And my name is Rory and we are the hosts of the IELTS Speaking for Success podcast.
Podcast themes to help you improve your speaking skills, as well as your listening skills along the way.
We started this podcast to give you gorgeous grammar and super vocabulary for your high IELTS score.
Maria, you get around a lot.
Where were you recently?
Oh, Baikal, Altai, Turkey.
Oh my God, it's like a geography class.
Let's talk about geography.
Yes.
Yes, dear listener, geography again.
It's the second episode on geography.
Make sure you listen to our first episode and now it's a comeback geography again.
Do you like geography?
I like the subject.
To be honest, I wasn't a great fan of it in school.
It wasn't very well taught.
I did like finding out about the effects of geography on human history, though.
There's a brilliant book called Guns, Germs and Steel on the subject, and I found that quite fun to read.
Do you think geography is useful?
Well, I think a basic grasp of it is important and knowing how to navigate, but things like understanding or working at the incline of a hill is the sort of thing that sends most people to sleep, including me.
It's just sort of useless, to be honest.
Have you ever studied geography at school?
Yeah, and it was extremely boring and the logic behind it wasn't very clear.
I remember the teacher droning on about tectonic plates and convection currents, but I'd already read about that in a book beforehand, so it wasn't exactly new information.
Do you want to be a geographer in the future?
No, I'm quite happy being a teacher, thank you.
I'm not sure I have the patience to learn everything about geography all over again.
And I'm not even sure what that job would involve now.
We've got satellite mapping to do everything for us.
I'm not sure what being a geographer even involves.
Dear listener, we do have our premium episodes where Rory and I are discussing fresh topics in Speaking Part 2 and 3.
This week on our Premium, Rory is describing a party that he enjoyed, and in Speaking Part 3, we are discussing parties in general.
The links to our Premium Super episodes are in the description.
Do check them out.
So geography, dear listener, I wasn't a fan of geography in school or at school.
So I wasn't a fan of geography or maybe I was a fan of geography.
I was into geography.
I was into geography.
I liked geography.
What were you a fan of at school?
Nothing.
Just hanging out with my friends after school.
I was a fan of the fact when it was over.
I was a fan of escaping school.
Missing classes, you know, going just for walks, endless walks.
Yeah, but sometimes I did miss classes and it was quite fun.
And I lived like two minutes away from school.
So when I didn't go to classes, I went home.
Two minutes and I'm in my bed.
You can say geography wasn't taught well.
So passive voice.
Geography wasn't taught well.
Or it was taught well.
I loved the teacher.
I was a fan of geography.
Or it was boring.
Dull.
It was the dullest thing in the world.
And also, dear listener, remember that we have different kind of types of geography.
For example, human geography, physical geography, studies of hills mountains rivers oceans, earth science, and also just geography.
And geography of the soul.
I found this quote on the internet.
Okay, so it's very smart.
What's geography of the soul?
I'm gonna tell you, there is an internal landscape, a geography of the soul.
We search for its outlines all our lives, josephine hart.
Oh, it's nice you see geography of the soul rory, so kind of like you search for geography of your soul.
Do I?
Do you?
I feel really bad after that really nice poem.
I'm just like, do I do that?
The geography of our soul, dear listener, kind of the outlines.
We do search for the meaning of life, who we are.
You see how philosophical we can get here?
And, dear listener, you can say that, like, do you like geography?
Yes, I prefer the geography of the soul.
A basic grasp of geography.
Rory, what is the basic grasp of geography?
Well, that's just a simple understanding, like being able to know what a hill is or what a mountain is.
And being able to identify different things on a map, that's pretty useful.
So if you've got a basic grasp of geography, you should be able to do things like understand what you're seeing on a map.
So you can say, I reckon, I think that a basic grasp of it is useful, right?
So a basic grasp of geography is important.
And how to navigate.
So geography is about maps.
So how to navigate, how to find your way around things is useful.
What is the incline of a hill?
Well, oh great, it's wonderful.
I said that that was the most boring thing ever and now I'm going to talk about it.
So the incline of a hill is just how steep it is.
So here we've got a flat incline and here shown in percentages or in degrees, and I think that's the most boring thing ever.
We had to do it in geography at school, like just working out what the different levels were and things, and it was so dull.
I don't really understand why it couldn't have been so like, why it couldn't have been more interesting, but it wasn't, so I don't like it.
So physical geography studies like hills, mountains, the incline of a hill.
And here to show off your beautiful band 9 vocabulary, a specific vocabulary you can say well, knowing about the incline of a hill is not important in today's world.
Well, it's not important for most people.
It's important for geographers.
You can say that geography sends most people to sleep.
So it's boring.
Geography.
Yeah.
So, oh, it sends me to sleep or it sends most people to sleep.
Another specific word is tectonic plates.
So geography, physical geography studies tectonic plates.
One of the subjects of this subject. is tectonic plates.
What are tectonic plates, Rory?
We've already explained this in a previous video, but tectonic plates are created by fractures in the Earth's crust, so the crust sits on top of the magma and they move around, and the big sections that move around are called plates.
And when they overlap with each other and separate suddenly, they create earthquakes.
This topic sends me to sleep.
Likewise.
So you can say it's extremely boring or it was extremely boring at school.
And the teacher wasn't great.
The teacher was boring.
And I was bored to death when I studied things about tectonic plates.
So the incline of a hill, tectonic plates.
So it's like two phrases for Band 9.
Also you can say that at school we had to analyze maps, charts, it was boring, and we studied Things about soil, oceans, what else?
Like climate landforms, because physical geography studies landforms.
So kind of like the form of the land around us, below us.
Rory would not like to be a geographer in the future.
Rory, like, why not, you know?
Such a, like, prosperous career.
I don't know what... Maybe it is.
I don't know anything about being a geographer.
Like, the actual job itself.
I don't know what that involves.
Okay okay, so do you have an idea?
Oh yes, i have a very clear idea, thanks to national geographic.
I did read a very interesting article there.
So geographers explore, they research the physical properties, qualities of Earth's surface and human societies.
So there is also this human geography.
Rory, did you know about that?
I knew about human geography, but I didn't know that that was something that geographers research.
That sounds like something an anthropologist does.
No no no, it's like a human geography.
And again, there are different types of geography and different types of geographers.
And also they investigate the impact, the geographic impact, of human activities and the role of humans in our environment.
You see huh, it's not just geography, it's geography, and also geography involves um, i told you like physical geography, and physical geography also has different disciplines, like subjects, for example geomorphology, glaciology.
Glaciology, I think about glaciers, these ice things.
Hydrology, climatology, biogeography.
Oceanography, dear listener.
Roy, what's oceanography?
Well, that's the study of the geography of the ocean, but that's a totally different job from being a geographer.
That's like an oceanographer, sorry.
Right, dear listener, when the examiner asks you, would you like to be a geographer?
You go, no, I would like to be an oceanographer and study the ocean.
Wow.
So I would like to study ice.
Beautiful.
So the article is amazing.
It's quite long, but it gives you a very good idea about human geography.
Human geography.
But we post it in the description.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
It's in the description, dear listener.
So make sure you read it.
Thank you very much for listening and for watching.
Write in the comments.
Would you like to be an oceanologist oceanographer ah, oceanographer.
Would you like to be an oceanographer or a geographer, and what kind of geographer?
Let us know in the comments.
Yes, speaking of the comments, today's reflection task is application.
So that means you've got to use the language.
In the comments on YouTube or, if you want to, on our Instagram.
Use the vocabulary from the episodes to answer one of the questions.
Only one, not all of them, because otherwise you'll be writing paragraphs and that won't be very effective.
And once you send them, I'll give you some feedback.
Bye!
Do you like geography?
Well, like the subject.
To be honest, I wasn't a great fan of it in school.
It wasn't very well taught.
I did like finding out about the effects of geography on human history, though.
There's a brilliant book called Guns, Germs and Steel on the subject, and I found that quite fun to read.
Do you think geography is useful?
Well, I think a basic grasp of it is important and knowing how to navigate.
But things like understanding or working at the incline of a hill is the sort of thing that sends most people to sleep, including me.
It's just sort of useless, to be honest.
Have you ever studied geography at school?
Yeah, and it was extremely boring and the logic behind it wasn't very clear.
I remember the teacher droning on about tectonic plates and convection currents, but I'd already read about that in a book beforehand, so it wasn't exactly new information.
Do you want to be a geographer in the future?
No, I'm quite happy being a teacher, thank you.
I'm not sure I have the patience to learn everything about geography all over again.
And I'm not even sure what that job would involve now.
We've got satellite mapping to do everything for us.
I'm not sure what being a geographer even involves.
