Hello lovely and welcome into IELTS speaking part 2.
We have a strange topic.
Oh wow, it's a new topic and it's really strange, like super strange.
So strange that worry will read it out.
Describe a time when the electricity suddenly went off.
Yes, that was a fun one to read.
Can you imagine?
Describe a time when the electricity, dear listener, in your house, wherever you were, went off.
Like, no electricity, no light.
Bam!
It's gone.
You should say when and where it happened, how long it lasted, what you did during that time without any lights in your house, and explain how you felt about it.
What a super strange stuff!
Maybe you've never experienced it in your life.
Actually, I've had many times when the electricity went off in my house because I live in the country.
And also as a child, in summer, we lived in the country and it was a typical thing.
When it was pouring down, rain and thunderstorms, no electricity.
I'm quite lucky because I lived in a place where this was a common thing.
Rory, give us a story.
I'd probably like to talk about the time when I lived in Ghana.
This is about 10 years ago now, when I was just starting out as an English teacher.
And if you're not aware where it is, then it's a country in the west of Africa.
And I've been living there for a few months.
And in the first month, this kind of thing didn't happen.
But later on, I was warned that it might.
It's a practice called load shedding, I think, which is where electricity supplies are reduced or cut off in some places.
I think it's part of managing the electrical grid in some countries.
But I don't know enough about it to say for sure.
Anyway, when it did happen, of course, the power went out because it was disconnected.
And it lasted for a few hours, actually.
And under normal circumstances, it would be difficult to know what to do during that time.
But in my case, we knew that it was coming.
Maybe not exactly, Wayne, but we knew when it was coming.
We knew it was coming.
And so I was ready.
I just picked up a book and I sat and read my book in the sunshine until the power came back on.
We knew that happened because the fans started to work again.
Some people have a real problem with the heat, but I don't mind sitting out in the sunshine and just waiting for things to resolve themselves.
When it comes to how I felt about it, well...
It was a new experience, having grown up in the UK where this is not a common practice.
It was a bit of a surprise, but nothing terribly dramatic happened.
I was happy when it was over, but it's not something that really had a major impact on my life because, If memory serves, it happened at the weekend, so there wasn't really anything that was hugely disrupted by that.
I lived in the middle of nowhere, so not a big problem.
Of course, if it hadn't happened then that would have perhaps been slightly more convenient, but it's hardly a disaster.
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So, dear listener, now you should remember a time when the electricity suddenly went off, right?
Or lie.
You can choose Rory's story.
Just steal his story.
If you've never had such a situation, make it up.
Imagine you went to some country house and then maybe there was a storm or the rain was pouring down.
There was a thunderstorm and then bam! the electricity went off.
And Roy, tell us, like, what usually happens when the electricity goes off?
So goes off, there is no electricity.
The power is cut, so nothing works, no electrical items can function.
So this could just be the lights, or it could be computers and other things which are connected to the mains electricity.
The power is cut.
The power is cut off.
The power means electricity.
So I had no power.
The power was cut off or the power was off.
We can't use any electrical devices, pretty much nothing.
And also heating, right?
If it's in winter, there is no heating because heating is also connected to electricity, right?
To this electrical power.
So there's no heating and all you have is like candles, your fireplace, if you have a fireplace.
And sometimes in some houses, water is connected to electricity.
So if I don't have any electricity, I don't have any water.
Oh, wow.
That is a weird one.
Although I suppose water pumps require electricity.
Yeah, water pumps.
You see?
To have water in your bathroom, you need electricity.
So we say that...
I'm going to tell you about a time when the electricity was cut off in the countryside, or when the electricity was cut when the power was cut.
It's not a common practice where I live or it's quite common where I live.
It's kind of a regular situation.
It happens all the time and usually it happens if there is a storm thunderstorm, if it rains heavily, there are some problems with the power.
So it's common or it's not a common practice in my country and rory told us his story about ghana in africa.
Our rory worked in africa.
Honestly, this is not something that I'm used to dealing with, so thank heavens that I was able to remember when this happened.
And Rory, when you lived in the countryside in Scotland in your parents' house, so the power was always on.
Yeah, even when there were freak snowstorms or something like this, we always had power.
Yeah, because in many countries I think it's quite common in storms, in some heavy storms in winter.
And if the power goes off?
When they fix something.
So there is no storm, there is no rain, but they're working on something and they switch it off.
What do you call it?
How do you explain the situation?
People are trying to restore the power.
Oh, I could have said that actually.
The power was restored.
Yeah, the power was restored.
It went back on again.
Or you can say that, yeah, the electricity went off because they were fixing something.
And you can say something was disconnected.
So what was disconnected in your story?
Well, the power was disconnected, so the fans stopped working.
But that's not really a big deal for me.
Or it wasn't at the time.
Maybe it would be different now.
Yeah.
Sometimes they tell you that there will be no electricity on this day at this hour right, so i knew that it was coming.
Or i didn't know that it was coming.
The task says like suddenly went off.
But you can kind of say that i knew it was coming, so i was prepared, i lit my candles and i started my fireplace.
Or I didn't know it was coming so it was cold and I didn't have any heating.
I froze to death.
Well, if I'd frozen to death, then I wouldn't be here to talk about it now.
Yeah, the second conditional, you see.
No, actually, the third conditional.
Well, then the power was cut, and I melted.
And then I wasn't able to tell anyone about it.
Yeah, but Rory was in Africa, so it was pretty hot.
The fan stopped working and rory picked up a book, sat down in the sun until the power came back on.
So you can say well, i didn't do much, i just waited until the power came back on.
The power came back on in two hours.
It lasted for two hours or three hours or five minutes.
I just waited for things to resolve themselves.
So we solve a problem or we resolve a problem.
So I just did nothing.
I waited for things to resolve themselves.
In my situation, when there is no electricity, I look at the chat.
We have a chat of like, where neighbors, all the neighbors, are in this chat.
If there's no electricity, they write oh, do you have electricity?
No no, i don't.
Okay, did you call them?
So call the, you know local authorities.
So did you call them?
Yeah, did you write to them?
Yeah yeah, i did.
I did what's going on?
And then they start, you know, chatting about it oh, the power is off again, what's going on?
So all this, you know complaining is going on in the chat.
I was really happy when it was over.
I was happy when the power came back on again.
I was delighted.
You think everybody would be.
Yeah, that's true.
It didn't have a major impact on my life, so it didn't influence my life.
So everything was fine, my life wasn't disrupted.
So to disrupt something, my routine was fine, it wasn't hugely disrupted.
Or if it was disrupted, then the routine was not fine.
Yeah, we can disrupt a system, a process or event.
For example, his show was disrupted by millions of fans.
The meeting was disrupted by protests, for example.
Or our meeting was disrupted by a power cut.
Or you can say that I was really disrupted because I was having a meeting online at the time and there was no electricity.
So I couldn't use my laptop.
So it was hardly a disaster.
So it wasn't a disaster for me.
Or it was a disaster.
I was cold.
I couldn't prepare my food.
I didn't have any water.
So you can make the story dramatic, dear listener, and this is a thing to tell the examiner a dramatic story.
Oh, i was so cold, i didn't have any food and it was getting colder and colder and darker and darker.
I didn't know what to do.
So the examiner gets all excited and you know, like boy you.
So the examiners will start developing emotions towards yourself.
We need more dramatic stories in the future.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So, and this could influence the decision on the band they would give to you.
That's true, dear listeners, our psychology, you know.
Yeah, one of my students told a story how he fell down while snowboarding and how he hit himself really badly.
And after the exam, the examiner asked my student, so were you okay in the end?
Like, is everything okay with your leg now?
Oh, that's so nice.
And then they were given a band nine.
Probably, yes.
No, but he got a good score, like 7.5 or something.
You see?
Drama, you know?
Suffering.
But you kind of tell it in a happy way, but you kind of make emotions appear in the examiner's brain and heart.
Psychological manipulation, there we go.
Exactly, exactly.
Very professional.
Yeah, don't tell anybody that we're teaching you this on the podcast again.
In this publicly available podcast.
Rory, what else can we say about the electricity?
I mean, vocabulary.
We say... The power died.
Yes, the power died.
Okay, what else?
The lights went out.
The lights went out.
What do you call people who fix the lights, who fix electricity? electricians electricians well it could be electricians or you can also have engineers that deal with this yeah electricians i called the electricians to fix the lights to fix the power to fix the electricity Any other technical vocabulary like wires or electrical poles?
What do you call these things?
Well, I mean, that would only count if they'd been damaged in some way.
So maybe like the electrical grid or the electrical lines were damaged, for example.
But here...
The electrical lines were damaged by the rain, by a heavy storm.
And usually this is like a common situation.
The electrical lines were damaged.
That's why the power was down in the whole neighborhood.
What can a person do, like maybe something that people can do at home ruin to damage the electricity.
Well, you could probably like plug in too many things and, I don't know, blow out your circuits or something like that.
I don't really know how electricity works, to be honest.
So we're not electricians, so if you are, well done, good for you.
If people plug in too many things bam, you know what happens not an explosion, but like uh, you blow up your socket.
The thing that you plug in, your plug into it, gets technical deal.
Listen, that's why we should finish.
Yeah, this is.
I should have been an electrician.
Yeah, you don't need that.
Okay, just use the synonyms we've given you.
Okay, that would be enough.
Thank you very much for listening.
And we'll get back to you with more electricity stories.
Bye.
Raise the rudder.
Raise the sails.
Raise the sails.
Captain, an unidentified ship is approaching.
Over.
Roger.
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Describe a time when the electricity, dear listener, in your house, wherever you were, went off.
You should say when and where it happened, how long it lasted, what you did during that time without any lights in your house, and explain how you felt about it.
I'd probably like to talk about the time when I lived in Ghana.
This is about 10 years ago now, when I was just starting out as an English teacher.
And if you're not aware where it is, then it's a country in the west of Africa.
And I've been living there for a few months.
And In the first month, this kind of thing didn't happen, but later on I was warned that it might.
It's a practice called load shedding, I think, which is where electricity supplies are reduced or cut off in some places.
I think it's part of managing the electrical grid in some countries, but I don't know enough about it to say for sure.
Anyway, when it did happen, of course the power went, went out, because it was disconnected, and it lasted for a few hours actually, and i you know, under normal circumstances it would be difficult to know what to do during that time.
But um, in my case, we knew that it was coming, maybe not exactly when, but we knew when it was coming.
Uh, we knew it was coming, And so I was ready.
I just picked up a book and I sat and read my book in the sunshine until the power came back on.
We knew that happened because the fans started to work again.
Some people have a real problem with the heat, but I don't mind sitting out in the sunshine and just waiting for things to resolve themselves.
When it comes to how I felt about it, well...
It was a new experience, having grown up in the UK where this is not a common practice.
It was a bit of a surprise, but nothing terribly dramatic happened.
I was happy when it was over, but it's not something that really had a major impact on my life because, If memory serves, it happened at the weekend, so there wasn't really anything that was hugely disrupted by that.
I lived in the middle of nowhere, so not a big problem.
Of course, if it hadn't happened then that would have perhaps been slightly more convenient, but it's hardly a disaster.
