This is an IELTS Energy Podcast, Episode 1593.
Do you find this vocabulary heartwarming?
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 may get a question about a gift you have received.
Today, listen to our sample answer and hear how it could be improved for a better score.
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Hey there, Aubrey.
What's going on with you?
Oh, not too much.
How are you, Lindsay?
Good, Aubrey.
I wanted to ask you, what's something that happened to you recently that was heartwarming?
Is there anything?
Yeah.
My daughter entered this contest.
That a pizza place.
There's a pizza place opening near our home and they did this art contest where kids designed the front of a pizza box and they decorate their little pizza shop with them.
And she ended up winning.
She was chosen as like the number one winner.
She won free pizza for a year, which is amazing.
But when we took her for there was like a grand opening event.
And so I took her and they were really celebrating her.
It was so heartwarming to me how, just how important that was, like how you could see it was really building her confidence to be recognized that way to be.
You know, the center of attention was really fun.
That's kind of rare for an 11 year old kid.
And That's really fun.
That's beautiful.
That's very cool.
That's a big win.
It was really sweet.
Love it.
Very heartwarming.
And that is one of many adjectives that you are going to learn today to describe experiences.
You're almost certainly going to need to describe events or experiences that were personally meaningful.
So you're going to learn band nine adjectives to describe these today.
Yes, I love this.
And if we do get a question about something that's heartwarming, this is again another low-hanging fruit opportunity, because we can come up with something here, right.
And we just need to plug in the room.
Yes, everyone has something to say.
Plug in the right vocabulary.
Good.
But it is easy to make mistakes with this vocabulary.
This was actually inspired by.
There was a student that posted in our community.
That was heart touching and made me think of my own experience.
And I was like oh, this is so tricky because this is combining the adjective touching and heartwarming.
And so this is important that we keep these straight.
So you're going to get all the details you need to use them correctly today.
Yes, so good.
But we do have to go into an announcement today.
We have some news for our listeners.
This is very exciting.
I'm excited, Lindsay, for you to share this news.
Yes, I have some.
Very exciting news.
And I know that a lot of our listeners are parents.
And so you all are going to resonate with this.
I am going to be having a baby.
And actually, we're recording this a few months in advance.
So currently I'm two weeks out from my due date.
And so we are getting real close now, Aubrey.
Congratulations lindsey, on behalf of all of our lindsey our listeners.
This is so exciting.
We are very excited for you to have this baby.
Thank you so much and yeah, the podcast might look a little different.
We're gonna have michelle on some episodes, which will be very fun.
She's been here before, you guys know michelle lindsey will still be here as well.
Yes, it's going to be very fun.
It's going to be fantastic.
So the idea here guys, is starting.
In the next couple of weeks you're going to see the new pairing.
You're going to see Aubrey and Michelle together on the microphone.
You're still going to see Aubrey and me right here.
We have episodes presenting to you, and nothing is going to change with the show.
You just get to see new pairings of new podcasters, which i think is really cool aubrey, because new dynamics can come out, absolutely new phrases that are maybe not used between you and you and me and are used between you and michelle right.
Yes, going to be interesting.
I love getting sample answers from different people, different voices.
We've had a lot of guests on the podcast, so we're excited that you guys will be able to hear some from Michelle as well.
Yes, exciting.
And if you're not currently subscribed to our other shows, I will still be on those shows as well.
Those are All Ears English and Business English.
Make sure you search for those and hit follow. follow.
Okay, good.
Awesome.
Well, congratulations, Lindsay.
Stay tuned for the end.
Lindsay's going to answer a part two question today and give a little bit of details about her pregnancy here.
So let's first dive in with this vocab.
So heartwarming is where we started the show.
I asked you, has anything ever happened to you that was heartwarming, right?
Or has recently has anything happened?
This is something that makes you feel happy, touched, emotional, emotionally uplifted.
Very positive, right?
It makes you feel good, warm and fuzzy.
I love that, right?
This is not for negative emotions.
This is when you feel really happy.
For example, it was so heartwarming to see everyone show up to support me after my surgery.
This is for things that you find very meaningful.
You would call it heartwarming.
Yes, that's a good example.
Or I saw my neighbors helping an elderly couple shovel snow and it was really heartwarming.
Yeah, that's nice.
So whenever you see something that just gives you those good feelings, you know, you feel you see the good in humanity.
You can always say, oh, it was really heartwarming.
But there are other ways to say it, too, like touching is another great one.
This is again very similar or something that causes strong feelings of sympathy, affection or compassion.
Yes.
Yes, exactly.
For example, a speech, his speech at the wedding was incredibly touching.
A lot of people in the audience were tearing up.
So often when it's evoking emotion, we'll say it was touching.
Are you a wedding crier, Aubrey, when you're just a...
I know we've talked about this before.
I always cry at weddings.
I cry easily.
If there's a movie that is meant to be touching and evoke some emotion, I'm going to be waterworks.
I know.
Sometimes I'm embarrassed.
I try to hide it or something.
You know, it's like, oh, gosh, you just got to let it out.
Yeah, it feels good.
It feels really cathartic to cry sometimes in a movie.
I agree.
We just need it sometimes.
We shouldn't be stifling it.
We need to let those emotions go.
Exactly.
Or this could happen at work.
It was really touching when my coworkers organized a farewell party before I moved, right?
Yes.
Anything that makes you feel like people care about you.
They went out of their way to do something kind for you.
You could say you found it touching.
Yes, or moving, right?
Again, moving, emotionally powerful in a way that deeply affects you.
So we already hinted at this word in the last example.
But this one is very similar, right?
My friend told me about her experience volunteering at an animal shelter.
It was really moving and inspired me to look for opportunities to give back.
Yes, very similar to touching, moving.
It just means you felt strong emotions about it, right?
Or at my grandmother's funeral, my sister gave a life sketch that was incredibly moving.
And so these are all very interchangeable.
But it's interesting these words by themselves.
It's not that obvious what it would mean.
Because of course, these are verbs to touch to move.
But when used in this way, they're very idiomatic.
They're about emotions.
Yes.
But we can also use different forms here.
We can say moved, right?
To be moved.
Exactly.
So these touching, moving, when it's the verb ing, it's describing a situation.
But when we're describing a person, then we use moved or touched.
We use that past participle to say that a person is emotionally affected.
So we do need to be able to do a little ninja with our grammar here and change that.
A little bit of ninja moves with our grammar and change that around depending on what the object is that we're talking about.
Right.
Exactly.
So where we would say it was moving, then if we're talking about us, personally would say I was moved.
I was deeply moved by the way my community came together to help a family whose home was destroyed in a fire.
So the grammar is slightly different, though the meaning is the same.
Often you see examples of this at the community level.
So if you're struggling to come up with examples, think about your community, where people banded together to help a family.
Or, I don't know, to prevent something from happening.
You see this a lot.
We see this in the worldwide community now with GoFundMe on like Facebook.
Someone will post a fundraiser for a family in need and we're able to reach out.
You know wider than just our local community for something like that.
I love that.
And then touched also works this way to touching touched.
So this kind of represents a milder personal response to kindness or gentle gestures.
For example, I was really touched that my coworkers remembered my birthday and organized a small celebration.
Yeah, that's touching, right?
It is.
It is touching.
So you would say either it was touching or I was touched.
So that's the grammar.
They both work.
These are all pretty interchangeable.
They all mean sort of the same thing.
But instead of repetition of vocabulary, you have now all of these different ways to say.
So especially for speaking part two.
If you're talking about something you found moving, touching.
There's lots of different ways that you could describe that.
Beautiful.
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All right, Aubrey, time for some sample answers.
I am ready for my part two sample answer here.
All right, I'm going to pull up my timer because as you guys know, part two should be two minutes.
Don't let those instructions throw you off when they say you have one to two minutes for this.
You need to speak for the full two minutes.
Don't stop speaking until the examiner says thank you and stops you.
Perfect, all right.
All right.
So here's your question ready describe a gift you have received.
Yeah, I would love to describe a gift.
So over the weekend, we had our baby shower, as I just shared.
I'm having a baby soon.
And we had our baby shower.
I received the most touching gift because the person who gave it to me had handmade handmade, this gift.
It was our friend Kelsey, a man.
He had knitted a blanket and a hat for the baby with the Colorado logo.
Colorado is a state that people take a lot of pride if they're from Colorado.
So you see the Colorado logo all over the place.
And he had taken possibly months, knitting this beautiful cap and this blanket for our child.
And he presented it to us at the baby shower.
I was touched, honestly, and moved by all of the gifts that people gave us.
However, this one was especially uplifting to get, just because he had spent the time thinking through what he knew would really resonate with us as well, because we also strongly identify with living in Colorado.
We love life here.
We love the sunshine here.
So he knew that would matter to us.
And that's why it was really so heartwarming.
Whenever someone takes the time to make you something, especially these days, it just touches your heart.
And you know, being at the baby shower and seeing so many of our friends pour in that afternoon also bringing gifts, but bringing their presence back really touched me as well.
You know, being able to just, we hosted it at a brewery.
And so it was a very low maintenance baby shower.
There were no games, which I did not want.
There was just food on the table.
There was beer, a few gifts and just lots of laughter, lots of love, filling the room in a really heartwarming and touching way.
That's all i have.
No, that was right.
You were so close, well done.
You were like one second shy of two minutes, but that's such a good.
I'm really glad that happened because all of the students out there listening two minutes is a long time to talk about.
One three, one thing right, And if you haven't had a ton of practice thinking of other related details or segueing to something else, it's so difficult to fill two minutes right.
That was hard.
So the first advice I would give is if that happens, you can just stop.
It's not the end of the world if the examiner hasn't said thank you, hasn't stopped you.
If you are like I have nothing else to say, just stop and then they will.
You move on from there, right?
If you're one second under, not really going to affect your score.
Better than being like, I have nothing else to say.
You wouldn't want to say that to highlight that, right?
But even better... transition to anything related start talking about other baby showers you've been to why didn't you want games right you like instead of sometimes we feel like we have to stay on topic and everything we say has to be directly answering the question it doesn't as long as you answer that question you could share anything related what was the food why did you choose that brewery Who came?
Tell all about who came, right?
Any details you can share.
But this really highlights how important it is to practice part two.
It is difficult to speak for that two minutes.
100%.
So always kind of keeping your mind open and not being set.
I think in my head I was a little bit tunnel vision and I only had a few things to say just about the cap.
I could have gone into also the other GIFs.
I could have gone to the other gifts we received from other guests.
There's a lot that could have been done.
Yeah, the main strategy here is answer the question directly, but then you can say anything that's at all on topic or even pivot away.
And you could even say something like as far as wedding presents, or talk about someone's already given you a wedding present.
Anything that you can relate at all segue to something else.
You can talk about anything once you've answered the question.
Love it.
And I also did hear myself repeating certain words multiple times.
I think a few words, sets of words I repeated multiple times.
That we'd probably avoid too, right, Aubrey?
This is kind of a what not to do answer.
Yeah.
Because when you have two minutes, you used a ton of great vocabulary, but there were a couple that you repeated, right?
Maybe touched, moved, heartwarming.
And you did say it a different way.
Like you're still paraphrasing.
You'd say, you know, this, then we find it touching or it warms the heart.
That's still other ways to paraphrase.
So that wouldn't really be considered vocab repetition, as long as you're not saying it was heartwarming and that was heartwarming, and this is repeating the exact same word.
That's when your score is really going to come down.
So it's about the way the words presented, the whole package of the word, the packaging.
When you're paraphrasing like that,
Yeah, this was great.
And so much good vocab.
I wanted to highlight, especially some things that you used here.
So, of course, the vocab we taught today, right?
Heartwarming, touching.
I felt touched and moved like this is all great.
But some other really high scoring vocabulary.
You were saying that your friend chose something that would resonate with you.
This verb resonate is band nine.
Students rarely use it.
So if you can fit it in, that's something that applies more specifically to you.
What would be meaningful to you is what would resonate with you.
This can be music gifts, you know, a note.
Whatever it is something that would personally be meaningful to you.
Love it.
And then I loved this verb of saying that friends poured in.
This is also band nine because most students would say like friends came, friends arrived.
And this is, you know, a more rare word to say that friends poured. poured into a place.
That just means there were quite a few of them entering.
So that's a band nine verb there.
So it creates a real image, right?
A more specific image, right?
Exactly.
Yes.
And this still would be a very high scoring part two answer.
So I think this is good for students out there.
If you took the speaking exam And part two, you didn't quite make it to two minutes and then you stopped.
That's, you know, that's OK.
Right.
Ideally, keep speaking until they cut you off.
But if you find yourself kind of stuck and you have spoken for nearly the full two minutes, you could have a sentence or two summarizing that.
You can always change the topic and talk about something else.
But I would avoid saying something like, I don't have anything else to say about that.
That's going to be more of a signal to the examiner that your fluency score should be lower.
And part of the way we can prevent this is knowing what two minutes feels like, right?
Yes.
And that is in preparation.
Every time, every two three, four times a week.
We're practicing speaking part two, especially because it is the longest time you're going to speak on the test.
And knowing exactly how that feels, because I really don't have a sense of what two minutes feels like.
And so I was like, I don't know.
Am I done?
I'm not really sure.
You're like, are you sure that's not two minutes?
It feels like forever.
It's true.
Time your answers.
Practice several times a week.
Speak for that full two minutes.
Time yourself so that you really get a good feel for how long that is.
And then use all the strategies we teach here on the podcast and in our course.
Tell a story. answer the question, and then pivot away.
You can share any related details once you have directly answered that question.
And also in your practice session, so if you had given an answer like mine, which is not band nine because I did certain things, right, that were not exactly band nine standard, I would try it again.
I would turn back around now and talk about the strategies.
We just talked about the directions.
You could go in and make it a band nine or a band seven.
Yes.
Good point, Lindsay.
There's so much learning from doing an answer a second time.
If you answer it and you know I could have done better or I didn't fill the full two minutes, turn right around, do it again, record yourself, compare them, make sure you're using lots of interesting vocabulary.
That's a really good strategy to answer a question a second time and improve it.
All right.
Great stuff today, Aubrey.
So we're wrapping up our episode for today.
Any final takeaways for the episode for today for our listeners?
I think this really highlighted how important it is to practice for speaking part two.
It's impossible to just go in on test day and be able to have a band nine part two answer speaking for two full minutes about any topic they might throw at you.
You definitely need to prepare in advance.
Exactly.
Guys, go over to 1589, how to practice staying on track during IELTS listening.
All right.
And that's it.
I mean, practice, practice is the key here.
Practice with the knowledge and the depth of vocabulary that you know will differentiate your answer from other students.
Right.
Exactly.
Absolutely.
It's not enough just to speak for two minutes.
It also needs to have band nine pronunciation and vocabulary.
So if you practice all of that, then you can get these really high scoring answers.
All right.
Great stuff today, Aubrey.
We'll see you next time.
You have a good rest of your day.
All right.
You too.
See you guys next time.
Bye.
Bye.
Thanks for listening to IELTS Energy.
Hit subscribe now, and don't forget to find your estimated band score at allearsenglishcom.
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