IELTS Speaking for Success - 🌱 Influence and encouragement (Part 3) + Transcript

Episode Date: May 24, 2026

Get access to our episode archive: https://www.patreon.com/ieltssfs Can you persuade anyone? Rory reveals what gives someone 'gravitas' and why hovering over kids might backfire. Plus, Maria introduces a new slang word you definitely shouldn't use in your IELTS exam! 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/ 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

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free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. Hello, hello, dear listener and welcome into IEL speaking part three. We are talking about encouraging people and more encouragement. Rory is the authority. Rory encourages people daily. I have to encourage myself sometimes. Ah, okay.

Yeah, like Rory encourages himself, other people, students. You, dear listener, perhaps. Mostly myself. Do you think some people are better than others at persuading? Oh, absolutely. Some people definitely have this great sense of gravitas and authority that makes them almost natural leaders who can make people fall in line. I suppose it helps if you're backed up by some organization or institutional power,

which is given to you by something like a school, but it doesn't always seem to be necessary. What kind of encouragement should parents give to their children? Well, ideally it should be helpful and doesn't undermine a child's agency. For example, they can make it clear why something is a great idea and support their child to make the right choices in the appropriate direction. But they shouldn't just tell or threaten them to do something without question unless it's absolutely necessary.

Otherwise, how are they going to find the motivation to do things by themselves? When should parents encourage their children? I don't really know since I'm not a parent and I don't plan to be one. But in an ideal world, I suppose it should be most of the time, at least when they're around their kids, assuming the children are behaving and things are normal. That's just reinforcing the normal state of affairs. Although thinking about it now, maybe it shouldn't be constant.

Otherwise, again, how are people meant to be independent if adults are constantly hovering over them and dropping praise all the time. How can leaders encourage their employees? Well, I guess the easy answer is by paying them appropriately. But while there might be some truth to that, I'm not sure that's the only thing. They have to set and reinforce standards of conduct and workflow and perhaps recognize and reward various achievements and milestones, even if it's just a mention or an aside,

people tend to like it when that sort of thing happens, provided it's appropriate. So that could be another way, if the more basic needs have been met. Who do you think should encourage people more, relatives or their friends? Oh, wow. Surely that depends on who you spend the most time with, because then you'll receive the most encouragement. So if you live at home and you don't get out much, then I imagine your parents will pay, well, play a key role in doing that. However, if you're out and about and you have lots of friendships and different kinds of relationships with lots of people, then they would probably play a greater part in

it since you'll be seeing them more often. This is assuming that we want to maximize the amount of encouragement that's happening. Okay, when I sell my business, I want the best tax and investment advice. I want to help my kids, and I want to give back to the community. Ooh, then it's the vacation of a lifetime. I wonder if my out of office has a forever setting. An IG Private Wealth Advisor creates the clarity you need with plans that harmonize your business, your family, and your dreams. Get financial advice that puts you at the center.

Find your advisor at IGPrivatewealth.com. 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 listener, as we've discussed, encourage someone to do something or persuade someone to do something.

When you persuade people to do something, you make them do it, you talk to them, you make them believe something, you make them do it. Like, for example, in advertising. So a person wants to sell you something and they persuade you to buy this perfume. They persuade you to get a new car and convince someone to do something. Or a nice synonym is to talk someone interdoing. Oh yes. And make people fall in line.

Do what you want them to. Like she talked to me into joining a yoga club. class with her. So she persuaded me to join a yoga class with her. She convinced me. Just her magic yoga powers. Some people have a great sense of gravitas. Rory, what's that?

Gravitus? You don't know what gravitas means. Gravitus. It's when people have this, like, seriousness or serious manner. Seriousness and importance of manner. causing feelings of respect and trust in others. So perhaps politicians have gravitas, like you listen to them and you feel that they're serious, important,

and you believe everything they say. Which politicians have that? Yeah. Or politicians can lack gravitas. They can, yes. I frequently do, unfortunately. Rory, could you give us another example with this gravitous word? It's strange.

Oh, lots of respected teachers have a great deal of gravitas. A great deal of a lot of gravitas. And authority. Some people have a great sense of authority, which make them natural leaders. So many people are natural leaders, so they are good at persuading other people to do everything they want. Or to make people fall in line. Fall in line, is it an idea? Is it?

Oh, it is an idiom fall in line. So if a person falls in line, they start following the rules or behaving according to what you tell them to do. Oh, wonderful. For example, teachers fall in line with the rules. So at school, teachers follow the rules, so they fall in line with the rules. Do you think? Well, yeah, you know, like teachers with a great sense of. of gravitas.

They make their students fall in line with the rules. Teachers who are natural leaders make their students fall in line. Do you have a sense of gravitas, Marie? No, no, I don't have much, you know. No, unfortunately, I don't think I do either. No organization, no gravitas, just, you know, charisma. Just charisma and personality. That's all you need. I discovered, by the way, do you know, it's a slang word,

but do you know the word Riz? Riz. No. R-I-Z? R-I-Z-Z. Don't look it up yet, but it's used to describe people who, if you have a lot of it, then you can make people fall in love with you easily and you can flirt with them. And I was like, why is it called that?

And then someone explained to me, they're like, it's one of the syllables or syllable combinations in charisma. Oh, charisma. Oh, I was like, why don't people just call it charisma? But apparently that's too complicated nowadays. Oh, wow. Riz. Riz.

Charisma. Yes, according to Cambridge and Lengition, it's slang. So it's slang, but actually, you can use it in aisles. Why not? When you use it in aisles, your examiner will look at you like you're insane. You could use charisma. Ah, okay. All right, so it's slang delistence.

So it's really, you know, like bad. No, kind of not bad, but. slang, like not traditional English, Riz, a noun, the ability to attract people's attention make them like you often in a romantic or sexual way. She has more Riz than anyone I've ever met. Look at you using the word sexual as if that's going in the podcast. Make them like you often in a romantic way.

She has more Riz than anyone I've ever met. Wow, interesting. So ideally see a modern slang word Riz that you can't use in your IELT test. You're welcome. Encourage people to do something or encouragement. That's a noun. And what verbs do we use with encouragement?

Like blah, blah, encouragement. Oh. What do you mean? The verbs that go with it, like collocation. Exactly, yeah. So we blah, blah, encouragement to people. Oh, yeah. Oh my God.

Some English teacher I am. Oh, wow. I was like, what is the most complex therapy that can go all with encouragement? And Maria is like, it's give, it's simple Rory. DeLisner, and Rory's laughing, but actually give encouragement to someone is a good collocation.

And it's kind of bad eight, but nine. It's a accurate phrase, a very specific phrase. So, like, parents should give encouragement to their children. You know? Well, you know, it's kind of simple, but you are using synonyms, like encourage people to do something or give encouragement. Actually, it wasn't the question. What kind of encouragement should parents give?

See, this is it. I didn't even think about looking at the question, but I often try not to repeat the question and the answer. So I've been foiled by my own plan. Whoops. Oh, well. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So if the examiner asks you, what kind of encouragement should parents give to their children, then you say, oh, they should persuade their children to encourage children to do something. So we use a verb. They should build up their agency. But agency is just higher in control of the situation you are.

You're no longer young people. You're just people. And people are either productive or dead weight. It's my first day of work and I need to make a big impression. Were you just checking me out? No. It's too bad. I see at least 15 ladies I need to talk to before my beta block wears off. My co-workers don't take me seriously. It's not a human.

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Actually, a lot less. Visit staples.ca slash preferred. That was easy. If you have good agency, then you feel in control and you have lots of control over a situation. Maybe you have no agency, you have zero control, and it's very bad for your mental health, apparently. but we could undermine it, which means to make it worse. Undermine is C2, yeah. Is it? Yes, it's proficiency.

I knew it. I love that word. It's my favorite word. Yeah, agency is the ability to take action, to choose what action to take. So it's not like agency, like a company in this context. So children should have a sense of agency, like as if they are, you know, like an agent who acts. Well, I think they should have a sense of agency. the other people think children should just do as they're told. I think that parents should encourage their children to act more actively, so to encourage their sense of agency, yeah,

to make them more active in doing stuff, in choosing what to do. Making the right choices, we make a choice, so parents can encourage the children to make right choices. Since I'm not a parent, I'm not a parent, don't really know. So if you don't have any children, and if you don't plan to be a parent, since I'm not a parent, as I'm not a parent, like because I'm not a parent, I don't know. And this is a good strategy to answer any children's question. So I'm not a parent. Since I'm not a parent, I don't have a clear idea. But in an ideal world, I suppose, ta-ta-ta-ta. In an ideal

world, like ideally in a perfect world, I suppose it should be this, yeah. I suppose it should be the time when blah, blah, blah. But also, assuming that things are normal and children are behaving normally. The normal state of affairs. That's a nice one, like state of affairs, like how things are. Or if you like to use French words in English, the etat affair. What? Yeah, it's a French phrase that we use in English.

That means state of affairs. I would like a croissant. I'm allergic. You can't say, I would like a croissant and then say I'm allergic. I can. Why not? Because you... I'm allergic to la fluorescence.

Not framboise. All right, okay. Where were we? Could you repeat that thing, please? It had to fare. Right, dear listen. We are. going to ignore it.

What? No. Because we are not using any French in our English. So... That's very mean. It means the state of affairs, the condition that we find ourselves in. Yeah, exactly. So the normal state of affairs.

You have no appreciation for other languages at all. No, I do love other languages, but it's difficult to pronounce. It's like... I like other languages, just not in my eye else. I mean, speak English in English. your irons, okay? But if you have to say the A-FEL tower, you can say La Tour-Felle. Why not?

Like French. Anyway, state of affairs. Parents are constantly hovering over their children. That's a benign phrase of verb, hover over somebody. That's funny because it's like hover over. It's like a helicopter. Can you imagine a helicopter? And it's called helicopter parenting.

Yeah, when a person, a parent, controls their children, they stay with the children all the time, they are over-controlling, so they hover over their children. Hover, over. And for example, when you use a computer, your mouse hovers over something. So before you click on it,

you have to hover your mouse over something. something and then you click on it. Parents usually encourage their children by using praise. Praise when they say, oh, well done, my boy. So parents praise their children or drop praise all the time. Like give praise or drop praise. Employees or workers could be encouraged with a better position, with money, with promotion, and recognition.

So the company should recognize their achievements, like achievements, what they have achieved. And milestones, which is another kind of achievement. Yeah, that's a nice one, a milestone. If, for example, an employee did something very well, oh, that's a milestone. For example, they negotiated a contract, which is very important.

So that's a milestone, an important event. They hitch their targets. Yeah, and actually a milestone is a stage in a child's development at which they do particularly well. So kind of like the first step, for example, the first smile is a milestone. Like graduating from a university is a milestone. You getting, you know, band seven or eight for your ios or even 6.5, that's a milestone. Like you're taking the test, dear listener, that's a milestone. to meet basic needs.

That's a nice expression. So when a company meets employees needs to meet someone's needs. They pay them enough, for example. Yeah, they give them like an office. It's warm. They give them a computer. So we need a flat to meet our needs. And employers, companies, should make sure that they

meet everyone's needs or they should make sure that everyone's needs are met. Yeah, the passive voice, super cool. Lovely. Dear listener, we are encouraging you to learn English, to learn phrase of verbs and new vocabulary. Okay, with us. We love you, we hug you. Stay in touch, okay? Bye.

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Oh, absolutely. Some people definitely have this great sense of gravitas and authority that makes them almost natural leaders who can make people fall in line. I suppose it helps if you're backed up by some organization or institutional power, which is given to you by something like a school, but it doesn't always seem to be necessary. What kind of encouragement should parents parents give to their children? Well, ideally it should be helpful and doesn't undermine a child's agency. For example, they can make it clear why something is a great idea and support their child to make the right choices in the appropriate direction.

But they shouldn't just tell or threaten them to do something without question unless it's absolutely necessary. Otherwise, how are they going to find the motivation to do things by themselves? When should parents encourage their children? I don't really know since I'm not a parent and I don't plan to be one. But in an ideal world, I suppose it should be most of the time, at least when they're around their kids, assuming the children are behaving and things are normal.

That's just reinforcing the normal state of affairs. Although thinking about it now, maybe it shouldn't be constant. Otherwise, again, how are people meant to be independent of adults are constantly hovering over them and dropping praise all the time? How can leaders encourage their employees? Well, I guess the easy answer is by paying them appropriately. But while there might be some truth to that, I'm not sure that's the only thing. They have to set and reinforce standards of conduct and workflow and perhaps recognize

and reward various achievements and milestones, even if it's just a mention or an aside, people tend to like it when that sort of thing happens, provided it's appropriate. it. So that could be another way if the more basic needs have been met. Who do you think should encourage people more, relatives or their friends? Oh, wow. Surely that depends on who you spend the most time with because then you'll receive the most encouragement.

So if you live at home and you don't get out much, then I imagine your parents will play a key role in doing that. However, if you're out and about and you have lots of friendships and different kinds of relationships with lots of people, then they would probably play a greater part in it since you'll be seeing them more often. This is assuming that we want to maximise the amount of encouragement that's happening.