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're starting this podcast to give you gorgeous grammar and fabulous vocabulary for your high IELTS school.
Your Pantene score.
Ay, Rory, Rory, you're now officially an old man.
You're 36 years old.
Ooh la la.
I know.
Hopefully you don't mind working with an old man.
Oh, I'm fine working with an old man.
Like, you look young anyway, so...
Shall we talk about working with old people?
Sure.
And it's just interesting, dear listener, like what topic is this?
Working with old people.
And we haven't invented this topic, dear listener.
It's just like IELTS people. named this topic working with old people.
Is it even polite to just call old people old people?
I don't know.
I'm not sure.
Maybe it means working with older people.
That's the topic that we've got to work with.
Yeah, but why is it a topic?
Why is it older people?
Why is it just not working with children?
Listen, this topic is very strange because I'm old.
Rory is old.
We are old and we are, you know, protesting.
You just said I wasn't old.
No, I said you are old.
You look young.
But come on, seriously, I'm joking, of course, dear listener.
36 years old.
It's not old at all.
It's young, it's healthy, it's like in full bloom.
36.
Maria is just full of compliments today about how I look.
No, but like if you could see Rory.
Rory is wearing a blue t-shirt and he's got his nice hair done, a lovely stylish haircut.
For going to London.
He's going to London.
He looks gorgeous.
So, yeah.
36 is, come on, it's young.
Forever young.
Right, dear listeners, if you are as old as me, yeah, let's talk about old people.
Working with old people.
Have you ever worked with older people?
Well, I suppose that depends on how we define old people, doesn't it?
I've certainly worked with people at least one or two decades older than me, but not with anyone that would qualify as a pensioner, at least not at the time.
Are you happy to work with people who are older than you?
I'll work with anyone as long as they are competent, frankly.
I suppose older teachers might have more experience, which might make that more likely, at least now that I think about it, though that's not necessarily guaranteed.
What are the advantages of working with older people?
Well, I've already said, they might be more competent and experienced, which might make work a bit less stressful, since you can draw on.
Well, all of that potentially.
As for other things, I would hope that might make them a bit more patient and understanding, since they've theoretically seen it all before, though in life there are no guarantees of that.
Are there any disadvantages?
Well, it's not set in stone, but older people might be more set in their ways, since they've had a long time to develop specific methods of doing things or ways of doing things.
And that might have crystallized.
So that might make them a bit inflexible.
I say that some elderly people are quite pleasant and keen on change.
Do you enjoy spending time with older people?
I've no issue being around anyone as long as they're nice to me.
No one wants to be around people that are awful, do they?
So it's less about age and more about personality for me.
As you know, we now release all of our premium content for free and it's available for one month.
After one month, it goes into our super secret archive.
To sign up for the archive, click the link in the description below.
See you soon.
Yay.
Thank you, Rory, for super polite answers.
Well, I'm old.
I need to represent.
No, you're not old.
36.
Come on, Rory.
Come on.
36 at the time of recording.
If you're kind of like 96.
96.
Okay, that's pretty old.
The body, the body is old.
But again, your soul could be still 26 or even younger.
Yeah, dear listener, so how do you feel about this topic?
Are you okay?
Because I'm worried about you, right?
Because health people, they come up with such topics, you know. if you're okay so yeah we say all the people to be polite right but the examiner can say all the people but we say kind of older people The elderly, also pensioners.
Pensioners, then how old is a pensioner?
Well, it varies from country to country because the law which determines when you get your pension will be different and have different age requirements.
On average, it's between 60 and 70 years old. so anyone of that age should be getting a pension.
Of course, given how the economy is these days, I will never see a pension, and neither will you, Maria.
We're going to be working for a very long time.
A pensioner, pensioner, or old age pensioner, is a C1 word, dear listeners of Band 8.
A person who receives a pension.
Are you kidding me?
Yeah, C1.
Okay.
According to the Cambridge Online Dictionary.
Hello, Cambridge.
So dear listener, you can talk about pensioners.
I worked with pensioners.
I'm fine with working with pensioners.
Or I've never worked with pensioners.
So like 60, 70 year old people.
And then you can express your kind of disappointment about this topic and say like well, that depends on how we define older people, how we define old people.
Like, What do you mean old people?
How old?
How old are they?
Because, like, Rory is 36 and he thinks he's old.
Yeah, am I old?
I don't even know how old I am.
I don't...
I want to remember, I want to forget how old I am.
So I think I'm old, like what about you maybe, dear listener?
You are like 27 and you, you think you are old.
You know like, define old, give a definition.
And you can say that I've worked with people older than me, right?
Or much older than me.
Like I worked with people who are my parents' age, for example, or my grandmother's age.
Or you can say like well, if you mean somebody who is a pensioner, then I've never worked with such people.
And here you can focus on character traits rather than age and say that I'll work with everyone, as long as if they are competent, knowledgeable and like nice people.
And Rory works with people, students, teachers.
So like. age doesn't matter for him well yes because it's not about how old you are it's about how well you can collaborate with other people surely just because you are young does not mean you can collaborate Rory, are you a yoga instructor now, officially?
I'm halfway through becoming a yoga teacher.
Tune in for March 2026 when the training is finished.
Then it will be.
Then I will be.
Yay, congratulations to Rory.
So our Rory will be a yoga teacher.
Can you imagine this?
So Rory, tell us like, does it matter how old the person is when they come to you to kind of learn yoga?
Because, kind of our bodies may be flexible, not flexible.
No, if you can breathe, you can do yoga, so the flexibility isn't necessarily a part of it.
You see No age in dancing, in yoga, in learning.
No age.
We say this because we are old, dear listener.
No, we say it because it is true.
Yeah, it is true.
Yeah, of course it's true.
If you feel young, then you are young.
Forever young.
And older people are usually more patient.
They are more understanding.
They are more experienced because they've been through difficult times in their life, right?
They've seen a lot.
They've seen more than young people.
And these are the advantages, right?
But the disadvantages are not set in stone, dear listener.
That's an interesting idiom to use.
It's not set in stone, so not set or carved in stone so it can change.
It's able to be changed.
For example, like the strategies, the speaking strategies we're giving you are not set in stone so you might change them.
You may, you know, use some other strategies.
Older people might be set in their ways.
That's another idiomatic expression from Rory.
From the English language.
Through me.
But if you're set in your ways, then you have your way of doing things and you don't want to change.
Or you find change very difficult.
Yeah, some people are very sad in their ways.
They always have dinner at 6 p.m. and that's it.
And actually, that could be true that older people might be more set in their ways.
They are unlikely to change, learn something new, like do crazy things.
And this makes them a bit inflexible.
Yeah, we talked about flexible bodies when you do yoga.
But people might be inflexible in life, not necessarily in sports.
It's kind of like if a person is inflexible, they are fixed, unable or unwilling to change.
We should be flexible, dear listener.
Change, Embrace change.
But some elderly people are quite keen on change, so they embrace change change, they like change.
And then a strange question like do you enjoy spending time with older people?
What kind of question is this?
I don't know what the answer to this is supposed to be.
No, i hate older people.
You're like what's going on?
I don't know.
It's just like, what?
Well, you can talk about your parents, for example, if, I don't know, they're 70 or older.
You can talk about, i don't know, your grandmothers grandfathers right, your family members colleagues, our rory has no issue being around anyone.
So, like again, the best strategy is Like I don't have any issue being around anyone.
And also, dear listener, if your examiner is old, if you see that they are much older than you, then You should say only good things about older people.
Okay, dear listener?
If you say like oh, old people are stupid, they're slow, they don't remember anything, they're inflexible.
No, no, no, no, no.
Just no, dear listener.
Forget it.
It's is just no, and so do not insult the examiner.
Yeah yeah, don't do this.
And um, you can just complain about the question.
Like what kind of question is this?
Like, i'm fine being with anyone as long as they're nice to me.
I love everybody.
Yeah, love and joy.
And again, Rory gives us tag questions everywhere.
No one wants to be around people that are awful, young people, babies no, but babies are not awful, they're cute and cuddly, awful people.
Oh, some babies are awful noise that they made.
Some babies are the noise, but they're noisy.
But okay again, awful and noisy are different things.
Rory, come on, I know, I know, I know.
I'm being mean to babies.
Now we are insulting babies.
Delysna, we love babies.
Yeah, so it's less about age and more about personality.
And I think these are the key words from this episode that you should remember.
It's less about age, so it's not about age.
It's more about personality of a person.
Rory, would you like to live until you are like 130 years old?
If I have more vitality, if I can keep my vitality at that age, then it's okay.
But if I'm like falling to pieces and I'm very unwell, then no, I don't want to live until I'm so old.
It's not about living as long as possible.
It's about living as well as possible.
Yeah, fair enough.
If you're kind of 130 years old and you can walk, you can, you know, take care of yourself.
You can, I don't know.
Breathe, eat, move, dance.
Why not?
I think that's quite enough discussion of being old.
Now let's talk about something else that's more interesting.
Thank you very much for being with us during this difficult topic.
Dear listener, thank you for your support.
I thought you were going to say thank you for being with us during this difficult time talking about aging.
Yeah.
Hugs, love, health and joy.
Okay.
Bye.
Thank you.
Have you ever worked with older people?
Well, I suppose that depends on how we define old people, doesn't it?
I've certainly worked with people at least one or two decades older than me, but not with anyone that would qualify as a pensioner, at least not at the time.
Are you happy to work with people who are older than you?
I'll work with anyone as long as they are competent, frankly.
I suppose older teachers might have more experience, which might make that more likely, at least now that I think about it, though that's not necessarily guaranteed.
What are the advantages of working with older people?
Well, I've already said, they might be more competent and experienced, which might make work a bit less stressful, since you can draw on.
Well, all of that potentially.
As for other things, I would hope that might make them a bit more patient and understanding, since they've theoretically seen it all before, though in life there are no guarantees of that.
Are there any disadvantages?
Well, it's not set in stone, but older people might be more set in their ways, since they've had a long time to develop specific methods of doing things or ways of doing things.
And that might have crystallized.
So that might make them a bit inflexible.
I say that some elderly people are quite pleasant and keen on change.
Do you enjoy spending time with older people?
I've no issue being around anyone as long as they're nice to me.
No one wants to be around people that are awful, do they?
So it's less about age and more about personality for me.
