Hello, lovely.
I'm Maria.
And my name is Rory.
And we are the hosts of the IELTS Speaking for Success podcast, the podcast that aims to help you improve your speaking skills, as well as your listening skills along the way.
We've started this podcast to give you gorgeous grammar and fabulous vocabulary for your high IELTS score.
Your band nine score.
Oh, sorry, Rory.
I'm late.
I had a problem with my apartment.
They just don't make buildings like they used to, do they?
Buildings, you said?
Did you say buildings?
Yes, I did.
Shall we talk about buildings?
Hmm?
Oh, let's talk about buildings.
What a topic!
Dear listener, buildings in IELTS Speaking Part 1.
Wow!
Not water, not jeans, not ice cream, but buildings.
Hmm?
Do you want to live in a tall building?
Well, I think that depends on exactly how many stories it is, to be honest.
If it's like a high-rise with dozens of floors, then that would be too much for me.
But if it's just three or four floors, it's a lot more manageable.
Is there a building that you'd like to visit?
Not desperately, though if I get the chance, I'd love to see Blenheim Palace near Oxford.
I think it's an old royal residence.
That's a kind of museum now, and people say it has amazing architecture.
Do you take photos of buildings?
Not really, no, unless it's a really famous or unusual one like the Burj Khalifa.
It's that sail-shaped building in the Middle East.
Sometimes I take photographs of the graffiti or displays on the facades of different buildings, but that's more about the art than the architecture, I think.
Are there tall buildings near your home?
Well, if you mean something like the Empire State Building, then definitely not.
I think the tallest thing might be an old factory chimney or an old office block that has six or seven floors.
But that's about it.
It's a very flat place.
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See you soon! skyscrapers.
Is a monument a building?
I think it could be, although that's one with a very specific purpose, which is like to commemorate something.
Usually, when we think about buildings, it's buildings that have a purpose, like people live in it, for example.
Yeah, if you check it up in a Cambridge online dictionary my favorite dictionary a building is a structure with walls and a roof.
For example, a house or a factory.
But you can talk again about museums, blocks of flats, houses like usual houses factories, office buildings, historic buildings.
We have like museums, arts galleries.
And what do we call a tall building?
So it could be a high-rise or maybe a skyscraper.
Yeah, so a skyscraper is a tall, a very tall building, or you can say high-rise buildings.
So if you have tall buildings where you live, you can say I have some skyscrapers, I have some high-rise buildings near my house.
Another interesting word is story.
When we talk about buildings, we talk about how tall they are and how many stories they have.
So, the level of a building.
If my house has, for example, three floors, three levels, I say it's a three-story house.
And, Rory, why is it confusing, this story word?
Well, it probably sounds similar to story, like something you tell people, but here it's got a different spelling and it's used to describe just the number of floors or levels in a house.
Yeah, we usually say, oh, that's a good story.
Ah, Rory's story.
Rory, tell us a story.
But here, story, S-T-O-R-E-Y.
It means a level of building.
So, you can say, I live in a five-story house.
If your house has three stories, three floors, can you say, I have three floors in my house?
Or it's a three-floor house.
You could say one or the other.
There are three floors.
Just we know what the number of floors is either way.
Yeah, well, there are many floors in this building.
It's very tall.
What you should definitely not say is it's a three floors house.
So we don't need the extra S when we talk about an adjective.
Three floor house.
And you can say, I want to live in a house with 10 stories or 10 floors.
Or I want to live in a skyscraper.
Or I wouldn't like to live in a high-rise building.
Because, you know, they say it's not good for your health, for your blood pressure.
And if you live on the first, second, third floor, it's okay.
But higher than the fifth floor is not very good.
Have you heard anything like this, Rory?
I don't know.
I'm just thinking for myself.
I would prefer to live in something that's closer to the ground, but that's more about convenience than anything else.
I'd prefer to live closer to the ground.
Yeah, what about you, dear listener?
Do you care for the view in a skyscraper or would you like to be closer to the ground?
When you feel the earth?
A building you'd like to visit could be a museum the British Museum, the Louvre in Paris, or perhaps a famous skyscraper, some iconic building.
Rory tells us, if I get the chance, I'd love to see blah, blah, blah.
So something Palace near Oxford.
Blenheim Palace, it's not difficult to see.
Blenheim Palace.
Why is it special?
It's not, it's just a very pretty building and I couldn't think of anywhere else.
I wanted to go.
I've seen everything I want to see.
Maria really, I'm an old man now yeah, so if you google this blah blah palace yeah, you'll see just a nice palace, Blenheim Palace, near Oxford.
How English is that?
Well, it's how the name sounds German, so maybe it's not so English.
Yeah, but some famous buildings that you could want to visit, dear listener, is the Eiffel Tower, the Leaning Tower of Pisa in Italy, Burj Khalifa.
How do you pronounce this name?
Burj Khalifa in Dubai?
I think it's Burj Khalifa or Burj Khalifa.
I don't know.
So that's why I said it's that sail-shaped building in the Middle East.
Because if you don't know how to say the name of a specific place, you can always say it's this and describe what it looks like.
Which is a good strategy to have in real life, but it's also handy for exams, because maybe you'll forget a word, but you can describe the word to the examiner and that's okay.
Or just Google the name of the place you'd like to go to.
A tower, a museum.
Learn this name and then off you go.
Or, for example, this Sydney Opera House in Sydney.
An iconic building.
Coliseum in Rome is also a building.
The Taj Mahal.
Big Ben, by the way.
But you can't visit Big Ben, can you?
Oh, no, no, you can go.
I don't know.
I think you can.
It's part of a tour of Parliament.
Maybe.
I don't know.
Let's check and see.
Like the White House.
In Barcelona, there are different buildings, like La Pedrera.
Well, apparently you can.
Yeah.
There are guided tours that climb the 334 steps to the area where the clock is.
Very important to point out, Big Ben is the name of the bell.
Elizabeth Tower is the name of the building.
Yeah, and also, dear listener, if you want to visit a bridge, it's also a building, a bridge.
So like London Millennium Bridge, for example, or the Tower Bridge.
And then you say, yeah, it's a palace or it's a museum.
It's a bridge.
It has amazing architecture or it's stunning.
Like, wow, you know, you look at this building and you say, wow, this means it's stunning.
It has amazing architecture.
It's iconic, like very famous.
It's elegant, for example.
Or it's historic.
So when we talk about buildings and history, we say historic buildings, not historical.
No, historical.
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We take photos of buildings.
So you can say I usually take photos of buildings or I don't.
I prefer taking selfies.
And if a building is famous or unusual...
And then you can make some examples.
Rory talked about Burj Khalifa, which is sail-shaped.
It just means it looks like part of a boat.
I can't think of another way to describe it.
It's got a weird shape.
It looks like a boat or it's sail-shaped.
And I take photographs, I take photos of the graffiti, of the design, of colors on the facades.
So, the facade of a building is the front of a building.
So, if we have...
An attractive building, usually the front of a building.
What you see on the wall outside is beautiful.
So, facade.
You can say, oh, this building has an elegant 18th century facade.
Or you could just use it to talk about the outside of the building, have some tall buildings.
Near my house i have some high-rise apartment blocks, so like buildings where people usually live are called apartment blocks.
You might have some skyscrapers, but actually usually we don't right if you don't live right in the center.
Yeah, usually you live in a very flat place, or relatively flat compared to the rest of the city.
Well if, if you have like An apartment block which has, let's say, 30 floors,
Is it a high-rise building?
30, 35 floors?
I would consider that a high-rise building.
How high does something have to be to be considered that?
I don't know.
Because I'm thinking of a skyscraper.
Okay, if we Google what a skyscraper is.
A skyscraper, dear listener.
A very tall building, okay?
So it's a very tall building.
I want helpful.
How tall?
Very tall.
Oh, well, that clears it up.
Yeah.
So, listen, usually kind of you have like, you don't live among the skyscrapers.
So you say, no, it's a flat place.
So if you don't have tall buildings, it's flat.
No mountains.
Everything's flat.
I have usual apartment blocks everywhere, old office blocks with six or seven floors or maybe even like a 20, 25 floors, not really tall.
Don't say high.
The building is high no, the building is tall or high rise buildings.
What's the difference between something that's tall and something that's high?
The difference is collocations.
But you know what?
According to the Cambridge Online Dictionary, you can say a high building.
You can, yeah.
You can?
A high building?
A tall building?
When I talk about things that are high, or how high something is, it's not attached to the ground.
Whereas if things are tall, then they are attached to the ground.
Well, for example, if you are a tall person, then you're standing up.
And if it's a tall building, the building is also attached to the ground.
But if we talk about how high the building is, then we're talking about a reference point which is not attached to the ground.
It's just a point in the air.
The same thing for talking about a plane.
A plane is not tall in the sky.
It's high in the sky.
Yeah, but more commonly we would say a tall building, right?
One of these things emphasizes the connection from the bottom of something to the top, and the other one is referring to a reference point above the ground.
It's very fun, isn't it?
Oh, all these ideas about grammar and vocabulary.
And speaking of grammar, I hope you noticed that I was doing different things with conditional or similar structures in my answers.
For example, when Maria asked, do you want to live in a high-rise building?
I used a conditional.
I said, if it's this, then no.
But if it's this, then yes.
So we can use the conditional this way.
Also, if the examiner asks you about something you would like to do or would like to visit, you can say if I get the chance, which is good, and then I'd love to see or I'd love to do, whatever the action is.
Then in a third question, Maria asked, do you take photos of buildings?
Yes.
And I said, unless it's a really famous building, which is a different way of talking about conditionals.
Usually we use if, but we can also use unless to talk about the exception to the rule.
And then in the last one, Maria asked, are there any tall buildings near your home?
And instead of saying it depends, I said, if you mean this, then no.
Lots of vocabulary and grammar to consider.
Yay, awesome.
And now we're ready for a joke.
We are.
Just don't ask me which conditionals those things are because I still have no idea.
Right.
So the joke is, what's the tallest building in the world?
The library.
It has the most stories.
Rory, could you explain the joke?
No, we're done.
Goodbye.
So, a library has books, and in books there are stories that people read.
But story also means the number of floors that a building has.
So, it's a play on words with different meanings.
Yes, dear listener, and you can crack this joke in the test, you know.
The examiner asks you, oh, like, do you want to live in a tall building?
And you say, not really.
And you know what?
What's the tallest building in the world to examine?
Do you know?
The library.
It has the most stories.
And then the examiner kicks you out of the exam and fails you.
They give you like minus one.
Yeah, like a library has a lot of stories in books, right?
And it is the tallest because it has a lot of stories, like floors, right?
Okay.
Right Alessandra, it's important to understand stupid jokes because Rory's culture has this idea of dad.
Jokes like stupid jokes, not dead like life and death, but dad like mom and dad.
So it's like a typical dad joke.
But Maria thought it was funny, so there we go.
But now you know, like a story and a story.
Two meanings.
Almost the same word.
Thank you very much for listening.
We'll get back to you in our new episode.
Alright, stay with us.
Bye!
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Do you want to live in a tall building?
Well, I think that depends on exactly how many stories it is, to be honest.
If it's like a high-rise with dozens of floors, then that would be too much for me.
But if it's just three or four floors, it's a lot more manageable.
Is there a building that you'd like to visit?
Not desperately, though if I get the chance, I'd love to see Blenheim Palace near Oxford.
I think it's an old royal residence.
That's a kind of museum now, and people say it has amazing architecture.
Do you take photos of buildings?
Not really, no, unless it's a really famous or unusual one like the Burj Khalifa.
It's that sail-shaped building in the Middle East.
Sometimes I take photographs of the graffiti or displays on the facades of different buildings, but that's more about the art than the architecture, I think.
Are there tall buildings near your home?
Well, if you mean something like the Empire State Building, then definitely not.
I think the tallest thing might be an old factory chimney or an old office block that has six or seven floors.
But that's about it.
It's a very flat place.
