IELTS Speaking for Success - 🏞 Parks and public gardens (Part 1) + Transcript

Episode Date: July 22, 2026

Get access to our episode archive: https://successwithielts.com/ Ever been asked about the outdoors? Listen as Maria prompts Rory to describe his ideal tranquil spot, revealing how to use phrases like 'peace and quiet' and 'off the top of my head' for a Band 9 answer. 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

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Try the Creamy Parmesan and Bacon Quarter Pounder today or treat yourself to your Dreamburger lineup with our original Quarter Pounder with cheese or Quarter Pounder BLT. At Participating McDonald's Restaurants in Canada, product availability varies by restaurants. Hello, Sunshine, I'm Miriam. And I am Ryan Reynolds in every movie, Rory Fergus Duncan. And we're the host of the IELT Speaking for Success podcast.

The podcast dreams to help you improve your speaking skills, as well as your listening skills along the way. We've started this podcast to give you super grammar and fabulous vocabulary for your high IELD school. Your band, nine score. Oh, Rory, you're looking very tend. Look at you. Oh, wow.

Thank you. I was out in the park yesterday and caught the sun. That's very handy, because now we're going to be talking about parks. Hopefully it will be a walk in the park for us. A walk in the park means very easy. And if you get the sun, you say, I got tanned. So tanned, like I got a bit brown, like cappuccino brown. So I'm tanned. I have, you know, the sun on my face.

Roy, and what are you today? What's your profession today? I kind of missed it. Ryan Reynolds in every movie, because Ryan Reynolds plays himself in every movie, so why can't I? What do you mean? I don't get the joke.

Every character that Ryan Reynolds plays in every film is him. It's his personality. Okay, so that's kind of a joke. Yes. Okay. All right. Right, the listener, I don't get it. If you get it, well done.

If you don't get it, it's okay. Because every time Rory makes up something interesting about himself. Okay, so now he's Ryan Reynolds. Okay. In every movie? In every movie. If you don't know who Ryan Reynolds is, just Google him. Okay?

Ryan Reynolds. Right. Parks. Oh yes. Parks. Do like go into Parks? Sometimes, yeah, especially if it's a nice day and the sun is out, like in the summer when you can just wander about and relax. That's always nice.

Did you like going to parks as a child? I suppose I must have done. Everybody does when they're younger, don't they? You can get outside in the fresh air and run around. What's not to like? What do you like to do when visiting a park? I've not done it in a while, but when I have in the past, I've enjoyed the peace and quiet and watched kids or dogs. playing with each other. That's quite relaxing and helps you decompress.

Would you prefer to play games in a private or public garden? Well, I don't play anything at all these days, but if I did, I suppose it would be in a private garden just so I didn't bother anyone and, well, they wouldn't bother me. Are there any parks you want to go to in the future? I can't think of any off the top of my head. Maybe St. James in London, it's quite picturesque, despite all the tourists. Oh, and Port Meadow in Oxford. I absolutely love it there.

It's this big open space, and there are these semi-wild horses wandering about freely, which is a lot of fun to watch in the summer. This episode is brought to you by Accenture. When your advertising operations fall out of sync, everything else follows. Spotify and Accenture are working together

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Standard message and data rates may apply. 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. Right, dear listener, so parks is a popular topic among IELTS people, parks, gardens, parks and gardens. You can talk about parks or garden, like botanic gardens, and you can also listen to our previous answers about parks and gardens. Just kind of type in Google Parks and Gardens, IELS speaking for success. And, Rory, where can our listener listen to our episodes?

They can listen on our new website. It's been redesigned. Successful. IELTS.com. You could even study our vocabulary from the episodes. And you could take a test and see how higher score will be. All on the one website. So, listen, you can say, I'm into box.

I love box. I like going to box. especially if the sun is out. So I enjoy just wonder about. Wonder about is our favorite phrasal verb. So you just walk, wonder about, walk around. I enjoy being out and about. Yeah, it's a binomial.

As a child, you can say I used to go to parks very often. Like my parents took me to parks every week. Or I didn't go to any parks. I had a terrible childhood Or you can say I enjoyed Running around in a park Or I used to Spend a lot of time in a park

As a child So used to So when you talk about Past Or if you don't remember I must have done Or I could have done We have public gardens

Like The Botanic Or the botanical What do you call them Botanical? Botanical Both are fine Right, so kind of public gardens where everyone can go.

And we have some private gardens or private parks. Maybe there is a museum and it has a private garden. Or maybe someone owns a nice house and they have a private garden. So where would you like to play games, dear listener? I don't know what kind of games. Like cards, monopoly, role plays. Hide and seek. I suppose.

maybe you could play like tennis or badminton in a park maybe volleyball ping pong yeah so there are some things that you can do in the park you can say well actually i don't play these days or i don't enjoy outdoor games i play poker inside with a bottle of whiskey and my friends yeah whiskey is very important like you play poker and you drink alcohol okay so poker without the alcohol is like no no you You can't do it. I'll take your word for it, Maria. I don't know anything about that. I've never played poker.

It's just from the movies. So, here you can use the second conditional. If I had to play a game, it would be in a private garden. So if I did, if I had time for a game, if I had to choose, it would be. Okay? because I don't want to bother anyone else. So bother, like, to be annoying to people. So I don't want to bother people.

But maybe you do want to bother people. Or you're okay with bothering people. Yeah, then you go to a public garden and you start screaming, shouting, running around, annoying everyone. What you do when you visit the park? Well, that's a good question for Chad GPD. And you can kind of ask chat GPT.

So what do people do when they visit a park? And what did Chad GPT say? I don't know. I usually ask Google. 20 ways to enjoy a park. There's some boring, you know, activities like take a break. Go on an adventure. Okay, an adventure in a park.

Take a deep breath. All right. observe wild life. So you kind of notice birds and squirrels. Go bird watching. So you can say, oh, I enjoy bird watching. I do outdoor yoga. Go for a picnic.

So yeah, not kind of like usual activities. And Rory told us just enjoy the peace and quiet. Which is a binomial. It's not quiet in peace. Peace and quiet. I just enjoy the peace and quiet. I watch kids play. I watch kids and dogs playing with each other.

Nice structure. So I watch people doing sports. I watch kids playing with each other. It's quite relaxing. And it helps me decompress. Decompress means to unwind, to rest. relax. But if you say relax, you shouldn't say relaxing because it's kind of like the same word. So it's quite relaxing and it helps me to kind of reduce pressure. You can also say it's therapeutic for me.

Ooh, it's like therapy. Go to the park wearing some strange clothes. So kind of like, you know, like a onesies. So you just dress up like a unicorn. You have a one suit and it's a unicorn, you know, one z one z means like a costume like one piece of clothes that's very strange yeah that does sound very strange it's not normal yeah but it's fun

do you know that for a fact no I haven't done it yet soon you will see Maria dressed up as a you've dressed up as a unicorn before yeah yeah I did yeah but I didn't go to a park so I should like let people

see my unicorn image. Yeah, yeah, it's fun. Can you imagine me running around in the park like a unicorn? And it has, like, is horn and a tail and everything. So it's fun. Right.

Dear Listen, maybe there's a park that you want to go in the future. You can choose a famous park. Or maybe not a famous park. Say the park near your home. Yeah, just like my local garden. Okay. a local park. But you can start off with like,

I don't know or I can't think of any off the top of my head. Like, at the moment, I don't have the answer. I don't know. Rory, could you pronounce this sentence? Like, how you say it with intonation?

I can't think of any off the top of my head. Yeah. In London, for example, we have Hyde Park, which is quite famous. Or, for example, Oh, Central Park in New York, for example, Hyde Park, okay, or a park in Barcelona, or a park in Tokyo. There you are. Or you can say like, oh, I'd like to visit Hyde Park in London.

I'd like to visit Central Park in New York. It's quite picturesque, like beautiful, full of nature. It's pretty, pleasant, picturesque, attractive, despite the tourists. I'd love to go there And there's plenty of space Like there's a lot of space And there's wildlife So yeah

Like choose a park you want to visit This is all right Maybe it's a national park It could be quite huge And which park would you like to visit Outside your country Well, these places are outside by country I live in England

I don't live in England I live in Scotland No, not the same country No, they're not the same country You stop that now Okay, I'm joking Yes. There are different places, they'll listen. Lovely. Thank you very much for listening, and we'll get back to you in our next episode.

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I suppose I must have done. Everybody does when they're. younger, don't they? You can get outside in the fresh air and run around. What's not to like? What do you like to do when visiting a park? I've not done it in a while, but when I have in the past, I've enjoyed the peace and quiet and watched kids or dogs playing with each other. That's quite relaxing and helps you decompress. Would you prefer to play games in a private or public garden? Well, I don't play anything at all these days, but if I did, I suppose it would be in a

private garden, just so I didn't bother anyone and, well, they wouldn't bother me. Are there any parks you want to go to in the future? I can't think of any off the top of my head. Maybe St. James in London. It's quite picturesque, despite all the tourists. Oh, and Port Meadow in Oxford. I absolutely love it there. It's this big open space and there are these semi-wild horses wandering about freely, which is a lot of fun to watch in the summer. Rosen lasagna, medium power, 15 minutes. Sounds like Ojo time.

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