IELTS Speaking for Success - 🔀 Making and changing plans (Part 3) + Transcript

Episode Date: September 4, 2026

Get access to our episode archive: https://successwithielts.com/ 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

Hello, hello, dear listener, and welcome into IEL speaking part three, plans and planning in general. Do people often change their plans in your country? I don't really know. I suppose given how fast-paced everything is these days, they might have to make minor amendments to the times of things fairly regularly, especially when it comes to last-minute arrangements. But for longer standing things, I can't imagine those would change often, or you wouldn't get much done, would you? What evidence do you have for that? I don't. It's just what seems logical to me.

Should people tell others if they change their plan? Assuming they're involved, yes, it's just good manners, isn't it? You can't just go pulling the rug out from under people willy-nilly, or you wouldn't have many friends. Could you explain further? Yeah, if you behave in... such a cavalier manner, like with people's lives and plans, they're not going to want to be friends with you since you can't be trusted, or at least you can't be trusted to stick to plans. Is it important for people to make plans?

Well, that probably depends on what we're talking about here. It's generally good to have a broad understanding of what you hope to achieve and how to achieve it, but you might not need to plan in depth if it's something you know how to do well. Or, Or maybe it's not that important. Or maybe it just defies having a plan applied to it at all. For other things like writing an essay or something like that, it's pretty crucial to have something in mind for what you want to do. Has that always been true?

Well, I certainly think so. People haven't changed much, or at least they haven't changed that much over the years. Why do some people dislike changes in plans? Well, if they see something as being set in stone or sacrosanx and people start meddling with it, It can be pretty annoying to have to make adjustments or deviations from what's been agreed, especially on the fly when you have about a million other things to be doing. It just adds to the stuff you already have to deal with.

And can anything be done about that? Other than people being more reliable in doing what they say they will. It's good to let people know about changes in advance or better yet brainstorm ideas for what to do if things don't go to plan. it might not be ideal, but people can at least manage their expectations and their emotions better. How does technology help people make plans? Well, you can share ideas faster and look things up to check various things, like opening times for venues and the like. So it certainly seems to make things go more smoothly.

Do you think that will also be true in the future? Assuming technology keeps developing at the pace it has been, definitely. Why do you think parents still make plans for the children? Well, charitably speaking, I suppose they always want things to go well for their kids, don't they? So it makes sense they want to try and have a hand in that by planning things for them, at least partially. Can that change?

Not unless parents suddenly lose the biological imperative to see their offspring do well, and I think we're a long way off 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. So, dear listener, we make plans, then we change plans. Because we are living in a fast-based world.

We are. Everything is happening very quickly. Oh, yeah. Everything keeps changing. So fast-paced happening very quickly. Today, everything becomes fast-paced. Everything is fast-paced. People make changes or people make amendments. Make changes or make amendments. C2. another one where I like really didn't expect that that doesn't sound like a no come on oh it does sound like it yeah yeah because usually we use this word about constitution so constitutional amendments they're not called the changes constitutional changes no so this constitutional amendment a change

or changes made to the words or a text yeah but we can use this word about a change in general. Amendments. Make amendments. You might make an amendment to a plan. Or you change the last minute arrangements. So you agreed to meet a person. Then five minutes before that, you just text them, oh, sorry, let's meet two hours later, you know.

So you change your last minute arrangements. It's a good idea to tell other people. people about changes in your plan. That's just good manners. Good manners. So you are polite. You're nice. You are friendly. So that's good manners. And there's an idiom. Pull the rug out from under people. Sorry, Rory. Like out from under. There are two propositions. Yes. Pull the rug out from under people. But if you pull the rug out from under people, that just means you surprise them as something usually unpleasant. Pull the rug out or pull the rug out from under people.

Yes, de lestine up from under people. Yep. This is English. Welcome to English idioms. So, well, so to suddenly take away something important from someone. Okay. Rory, could you give us another example with this lovely idiom? Oh, well, I pulled the rug out from underneath my friends by accident when I didn't plan properly.

Willy-neely. That's one of my favorite expressions. If something happens really-nilly, it happens even if people do not want it to happen. Or completely without control. Yeah, willy-neely, without planning. And, for example, you can't change your plans, willy-neely. and people can behave in what way? Oh, a cavalier way, but that just means without any sort of guiding principles, just doing whatever you like.

Cavalier way, not considering other people's feelings or safety. It's negative, disapproving, dear listener, this word is negative. So that's a rather cavalier attitude. Negative attitude, a person doesn't think about your feelings, safety, so, You know, they change plans. They tell you to meet them at six. Then they change to seven. Then they don't show up at all for the meeting.

So that's a cavalier way. And many people don't stick to plans. So they don't follow their plans. And those people can't be trusted. You can't trust them. We make plans. We change plans, right? Make plans.

Also, we make changes, make amendments. You may not need to plan in-depth. So when you plan in-depth, you have a very detailed plan. You plan every detail. You might plan in-depth for a wedding, for example. But you probably won't need to plan in-depth for, I don't know, your nighttime routine maybe. Exactly. When things are set in stone, they are fixed, right?

So set in stone to be impossible to change, to be difficult to change. Some schedules are set in stone, right? Usually we say it in the negative, like our timetable isn't set in stone. It's an idiom, yeah, it's not stone, so we can change it. It's flexible, right? So the structure of the essay is not set in stone. there are different options so you can do this you can do that so it's not set in stone and our timetable isn't set in stone it's not stone so we are flexible more or less we can

change and some people see plans as set in stone and if something is planned lots of people dislike when other people start meddling with it yes messing around Yeah, don't mess around with my plans. So some people enjoy, no, they enjoy, they meddle with other people's plans, they change plans, meddle with. It's also negative, meddle with things, meddle in other people's business, and usually like parents, meddle in their children's affairs. Do they? Yeah, yeah. They want to influence, control their life.

No, not always. Oh, sometimes. You can also make adjustments, the listener. So, adjust your plans, make adjustments, make amendments, and deviations. Ooh, deviations, what's the meaning? If you deviate from the plan, you don't follow what you had agreed, basically. Yeah. So make an adjustment, a small change, or deviation.

So that's a nice one. When you deviate from a topic, you go off topic. You go off script. Deviation from, you do something different. People could be more reliable. People could stick to their plans. People could make adjustments beforehand. Technology helps us to look things up.

So I look it up to check my arrangements with people, yeah? I look it up to check if I have any meetings for today. And we have different notifications, alarms, alerts. We make alerts for things. So technology makes things go smoothly. So if everything goes smoothly, everything is fine, effective, well arranged. Parents make plans for their children. So parents tend to meddle in children's plans.

So they want things to go well for their children, obviously, you know, so why not? Parents want to have a hand in children's affairs. If you have a hand in something, you're just contributing to it or helping with it. And the parents want to see their children do well. So do well in life, just be successful, be fabulous and full of awesome. Right, dear listener, thank you very much for listening. we'll get back to in our next episode. Okay?

Bye. Do people often change their plans in your country? I don't really know. I suppose given how fast-paced everything is these days, they might have to make minor amendments to the times of things fairly regularly, especially when it comes to last-minute arrangements. But for longer-standing things,

I can't imagine those would change often or you wouldn't get much done, would you? What evidence do you have for that? I don't. It's just what seems logical to me. Should people tell others if they change their plan? Assuming they're involved, yes, it's just good manners, isn't it? You can't just go pulling the rug out from under people willy-nilly, or you wouldn't have many friends.

Could you explain further? Yeah, if you behave in such a cavalier manner, like with people's lives and plans, they're not going to want to be friends with you since you can't be trusted, or at least you can't be trusted to stick to plans. Is it important for people to make plans? Well, that probably depends on what we're talking about here. It's generally good to have a broad understanding of what you hope to achieve and how to achieve it,

but you might not need to plan in depth if it's something you know how to do well, or maybe it's not that important, or maybe it just defies having a plan applied to it at all. For other things like writing an essay or something like that, it's pretty crucial to have something in mind for what you want to do. Has that always been true? Well, I certainly think so. People haven't changed much, or at least they haven't changed that much over the years.

Why do some people dislike changes in plans? Well, if they see something as being set in stone or sacrosanct and people start meddling with it, it can be pretty annoying. to have to make adjustments or deviations from what's been agreed, especially on the fly when you have about a million other things to be doing, it just adds to the stuff you already have to deal with. And can anything be done about that? Other than people being more reliable and doing what they say they will.

I mean, it's good to let people know about changes in advance or better yet brainstorm ideas for what to do if things don't go to plan. It might not be ideal, but people can at least manage their expectations and their emotions better. How does technology help people make plans? Well, you can share ideas faster and look things up to check various things, like opening times for venues and the like. So it certainly seems to make things go more smoothly.

Do you think that will also be true in the future? Assuming technology keeps developing at the pace it has been, definitely. Why do you think parents still make sense? plans for the children. Well, charitably speaking, I suppose they always want things to go well for their kids, don't they? So it makes sense they want to try and have a hand in that by planning things for them, at least partially. Can that change? Not unless parents suddenly lose the biological imperative to see their offspring do well, and I think we're a long way off that.