvy, like one word, S-A-W-V-Y. If a person knows a lot about technology, what do you say?

They're tech savvy. They're tech-savvy. So they know things about technology. Or you say, I'm not tech-savvy. So I don't use apps. If it didn't exist, now the second conditional dear listener. So if you are aiming for seven and above, it's a good idea to finish off with the second conditional, because here we talk about present.

So if it didn't exist, I'd be, ta-t-ta, or I'd use, or I'd go to a bookshop. If this website didn't exist, I'd go to a second-hand bookshop. Lovela. Radio listener. Thank you very much for listening. We'll get back to you in our next episode. Okay. Bye.

Bye. Going on vacation? We're here for it. With kids, who turned the backseat into a courtroom drama over whose tablet is louder, whose charger is faster, and while watching the same cartoon for the hundredth time as a human right? Yep, we totally have vehicles to handle that. Because whether it's a road trip or a business trip,

where your flight's delayed, your phone's at 2% and your dinner is whatever is open. Yeah, here for that too. Enterprise. We're here for it. it. Describe a website or an app you've used to buy or sell secondhand or recycled items. You should say what the website or app is, what kind of items it offers, how you used it, and explain why you found it useful. Well, I've only ever used Amazon and eBay to do these things, so I suppose the one I'll focus on is Amazon. I think it's probably.

part of a wider company owned by Jeff Bezos, who at least at the moment is one of the world's richest men. Speaking about what kind of things you can get there, well, it's an online marketplace, so the sky is really the limit, to be honest. Not only have you got used books, but I'm pretty sure you can order clothes and even food on there, which is very handy, or it must be, I've never ordered food. So it's not exclusively for used goods, there are some brand new things on there too. I think you can even get things like refurbished. laptops and the like as well. If we consider how I use it, then it's almost always to get my hands on various secondhand books, which is what I think it was originally used for, actually.

Even though they aren't exactly in mint condition, they always have their pages intact and are perfectly legible. So it doesn't bother me if they're slightly dog-eared. So that's not really a thing that I worry about. Well, as it saves a fair amount of time as well, why would I shell out for a pristine copy of a book I'm only going to read once anyway. When I think about why I find it useful, other than the things I already said, I suppose it's pretty convenient. You can get everything you want in just a couple of clicks, and if I've been particularly savvy, I can use a voucher from filling in market research surveys to pay for it all, so that's pretty handy. If the site didn't exist. I suppose I'd be reduced to using the second-hand bookshop up the road, and I don't want

to have to resort to that, because their selection is completely rubbish, and they almost never have anything I'm interested in. So I'm quite happy I've got the choice of Amazon.