Hello, Sunshine.
I'm Maria.
And my name is Rory, and we're 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 modal answers, gorgeous vocabulary and fabulous grammar for your high IELTS score.
It's for a band 9 score.
Maria, what are you doing?
Pay attention.
I was just checking my emails.
I see.
What shall we talk about today?
Emails.
Yeah.
Yes, dear listener, emails is a fresh IELTS speaking part one topic.
Are you ready?
Are you excited?
Emails it is.
Rory, do you often send emails?
Probably every day, if not every other day, I do.
I often need to send documents to students or various organizations I work with and work for.
So it definitely features in my day.
I would say most of my days, probably.
Is sending emails common in your country?
I would imagine so, since you usually have to contact stores or colleagues via email.
Messaging isn't very common via the telephone.
Sending messages in a messenger is seen as a bit more informal and very few people text these days.
Do you think sending emails will be more or less common in the future?
I'm not sure.
Like I said about messengers, they're becoming certainly more popular.
So maybe they will overtake email as the main form of communication.
But we still have radios and telephones despite email existing.
So I doubt they'll disappear entirely.
Do you prefer texting or emails?
Neither, to be honest.
Texting is a bit outdated and emails are always so long.
Messaging is much easier and more direct.
You can even check messages have been read or whether they're not, in most cases.
Do you prefer to have an email or a card for your birthday?
Not overly fussed, to be honest.
Just the fact someone took the time to send a message on my birthday is good enough for me.
I suppose email is relatively more environmentally friendly by comparison, but that's about the only advantage I can think of.
Will emails replace letters?
Probably not entirely.
Like I said before, radio didn't replace telegraphed messages completely and e-books haven't replaced regular paper books, so they'll probably become more commonplace, if they haven't already.
But totally eclipsing letters is unlikely.
Thank you, Roy, for your answers.
I'll email you my thoughts about this.
Thank you.
Thank you for listening.
If you liked our little chat about emails on our free version, then you will love our premium version, where we have answers not for part one, but for part two and part three.
In part two, I'm going to describe a special day out that costs little to no money.
And in part three, I'm going to talk about my leisure time.
You can find the links to this in the description below or above or wherever the description is.
So, emails.
Yeah, so we have emails, so we send emails.
We have texting.
Texting is without the internet, so you just write a text and just send an SMS, right?
Is this what texting is about?
Yeah.
Right.
Okay.
Messaging.
So you write a message on WhatsApp, on Telegram, on different other platforms.
So when you message, you use some apps to send a message.
And we have texting and messaging.
Yes, but we won't mention any specific examples unless they want to contact us so we can advertise for them.
Yeah, okay.
And then the examiner can ask you, do you prefer to send an email or do you prefer to text?
And then Rory kept talking about sending messages in different apps in different messengers.
So message, send the message and messengers yeah, like what's up?
WhatsApp people, if you want to sponsor our podcast.
And also McDonald's people, Apple, Elon Musk.
So feel free to... Messi, Messi, if you want to sponsor our podcast, we would like that very much.
We would like the money very much.
Rory, we don't care about the money.
Selling our souls down the river and the cause of advertising, on the other hand.
Rory, just stop talking, Rory.
This podcast has turned me into a revolutionary.
Yeah, you know, like, three years ago, Rory didn't used to have an Instagram account.
He didn't know what Facebook was just three years ago.
Look at you now.
Look at me now, conspiring to bring down capitalism.
That's what social media will do to you emails.
Right back to email.
So we send emails.
We also send documents to different people, so what else can we say?
We send emails, we receive emails, we send them again, we check emails.
We check emails at night.
We check them the first thing when we wake up, maybe.
You can talk about copying people in or blind copying them in.
That's just when you add people to the email send list.
And also when you send an email, you attach certain documents.
So it's kind of convenient in terms of you can attach things.
Yeah, but also you can do it in a messenger.
So, yeah.
And then, is sending emails common in your country?
So, it's common and also, Rory, you've used commonplace.
Yes.
Is it the same, commonplace?
For the purposes of this answer, yes.
There must be a difference between those two things.
Probably.
Common is used to describe.
Well, it can be used to describe something that's of low quality or not very refined, whereas commonplace means that it's everywhere.
But people use them interchangeably because of course the difference between those two things is very small.
Right.
And we can contact people via emails.
So you send an email.
I'll contact you via an email.
Right.
Or should I write to you in a messenger or send an email?
And Rory said that writing in a messenger is seen a bit more informal.
So emailing or messaging.
So messaging is a bit more informal.
Messengers are becoming more popular right, or maybe has already become more popular than emails, so messengers are becoming more popular.
So use the present continuous to show the trend, right?
Then Rory... said that will overtake, so messengers will overtake emails.
What did you mean, overtake?
They'll just...
I was going to say they'll just outstrip them, but that means almost the same thing.
So that just means that they become more popular.
You have the emails here and messengers used more, more, more, more, more, and they'll overtake.
They probably have overtaken them already, to be honest with you.
I have no idea.
I'm not a tech expert.
But if I were to guess, then I would say that's either about to happen or will happen.
And there we go.
I'm not an expert, but if i were to guess, and then blah blah blah, blah.
Yeah, so overtake also.
We use this verb about a car so uh, like a ferrari and a jaguar, and then A Ferrari overtakes Jaguar.
Jaguar is like lagging behind.
Jaguar.
And also, when you compared letters to emails, so when we write actual letters.
So, Rory, you said that emails will not totally eclipse letters.
But that's just another way of saying they'll overtake completely.
So if something is eclipsed, then you can't see it anymore.
Like if you think about when the moon eclipses the sun, you can't really see that much of the sun.
So it's the same for concepts and things.
Total eclipse of the heart.
That's much nicer than total eclipse of the email.
Yeah, so this is a very nice verb to use, kind of creative and band 9.
Well, I just didn't want to say replace again, because I already said replace for talking about radio and telegraph.
Yeah, so more commonplace, more common, more popular, will replace something, right?
And could you give us a sentence with eclipse again about letters and emails?
Yeah, well, letters were never or have never been totally eclipsed by email.
And do you actually write letters these days, like actual letters on paper?
I haven't written one in about a year, and I think the last letter I wrote was to my friend John.
And then do you prefer a card for your birthday or an email?
And Rory said, I'm not overly fussed about it.
So it's just a nice way of saying I don't care.
Yeah, he's just like, I don't care.
I'm just happy that someone thinks like, oh, it's Rory's birthday.
Let's send him a message.
Unlike certain people who don't just fail to send me messages, they also fail to show up to my birthdays.
I wonder who I could be referring to.
Vanya and Maria.
Who?
Who?
Who indeed?
And then you can say that emailing is more environmentally friendly.
So we use kind of paper when we send letters and cards, birthday cards.
We buy them, you know.
We send them.
We throw them away maybe.
And emailing is more environmentally friendly.
And when you use all this energy and computers and technology and yeah, that's more environmentally friendly.
That was sarcasm.
Oh, sorry.
Oh yeah, apparently keeping your emails as well is meant to be bad for the environment too.
Oh, really?
So keeping your emails?
Oh, wow.
Well, they have to be kept somewhere.
So they're kept on a server that will create heat and that will also cause climate change as well.
Well, that is the argument.
I mean, at this stage, I think people are just finding things to complain about.
But I think the worst thing about emails is just they keep people keep sending emails to you and different ads and different people you don't know.
And then emails, emails, and then you're so full of emails, there's not enough space.
I have a question.
How many unread emails do you have on your phone?
You can check it right now.
Okay, okay.
I'm checking, I'm checking.
How many unread emails do I have?
I have 92.
Oh my God.
My brother has something like 26,000 of them just because he doesn't delete them.
And it really depresses me because you see this like notification icon popping up like just, would you ever just answer the emails, dear listener, could you please tell us um, do you delete the emails and how many?
So do now check how many unread emails do you have now and let us know if people, if there are more disorganized people or more organized people listening to our podcast.
So if you're organized, then obviously everything will be your way, but if and it's right place and folder, but if you're disorganized, then you'll probably have 27 000 emails that you haven't read yet.
So Maria is all over the place.
Are you all over the place?
Yeah, with my emails, yeah.
I don't have like thousands, but well, 92.
92 isn't that bad.
There are worse.
It is not that bad.
Yeah, there are worse examples.
I wouldn't worry too much about it.
Please let us know in the comments what do you have and do you delete them, and what's your system of organizing your mailbox.
Thank you very much for listening.
Can our listeners send us an email?
So if they can find us, it's easier to send a message on Instagram.
That would be nice.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Oh, actually, please do because I keep collecting reviews.
So if people send us them, then I can put them on the Instagram account and that would be nice.
So yes, please.
Thank you very much.
We love you and we hug you.
Like us, share us, subscribe.
Email us.
Bye.
Bye.
See you next week.
Rory, do you often send emails?
Probably every day, if not every other day, I do.
I often need to send documents to students or various organisations I work with and work for.
So it definitely features in my day.
I would say most of my days, probably.
Is sending emails common in your country?
I would imagine so, since you usually have to contact stores or colleagues via email.
Messaging isn't very common via the telephone.
Sending messages in a messenger is seen as a bit more informal and very few people text these days.
Do you think sending emails will be more or less common in the future?
I'm not sure.
Like I said about messengers, they're becoming certainly more popular.
So maybe they will overtake email as the main form of communication.
But we still have radios and telephones despite email existing.
So I doubt they'll disappear entirely.
Do you prefer texting or emails?
Neither, to be honest.
Texting is a bit outdated and emails are always so long.
Messaging is much easier and more direct.
You can even check messages have been read or whether they're not, in most cases.
Do you prefer to have an email or a card for your birthday?
Not overly fussed, to be honest.
Just the fact someone took the time to send a message on my birthday is good enough for me.
I suppose email is relatively more environmentally friendly by comparison, but that's about the only advantage I can think of.
Will emails replace letters?
Probably not entirely.
Like I said before, radio didn't replace telegraphed messages completely and e-books haven't replaced regular paper books, so they'll probably become more commonplace, if they haven't already.
But totally eclipsing letters is unlikely.
Thank you.
