Hello, everyone.
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 started this podcast to give you a look at how native super English native speaker...
You said native twice.
Is that because being native is twice as important?
I'm asking the questions and Rory is asking them using spectacular vocabulary and excellent grammar.
You just use asking twice.
That's because asking questions is twice as important as answering them.
Right.
Rory, are you worried about the questions today?
No, it's not rocket science, is it?
Right.
We're going to be talking about science, right?
Yeah.
Yes, dear listeners, in Speaking Part 1, they can ask you questions about science.
Rory, do you like science?
Oh, absolutely.
It gives answers to all the unanswered questions.
Medical science saves lives.
And I think generally it gives all these people that are scientists a sense of meaning in their lives.
Did you learn about science in primary school?
Um, kind of.
Although in my opinion, it was a bit tangential to the actual main syllabus.
It didn't get really serious until high school.
Then we had like classes for biology, chemistry, physics.
Did you have science classes at school?
Well, yeah, like I said, we had them at primary school and then we had them at high school.
I suppose, in addition to the sort of almost superfluous primary school education, the high school education was a bit more thorough.
So like.
Like I was saying, we had biology and chemistry and physics classes.
I didn't actually like it at the time.
I kind of regret it now, though.
I feel like I have a more inquiring mind now.
How often do you read about science?
I used to read more about it than I do now.
I suppose the closest I get is reading linguistics and methodology texts.
But I would like to read more.
I have a book called Bad Science, which is by a British journalist I want to read.
So that's going to give me a good head start, I think.
Do you think it's important to study science?
Oh, definitely.
As I mentioned at the very beginning, it gives people the answers to their questions, it saves lives and it provides meaning to people.
I think it's absolutely essential.
And should children study science?
They should study it better than I did, I think.
Okay.
Rory, thank you very much for your answers.
Shall we go over the vocabulary?
Yes.
So for grammar you've just used.
All right.
When we talk about science, we talk about what subjects?
Oh, God, there's so many subjects.
Biology, physics.
Yeah, biology, chemistry and physics are the main ones.
But like anything ending in ology is like a science, isn't it?
Astronomy, what about astronomy?
Oh, astronomy as well.
It's one of the weirder ones.
So a lot of sciences have this ending, like archaeology, which is like studying ancient cultures and ancient sites, or paleontology, which is studying dinosaurs and various life forms connected to that.
All right.
Astrology is not a science.
Astronomy.
Yeah, you can have... About planets and...
So we have science and we have the humanities.
So if you study literature... like the English language, these are arts.
Yes, arts and humanities.
And science, science subjects, we can say scientists, scientific subjects.
Rory, you've used a nice adjective, tangential.
Yeah.
Oh, gosh, what does it mean, tangential?
Tangential is just like erratic or not connected to the subject really very well.
It's usually the collocation is something as tangential to something.
So that's a really higher level piece of vocabulary.
Gosh, band 10 out of 9.
Oh yeah, like band 300 maybe.
Could you give us a sentence?
Sure.
So the science education in primary school was tangential to the main curriculum, the main subjects.
Band 9, woohoo.
Okay, when we talk about school, the question was about primary school, right?
So for kids, like the first form till the fifth or the fourth, right?
Then we go secondary school and high school.
Yeah, and then higher education at university.
We can also talk about syllabus.
You've mentioned this nice word, a syllabus or the school's syllabus.
Yeah, so the school syllabus.
Well, words like syllabus and curriculum these days are used To mean the same thing.
So the syllabus is basically the plan of education, for it could be for the year in a primary school or for a subject in a university.
So it's like what different parts of the subject will the student study throughout the course?
Yeah, we can say the curriculum includes science.
Yes.
The curriculum includes like physics, biology.
Exactly.
There is a difference between syllabus and curriculum, but it's only really used by very technical academic people.
If we have any teachers listening, so yes, there is a difference.
Yes, if we have any teachers listening, sorry, but it's true.
There's a difference.
There is a difference, but it's not important.
Yeah, it's like, you know, a tomato.
What is it, a fruit or a vegetable?
It's a cherry, isn't it?
Oh, wow.
Yes, it's a berry.
Oh, that's what it is.
Is it a berry or like a fruit or a vegetable?
Yeah, usually we say it's a vegetable, but actually from the scientific perspective you know it's not.
It's very confusing.
Yes, it is.
You mentioned that you have an inquiring mind.
An inquiring mind.
So you can talk about somebody wanting to know the answers to different questions constantly as having an inquiring mind.
Lots of scientists have inquiring minds because of course they want to find out the answers to things in their work.
They're curious.
Yeah.
Why does the wind blow?
Why do the planets move?
Why do we do this podcast?
Why are we here?
Right.
We know the answers.
We know the answers to those questions.
To everything, yes.
Roy, when you talked about your school days, your happy school days, you used the structure used to.
Yes.
I think we've talked about it.
We have, yeah.
So I used to enjoy science.
Yep, I used to enjoy science.
I used to read more.
Yeah, but now Rory doesn't.
In the past, Rory read more.
He used to read more, but now he goes dancing.
No, I don't.
You go dancing.
Podcasting.
I do the podcasting.
Yeah.
You've used a nice phrase, something with a head start.
Yes.
What was it?
Well, a head start, I actually didn't use the word correctly there.
A head start is like starting ahead of time.
But of course, I'm older now, and so...
It's a bit late for me to start reading about science.
So a head start is really like starting in advance.
What I should have said is it will give me a good restart or something like that.
So, but I did try and, you know, even native speakers can make mistakes and of course, the meaning is clear.
I still want to get a good grip of my science education, even though I'm older now.
Yeah, it's interesting.
If a native speaker makes a slip or a mistake, it's just like, yeah, it's okay.
But if a non-native speaker makes a mistake, it is a mistake.
Oh, trust me.
If any native speakers near me make mistakes, I correct them.
Don't worry.
We should do this.
It's important.
Yeah, super.
When we talk about school subjects like science, we can say that I'm into science, yeah?
Absolutely, yeah.
I like science, I'm into science.
If you kind of hate science, what do you say?
Oh, I'm not into it, really.
Or it's not my thing.
It's not my thing or it's not my cup of tea.
Absolutely.
It's not my cup of tea.
What about up your street?
You could say this, but it's not something I've heard in quite some time.
But would you say like, oh, it's not up my street or it's up my street?
If I had to say it, then I would say it's not up my street.
Right.
Or it's not my cup of tea.
It's not my thing.
Right.
Also, we can say I can't stand science.
Yes.
Like I hate science.
I can't stand science.
If you're very, very foolish and short-sighted, you could say that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Or I couldn't stand biology, for example.
It's just like nice synonyms to I like, I dislike.
Exactly.
Rory, thank you very much for being a lovely person you are, with all your gorgeous answers and super-duper grammar and vocabulary for Ben Nysko.
Dear listeners, you can listen to Rory's answers again and this time notice all the precise vocabulary he's just used for high school okay.
Rory, do you like science?
Oh, absolutely.
It gives answers to all the unanswered questions.
Medical science saves lives.
And I think generally it gives all these people that are scientists a sense of meaning in their lives.
Did you learn about science in primary school?
Kind of.
Although, in my opinion, it was a bit tangential to the actual main syllabus.
It didn't get really serious until high school.
Then we had like classes for biology, chemistry, physics.
Did you have science classes at school?
Well, yeah, like I said, we had them at primary school and then we had them at high school.
I suppose in addition to the sort of almost superfluous primary school education, the high school education was a bit more thorough education.
So like I was saying, we had biology and chemistry and physics classes.
I didn't actually like it at the time.
I kind of regret it now, though.
I feel like I have a more inquiring mind now.
How often do you read about science?
I used to read more about it than I do now.
I suppose the closest I get is reading linguistics and methodology texts.
But I would like to read more.
I have a I have a book called Bad Science, which is by a British journalist I want to read.
So that's going to give me a good head start, I think.
Do you think it's important to study science?
Oh, definitely.
As I mentioned at the very beginning, it gives people the answers to their questions, it saves lives and it provides meaning to people.
I think it's absolutely essential.
And should children study science?
They should study it better than I did.
Thank you very much for listening.
And we'll see you next time.
Bye.
Bye.
