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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 9th score.
Rory, what happened to your hair?
Your hair? Oh, sorry.
I was swimming before the recording.
Oh, swimming? Fabulous.
Let's talk about swimming.
swimming in the river swimming in the ocean swimming in the sea all the swimming pool dear listener wee do you like swimming yeah i love it i try to go once a week with the wild swimming club from my area we never stay in very long unless it's the summer but it's a fun social experience.
Is it difficult to learn how to swim?
That's a good question.
I suppose once you master the basics like how to stay afloat on the surface and how to do the different strokes, then it's fine.
Though I imagine some have more difficulties than others.
Looking back, it seemed pretty easy to me, but that could just be my memory being selective.
What's the difference between swimming in the pool and swimming in the pool.
What's the difference between swimming in the pool and swimming in the sea?
Oh wow, there's like a world of difference.
A pool is mostly a warm, controlled environment with good supervision and lots of people to share the space with, but an open body of water has currents and various kinds of wildlife to contend with, so it could be less safe.
Although there are fewer people, which I consider a plus.
Where do people in your country like to go swimming?
Well, wild swimming really seems to have taken off big time here.
So you see people in the rivers and the sea more.
Maybe not at this time of year, but in general.
But we also have lots of public baths for those who prefer something longer lasting or who want to make a day of it.
I can't really think of anywhere else.
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Rory, tell us what's this wild swimming?
You go wild and you swim Wild swimming is just swimming in uncontrolled or open bodies of water.
So going in the river or in a lake or in the sea, maybe the ocean.
So dear listener, you just go in there in the forest you find a pond or a lake or a river and you just go wild and crazy.
Especially in winter.
Not in... why especially in winter?
Because it's cold and it's wild But it can be warm and wild too If you live in the Mediterranean Okay So Rory goes to the wild swimming club Alright Once a week I try I've been good so far this year But we are recording in January We're recording halfway through January Things could change For Rory,
it's a fun social experience so he talks to people he hangs out with people it's kind of a social thing so if you go to a swimming club it could be a social experience for you like talking to people meeting new people go wild swimming together where else can we go swimming yeah where else so a pond
is like smaller than a lake a pond oh it's a lot smaller can you go swimming in a pond yeah oh my god Maybe you have bigger ponds in Russia.
Yeah, yeah. So there are smaller ponds, bigger ponds.
A lake, usually a river.
Ocean. I swim in the ocean.
I swim in the sea. Did you listen to the article there?
Or do I say I swim in the river or in a river?
I don't think it makes a difference apart from if it's the first time we're talking about it.
Then you would say I swim in the river.
And then you talk about it.
I swim in the river.
Or maybe both of you and the person you're talking to share the same context and there's only one river.
For example, where I live, there's a giant river in my hometown.
So we say I swim in the river, it's clear we mean the big one.
Yeah, but usually, dear listener, we say like, oh, I enjoy swimming in a river.
In a river, but I enjoy swimming in the sea, in the ocean.
What about a swimming pool?
well if there's only one in the town that you're in then the but if it's a big town then many then you'd say ah i enjoy swimming in a swimming pool a swimming pool or i go to the swimming pool or i go to a swimming pool like every week i go to a swimming pool i live in a huge city there are many swimming
pools so i go to a swimming pool but in the sea in the ocean we learn how to swim usually when we are all children.
You master the basics, dear listener.
You master swimming, like you learn how to swim.
You master the basics, the basic skills.
You learn how to stay afloat on the surface.
The surface, like the surface of a river, the surface of the sea, and you stay afloat so you kind of float in the sea you know you stay there you don't go down like the titanic afloat you stay afloat and then you do different strokes strokes like with your arms and i think legs what do you do with your
legs you kick your legs oh kick well my understanding is that the strokes are what you do with your arms and the kicks of what you do with your legs but i think it's just come to mean everything you do with all of your body parts so for example breaststroke is when you move your hands like a frog and you
move your legs like a frog but backstroke is when you're on your back and you move your arms backwards and you just kick your legs and what and what about like um you know like you swim like a dog with your kind of hands and legs like doing like a dog like this doggy paddle so you learn doggy paddle
doggy paddle swim yeah but I think that's considered a beginner stroke at least it was when I was younger it's your progression to front crawl where you're more confident with your head under the water check it out freestyle doggy paddle how to dog paddle so you swim like a dog usually children do that when you're
a beginner so like doggy paddle swimming technique for beginners okay yeah dear listener but this is like super topic specific vocabulary for band 9 so you learn how to do different strokes different kicks and um when you are a beginner you learn doggy paddle swimming there is a world of difference
so if the difference is huge, you say there is a world of difference between swimming in the pool and swimming in the sea.
So they are very different.
A pool is a controlled environment.
So everything is controlled.
There are people around you and it's warm.
They control the temperature of the water.
There are no stones.
And we have supervision.
So, supervision. Like, what do you call these people who control the situation near the pool?
Guards? Oh, the lifeguard.
Lifeguards, yeah. There are lifeguards.
And you share the space with many people and children who tend to pee in the pool.
Do they do that? water and then yeah i'm sure they do yeah maybe some adults you know like they they enjoy like oh okay do you think so yeah but you know i like to think that most people is an open body of water yes that just means it's not contained yeah contains it's not closed it's not like a swimming
pool you know with its borders and um any sea has its currents what are currents so a current is like a continuous movement of the water in a specific direction um so a current will carry people along in a certain direction perhaps or it will carry things in a certain direction If the water is coming
in and out from the beach or the shore, then that is the tide.
So both of these things are used for talking about water.
It's more just the duration and when it happens or the regularity that separates them.
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And we have various kinds of wildlife to contend with.
So wildlife, different fish, corals, other thingies like crabs.
What do we mean by to be contend with in this context?
Oh, to contend with.
It's just to deal with.
And it's usually something that you have a problem with along the way.
So if you're contending with wildlife, you have to navigate and move around them and be careful.
yeah for example so contend with something to have to deal with a difficult or unpleasant situation so we use it about something unpleasant like you are swimming in the sea and then like dangerous corals or this you know seaweed you know like sealed or unpleasant situation so we use it about something
unpleasant like you are swimming in the sea and then like dangerous corals or this you know seaweed you know like like sea flowers like or there are jellyfish you know these transparent thingies which touch your body or sea urchins this dangerous black stuff that's you know with spikes that are super
dangerous oh so you have to contend with corals stones rocks sea urchins and jellyfish okay super band nine vocabulary deltis no you're welcome i don't have sea urchins where i live thank god well of course scotland is the middle of nowhere but usually people go to the sea and there are some sea urchins
google sea urchins in italy people eat them actually all over the world people eat sea urchins and also jellyfish jelly like jelly like this jellyfish some jellyfish are not one creature but they are in fact many different creatures cobbled together people usually go swimming again in the rivers in the sea people
in my country go wild swimming like rory does in scotland and there are a lot of public swimming pools in england there are public baths like special places with warm water and it's like natural like natural springs right uh it could be um to be honest we use the word swimming baths in this country
to mean uh water that's in a pool as well okay so public bath a public bath is like a swimming pool uh it can be yes yeah but you don't usually swim there you you just like, you just lie there and because the water is kind of like a mineral, so it's good for your health, so you kind of don't swim in such
a bath. Okay, and what kind of swimming can we have?
Like a wild swimming?
Regular swimming? Competitive?
But in swimming competitions, it's competitive swimming.
We don't call it racing.
But I don't do that because I cannot swim that well.
Well, I can swim quite well, actually, but I wouldn't swim at a competitive level.
Can I say I'm a professional swimmer?
If you are, then yes.
Or I'm an amateur. I'm an amateur swimmer, like I do it for fun.
Can I say that? Yeah.
Amateur. Or maybe, dear listener, you hate water and then, well, the examiner will continue asking you questions about swimming.
So you should lie and make it up why you hate swimming.
but it's better to just say that yes I like swimming and use the vocabulary that we've given you okay even if you hate swimming or if you don't know how to swim imagine that yes I know how to swim Rory why why would you go wild swimming it's cold because a whole group of people do it and it's fun to
hang out with them so it's like I say it's not about the actual swimming itself is about the social experience that follows.
For me, at least. Some people get a health benefit from it, or health benefits, but I personally don't see that happening for me.
Okay. Sweet. But Maria.
Right, dear listeners, thank you.
No, don't thank them for listening yet, Maria.
I have a quiz for you.
Oh, yes. So, I'm going to ask Maria a question about a piece of vocabulary in the answers to each question.
And Maria has to work out what I'm talking about, and you can play along with us.
We'll do a brief pause to allow people to answer and think in their heads, and then Maria will answer, and we'll find out if she's correct or not.
The first question was, do you like swimming?
And I said something, it was a collocation, meaning a positive time spent with other people.
But what was that collocation, Maria?
it's a fun social experience yes well done question number two was is it difficult to learn how to swim and I used an adjective to describe when your memory focuses only on certain things but what is that adjective oh my memory is selective yes oh my gosh 100 so far Question number three was, what's
the difference between swimming in the pool and swimming in the sea?
And I used an idiom to emphasize a big difference between two things.
But what was that idiom?
There is like a world of difference.
A world of difference, a big difference.
Question number four was, where do people in your country like to go swimming?
And here I talked about doing something as part of a range of activities throughout a whole day.
But what was the expression I used to describe it when that happens or when you do this?
Make a day of it. Yes, if you make a day of something, then you are structuring everything around it.
So maybe you go to the swimming pool and you go to a cafe after or you walk before you go to the pool and then you walk back and everything just builds up from there.
So there you go. We have focused on some band nine vocabulary for that.
So make a day, make a night, make an evening or make a weekend of it to make an activity longer or combine a series of activities so that they last for the whole of that particular period of time.
So for example, so we decided to make a weekend of it and of some activity.
alright or for example, let's go swimming and let's make a weekend of it so the whole weekend we'll spend swimming.
Rory, could you give us one more sentence with this idiom?
Well, sometimes if I go to a museum in a different city, then I'll make a day of it so I could go to the museum and then go shopping and go for a walk around the city as well and go to a cafe and have dinner, so that's making a day of it Sweet Rory, dear listener, thank you very much for listening we're
sending you hugs, love, and joy and bandai vocabulary with grandma.
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Do you like swimming?
Yeah, I love it. I try to go once a week with the Wild Swimming Club from my area.
We never stay in very long unless it's the summer, but it's a fun social experience.
Is it difficult to learn how to swim?
That's a good question.
I suppose once you master the basics, like how to stay afloat on the surface and how to do the different strokes, then it's fine.
Though I imagine some have more difficulties than others.
Looking back, it seemed pretty easy to me, but that could just be my memory being selective.
What's the difference between swimming in the pool and swimming in the sea?
Oh, wow, there's like a world of difference.
A pool is mostly a warm, controlled environment with good supervision and lots of people to share the space with.
But an open body of water has currents and various kinds of wildlife to contend with.
So it could be less safe.
Although there are fewer people, which I consider a plus.
Where do people in your country like to go swimming?
Well, wild swimming really seems to have taken off big time here.
So you see people in the rivers and the Seymour.
maybe not this time of year, but in general.
But we also have lots of public baths for those who prefer something longer -lasting or who want to make a day of it.
I can't really think of anywhere else.
