This is the IELTS Energy Podcast episode 1539, how to shoulder the burden of IELTS vocabulary.
Welcome to the IELTS Energy Podcast from All Ears English.
Downloaded more than 35 million times with examiner trained IELTS whiz, Aubrey Carter and Lindsay McMahon, the English adventurer.
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On IELTS Speaking, Part 2, you might get a question about a time that you took on more work than others.
What would you say?
Today, get four native band nine phrases to ensure you boost your score with vocabulary.
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That's allearsenglish.com slash F L U E N C Y S C O R E. Hey there, Aubrey.
How's everything?
I'm great, Lindsay.
How are you?
Good.
Aubrey, question for you.
You ready?
Yes.
All right.
So, when it comes to housework, things that need to get done around the home, do you feel like you do your fair share?
Ooh, yes, I think so.
My partner cares a lot more about our house being tidy.
So he really does more of the tidying all the time.
But I really do try to do my fair share.
I'm like doing the dishes.
I'm often making dinner.
But You know who doesn't do their fair share?
Our kids.
I need to like assign them chores and then make sure they do it.
Often I just do it because I know I'll do it more quickly or I'll actually do it.
And you want it to get done.
So you're like, I'll just do it.
Oh, geez.
Yeah.
Tricky.
They get away with not doing very much.
Love it.
Well, this is going to be a great topic today, because I think this is an IELTS topic that all of our listeners will be able to relate to.
Absolutely.
Right.
A lot of different questions on the IELTS speaking exam could relate to whether or not you're doing your fair share.
If other people are doing their fair share, maybe at work or at school.
There are so many ways that this comes out in life.
Yes.
And this question in particular today came from our YouTube channel.
Don't forget, guys, that we have an entire YouTube channel just for IELTS Energy TV.
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All right.
Aubrey, would you read the question?
Yes.
This was a YouTube listener who said, Hi, Aubrey and Lindsay.
Pigeonhole.
Cool vocab.
Thanks.
You're welcome.
That was a fun episode.
And then they said And how about a term for doing everything, including tasks that someone else should be doing?
Mm hmm.
So clearly our listeners are struggling through this in one way or another, too.
Right.
So guys, don't forget to hit the follow button right here on the podcast.
Or again, like we said, find us on YouTube and hit subscribe.
All right.
Yes.
Awesome.
We're going to share four band nine phrases to convey this meaning that you're doing tasks that maybe someone else should be doing, or at least you know you're doing more than your fair share.
Yes, exactly.
Exactly.
So the first one that I love, this one's really fun.
Pick up the slack or picking up the slack.
What is the slack?
Right.
It's tasks, responsibilities that have been neglected.
Maybe someone hasn't done enough.
You're trying to keep things running smoothly.
So you have to do a little bit extra.
And that extra is the slack.
Yeah, that is the slag.
I like this because it's very native and natural.
I think this would also be a rare phrase on IELTS.
I just have a feeling it's not being used very much.
Definitely, right?
This is band nine because it's not as common.
It's very idiomatic.
And if you want like a mental image to remember this, it really comes from a rope that has slack.
Rope or string or something, that when it's not taut, when it's not tight, there's slack in the rope and we stretch it tight, then there's no slack.
And we use this idiomatically to talk about extra work that needs done.
That's the slack.
And I'm going to give an example here.
When I was a kid, my dad started working night shifts and my mom picked up the slack and helping us with homework and bedtime routines, because those were the things that were left over that he couldn't do because he was working.
Right.
So she did that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So if you're asked about you know, parental duties at home, maybe on part one or even in part three how parental duties should be shared in a society, this would be perfect to talk about which parent has to pick up the slack if the other one is working full time.
Yeah.
Really interesting.
Really interesting.
And what's the second one, Aubrey, for today?
All right.
This next one is doing all the heavy lifting.
So if you imagine some like literally, if you're moving and one person is moving all of the heavy items, the couches and heavy boxes of books, they're doing all the heavy lifting.
We use this idiomatically as well.
It means handling the most difficult tasks.
Yep.
Yep.
I remember in graduate school.
I remember very clearly a moment when my professor assigned this essay that everyone knew or thought was going to be hard, because it was like the kind of thing that's talked about across the classes.
You know, the class before the year before says, oh, that essay is really hard.
And then I remember him saying, this is not heavy lifting, folks.
Right.
Meaning it's not hard, but it actually was really hard.
Oh, that's so funny.
Yeah.
I've used this recently when we were planning a party and no one was giving ideas, like it was just, and I'm like OK, I feel like I'm doing all the heavy lifting here.
Yeah, that's a fun one.
Somebody else pitch in.
Yeah, it's a great one to use.
And I love it's kind of an analogy.
It's a metaphor.
So interesting in terms of language and I think would get you that band nine in terms of vocab.
Could be so useful if you're asked about school or work.
And you could share just like yours in group assignments at school.
I always ended up doing the heavy lifting while others contributed minimally.
Many of us have been in this situation at school.
And this is a way to answer that using really high scoring vocabulary.
Yes.
And then shouldering the burden.
This is really saying something is landing on one person.
Right.
So taking when that one person takes on the responsibility more than they more than is fair.
Right.
Exactly.
Right.
And this comes up. everywhere in life as well.
Maybe in part two.
If you're asked to describe a friend, you could say after her father passed away, she shouldered the burden of supporting the family while her siblings were still in school.
So this means she's taking on that responsibility.
Yeah.
And usually we see this if there's two siblings, one will tend to often be the one to take in the parents.
From what I've observed in my life, I've seen that it's often the daughter who that will tend to maybe take in the parents as they're getting older.
Not always, but I see that as a pattern and I wonder about that.
And this is that brings up a really interesting thing about this phrase, because burden has such a negative connotation that, like if my parents heard me refer to them, like if I was letting them move in with me and I said I'm shouldering the burden of letting our parents that would be hurtful.
No, you would never say that.
You wouldn't say that, right?
Because burden.
Like we'll use this idiomatically to mean like any difficult task, but no one wants to be called a burden.
It's the kind of thing you might have a conversation in an argument with your brother or something right.
In private, but you would never say it to your parents.
Exactly.
Right.
So you could say this to the IELTS examiner.
I'm shouldering the burden. of helping my parents as they age, but you wouldn't say to your parents.
No, you would never say that.
Yeah, be careful.
We gotta be really aware of the words that we're dropping and who's around, who's within earshot, as we say right.
Okay, taking on the lion's share is our last one.
I hope our listeners are writing these down if they wanna ban nine.
Yes, absolutely.
Take note of all of these idioms.
They are high scoring.
This means to do the majority of the work, to take on the lion's share.
So that animal-
The lion.
I'm not sure exactly where this comes from.
I wonder if lions, if there were like a bunch of animals around the lion, would take more of like the kill.
Imagine they have like a bigger appetite because they're a bigger animal.
Yeah, it's interesting.
I have no idea.
It's a good question.
Right.
What about that sample sentence?
Yeah.
So maybe, if you're asked about a holiday, you could say at Thanksgiving, my grandma always takes on the lion's share of the cooking, even though everyone offers to help.
I think she doesn't trust any of us in the kitchen.
Yes.
Nice.
I love it.
These are all just incredibly natural and native.
They're kind of like native secrets that if we employ on the test we will score high, at least for vocabulary.
Absolutely.
These are very high scoring.
If you find yourself about to say you know doing more than I should have to or doing a larger portion of the work, have these in your back pocket.
To use one of these instead and boost your vocab score.
Love it.
Love it.
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Okay, Aubrey, we are back from break.
It's time for a sample answer.
Yes, we're going to have Lindsay answer a speaking part two answer.
So I am going to time you.
I'll give you the full two minutes.
Normally you guys, if you are aware, before I out speaking part two questions, you usually have one minute to take notes and think about your answer.
So during that minute, you want to think of some maybe these idioms if you're able to apply them.
Right.
You can jot down some high scoring vocabulary that you could use in your answer.
Yeah.
We're not going to give Lindsay that full minute.
So we'll see how you do here.
And I know I'm aware now that I have to fill two minutes.
So I know that I need to give some context.
I need to tell a story.
I need to build this out a little bit more versus if I were just answering a part one question.
Right.
Exactly.
Right.
Rather than that three to five sentences in a part one question, you need that full two minutes.
This is a really good strategy to tell a story.
Give the background you know, make comparisons how something used to be and what it's like now.
And if you haven't been told, if the examiner hasn't told you to stop yet?
Don't summarize your answer.
Keep sharing details.
The examiner will let you know when you hit that two minute mark.
Okay.
Let's do it.
Let's go for it.
All right.
Here's your part two question.
Describe a time when you did more than your fair share of work.
Yeah, that just makes me think of one single time in my life, which was graduate school.
I think a lot of people would absolutely relate to this scenario.
You don't expect to be doing all the heavy lifting when you have group work and everyone is apparently looking to achieve a high grade in the class and looking to succeed.
However, in this particular assignment that we were given, it was my first year in graduate school.
It was back in 2010.
I was living in Boston.
I remember really having to pick up the slack.
We were assigned a group of four and the topic was it was actually a group paper which is complicated to write a paper with four people because everyone has a different voice.
And I did find myself, unfortunately, shouldering the burden.
At first, like I said, I thought it would be fine.
We all sat down to have our first group meeting.
And it seemed like people were raising their hand and volunteering to do some of the work.
But the cold hard fact was the other people in my group.
All three of them were working full time jobs.
And I was working for myself at the time.
So I had some more I had more flexibility.
And I was determining my own hours.
And that's really what it came down to in the end and was the reason I eventually took on the lion's share of the research for the project not just researching it, but writing it.
But finally, in the end, the very last week of the project, I stood up for myself and I let my group members know that this was unacceptable.
I wasn't going to be picking up the slack any longer.
I needed them to... to pull their weight and to help out.
It really was a case of social loafing up until the point where I called them out on it.
And so I was just very direct.
I called that group meeting and I said, I can't do this on my own.
And finally, they did step in and offer to help craft that final version of the essay.
But I wish in hindsight that I had asked for this earlier.
It's a good word to the wise.
Thank you.
Excellent.
I love that.
That this strategy.
You realized you still had a little bit of time to start using the conditional.
I wish I would have done things differently.
I wish I would have done this earlier to give you more to say, right?
Yeah, for sure.
I was really stretching there in the end, but two minutes is a long time.
It feels like a long time when you're even though you shared an amazing story.
But this instead of summarizing, you don't want to repeat any ideas.
Do like Lindsay did.
And this is a great thing to say what you would have done differently if you could go back.
And that's also giving you a chance to show those impressive conditional tenses.
It's kind of this idea of the lesson, right?
The lesson.
What is the lesson that we got from this experience?
I love that as a potential template we can have in our minds.
Yeah.
So this is interesting.
You were able to use all of the phrases that we shared today.
And what I especially want to highlight is the verbs and the grammar tenses you used with them, because this was really impressive.
And so this would not only be a really high vocabulary score, but an impressive grammar score as well.
So first of all, you said, I wouldn't expect to have to do the heavy lifting.
So this is a really good conditional tense, where and this is you could use this on a lot of different answers.
If you're prepared with one of these, you can say I wouldn't expect to have to this for anything, regardless of how it turned out.
I didn't expect it to be that way.
I wouldn't expect to have to do this.
Right, right.
It gives a new dimension to your answer in a sense.
And it also gives you that chance to increase that grammar score.
Absolutely.
And flexible, like flexibility, because no matter what your, where your answer ends up going, you can share what you wouldn't have expected to happen.
Really interesting.
Okay.
So then when you said, um, I had to pick up the slack.
So this is interesting.
Um, and then I found myself, um, picking up a few times.
Yeah.
And this is a really good structure where instead of saying I picked up the slack and We say I found myself and then verb ing whatever it was.
I found myself working really hard.
I found myself picking up the slack.
So this is a great structure for IELTS.
And then the verb I took on.
I took on the lion's share.
So of course you can say I did the lion's share, but this phrasal verb is less common, more idiomatic.
Every phrasal verb is.
So this is a great way to say that I took on the lion's share, to mean I did more of the work than anyone else.
Yes.
Yes, love it.
And then our lesson about tying it up with our framework about tying it up with a lesson at the end.
So good.
So many good tips today.
But like I said, I did find myself repeating a few of the keywords for today's episode.
And we want to avoid that, right?
We want to avoid repeating any of the same phrases.
Yes.
Right.
You don't want to repeat any vocabulary.
So this helps that we've given you four different ways to say this.
But this does happen if you haven't practiced like Lindsay had never practiced this answer.
It's really easy to repeat a phrase.
So it really highlights the importance of practicing answering IELTS speaking questions, because you can't just go on test day and expect to never repeat vocabulary and have these band nine answers.
You've got to practice your IELTS speaking answers.
Yeah.
And there was one bonus phrase that I snuck in there.
It was social loafing.
So I love that term.
We should write that down.
Do you know that term?
I mean just when you know, when we people kind of just allow others to do the work, social loafing.
Yes, that's Ben 9 as well, right?
Very uncommon to be like, they were all, you know, there was a lot of social loafing happening.
Loafing means to be lazy, just kind of like laziness loafing.
Yes, exactly.
Exactly.
So good to get in a good term.
Aubrey, what's our takeaway for today?
Where should we leave our listeners?
Yeah, you know that you need idioms to satisfy this IELTS requirement of idiomatic language.
And And many questions can be answered, sharing either how much work you had to put in or how much others put in.
So practice using these idioms.
They're actually quite flexible.
You'll be able to use them on a lot of different IELTS speaking questions.
Yeah, so much to take away just from today's episode.
So guys, if you feel like today's episode went fast and you want to really absorb it, listen again.
Listen again tomorrow.
Come back to the episode.
Write down these phrases because they are incredibly native and natural.
Absolutely.
Have them ready.
Practice using them so that you can use them on test day.
Yes, 100%.
All right.
We'll see you very soon, Aubrey.
Have a good one.
Awesome.
See you next time.
All right.
Bye.
Thanks for listening to IELTS Energy.
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