S01 - 1 Introductions

Hey guys, before we start with today's English lesson, I wanted to quickly tell you about something that's really been helping me improve my own language skills lately. I've been using I-Toki to book one-on-one classes with real teachers, and honestly, I love it. What I like most is that you can choose a teacher that really fits what you need, whether that's your budget, their teaching style, or even the accent you want to learn from. I've personally been using it to practice more natural conversation and build confidence in speaking. I chose a teacher with similar interest to me, which helps a lot, and is another excellent feature of the platform. You can see what the different teachers are interested in and pick the right one for you. So instead of studying by yourself, you're actually speaking regularly with someone who can correct you, slow down, explain things naturally, and help you sound more like a real person and less like a textbook. The classes are private, super easy to schedule, and there's no subscription, you just pay per lesson. If learning English with I-Toki sounds interesting to you, you can sign up for free using the link in the show notes, and with the code "real" English, you'll get five euros off your first class of at least 10 euros, but only for the first 50 people, so don't wait too long. I only recommend tools I genuinely like and use myself, and if you sign up through my link, you're also supporting my podcast. Why not give it a go? Hello and welcome to Real Exam English. My name is Trevor and I'm from Ireland. So who and what is this podcast for? Well, it's primarily aimed at operating to media or advanced English speakers, and particularly at students preparing for their B2C1, C2 or IELTS exams, but really anyone with high level English will take something from this podcast. I've helped literally hundreds of students pass their exams, and I want to share some of that knowledge with you. So in nearly every English exam, you have to listen to speakers from all over the English speaking world. So here on Real Exam English, we ask questions from previous exam papers to native English speakers, and then analyze their answers to take out the best bits that you can use to get your English to that next level. Not only will listening to this podcast improve your listening, but also your vocabulary on topics such as the environment, travel, technology, and all of the usual subjects that come up in the exam. And in addition, you will pick up some useful grammar, such as conditionals, inversions, phrase of verbs, and much more. And of course, you will get some great ideas for your own answers too. So let's go ahead with the questions. This first episode is about introductions, and the first question is, where are you from? I'm from Cape Town, South Africa. Okay, and what do you do? I'm a stayed home mom. Just a quick word that this question, what do you do refers to your profession and not what you do in your free time. Many times students answer with something like I play football or I like reading books or something like that, okay, which isn't correct, okay, you need to tell the examiner what your job is or if you're studying what you're studying in university. What's your name? Karen. Okay, and where are you from? Detroit, Michigan. And what do you do? I am a nurse. I'm a school nurse. Okay, and what do you most enjoy about your job? I enjoy working with different people, collaborating with other disciplines and just, yeah, that's the main thing, just being able to talk with people every day and try to help them solve whatever is going on with them and just caring for people. A really nice clear simple answer there from Karen. So Karen is from Michigan, which is in the Midwest of the United States and that accent is considered to be a very neutral accent and in fact is the accent that is used on television for reporting the news. So hopefully you could understand that very clearly. Where are you from? I'm from London. Okay, and what's the best thing about living in London? For me, the best thing about living in London, oh, actually there isn't one good thing. There's quite a few. But if I put it all in one sentence, then I'd say it's the fact that London is very multicultural and there is so much to do, the city never sleeps. And so, you know, if you're in London, there's always somewhere to go and do something new, whether that's because you're interested in eating different types of food or you want to go to a museum or you want to go to a club or, you know, you're interested in fashion, doesn't really matter what it is. There's always something new and exciting and different happening in London. And what's the worst thing about living in London? I suppose I would say that London can be a little bit relentless in that there are so many people. And so, you know, you're always rushing because there are so many people. And so when you're travelling on the tube, for me, it's tube journeys really because they're just rampacked. There's never enough space and it can get a bit uncomfortable. Oh, London, I absolutely adore London. And for me, I love the tube seeing all of the different cultures in one place. It's amazing, but I understand that if you do it every day, then the novelty probably wears off. So these are very typical questions, the good and the bad points about living where you do. So make sure to have a think about how you would answer these questions in the exam. Where are you from? I'm from Leeds. Okay. And what do you do? Well, I'm a chef by trade, I guess, but not trained. I've always been a chef for 15 years and then in between not tossing English, but I would say I'm a chef if somebody asked me. So George begins his answer with this word, "Well, which is a really good way to buy yourself a little bit of time so that you can think how you're going to answer the question." And he also uses this expression, "I'm a chef by trade." This expression is used when somebody works in more than one job and it's used to identify which one of the jobs is the main job or the job that the person has been trained to do. So in George's case, he's a chef by trade, but he's also an English teacher, which is his secondary job. Where are you from? Where am I from? I'm from Holt in England. Tell me about your journey here today. My journey here today, well, I'm actually in my sister's house and we live in the same town, so I just walked down until me about half an hour. Here we have another technique that is used to buy a little bit of extra time. So the speaker kind of repeats the question a little bit. He says, "My journey here today, well, and that way he gives himself a little bit of extra time to be able to think how he's going to structure his answer." Also he uses this phrasal verb, "I just walked down." It's very common in English for people to say, "I walked down or I walked up or I drove down or I drove up." Sometimes there is some logic to it, "Okay, you can be going north or south or up a hill or down a hill." Or sometimes it's just personal preference. Wherever you can get the transcripts for this and every episode on the real exam English pages on Facebook or Instagram. And you can also find lots of great grammar exercises there as well as really useful tips on how to prepare for your exam. And if you want information on classes to prepare for your exam, then you can find that there also. Where are you from? I'm from Bolton, which is just north of Manchester, in England. What is your favourite season? Favorite season? Something said. Yeah. Gosh, that's a strange question. I don't know if I could say I've got a, well, that's probably spring. Yeah, it's got to be spring, hasn't it? I like spring and I like autumn. But I think with autumn you're always up to sense that the winter's coming. And the winter's in England, along and cold. So I like the colours of autumn, but I don't like the feeling because I know what's coming. Where spring, the colours are so beautiful and vibrant. And you also know that the summer's coming. So the first thing to comment on here is the answer to the question, where are you from? He says, "I'm from Bolton, which is just north of Manchester, in England, which is totally fine and acceptable answer." However, just bear in mind that if you're from a town and you're doing the exam in that town, then it's not a great idea to give a geographical location to the examiner. And the main reason is that most of the students doing the exam probably live in that town too. And half of them are going to give that answer. And the examiner probably lives in that town also, and has heard that answer lots of times before. So the examiner kind of gets sick and tired of hearing the geographical location answer. So it's much better to say I was born and bred here in Bolton, or I live in a suburb on the outskirts of Bolton, or maybe I'm from London originally, but I moved here to Bolton a few years ago, and I love it here. Okay. And in the second answer, we hear a really good technique to buy a little bit of extra time. So the speaker says, "Gosh, that's a strange question." You can also say that's an interesting question, or that's a great question, but it's handy to have one of these options to be able to buy yourself some time to think. And what I also liked about this answer was the connecting words. So we heard "boss" because so, and "whereas", which was used to contrast the seasons. An examiner's love connectors as they give the answer some structure. So if you can get some of them into your answer in part one, then that's great. Where do you live? In Boseman, Montana, in the United States of America. Okay, and how long have you been living there? I've been living here 14 years. What do you like about the area where you live? The area that I live in has many different mountain ranges around it, and it's very beautiful country, which is one of the reasons why I moved here was to go skiing in the mountains, and to ride mountain bikes. So it's a great place for skiing and a great place for mountain biking, and it has rivers around here also, so lots of people like to go fishing, and then all the hiking in the mountains as well, and then there's the Yellowstone National Park, which is not too far from here. So it's just really beautiful country, you know, lots of outdoor activities to take advantage of, and just a nice, nice place to live. Good answer there from the United States of America, as he says. He gets some nice vocabulary in there, such as skiing, mountain biking, fishing, and hiking, and he structures his answer very well also, with words like so then and all though, and he uses this really useful expression to take advantage of, which means to make the most of a situation. So an example sentence would be, we took advantage of the nice weather by having a picnic in the park. How does a typical day for you start? A typical day for me usually consists of getting up, stumbling around the house, looking for some coffee, drinking it, and then getting ready to go to work, if I'm having to be going to work that day, which involves getting on the London Underground, which by no means is any kind of mean feat. Navigating through that and then arriving at my required work destination. Pretty much how it starts. Wow, what an amazing answer. It was packed full of super vocabulary. I'd just like to focus on the phrasal verbs, because she used quite a few of them. First of all, she used getting up, which is quite a common phrasal verb. You probably already know this one, and you use that to say when you get out of bed, so I'll get up this morning at 7am, for example. The next phrasal verb was stumbling around, which means to move in an unstable or awkward manner. And it's very often used to describe how you would move in the dark, for example, or maybe after a few to many drinks, perhaps. So an example would be the electricity went last night, and I stumbled around looking for a torch. The next phrasal verb was looking for, and we use this one when you're searching for something. For instance, I'm looking for a pen to make a note of Trevor's great tips. And the last one she used was getting on, and she used that one to say getting on the London Underground. And that is exactly where you use this phrasal verb to get on a type of transport, like a bus or airplane or a train. But remember for a car, it's get into. Additionally, I would like to mention this really nice conditional that was used. She said, "If I happen to be going to work that day, and we use this expression, if I happen to be, when something is not that probable or not that likely, for example, someone may say to me, "Hey Trevor, would you tell John to call me if you see him?" And I would respond with something like, "Well, I'm not planning on meeting him, but if I happen to see him later, I'll tell him to call you." Okay, so that's the last one of our example answers. And just a quick recap on how to go about answering the questions in part one, introductions. Really, it's not the most important part of the exam. Okay, it's not going to make or break the speaking exam for you. However, if you start well in this part, it's going to give you a bit of confidence to go on to the more difficult parts of the speaking exam. So one thing to note is that a lot of the speakers, when they answered the questions, they use some kind of a technique to buy themselves a lot of time. So that might be something like, "Well, or that's an interesting question," or quite a lot of them kind of repeated a little bit of the question at the beginning of their answer. And that way you got an extra few seconds to get your thoughts together. And if you can get some nice vocabulary into your answer, that's great. And the other thing that would really help your answer here is to put in some connectors. So things like, although, whereas, on the other hand, in addition, okay, that kind of stuff because examiner's really like those structures in your answer. 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