IELTS Speaking for Success - 🎯 Dreams and ambitions (Part 1) + Transcript

Episode Date: August 31, 2026

Get access to our episode archive: https://successwithielts.com/ Rory reveals he's achieved everything he wanted in life and is now more "chilled out." Listen as he and Maria discuss grand designs, dream jobs, and whether being ambitious is really a good thing. 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

Two and five Canadians will hear the words you have cancer. That's why every step and dollar raised matters. On September 19th, join thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation Walk. Challenge yourself, friends, and family to walk 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research. Together, we can carry the fire and help create a world free from the fear of cancer. Register today at pmcfwalk.ca.ca. Hello, lovely. And Maria.

And I am Oxford University janitor, Rory Fergus Duncan. We are the hosts of the high-alt speaking for success podcast. The podcast that aims to improve your listening skills as well as your speaking skills along the way. I've gotten that in reverse. The podcast that aims to improve your speaking skills as well as your listening skills along the way. I'm too busy being a janitor. We started this podcast to give you gorgeous grammar and super vocabulary for your high-I-old school. You're a band nine score.

Rory, you are now a janitor. Hey, a gifted one. I work at Oxford. Janitor, dear listener, caretaker is a person who takes care of a large building, a school, for example. He cleans, repairs things. So Rory cleans Oxford schools. He's an Oxford janitor. It's a joke because Rory works in Oxford.

Now he teaches students. That's true. And this week I'll be teaching them about hard work and talent. So it makes sense that today we will talk about dreams and ambitions. Are you ambitious? Hmm. I don't know. I've pretty much achieved everything I wanted to in my life.

So I think I'm more chilled out about things these days. Of course, in the past, I had to be more ambitious to get to this state, but it's not necessary now. What was your childhood dream? I actually always wanted to be a teacher and a famous person and an author, and I think I managed to get to all three. Just not in the way I'd intended. What's your dream job?

Just being a teacher. Lots of people these days have really grand designs for being world famous celebrities or leaders in their fields, but I just like doing something simple that helps people and pays my bills. I think it's a lot less stressful that way. Are you the kind of person who sticks to dreams? Well, evidently, if I achieved them all, one of my old managers used to say I was very task-oriented, which I think is a polite way of saying,

I like to get things done, and that includes making my dreams a reality, apparently. Two and five Canadians will hear the words, You have cancer. That's why every step and dollar-raised matters. On September 19th, join thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation Walk. Challenge yourself, friends, and family to walk 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research. Together, we can carry the fire and help create a world free from the fear of cancer.

Register today at pmcfwalk.ca.ca. 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 so dear listen um ambitions so ambitions

is it a positive word or a negative word I think it's positive it's good to be ambitious and want to do things with your life ambitious having a strong wish to be successful powerful or rich to be very ambitious and ambitious young lawyer like, I'm ambitious, I'm not really ambitious.

You can have an ambitious plan to climb Everest, for example. That's quite ambitious. And if something, if your idea or a plan is ambitious, it needs a great amount of skill and effort for you to achieve it. Here, we talk about achievements. So you can say, I've achieved a lot of things in life. Laurie says, I've pretty much achieved everything. I wanted in my life.

Okay, wow, well, then you. But if you haven't, the listener, you can say, well, I've achieved some things I'm happy about. I have a lot of things to achieve in my life. All right, have things that I still want to achieve. Exactly. I have things I still want to achieve. I am proud of my achievements. Yeah, achieve achievements.

I'm ambitious. I have my ambitions. And we use the present perfect about your achievements, because I've done this, I've been there, I've graduated, I've written, I've finished, or I haven't done it yet. You can say, oh, I don't have many achievements. If you are 14 years old, 18 years old, you know, you are taking IOTs to enter university, that's absolutely fine. I haven't achieved much in life.

That's okay. Or I haven't achieved much yet. Maybe you're very young. Exactly. I haven't achieved much yet, but I'm planning to do-to-to-to. I'm quite ambitious. Now I'm more chilled out. I'm more relaxed about climbing Everest.

I just want to go for a walk in the mountains. I don't need to climb K-2 or some other. 8,000 meter mountains. I'm more chilled out. I'm more relaxed. I've always wanted to be a doctor. I've always wanted to be a teacher. My childhood dream was to be an author, like a writer.

You can lie, dear listener. Just feel free to say anything. You can say, oh, I've always wanted to be a designer. I've always wanted to be a race driver, a football. ball player. I have always wanted to be messy. But it could just be any job. I've always wanted to be is still quite a good kind of grammar to have. I haven't managed to get all done or I didn't manage to do a lot of things, to do many things in my life, or I managed to get something done. I managed to do it. I managed to do what I wanted. So it was difficult, but I did it. I managed. I

managed to do it. Your dream job, the listener. What's your dream job? You know, like on the internet, they sometimes advertise this position, a caretaker of an island. There's an island somewhere in the world,

and you have to take care of it. It's small. And they need one person to live there and take care of the island. And never talk to people ever again. Google, things that AI and machine learning

specialists, so this is a dream career, nurse practitioner, cybersecurity engineer, like cybersecurity is like digital security, engineer is a dream job. Yeah, you might want to work

for Google, Microsoft, Apple, Nike, McDonald's, Gucci. So you can say like my dream job is to be a doctor or just being an IT manager. So being a doctor is my dream job. But you don't repeat dream job, you just give a short answer.

So what's your dream job? Just being a teacher. Just being a doctor. Just being a nurse, a lawyer. Again, you can lie and you can pick a strange profession. Or you could say you have really grand. designs, which is like very ambitious plans. And you can describe those plans by saying, like being world famous. If you're world famous, that just means people all over the world know

who you are. Yeah. Being a pet food taster is my dream job. Like you taste food for dogs and cats for money. As you do. Snake milker. Oh wow. Okay, so there's a person who milks snakes. This makes my dream of being a teacher for all those years seem not so bad by comparison. Yeah, there you go. My dream job is to be a pet psychologist. Because we have a lot of psychologists for people like therapists, psychologists. So to be a pet psychologist, like if your dog is depressed and needs therapy. And potentially you can earn 52,000 dollars a month or a month or a year, I don't know. Probably a year, I think.

So you can say that this pays my bills. Bills, like I have to pay electricity bills, have to pay for the internet. If you stick to something, like you do it. Like you stick to your dreams. Like you have a dream to climb Everest. So you kind of, you stick to your dream. You do a lot of things to achieve it. you try hard to do it.

And if you're a hard worker, when you're focused on completing the goal, you might be task-oriented. Yeah, I'm task-oriented. I'm focused on the task at hand. So if I want to take iouts and get an eight, I'm task-oriented. I focus on this particular task. I prefer to get things done. I like to get things done. I like to... Complete things.

Complete things. Yeah, I like to get things done. I'm a leader. I'm a task-oriented person, so I like to get things done. Well, not necessarily a leader. You may just be focused. I enjoy making my dreams a reality. So you have a dream.

For example, you want to go to Paris. Okay. So I earn money. I book a home. holiday, I buy tickets, I find somebody to go with, for example, or go alone. So I make my dreams a reality. Don't say like turn dreams into truth or something like make my dreams a reality. And one day I will make my dream a reality. Rory, have you got a bucket list? No, not anymore. It's all done now. Oh my God. Wow. Yeah, do you listen, a bucket list,

you know, a list of things to do before you die. Maybe you have some travel plans there, I don't know, material things like something you want to do, places you want to visit, things you want to buy. So it's called a bucket list. And it's a nice movie. Yeah, I recommend watching the movie. It's called The Bucket List, a great film. Your homework is going to be watching the film, The Bucket List.

Create your bucket list. Yeah, drop. a nice plan, you know, maybe. There are 50 points, 100 points. Go wild and crazy. You're just like write crazy things there. And not crazy things. Maybe just you want to buy a nice pair of shoes.

You can put it down on your bucket list. Perfect. Thank you very much for listening. We'll get back to you in our next episode. Bye. Bye. Two and five Canadians will hear the words, you have cancer. That's why every step and dollar raised matters. On September 19th, join

thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation Walk. Challenge yourself, friends and family to walk 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research. Together, we can carry the fire and help create a world free from the fear of cancer. Register today at pmcfwalk.ca.ca. Are you ambitious? I don't know. I've pretty much achieved everything I wanted to in my life, so I think I'm more chilled out about things these days. Of course, in the past, I had to be more ambitious to get to this state, but it's not necessary now. What was your childhood dream? I actually always wanted to be a teacher and a famous person and an author, and I think I managed to get to all three.

Just not in the way I'd intended. What's your dream job? Just being a teacher. Lots of people. these days have really grand designs for being world famous celebrities or leaders in their fields, but I just like doing something simple that helps people and pays my bills. I think it's a lot less stressful that way. Are you the kind of person who sticks to dreams? Well, evidently, if I achieved them all, one of my old managers used to say I was very task-oriented, which I think is a polite way of saying I like to get things done. And that includes making my dreams a reality, apparently.

Two and five Canadians will hear the words you have cancer. That's why every step and dollar raised matters. On September 19th, join thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation walk. Challenge yourself, friends, and family to walk 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research. Together, we can carry the fire and help create a world free from the fear of cancer. Register today at pmcf walk.ca.ca.