Hello, lovely.
I'm Maria.
And my name is Rory, and we are the hosts of the IELTS Speaking for Success podcast.
The podcast aims to help you improve your speaking skills, as well as your listening skills, along the way.
We started this super podcast because we really want you to use high-level words and gorgeous grammar in your IELTS speaking and in your English life.
For a high score.
Bandai score.
Rory, we are recording in the studio and you were late.
You were like 20 minutes late.
I was late.
I was caught in a traffic jam, which is my new excuse for having terrible timekeeping.
Shall we talk about traffic?
Oh, why not?
Yes, dear listener, in Speaking Part 1, they can ask you questions about traffic where you live.
Rory, how do most people travel to work where you live?
Probably either by metro or car or bus.
Although some people take the trams and the trolleybuses these days.
Some lucky souls get to go on foot, but the rest of us are like sardines in cans in the rush hour, unfortunately.
What traffic problems are there in your area?
Well, just Russian traffic and driving in general really, rules are selectively followed and enforced and the roads are sometimes packed.
Then there's this rush to the metro in the morning, and then you have the rush hour in the evening time as well.
You're lucky if you can get a seat, actually especially if you're a man.
Mercifully.
I'm only a few stops from where I get the bus, so it's okay for me, but it can still be quite annoying.
It's the same with most kinds of public transport, to be honest with you.
Some of the ladies I work with have this propensity to save a seat for their bags, because they should never be left on the floor apparently, which means it's always a struggle to get a comfortable spot, regardless of whether it's public or private transport, it seems sometimes.
Are there more traffic problems now than in the past?
Well...
There's more traffic in general now, so I imagine there's been a proportionate rise in the number of problems.
There are airbags.
Actually, as it turns out, windscreen wipers weren't invented initially with cars.
They had to be invented later on.
So, yeah, all of these technological improvements probably mean that maybe there are fewer problems.
Maybe.
Do you think there'll be fewer traffic problems in the future where you live?
Well, the infrastructure in Moscow is always developing, so I think the trend I mentioned earlier will continue where I am, at the local level too.
How do traffic problems affect you?
Well, aside from slow traffic and struggling for a seat not tremendously my schedule's quite flexible and I've learned to live with standing, so it's not a major issue for me.
How would you reduce the traffic problems in your area?
I think the only way to do that would be to have fewer people.
But then the side effect of that would just be spreading the problem around or increasing the problems over a wider area.
I think it's better to flow around problems than try and solve them.
So I spaced out my schedule, found things to do while I wait and just be generally more patient with people.
And that worked out pretty well for me so far.
Rory, thank you for your answers.
That's okay.
Hopefully... What can we say?
No, it's okay.
If you have no joke, it's fine just to say like, no problem.
There's always a joke.
My pleasure.
What are you doing?
Grammar and vocabulary.
So when we talk about traffic, we say traffic jams.
And Rory, what's a good synonym for traffic jams?
A pain in the bum.
A pain in the neck.
No, congestion.
Traffic congestion.
Yes, traffic congestion is a great word.
You can use it in the essay, in speaking.
Do we say traffic congestions?
No, because it's uncountable.
Yes, traffic congestion or traffic jams or like one huge traffic jam.
We can also say the roads are congested.
Yes.
And it's not just roads.
Your nose can be congested when you have a cold, which means it's full of blech.
Exactly.
That's the scientific term.
Make sure that your nose is not congested.
Like you have no problems breathing.
We can also say heavy traffic.
The traffic is really heavy.
Or busy traffic.
Or sluggish traffic.
Slow traffic.
I was going to say slow, but then I thought it would be too much of a lower band word.
You're sluggish.
That's why you say sluggish.
I was sluggish with my answer there.
And we can say that I usually get stuck in traffic.
So the phrase is like getting stuck in traffic.
You do get stuck in traffic.
And I do tell people I get stuck in traffic, whether it's true or not.
When the examiner asks you how people travel to work, you can say by metro, by bus, by car.
Rory told us, like, take the trams or on foot.
It's interesting, like, by car, by bus, but on foot.
You can say by foot, but it's just not a common saying.
No, it's wrong.
No, no, don't say that.
I've heard people talking about by foot before.
Really?
Yeah, it's not common, but it does exist.
No, usually we say on foot.
But usually it's on, yeah.
Yeah.
And Rory, you said that some roads are sometimes packed.
So the same as congested?
Yes.
And if you travel by metro, sometimes it's difficult to find a place.
And Rory has used a nice one about some of the ladies who who have this propensity to save a seat.
Yes, so a propensity is this...
It's a tendency to behave in a certain way.
Usually, at least when I use it, it's used to mean something that people do, which is often annoying or dangerous, for example.
When we talk about traffic problems, you should say like many traffic problems or fewer traffic problems.
We don't say less problems.
No, no, no, no, no, no.
Fewer, fewer traffic problems or fewer people.
So I wish there were fewer people on the roads or fewer cars.
So fewer, this is your word and that is bad Latin grammar, because even native speakers make mistakes with that.
Oh yeah, native speakers usually say less people, less cars.
And then by the end of that discussion you have less brain cells.
Yeah, so fewer.
Fewer people, fewer cars, fewer traffic problems.
I saw that in a CV I was reading once.
And I asked the teacher what the difference between less and fewer was in the interview.
And they couldn't tell me.
Well, actually, they could.
They attempted to.
They said less is used in formal situations and fewer is used in informal situations.
And that was just no, no.
If you don't know the answer to something, don't lie.
Especially not to somebody who's interviewing you for a job.
Yes, dear listener, you can remember now and forever that fewer people, fewer cars, but less energy, less money, less water.
But fewer teachers who don't know the difference between fewer and less are employed by me.
Then you said something like, there has been a proportionate rise in the number of problems.
Yeah, so a proportionate rise is just as something else rises, something also rises at the same time.
You can also have a proportionate decrease as well.
And you can say that the number of traffic problems has increased or has decreased over the years.
So we are using the present perfect tense here.
And also about traffic problems, Rory has mentioned that Moscow is always developing, right?
So my city is always developing and traffic is getting more and more horrible, for example.
Rory, what did you do with your schedule?
You space it out, right?
Yeah, so to be honest, it's probably not the best way of describing it.
I space out the things on my schedule.
So it means that if there's a problem with the traffic, then at least I'm not late.
Or at least I try to.
It's sometimes quite difficult.
And it's better to flow around problems.
Yeah, I like this expression, like be like the water and flow around the problem.
So rather than try and solve problems, you find alternative ways of getting around them.
So the problem is just something you ignore.
Yeah, so you can get annoyed by traffic problems or you can just flow around traffic problems.
Yeah, another word which is important is to commute and commuters.
So, for example, many people commute to work by metro or by bus, right?
So instead of saying just people go to work, you say commute to work, which is a very specific word, and there are millions of commuters Getting stuck in traffic.
A morning commute.
Could you give us a sentence?
Sure.
My morning commute.
Well, you could talk about my morning commute from my apartment to my place of work takes about an hour.
Would you like to use a bicycle to stay out of traffic?
I wouldn't like to use a bicycle in Moscow.
That would be taking my life into my hands.
And I hate cyclists.
I really don't like them.
Sorry if anyone's a cyclist even, I should say.
Yeah, and we also talked about rush hour, right?
Can you say like peak hour?
Or it should be rush hour.
Well, rush hour is used for the time when people are moving around from work to home or home to work.
But peak hours usually describes... when something is in service or something is in use the most.
So peak hours on trains could be the rush hour, but it could also be at the weekend, when people are moving around because they have the free time to do this.
Yeah, and we say like in the rush hour.
And Rory, I was wondering why it's called a rush hour, a rush hour, if no one is moving?
Well, the reason why no one's moving is because they're all so, well, they're all in such a hurry.
And there's a joke here, you see, rush hour, but no one is moving, you know.
It's ironic.
But hopefully you'll be in a rush now to use all this vocabulary with your examiner when you do your speaking exam.
Oh, right.
Don't you think we are overdoing the jokes?
No, we're just it just feels like we're overdoing it.
Because we've been sitting recording like 25 billion sessions, 25 billion recordings in a row.
Anyway, thank you very much for listening.
And remember, the road to success is rarely free of traffic jams.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye, bye, bye.
Roy, how do most people travel to work where you live?
Probably either by metro or car or bus.
Although some people take the trams and the trolleybuses these days.
Some lucky souls get to go on foot, but the rest of us are like sardines and cans in the rush hour, unfortunately.
What traffic problems are there in your area?
Well, just Russian traffic and driving in general really.
Rules are selectively followed and enforced, and the roads are sometimes packed.
Then there's this rush to the metro in the morning, and then you have the rush hour in the evening time as well.
You're lucky if you can get a seat actually, especially if you're a man.
Mercifully.
I'm only a few stops from where I get the bus, so it's okay for me, but it can still be quite annoying.
It's the same with most kinds of public transport, to be honest with you.
Some of the ladies I work with have this propensity to save a seat for their bags, because they should never be left on the floor, apparently.
Which means it's always a struggle to get a comfortable spot, regardless of whether it's public or private transport, it seems sometimes.
Are there more traffic problems now than in the past?
Well...
There's more traffic in general now, so I imagine there's been a proportionate rise in the number of problems.
But maybe the seriousness has decreased compared to before, because we have more safety measures.
Everybody's got improved seatbelts and there are airbags.
Actually, as it turns out, windscreen wipers weren't invented initially with cars.
They had to be invented later on.
So yeah, all of these technological improvements probably mean that maybe there are fewer problems.
Maybe.
Do you think there'll be fewer traffic problems in the future where you live?
Well, the infrastructure in Moscow is always developing, so I think the trend I mentioned earlier will continue where I am, at the local level too.
How do traffic problems affect you?
Well, aside from slow traffic and struggling for a seat not tremendously my schedule's quite flexible and I've learned to live with standing, so it's not a major issue for me.
How would you reduce the traffic problems in your area?
I think the only way to do that would be to have fewer people.
But then the side effect of that would just be spreading the problem around or increasing the problems over a wider area.
I think it's better to flow around problems than try and solve them.
So I spaced out my schedule, found things to do while I wait and just be generally more patient with people.
And that worked out pretty well for me so far.
