TRANSCRIPT EPISODE 1: EYE TESTING

Hello. I’m Margot Politis. Welcome to Study English, IELTS preparation, where we
look at the skills you’ll need to write, read, speak and listen to formal, academic
English.

In today’s episode, we’re talking about pronouns. We’ll also have a quick look at
homonyms and then take some time to practise using suffixes.

But first, we’re going to watch a clip about people who suffer from eye problems. The
people in this community live far from the city, so it’s hard for them to get medical
treatment.

They have no access to specialists at all, and they

cannot travel because they are poor, and most of
them have cataract and they are blind because of
cataract, which is preventable.

The resources aren’t here really to take care of them.

It would mean a major upheaval if they got to the
stage where they couldn’t be taken care of here.
They would have to leave their home, their friends,
their family and go somewhere where they could be
cared for, which is miles away in remote communities.

The professor is talking about the access of residents in the Moora community to eye
specialists.

He talks about the residents by using the pronoun ‘they’.

Pronouns are words that can take the place of nouns. They’re words like ‘I, you,
they, who or what’.

We can use pronouns in a number of different ways, and they take several different
forms.

They can act as subjects, objects or possessives.

If we look at ‘they’, the subject form is ‘they’,

the object form is ‘them’, the possessive form is
‘their’.

Listen to the professor talk about the residents.

They have no access to specialists at all, and

they cannot travel because they are poor, and
most of them have cataract and they are blind because of cataract, which is
preventable.

Here, ‘they’ is used as the subject of the sentence.

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Did you notice that the subject and verb agree in number? They’re both plural.

The professor always says ‘they have’, or ‘they are’.

Let’s listen to the clip once more.

Most of them have cataract and they are blind.

The resources aren’t here really to take care of them.

Both the speakers use the pronoun ‘them’ after the preposition ‘of’ – ‘most of them’,
‘take care of them’.

Let’s see how we can use ‘them’ with other prepositions.

We can say:

‘of them’,

‘to them’,

‘by them’,

‘for them’,

‘in them’,

‘on them’,

‘with them’,

or, ‘at them’.

Now listen for the possessive form of ‘they’ - ‘their’.

They would have to leave their home, their friends, their family and go somewhere
where they could be cared for, which is miles away in remote communities.

Here, ‘their’ functions as a possessive adjective.

It describes ownership.

‘Their’ is used to talk about things that belong to

the eye patients.

The patients’ homes - ‘their homes’.

The patients’ friends - ‘their friends’.
The patients’ families - ‘their families’.

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So there are three forms pronouns take:

the subject form, like ‘they’,

the object form, ‘them’,

and the possessive form, ‘their’.

The word ‘their’ is a homonym.

Homonyms can be words that sound the same but have different meanings, like
‘their’ and ‘there’, /ð ə/.

Julie is talking about ‘/ð ə/ home, /ð ə/ friends,

/ð ə/ family’.

Is that ‘t-h-e-i-r’ or ‘t-h-e-r-e’?

We know from the context that she is talking

about ownership – who the friends, home and
family belong to.

So we know which spelling of /ð ə/ she is using – ‘their home, their friends, their
family’.

Another example of a set of homonyms is ‘h-e-r-e’ and ‘h-e-a-r’. They’re both

pronounced the same – /h ə/.

Listen for /h ə/.

The resources aren’t really here to take care of them.

She says ‘the resources aren’t really /h ə/.'

The context tells us that when Julie says /h ə/, she means ‘in their immediate
location’. She is using ‘h-e-r-e’.

‘The resources aren’t really here.’

There are two different types of homonyms.

The ones we’ve looked at so far are called

homophones, because they sound the same
even though they’re spelt differently.

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Some other examples of homophones are:

‘sight and site’,

/sa t/

‘sale and sail’,

/se l/

‘fair and fare’,

/f ə/

and ‘through and threw’

/ ru/.

So homophones are words that are spelt differently, but sound the same.

The other type of homonym is a homograph.

Homographs are words that are spelt the same but, in different contexts, the word
will be pronounced differently.

Some common examples are:

‘read and read’,

rid/ /r d/

‘wind and wind’,

/wa nd/ /w nd/

‘live and live’.

/la v/ /l v/

Let’s try an exercise about homographs.

How would you pronounce the word in bold?

She read the instructions carefully.

She /r d/ the instructions carefully.

We’ve already seen how some words are pronounced differently depending on their
context and function.

And when we looked at ‘they’, ‘them’ and ‘their’, we saw how the form of some words
will change depending on the context and function.

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Another way that words can change is by adding suffixes.

Suffixes can be used to create a new word with a new function and meaning.

First, listen for the suffix ‘-able’.

They have no access to specialists at all, they

cannot travel because they are poor, and most
of them have cataract and they are blind
because they have cataract, which is
preventable.

Cataracts are preventable.

By adding the suffix ‘–able’ to the verb ‘prevent’ we form the adjective ‘preventable’
meaning ‘able to be prevented’.

We can add the suffix ‘-able’ to a number of other words to form similar adjectives.

For example:

‘read’ becomes ‘readable’,

‘count’ becomes ‘countable’,.

and ‘recognise’ becomes ‘recognisable’.

There are many other common suffixes in English.

Learning suffixes is a quick way to expand your vocabulary.

Let’s take a look at two other common suffixes:’ –ist’ and ‘–ism’.

We can use ‘–ist’ when we talk about the ‘people who do certain jobs’.

So you could be:

a ‘journalist’,

a ‘chemist’,

a ‘geologist’,

or a ‘psychologist’.

We use the suffix ‘–ism’ to talk about ‘beliefs, ideologies or movements’.

For example:

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Buddhism,

modernism,

realism,

or Marxism.

And the people who believe these ideas can sometimes be described by adding the
‘–ist’ suffix.

So we get:

‘Buddhist,’

‘modernist’,

‘realist’,

or ‘Marxist’.

So let’s take a look back over what we’ve learned today. We’ve looked at how words
change according to their function and context.

First, we’ve looked at pronouns and

the different forms they take –subject,
object, and possessive.

Then we talked about homonyms and

the two different sorts – homophones
and homographs.

And we finished today with a few

different suffixes ‘-able’ ‘-ism’ and ‘-
ist’.

If you’d like to spend some more time on any of these topics, have a look at the
Study English website.

It’s at australianetwork.com/studyenglish.

That’s all for today. I’ll see you next time for more Study English IELTS preparation.
Bye bye.

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TRANSCRIPT EPISODE 2: GINSENG

Hello. I’m Margot Politis. Welcome to Study English, IELTS preparation.

Today we’re going to look at using the word ‘say’ in four different ways – to give
examples, to narrow down, to quote and as a filler.

Our story looks at the anti-cancer qualities of the ginseng plant. Listen for the word
‘say’.

What they’ve found, say, in the case

of ginseng, is that it is something
that is difficult and slow growing, in
the wild and even in field cultivation.
So you can imagine ginseng, to have
a mature plant, it might be there for a
period of say 4 to 7 years.

While it’s in the ground, it can suffer

from pests, pest problems. I’ve
heard of instances where growers
have had the crop in the ground for
say 5 to 6 years. They’ve been keen
to keep it that extra year or two, to say form the right shape of the ginseng plant, and
then they’ve been struck by pests, virtually overnight.

The speaker, Dr David Armstrong, uses the word ‘say’ in several different ways.

Listen to the first one again.

What they’ve found, say, in the case of ginseng, is that it is something that is difficult
and slow growing.

The word ‘say’ in this clip is used to introduce an example.

In formal English, instead of using ‘say’, we would use ‘for instance’ or ‘for example’.

Have a look at these sentences:

“They have found, say, in the case

of ginseng, that it is difficult
to grow.”

“They have found, for instance, in

the case of ginseng, that it is difficult
to grow.”

“They have found, for example, in

the case of ginseng, that it is difficult
to grow.”

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So ‘say’ can be used to introduce an example.

Let’s listen to another use of the word ‘say’.

So you can imagine ginseng, to have a mature plant, it might be there for a period of
say 4 to 7 years.

‘Say’ in this clip has another meaning.

It’s used for narrowing down a time period. It means ‘around’ or ‘approximately’.

Listen for another example.

I’ve heard of instances where growers have had the crop in the ground for say 5 to 6
years.

The crop has been in the ground for say 5 to 6 years.

So the word ‘say’ here narrows

down a time period.

“The growers have had the crop in

the ground for ‘say’, 5 to 6 years.”

“The growers have had the crop in

the ground for ‘around’, 5 to 6
years.”

Dr Armstrong uses the word 'say' in

one more way. Listen here.

They’ve been keen to keep it that extra year or two to, say, form the right shape of
the ginseng plant and then they’ve been struck by pests.

He says “to, say, form the right shape of the ginseng plant”.

'Say' here is giving the speaker time to gather his thoughts. It’s used as a filler. He
could have said ‘um’, or one of the other language fillers.

For example: “to say, form the right shape of the ginseng plant.”

“to, um, form the right shape of the ginseng plant.”

There is one more use for the word ‘say’ – to quote. When we report what someone
else has said we call it indirect speech or reported speech.

Speakers often introduce indirect or reported speech using the verb ‘to say’.

Listen how the reporter talks about Dr McManus’s new approach to cancer treatment.

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Dr McManus says it’s a whole new approach to cancer treatment, using the slower
acting, milder, traditional herbal compounds as well as Western cancer drugs to try to
make conventional treatment more effective.

The reporter is quoting Dr McManus. She is talking about something that he has
said.

“Dr McManus ‘says’ it’s a whole new approach.”

So we’ve looked at 4 different uses of the word ‘say’ in that one short story.

This one word, ‘say’ turns out to be very useful in English!

The story we’ve watched about ginseng provides us with lots of vocabulary relating to
the topic of health and well being.

Now let’s listen to Dr McManus talking about the benefits of ginseng.

Listen for the vocabulary that relates specifically to this topic.

Dr McManus says it’s a whole new

approach to cancer treatment, using the
slower acting, milder, traditional herbal
compounds as well as Western cancer
drugs to try to make conventional
treatment more effective.

Mild doses every day is believed to

keep the body in equilibrium and just to
maintain general health and vitality and
stamina, and the other perhaps more
valuable application is when someone’s
dying. It’s believed to have life-enhancing properties, so because of that it
commands very high prices. I saw in, in Beijing, in a herbal pharmacy there, one
plant, a 50-year-old ginseng plant, worth $100,000. It’s because of the active
components increase with age over time, so a one-year-old root is nowhere near as
valuable as a six-year-old root and, of course a wild 50-year-old root is incredibly
valuable.

He uses a lot of health related words.

He says:

‘doses’,
‘body’,
‘equilibrium’,
‘health’,
‘vitality’,
and ‘stamina’.

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Did you notice how these words were combined together?

Let’s listen again.

Mild doses every day is believed to keep the body in equilibrium and just to maintain
general health and vitality and stamina.

Dr McManus says “Mild doses every day is believed to keep the body in equilibrium”.

The phrase ‘mild doses’ is a collocation.

In English, some word combinations commonly go together. These combinations are

called collocations.

There is no particular reason for these words to go together. They just sound right to
a native speaker, because of habit, history or usage.

Collocations occur in both noun phrases like ‘mild doses’, and verb phrases such as
to ‘keep the body in equilibrium’.

Let’s look at some common noun phrase collocations.

We say ‘high prices’.

‘High’ collocates with ‘prices’. We don’t say ‘large prices’ or ‘big prices’, we say ‘high
prices’.

We say a ‘tall building’, not a ‘high

building’.

Collocations are not just about the

words that go together, but also the
order they go in.

We always say ‘black and white’, not

white and black.

We say ‘salt and pepper’, and 'hot

and cold'.

Another important collocation is the way we say ‘directions’. English speakers

always say ‘north, south, east and west’, in that order.

The topic of today’s story is a collocation as well – ‘health and well-being’. These
nouns are often used together, in this order.

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Listen to Dr McManus again. You’ll hear him use a number of other collocations,
such as ‘general health’, ‘valuable application’, life-enhancing properties’ and ‘high
prices’.

Mild doses every day is believed to keep

the body in equilibrium and just to
maintain general health and vitality and
stamina, and the other perhaps more
valuable application is when someone’s
dying. It’s believed to have life-enhancing
properties, so because of that it
commands very high prices.

Choosing the right word combination will

make your speech and writing sound
more natural. Also, choosing the best
collocation will enable you to express
yourself more clearly and precisely.

So today we’ve looked at the word ‘say’ for giving an example, narrowing down,
quoting, and as a filler. We also looked at some collocations relating to health words.

Don’t forget that you can go to our website for the transcript, study notes and
exercises for today’s story.

And I’ll see you next time for Study English. Bye bye.

Page 5 of 5
TRANSCRIPT EPISODE 3: JARRAH FOREST

Hello. I’m Margot Politis. Welcome to Study English, IELTS preparation.

Today we’ll travel to Western Australia to take a look at a famous jarrah forest.

And while we’re there, we’ll learn about words that we use to describe ‘spatial
relationships’ - where things are in relation to one another.

Later on, we’ll listen to a few ‘proverbs’.

But first, here’s the Western Australian jarrah forest.

Our jarrah forest is our reference point, it’s

our library of information, this is our baseline,
this is what we had before we mined. I think
some of the outward signs are showing us
that it’s quite healthy.

The proof in the pudding is not you and I

sitting here today, but the proof of the
pudding might be in ten year’s time, twenty
year’s time - whether this forest is flourishing
for our children and grandchildren. So far so
good.

Dr Bougher knows a lot about the forest. In the clip, he spent a lot of time describing
where things are.

When you’re describing where things are, it’s important to be precise and accurate in
your description.

You need to think about how you’re going to ‘order the description’. You should try to
arrange it in a logical way, according to some kind of pattern.

You might describe things in one area at a time, so you can guide your listener
through the space.

Look at this picture.

You could for example describe

from the ‘top to the bottom’, from the
‘left to the right’, or from ‘near to far’
– that is you could start describing
‘the foreground’, ‘the middle
distance’, and finish with ‘the
background’.

There are no rules on how to describe something. Just make sure that your
description is clear and logical.

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Here is Dr Bougher again. Notice how he describes the forest area.

On our left here, we have a very good

example of the jarrah forest, the famous
jarrah forest of Western Australia.

And on our right here, we have the contrast,

which is the mined area, and on this area we
can see the rehabilitation has occurred about
three years ago.

Dr Bougher uses descriptions like ‘on our left’ and ‘on our right’.

He helps us understand the location of things by using the preposition ‘on’, along with
a noun phrase. These are preposition phrases.

When we want to describe where things are, we usually use preposition phrases.

Let’s look at some of the common prepositions you can use to describe where things
are:

‘above’,

‘below’,

‘beside’ or ‘next to’,

‘in front of’,

‘behind’,

‘on the right’,

‘on the left’,

‘on top of’ or ‘over’,

‘under’,

‘between’,

or even ‘surrounded by’.

Page 2 of 5
Let’s listen to Dr Bougher once more. As well as using these prepositions, he uses
another word to show exactly where things are.

Can you hear it?

On our left here, we have a very good example of the jarrah forest, the famous jarrah
forest of Western Australia.

And on our right here, we have the contrast, which is the mined area, and on this
area we can see that rehabilitation has occurred about three years ago.

He says ‘on our left here’, ‘on our right here’.

‘Here’ is an adverb. We can use adverbs to help us describe ‘spatial relationships’ -

where things are.

The two most useful ones are ‘here’ and ‘there’.

Or, you can use other adverbs of place, like:

‘somewhere’,

‘anywhere’,

‘everywhere’,

and ‘nowhere’.

In today’s clip, Dr Bougher is not just telling us

where things are. He’s also trying to compare the different areas.

If you’re trying to compare two or more things, a good description needs a ‘starting
point’.

What’s Dr Bougher’s starting point?

Our jarrah forest is our reference point, it’s our library of information, this is our
baseline, this is what we had before we mined.

His starting point is the jarrah forest.

He calls it his ‘reference point’, his ‘baseline’.

He means that he can compare other landscapes to this particular jarrah forest.

OK. So we’ve looked at some words you can use to describe ‘spatial relationships’ in
a description. If you need more help, just go to our website.

Learning new words is an ongoing process.

Page 3 of 5
It’s good to learn words in phrases, because they are used in a certain way.

Sometimes, we come across more unusual groups of words.

Listen to the clip and see if you can hear an unusual expression.

On our left here, we have a very good example of the jarrah forest, the famous jarrah
forest of Western Australia.

And on our right here, we have the contrast, which is the mined area, and on this
area we can see that rehabilitation has occurred about three years ago. This is
world’s best practice.

Our jarrah forest is our reference point, it’s our library of information, this is our
baseline, this is what we had before we mined. I think some of the outward signs are
showing us that it’s quite healthy.

The proof in the pudding is not you and I sitting here today, but the proof of the
pudding might be in ten year’s time, twenty year’s time – whether this forest is
flourishing for our children and grandchildren. So far so good.

Dr Bougher says ‘the proof of the pudding’.

The full saying is ‘the proof of the pudding is in the eating’.

Can you guess what that means?

“The proof of the pudding is in the eating.”

A ‘pudding’ is a soft, sweet dessert.

The saying says that you can’t tell if the pudding is good until you taste it.

It’s means that you can only judge the quality of something after it has been tested or
experienced over time.

So Dr Bougher means we won’t be able to tell how healthy the forest is for a long
time. The real test will be how healthy it is in the future.

Traditional sayings like ‘the proof of the pudding is in the eating’ are called proverbs.

Proverbs are general sayings that give advice or tell us something about life.

Every language has its own proverbs.

The Japanese say that ‘getting up early brings you merit’.

But in English, we say that ‘the early bird catches the worm’.

Many proverbs in English come from the Bible or well-known poems.

Page 4 of 5
Because proverbs are well known sayings, they aren’t always quoted in full.

For example people just say ‘when in Rome’, referring to the old Latin proverb “When
in Rome, do as the Romans do”.

Listen to Dr Bougher again:

The proof in the pudding is not you and I sitting here today, but the proof of the
pudding might be in ten year’s time, twenty year’s time – whether this forest is
flourishing for our children and grandchildren.

He just says ‘the proof of the pudding’. He doesn’t say the whole proverb.

Proverbs are usually found in informal language. Using them naturally is not easy.
The meanings of common proverbs aren’t always obvious, so the only way to learn
them is to memorise them. Using proverbs takes time, so be patient.

And that’s all for today.

We’ve looked at describing ‘spatial

relationships’.

We saw how prepositions like ‘on’ can be

useful when describing where things are.

Then we tried using adverbs to help with our

descriptions.

And we looked at proverbs, traditional

sayings.

So why not go to our website for more on these topics. You’ll find the story,
transcript, exercises and study notes. Nothing ventured, Nothing gained!

And I’ll see you next time for more Study English. Bye bye.

Page 5 of 5
TRANSCRIPT EPISODE 4: CLOUDS

Hello. I’m Margot Politis. Welcome to Study English, IELTS preparation.

Today, we’re going to look at ‘paragraphs’.

But what’s a 'paragraph’? Well it’s a group of sentences that are related and develop
an idea.

You need to use paragraphs in any formal writing you do, especially in the IELTS
writing test.

Let’s listen to a weather expert talking about clouds, and then we’ll look at how a
paragraph works.

Clouds have two effects. Now clouds obviously

decrease the amount of incoming radiation, that
is heating, from the sun. That then affects how
many more clouds form. It affects how hot it
gets in the daytime. At the same time clouds, at
night time, prevent radiation or heat escaping
from the earth. This not only affects
temperatures, but it affects the atmospheric
systems, the winds, then the humidity and how
everything occurs.

Jim Arthur speaks clearly on the topic of clouds.

What we have here, when it’s written down, is a really good paragraph.

A good paragraph consists of three main parts: a topic sentence, supporting

sentences and developing sentences.

Let’s start by looking at the topic sentence. The topic sentence provides the main
idea of the paragraph. It tells us what the paragraph is about.

Here’s Jim Arthur introducing the subject he will be discussing.

Clouds have two effects.

“Clouds have two effects.”

This is Jim’s topic sentence.

There are two parts to his topic

sentence.

“Clouds have 2 effects.”

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The first part tells us the subject: the subject is ‘clouds’.

The second part tells us the controlling idea.

The controlling idea is that clouds ‘have two effects’. This is what the rest of the
paragraph will discuss.

Let’s listen to Jim discussing the

effects.

Now clouds obviously decrease

the amount of incoming radiation
that is heating, from the sun.

In his second sentence, Jim

states one of the effects of
clouds that relates to and
supports the topic sentence.

“Clouds decrease the amount of incoming radiation.” This sentence is called a

supporting sentence.

Listen to him continue.

That then affects how many more clouds form. It affects how hot it gets in the
daytime.

These two sentences further develop or support the idea expressed in the supporting
sentence. They’re called developing sentences.

Developing sentences ‘provide examples’,

‘back up’, ‘explain’, ‘illustrate’ or ‘clarify’ the
point made in the supporting sentence.

Listen to the next sentence in the paragraph.

At the same time clouds, at night time, prevent

radiation or heat escaping from the earth.

This is the second supporting sentence in the

paragraph.

It supports the topic sentence. It gives the second effect of the clouds. They
‘prevent radiation or heat escaping from the earth’.

Now Jim develops the idea further.

This not only affects temperatures, but it affects the atmospheric systems, the winds,
then the humidity and how everything occurs.

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Jim clarifies the information in a developing sentence. He tells us that clouds affect
'atmospheric systems, winds and humidity’.

Let’s summarise how paragraphs work.

Paragraphs consist of related sentences that develop an idea.

The idea is introduced in the topic sentence.

The idea is supported in the supporting sentences.

The idea is further developed with examples or clarification in the developing

sentences.

There are different ways to structure a paragraph, but these basic elements occur in
all of them.

When you practise writing paragraphs, try to ‘make the ideas clear’ and ‘provide
details’ to strengthen the points you are making. Also do this when you’re speaking.

An important feature of a good paragraph is ‘coherence’. Arranging your ideas

logically will help provide coherence and get your message across.

Now let’s look at some vocabulary about the weather.

The clips we’ve seen feature a weather expert, Jim Arthur, talking about clouds.

He’s a ‘meteorologist’. He studies ‘meteorology’, the science that looks at processes

in the Earth’s atmosphere that cause different weather conditions.

Jim works in Darwin, the capital of the Northern Territory in Australia. Let’s listen to
him talk about the particular weather conditions around Darwin.

Around Darwin we get tropical cyclones

because we’re close to that hot water to the
north of us. We also get continental
thunderstorms - just come off the land, very
violent thunderstorms with a mixture of hot arid
dry air and hot, humid air. We get monsoons,
classic monsoons, where the northwest
monsoons come in for weeks on time.

Jim mentioned three words describing weather:

‘cyclones’,

‘thunderstorms’

and ‘monsoons’.

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These words describe severe, and in some cases, violent weather conditions.

A ‘cyclone’ is a violent tropical storm or hurricane.

A ‘thunderstorm’ is a storm with thunder and lightning.

A ‘monsoon’ is a period of heavy rains, and the wind that brings those rains.

Many words used in English originally came from other languages. We use them so
often that we no longer regard them as foreign.

Let’s look at some weather words we’ve borrowed.

‘Cyclone’ is from a Greek word.

‘Monsoon’ is a Portuguese word.

‘Typhoon’, which is a tropical cyclone or hurricane, is from the Chinese ‘tai feng’
meaning ‘extreme wind’.

‘Tsunami’, a large, destructive wave caused by an earthquake, is from the Japanese

word meaning ‘harbour wave’.

A ‘tornado’ is a violent windstorm that circulates around a centre. It’s from Spanish
and it means ‘turning storm’.

So, in our glossary of words belonging to the field of weather conditions we can
include

‘cyclone’,

‘thunderstorm’,

‘monsoon’,

‘typhoon’,

‘tsunami’,

and ‘tornado’

Listen to Jim using some of these words.

Around Darwin we get tropical cyclones because we’re close to that hot water to
the north of us. We also get continental thunderstorms that come off the land, very
violent thunderstorms with a mixture of hot arid dry air and hot, humid air. We get
monsoons, classic monsoons, where, where the northwest monsoons come in for
weeks on time.

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Let’s finish today by writing a simple paragraph using our new weather words.

The topic is ‘English words’, and the controlling

idea is that ‘many come from other languages’.

My main idea will be expressed in my topic

sentence:

“Many words used in English originally came

from other languages.”

My supporting sentence will add:

“We use them so often we no longer regard them as foreign.”

I can use a developing sentence to give examples:

“Monsoon, tornado and tsunami are words from Portuguese, Spanish and
Japanese.”

Lastly, I might finish with another supporting sentence that reinforces the main idea in
the paragraph:

“English is always changing because it adopts new words.”

I hope you can put your new weather vocabulary to good use in some interesting
paragraphs.

To find more information and tips, visit our Study English website.

That’s all for today. I’ll see you next time on Study English. Bye bye.

Page 5 of 5
TRANSCRIPT EPISODE 5: VIRTUAL DOCTOR

Hello. I’m Margot Politis. Welcome to Study English, IELTS preparation.

Today, we have a story about new technologies in medicine. We’re going to look at
‘linking’ in spoken English, and then we’ll talk about the word ‘there’.

Let’s listen to Dr Stuart Stapleton talk about how he treats patients in other locations
using computers and cameras.

At the Blue Mountains end, there are four

cameras. There’s one which stands roughly
where I would stand as the team leader in a
resuscitation that gets the overview of the room
and the patient and the environment. There’s
another camera that’s located above the
patient’s bed.

There’s also a camera that lets us look at

things like X-rays, cardiographs, blood pressure charts and the like.

And there’s a final camera which is actually a mobile camera, which can also be
head mounted. So for example, if one of the staff up there needs to perform a
procedure, which they may have done maybe once or twice, then someone who’s got
a lot more experience can be at this end and guide them through the process.

To speak English fluently and sound like a native speaker, it’s important to link some
words together. Knowing how native speakers link their words together will also
make it easier to understand spoken English.

Sometimes it may be difficult to know where one word ends and the next one begins.

For example, ‘healthy ear’ sounds the same as ‘healthy year’. When ‘healthy’ is
linked together with ‘ear’, a /j/ sound is added.

So ‘healthy ear’ and ‘healthy year’ have the same pronunciation, shown phonetically
like this, /'h l i j ə/, /'h l i j ə/.

Normally, the context of the sentence would give you the meaning.

Listen to Dr Stapleton talking about a mobile camera that can view X-rays or
cardiographs. Listen to how Dr Stapleton links his words, but in particular listen for
the /j/ linking sound.

Page 1 of 5
And there’s a final camera, which is actually a mobile camera, which can also be
head mounted. So for example, if one of the staff up there needs to perform a
procedure, which they may have done maybe once or twice, then someone who’s
got a lot more experience can be at this end and guide them through the process.

Dr Stapleton, like most native speakers, speaks

quickly! Listen to how he says the phrase,
‘which is actually a mobile camera.’

And there’s a final camera which is actually a

mobile camera.

Dr Stapleton says: ‘actually a’ like this

/'æk uəli ə/.

To make your speech flow as smoothly as Dr Stapleton’s, it’s important to focus on

the last sound of a word and the first sound of the next, and then link the words
together.

There are different types of linking in English.

This is linking type 1: vowel + /j/ + vowel.

‘Actually’ ends in an /i/ vowel sound and the next word begins with a /ə/ schwa
sound. Linking these words together we have /'æk uəli j ə/.

Listen once again to Dr Stapleton. See if you can hear another example of /j/
linking.

Then someone who’s got a lot more experience can be at this end and guide them
through the process.

Dr Stapleton says ‘be at’ /bi æt/, /bi j æt/.

‘Be’ ends with the vowel sound /i/, and ‘at’ begins with vowel /æ/. Linking these
words together with the /j/ sound we have:

be at /bi j æt/.

Let’s listen again. This time listen to how these two words are linked: ‘also a’.

What sound does Dr Stapleton use to link the two words?

There’s also a camera that lets us look at things like X-rays, cardiographs, um, blood
pressure charts and the like.

Page 2 of 5
He says: ‘There’s also a camera’.

Did you hear a /w/ sound? ‘There’s also a camera’.

We sometimes use a /w/ sound to link between vowels.

‘Also a’ /' lso ə/ ‘/' lso wə/

This is linking type 2: vowel + /w/ + vowel

Knowing when to use /j/ and when to use /w/ depends on the end vowel of the first
word.

High front vowels link with the /j/ sound.

High front vowels are /i/, /a /, /e /, / / , the sounds that are produced with the
highest part of the tongue and close to the front of the mouth.

For example:

see, me
/si/ /mi/

my, eye
/ma / /a /

way, say
/we / /se /

boy, toy
/b / /t /

High back vowels link with the w sound.

High back vowels are /u/, /a /, /o /, sounds that are produced with the highest
part of the tongue but close to the back of the mouth, like:

who, too
/hu/ /tu/

how, now
/ha / /na /

go, slow
/go / /slo /

Page 3 of 5
Look at the sentence:

“Have you ever been overseas?”

Notice ‘you ever’. ‘You’ ends with /ju/ – a high back vowel. So it links with linking
type 2– the /w/ sound.

It becomes ‘you ever’ /ju w və /.

Now let’s consider another aspect of Dr Stapleton’s interview. He uses the word
‘there’ in different ways.

Here’s the clip again. Listen for ‘there’.

There are four cameras. There’s one which stands roughly where I would stand as
the team leader in a resuscitation that gets the overview of the room and the patient
and the environment. There’s another camera that’s located above the patient’s bed.

Dr Stapleton uses 'there' to talk about the position of the cameras.

He says things like:

‘there are four cameras,

‘there’s one which stands’,

‘there’s another camera’.

In these expressions, ‘there’ is used as an introductory subject.

It’s used when we want to say something exists somewhere. ‘There’ is not the
subject but rather an ‘empty’ word that fills the position where the subject is usually
found.

It doesn’t contribute meaning. It’s used because the sentence would be

grammatically incorrect without it. The real subject follows the verb.

“There are four cameras.”

Notice that the verb form of the introductory subject agrees with the real subject. The
real subject is plural - 'four cameras' .

So he uses the plural form of the verb ‘to be’ - 'there are'.

So we have ‘there are four cameras’, but ‘there is another camera’.

Here’s another use of ‘there’.

Page 4 of 5
So for example, if one of the staff up there needs to perform a procedure, which they
may have done maybe once or twice, then someone who’s got a lot more experience
can be at this end and guide them through the process.

In this example, Dr Stapleton says: “one of the staff up there needs to perform a
procedure”.

‘There’ is used as an adverb to mean ‘in that place’.

So ‘there’ can be used as an introductory subject or as an adverb of place.

Listen to Dr Stapleton in this clip and see if you can identify which way he uses
‘there’.

There’s also a camera that lets us look at things like X-rays, cardiographs, blood
pressure charts and the like.

And there’s a final camera which is actually a mobile camera, which can also be
head mounted.

He says: ‘there’s also a camera’,

and ‘there’s a final camera’.

These are examples of introductory subjects.

So today we’ve looked at 2 different linking

types in spoken English – using /j/ and /w/;
and we’ve talked about ‘there’ being used as an
introductory subject, and as an adverb.

And you can get more practice by going to our

Study English website. You can read the
transcript and check the study notes.

And there you have it. I’ll see you next time on Study English. Bye bye.

Page 5 of 5
TRANSCRIPT EPISODE 6: LASERS

Hello. I’m Margot Politis. Welcome to Study English, IELTS preparation.

Today we’re going to learn about lasers – what are they, and how they work.

We’ll also practice structuring a description of how something works, and we’ll work
on our vocabulary for describing colours.

Let’s begin by listening to Imogen Jubb talk about the history and the science of
lasers.

Lasers are used in all sorts of settings like

welding, cutting, surgery, communications,
reading bar codes at the supermarket or reading
the information stored on a CD or DVD.

There are many types of lasers but they all have

3 main parts to them. They all have an energy
source, such as a lamp, some sort of feedback
mechanism, like this pair of mirrors, and also
some medium, like the ruby crystal, which can
amplify the light.

Now the first laser was built in the 1960s. It was made from a ruby crystal, some
lamps and 2 mirrors, one on either side of the crystal.

I’ve got a sort of model of it here.

The lamp shines white light onto the crystal,

which is represented by this tube. Pumping
energy into the crystal actually gives off light at a
particular frequency to produce a particular
colour.

Some of this light bounces backwards and

forwards between the two mirrors, and passes
through the crystal each time.

Each time the light goes through the crystal, it gets amplified, stimulating the same
energy release in other parts of the crystal. So after many times in between the two
mirrors, and many reflections passing through the crystal, you end up with a very
strong, narrow beam of light that is just one colour.

One of the mirrors is only partially reflective, so some light passes out as the laser
beam.

Page 1 of 5
Before Imogen explains the laser to us, she starts with an 'introduction', or
‘orientation’.

That way, we know what to focus on.

If you’re describing a device or a tool, it’s a good idea to introduce it by naming it and
describing what it’s used for.

This is useful in spoken English, and it’s also a good way to begin if you are writing in
formal English.

Listen to how Imogen introduces the laser.

Lasers are used in all sorts of settings like

welding, cutting, surgery, communications,
reading bar codes at the supermarket or
reading the information stored on a CD or
DVD.

She talks about the function of the laser

and lists a few of the things we use lasers
for today.

In formal writing, if you were to introduce a discussion of lasers, you could structure
your opening paragraph in a few ways.

One idea would be to start like this:

“A laser is a device designed to intensify a beam of light.”

Or, you might choose to write:

“The diagram is of a laser designed to scan barcodes.”

But Imogen chooses to begin by telling us what lasers are used for.

She begins:

“Lasers are used in all sorts of settings”.

In your introduction, you could give some background about the device.

Once the device has been introduced, you can talk about it in more detail.

Let’s listen to Imogen describe the parts of the laser. How many parts are there and
what are they?

There are many types of lasers but they all have 3 main parts to them. They all have
an energy source, such as a lamp, some sort of feedback mechanism, like this pair of
mirrors, and also some medium, like the ruby crystal, which can amplify the light.

Page 2 of 5
She talks about three main parts.

All lasers have: ‘an energy source’, ‘a feedback mechanism’, and ‘a medium to
amplify light’.

In formal writing, we could structure this information in a number of ways.

We might say that:

“A laser consists of a number of parts.”

Or:

“All lasers are comprised of three parts.”

Both of these sentences are structured to

include a subject, a verb, and an object.

You would then follow with a list or another sentence detailing exactly what the three
parts are, in order:

“These are the energy source, the feedback mechanism and, finally, a medium to
amplify the light.”

Imogen then explains how each part of the device functions. Let’s listen as she
describes each part.

The lamp shines white light onto the crystal, which is represented by this tube.
Pumping energy into the crystal actually gives off light at a particular frequency to
produce a particular colour.

Some of this light bounces backwards and forwards between the two mirrors, and
passes through the crystal each time.

Each time the light goes through the crystal, it gets amplified, stimulating the same
energy release in other parts of the crystal.

So you can see how Imogen has built up a clear image of the device.

In formal written English, you might finish off by explaining the ‘purpose’ of the
device.

You could say:

“The purpose of the laser is to generate an intense beam of light.”

Page 3 of 5
Let’s hear how Imogen finishes her description.

So after many times in between the two mirrors, and many reflections passing
through the crystal, you end up with a very strong, narrow beam of light that is just
one colour.

She finishes by talking about what the purpose of the laser is, what it produces.

She says:

“You end up with a very strong, narrow beam of light’.”

So let’s review how Imogen has structured her explanation.

First, there was an ‘introduction’ to the

object. Imogen told us that we were
talking about the laser and then gave us
some background.

She then moved into the ‘body of the

description’. She told us that it is made up
of three parts, and listed those parts.

In your writing, you might write three

separate ‘body paragraphs’ - one for each of the parts.

Then, you’d finish off with a ‘statement of purpose’ – what the object’s overall
purpose is.

Now let’s finish by listening to Imogen one more time, and then we’re going to talk
about colours.

The lamp shines white light onto the crystal, which is represented by this tube.
Pumping energy into the crystal actually gives off light at a particular frequency to
produce a particular colour.

When energy passes through the crystal, it gives off a particular colour of light. Light
contains all the colours of the ‘spectrum’, or the ‘rainbow’.

These are:

‘red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet’.

We talk about shades of colour in different ways – most commonly by using ‘light’
and ‘dark’.

For example:

‘light blue’, ‘dark blue’.

Page 4 of 5
Or sometimes we refer to nature, for example:

‘sky blue’,

‘forest green’

‘fiery red’.

We also use precious stones to describe

colour. For example:

‘sapphire blue’

‘emerald green’

‘ruby red’.

And that brings us to the end of Study English today.

But for more information on structuring descriptions go to our website. You will find
notes, exercises and quizzes to help you.

Just go to australianetwork.com/studyenglish

And I’ll see you next time for more IETLS preparation. Bye bye.

Page 5 of 5
TRANSCRIPT EPISODE 7: MARS

Hello. I’m Margot Politis. Welcome to Study English, IELTS preparation.

Today on Study English, we’re going to practise using the words ‘some’ and any’.
We’ll also build up our vocabulary with some words about ‘space’ and ‘astronomy’.

But first, we’re going to meet a planetary geologist who is fascinated by the planet
Mars.

Mars is still a fascinating place. In the solar

system, it’s one of the most interesting places
where there may be life, apart from the Earth.

We want there to be Martians with spaceships,

ET, flying saucers, UFOs. We want all of these
things.

It’s frozen to a depth of about 7 kilometres at the

equator, maybe 20 kilometres at the pole caps, so there is a very thick, frozen layer
on Mars. The people who talk about cold the planet is.

These scientists are hoping to find out about life on Mars. They’re looking closely at
the landscape, and similar landscapes, to try to understand everything they can
about the planet.

Listen to Dr Hoffman talking about how the landscape of Mars was formed. Pay
special attention to how he uses the words ‘some’ and ‘any’.

Well, if we look at the picture here, cutting

down through each of these gullies is a little
black channel that’s bulldozed its way through
the snow, carved its way down and pushed the
snow aside and each springtime, part of the
snow collapses as it warms in the sun. It
doesn’t go through a liquid phase, it goes
directly from solid to vapour, boils away, and
falls down the slope and then you have this
tumbling mass, a little avalanche of some snow, some rock, some sand, some dust,
all churning up together.

What I have shown with this work is that the structures that we see in Antarctica are
a good place for life to be, if there is life on Mars. It would be very primitive microbes.
There wouldn’t be any sort of multi-cellular life there.

In English, we use the words ‘some’ and ‘any’ to talk about ‘how much’ or ‘how many’
of something.

‘Some’ and ‘any’ are called determiners.

Page 1 of 5
They tell us something about the quantity or amount we’re discussing.

Listen to how Dr Hoffman uses the word ‘some’.

It doesn’t go through a liquid phase, it goes directly from solid to vapour, boils away,
and falls down the slope and then you have this tumbling mass, a little avalanche of
some snow, some rock, some sand, some dust all churning up together.

He says ‘some sand, some dust’.

The word ‘some’ suggests an indefinite number or amount. It’s not specific.

We use it when it isn’t important exactly how much or how many we mean.

So, you might say:

“I’d like some milk.”

Or:

“Would you like some tea?”

‘Some’ is usually used in affirmative clauses, like this:

“There are some letters for you at the post office.”

And we also use ‘some’ in questions that expect a ‘yes’ answer.

For example:

“Would you like some help?” “Yes please.”

However, in negative constructions, ‘any’ is more commonly used.

Here’s Dr Hoffman talking about his work again. Listen to how he uses the word
‘any’.

What I have shown with this work is that the structures that we see in Antarctica are
a good place for life to be, if there is life on Mars. It would be very primitive microbes.
There wouldn’t be any sort of multicellular life there.

He says:

“There wouldn’t be ‘any’ sort of multicellular life there.”

‘Any’ is common in negative sentences like this.

For example:

“I don’t have any money.”

Page 2 of 5
So while ‘some’ is most common in affirmative statements, ‘any’ is most common in
questions and in negative statements.

After words with a negative meaning, we use ‘any’.

Like this:

“You never have any money.”

“There’s hardly any food left in the fridge.”

When we use ‘some’ to talk about a restricted or limited amount of something, we put
the stress on the word ‘some’.

For example:

“I like some Chinese food, but not spicy dishes.”

Or:

“I can eat prawns, but there is some shellfish I don’t like.”

When the word ‘any’ is stressed, this tells us that we’re talking about an unrestricted
quantity or unlimited choice.

For example:

“You can borrow any book from the library.”

“I don’t like any films made in Hollywood.”

Astronomy is an important and popular science.

Building your science vocabulary, especially your vocabulary about astronomy, can
help you to appreciate science fiction films and books as well as media stories about
space exploration and new discoveries.

But there are so many science words. Where do we even start?

It’s important to learn how to organise new words logically and to develop strategies
to help remember these new words.

Listen to Dr Hoffman talking about the possibility of life on Mars.

Mars is still a fascinating place. In the solar system, it’s one of the most interesting
places where there may be life, apart from the Earth.

Page 3 of 5
Dr Hoffman talks about Mars, the solar system and Earth.

Of course, our planet is called Earth. There are nine planets in our solar system.

They are:

‘Mercury’,

‘Venus’,

‘Earth’,

‘Mars’,

‘Jupiter’,

‘Saturn’,

‘Uranus’,

‘Neptune’,

‘Pluto’.

It’s important to learn all those names in English.

Here’s another clip. See if you can hear a word that is developed from one of the
planet names.

We want there to be Martians with spaceships, ET, flying saucers, UFOs. We want
all of these things.

He talks about ‘Martians’.

We form the word ‘Martians’ from the noun ‘Mars’.

‘Martians’ are creatures from the planet ‘Mars’.

We can extend our vocabulary about astronomy by looking outside our ‘solar
system’, to our ‘galaxy’, the Milky Way. We can also include words like:

‘comets’,

‘asteroids’,

‘stars’,

‘moons’,

‘black holes’.

Page 4 of 5
Let’s watch that clip again. Listen for some other words related to space and space
travel.

We want there to be Martians with spaceships, ET, flying saucers, UFOs. We want
all of these things.

We heard:

‘Martians’,

‘spaceships’,

‘ET’,

flying saucers’, and

‘UFOs’.

‘ET’ stands for extra terrestrial - another name for creatures from space.

‘UFOs’ stands for Unidentified Flying Objects - things from outer space that fly
through the sky. They can also be called ‘flying saucers’.

You’ll notice that in the story, the term ‘UFOs’ is pronounced ‘yufos’ /jufoʊz/. We
usually say ‘U-F-O’ /juɛfoʊ/.

That’s all for Study English today.

Let’s quickly review the topics we’ve looked at.

First, we talked about using the determiners

‘some’ and ‘any’. We learned which one to
use, and how to use stress to change meaning.

Then, we talked about how to increase your

vocabulary by learning groups of words.
Today we looked at space words.

Don’t forget to visit our website. You’ll find more tips and exercises to help you
improve your English skills. It’s at australianetwork.com/studyenglish.

And I’ll see you next time for more. Bye bye.

Page 5 of 5
TRANSCRIPT EPISODE 8: AIR ARCHIVE

Hello. I’m Margot Politis. Welcome to Study English, IELTS preparation.

Today we’re taking a look at tenses. We’ll focus on the present perfect and simple
past tenses, and we’ll hear examples of each.

Then, we’ll practice using some adverbs of time.

The clip we’re looking at today is about greenhouse gases. Scientists have been
measuring the concentration of certain gases, stored in ice in Antarctica. Let’s find
out more.

The air archived in ice helps prove how

much the level of greenhouse gases in
the atmosphere has changed in just the
last two hundred years.

What we’ve found out is that indeed

there were much lower concentrations
pre-industrially, around about a third of
the methane concentration that we have
presently. We’ve seen a big increase in
carbon dioxide, so the two main greenhouse gases in the atmosphere have
increased.

If you look back a half a million years ago, we don’t see concentrations anything like
we have presently. We can link those high concentrations of the present day
uniquely to activities of man - combusting of fossil fuels, clearing of lands and so on,
agricultural activities.

As you know, there is a variety of verb tenses in English – simple, perfect and
continuous.

Tenses are used to describe ‘past’, ‘present’ and ‘future’ actions.

Sometimes, we need to give more information about when an action happened, how
long it happened for and whether it is continuing.

When an action has been completed, we use the present perfect tense.

Listen to Dr Etheridge use it here.

What we’ve found out is that indeed there were much lower concentrations pre-
industrially, around about a third of the methane concentration that we have
presently. We’ve seen a big increase in carbon dioxide, so the two main greenhouse
gases in the atmosphere have increased.

Dr Etheridge uses the present perfect tense.

Page 1 of 5
He says: ‘we’ve found out’

He’s talking about an action that has been completed.

He also says: ‘we’ve seen’, and

‘greenhouse gases have increased’.

These actions started sometime in the past but have now been completed – they are
in the present perfect tense.

When an action has only recently been completed, we can highlight this by using the
adverb ‘just’.

Listen to the reporter.

The air archived in ice helps prove how much the level of greenhouse gases in the
atmosphere has changed in just the last two hundred years.

She says that “The level of greenhouse gases has changed in ‘just’ the last two
hundred years”.

By using the word ‘just’, she is telling us that two hundred years isn’t very long in
geological time. It’s only ‘just’ happened.

She’s also using the present perfect tense.

Let’s have a look at how we structure the present perfect tense.

We use the auxiliary verb ‘to have’ and a past participle.

So here’s our auxiliary verb:

‘to have’ – ‘I have, you have, she has, we have, they have’.

And then a past participle – for example:

‘changed’, ‘found out’, ‘seen’, ‘increased’ or ‘helped’.

So we have:

‘I have changed’,

‘you have found out’,

‘she has seen’,

‘we have increased’,

‘they have helped’.

Page 2 of 5
Now let’s take a look at the simple past tense.

We use the simple past tense when an action occurs at a particular time in the past.

For example:

‘last Christmas’, or

‘on the 15th of May’, or

‘in 1979’, or

‘three million years ago’.

Let’s listen to Dr Etheridge.

What we’ve found out is that indeed there were much lower concentrations pre-
industrially, around about a third of the methane concentration that we have
presently.

He says that: “There were much lower concentrations pre-industrially”.

This refers to a particular time in the past - that is, ‘pre-industrially’ or ‘before the
industrial revolution’ in Europe.

The atmosphere was cleaner then because there weren’t industries producing
greenhouse gases and other pollution.

So, the simple past tense describes an

action that occurred at ‘a specific time’ in
the past.

But the present perfect tense describes

an action that has been completed at
‘some indefinite time’ in the
past.

We’ve already seen how the reporter uses the adverb ‘just’. ‘Just’ is an adverb of
time.

There are several adverbs of time. They can be used with the present perfect tense
to give a number of different meanings.

Listen again.

The air archived in ice helps prove how

much the level of greenhouse gases in
the atmosphere has changed in just the
last two hundred years.

Page 3 of 5
The reporter uses the adverb ‘just'.

When you are using the present perfect to talk about a recently completed action,
you can use the adverbs ‘just’, ‘already’, ‘yet’ or ‘still’.

For example:

“The level has changed in ‘just’ two hundred years.”

“The Earth’s atmosphere has ‘already’ been destroyed.”

The adverbs of time ‘yet’ and ‘still’ are used in question forms and negative
constructions.

For example:

“Have you finished your assignment yet?”

“No. I am still writing the introduction.”

Or:

“Have you finished your assignment yet?”

“No I haven’t written the introduction yet.”

When we’re using the present perfect tense to talk about an action that took place at
some ‘indefinite time’ in the past, we can use the adverbs of time ‘ever’ and ‘never’.

‘Ever’ is often used in questions. It means ‘has the thing been done at any time in
the past’.

Some examples are:

“Have you ever been to China?”

“No, I’ve never been there.”

Finally, when we’re talking about an action that took place at a point in the past, up to
and including now, we can use the adverbs of time ‘for’ ‘from’ and ‘since’.

For example:

“I have been at this school for three months, since March.”

So you can see that there are different adverbs of time for different uses of the
present perfect.

The present perfect is a difficult tense to learn.

It’s used in statements about actions that began in the past and are still true now.

Page 4 of 5
But it can take a lot of practice to get right.

Using adverbs of time can be useful because they help to clarify the precise use of
the tense.

Practice using adverbs of time, and you’ll find making the right choice becomes much
easier.

And that’s all for Study English today.

Let’s review what we’ve done.

We’ve looked at the simple past tense,

and the present perfect tense.

And then we talked about using adverbs

of time in these present perfect
constructions.

Don’t forget that you’ll find more on these topics on our website. It’s at
australianetwork.com/studyenglish. You’ll find all the Study English stories,
transcripts, study notes and much more.

And I’ll see you next time. Bye bye.

Page 5 of 5
TRANSCRIPT EPISODE 9: WHALE SHARKS

Hello. I’m Margot Politis. Welcome to Study English, IELTS preparation.

Today, we’re going to look at the use of contractions in spoken English. A

contraction is like a short form in speech.

I’ve just used three examples:

‘I’m’ for ‘I am’,

‘we’re for ‘we are’,

and ‘I’ve’ for ‘I have’.

English speakers often use contractions, so

mastering them will help your speech improve.

Our story today is about tourists helping scientists study whale sharks off the coast of
Western Australia.

Listen to this conversation, and try to identify the contractions.

So what sort of information are you recording

in your log?

The latitude and longitude, the depth, the

time, the sex and any sort of interaction that
the swimmers have with it. The whale sharks
don’t actually seem to mind the interaction
with them and certainly if it wasn’t for them
being out here we wouldn’t have the amount
of knowledge we do about them.

The difference is, I suppose, with scientific research, you might have a research team
here for a week, two weeks, and then they leave. They might come here once every
few years. But when you’ve got, well, six or seven whale shark boats here, three or
four in Coral Bay, running for three or four months then their contribution to research
is awesome. They’re out here every day.

Did you hear the contractions? The first speaker used three of them.

Simon said: ‘don’t’, ‘wasn’t’ and ‘wouldn’t’.

Listen again.

The whale sharks don’t actually seem to mind the interaction with them and certainly
if it wasn’t for them being out here we wouldn’t have the amount of knowledge we
do about them.

Page 1 of 6
‘Don’t’ is a contraction of ‘do not’.

‘Wasn’t’ is a contraction of ‘was not’.

‘Wouldn’t’ is a contraction of ‘would not’.

These are all examples of a very common style of contraction – a verb and the
negative, ‘not’.

Now listen to a tour guide, Steve Gibson, talking about the tourists who help study
the whale sharks. He uses another type of contraction. Can you identify it?

The difference is, I suppose, with scientific

research, you might have a research team
here for a week, two weeks, and then they
leave. They might come here once every few
years. But when you’ve got, well, six or seven
whale shark boats here, three or four in Coral
Bay, running for three or four months then
their contribution to research is awesome.
They’re out here every day.

Steve says: ‘you’ve got’ and ‘they’re out’.

These are contractions of pronouns with the verbs ‘to have’ and ‘to be’.

‘You’ve’ is a contraction of ‘you have’.

‘They’re’ is a contraction of ‘they are’.

We can also make contractions with nouns and other words. Let’s look at a few.

“My brother’s studying.”

‘Brother’s’ is a contraction of ‘brother is’.

“Who’s going out tonight?”

‘Who’s’ is a contraction of ‘who is’.

“There’s our bus.”

‘There’s’ is a contraction of ‘there is’.

When writing informally, for example in notes or postcards, it’s fine to use
contractions, because they represent spoken language. However, if you are writing
formally, do not use contractions. Remember that in formal writing, words that are
not in the dictionary should not be used.

Page 2 of 6
Finally, let’s consider the pronunciation of contractions. Some are stressed, and
others are not.

But just remember, the rules for stressing words can change according to context.

Here’s a guide.

Contractions are ‘stressed’ when they’re formed from nouns, main verbs and
negatives.

For example:

“my ‘brother’s’ studying”,

“if it wasn’t for them”,

“we wouldn’t have”.

Contractions are ‘not’ stressed when they’re formed from pronouns and auxiliary
words.

For example, Steve says:

“when you’ve got boats here”,

“they’re out here every day”.

Notice that contractions cannot occur at the

end of a sentence, except for the
contraction of a verb and ‘not’.

For example,

“He’s sick.”
“Yes, I know he is.” We cannot say “Yes I know he’s.”

But we can say:

“I’m hurt.”
“No, you aren’t.”

OK. Now we’re going to watch the story again. This time, listen for the use of nouns.

Page 3 of 6
So what sort of information are you recording in your log?

The latitude and longitude, the depth, the time, the sex and any sort of interaction
that the swimmers have with it. The whale sharks don’t actually seem to mind the
interaction with them and certainly if it wasn’t for them being out here we wouldn’t
have the amount of knowledge we do about them.

The difference is, I suppose, with scientific

research, you might have a research team
here for a week, two weeks, and then they
leave. They might come here once every few
years. But when you’ve got, well, six or seven
whale shark boats here, three or four in Coral
Bay, running for three or four months then
their contribution to research is awesome.
They’re out here every day.

All the speakers use a number of nouns.

In English nouns are either countable or uncountable - that is, we can either count
them or we can’t.

Let’s look at countable nouns.

Countable nouns are generally things like:

‘people’ – a teacher, a cook, a swimmer;

‘animals’ – a dog, a cat, a whale shark;

‘plants’ – a lily, a bush, a tree;

‘objects’ – a chair, a table, a boat;

‘units of measurement’ – a litre, a dollar, a cup.

Uncountable nouns are generally more abstract, and include things such as:

‘languages’ – Chinese, Japanese, German;

‘emotions’ – happiness, sadness, anger;

‘ideas’ – intelligence, luck, knowledge;

‘substances or materials’ – like air, oil or rice.

Countable nouns have two forms. They can be ‘singular’ or ‘plural’.

But uncountable nouns have only one form, and cannot form a plural.

Page 4 of 6
Let’s have a look at that.

‘Chair’ can be singular or plural, ‘chairs’. It is a specific, concrete thing, so it is a

countable noun.

We can say:

“I would like to buy three chairs.”

However, ‘furniture’ is an abstract noun. It has only one form, and cannot be made
into a plural.

It is an uncountable noun.

We can say:

“I would like to buy all that furniture.”

Using a word like ‘all’ indicates quantity or amount.

Listen to how Simon Stevens measures knowledge in this clip.

The whale sharks don’t actually seem to mind the interaction with them and certainly
if it wasn’t for them being out here we wouldn’t have the amount of knowledge we do
about them.

He says ‘an amount of knowledge’.

‘Knowledge’ is an uncountable noun. It can’t be counted. We haven’t got a specific

number we can apply to define a ‘quantity of knowledge’.

We use ‘quantity words’ or ‘measure words’ with uncountable nouns, instead of

numbers.

We say:

‘an amount of knowledge’,

‘a cup of tea’,

‘a loaf of bread’,

‘a degree of happiness’,

‘a measure of luck’, or

‘a gust of wind’.

OK, so today we’ve looked at different types of contractions and how they are
stressed in phrases, and we looked at countable and uncountable nouns.

Page 5 of 6
If you would like to watch today’s story again, look at some study notes or do some
exercises, you can go to our website anytime. It’s at
australianetwork.com/studyenglish.

That’s all for today. I’ll see you next time on Study English. Bye bye.

Page 6 of 6
TRANSCRIPT EPISODE 10: DURIANS

Hello. I’m Margot Politis. Welcome to Study English, IELTS preparation.

Today, we’re going to look at the use of pronouns in a story about durian orchards.

English uses a range of pronouns for different functions. For example, there are
personal pronouns, possessive pronouns, demonstrative pronouns and reflexive
pronouns.

Today, we’re going to look at demonstrative and reflexive pronouns.

But first we’re going to meet Laura Fitzgerald, a durian researcher. She is describing
a durian leaf. Listen to how she uses the demonstrative pronouns ‘this’ and ‘that’.

This is the underside of the leaf and we’re seeing

it at a 406 times magnification. These are the
hairs that you see here. This is one of the
reproductive structures of the pathogen and it’s
called a sporangia and what’s happened is, it’s
been in a drop of rain and it’s splashed on to the
underside of the leaf and it’s gotten caught in the
hairs and it’s what we call germinated and started
to grow across the surface of the leaf.

New research is investigating ways of inoculating, or vaccinating, durian trees grown

in orchards with the good fungi to help the plant protect itself from disease.

She says:

“This is the underside.”

“These are the hairs.”

Demonstrative pronouns demonstrate both distance and number – how close

something is, and how many there are.

We can show this on a table.

‘This’ is used for singular nouns that are near to you.

‘These’ are used for plural nouns that are near to you.

Laura is looking at a durian leaf, and referring to part of it. The leaf is very close to
her, so Laura refers to it using the demonstrative pronouns for near things: ‘this’ and
‘these’.

“This is the underside.”

“These are the hairs.”

Page 1 of 5
Now listen to Dr David Guest discussing the effect of the typhoon on the durian
orchards.

In 1994 in Thailand there was a typhoon around

Chanta Buri, which is the main growing area.
What happened after that typhoon is that some
of the trees were damaged by the strong winds,
but after that typhoon there was an epidemic of
phytophthora, and some orchards were
completely destroyed by that epidemic.

He says:

“that typhoon”,

“that epidemic”.

‘That’ is a demonstrative pronoun used with singular nouns that are far away.

‘Those’ is used with plural nouns that are far away.

The typhoon was distant or far away from the

speaker. It was in Chanta Buri, Thailand. The
typhoon was also distant in time. It was years
ago, in 1994. This is why he refers to it as ‘that
typhoon’.

So demonstrative pronouns apply not only to

spatial relations ‘near and far’, but also to time
relations ‘now and then’.

In both cases, the pronouns convey distance.

Let’s look at some examples.

“I like this new movie better than that old one.”

‘This movie’ means a recent movie, a movie close to ‘now’ in time.

‘That movie’ means an older movie, more distant in time.

“These biscuits are nicer than those.”

‘These biscuits’ means they are physically close to the speaker. ‘Those biscuits’ are
further away.

Page 2 of 5
Listen to Dr David Guest again using ‘that’ for a different grammatical purpose.

In 1994 in Thailand there was a typhoon around Chanta Buri, which is the main
growing area. What happened after that typhoon is that some of the trees were
damaged by the strong winds, but after that typhoon there was an epidemic of
phytophthora, and some orchards were completely destroyed by that epidemic.

He says: “What happened is ‘that’ some of the trees were damaged.”

The word ‘that’ is not used as a pronoun here, but as a complement, introducing what
happened.

We can remove ‘that’ and the sentence means the same thing.

“What happened is some of the trees were damaged.”

You will see ‘that’ used as a complement most commonly when reporting speech,
ideas or feelings:

‘he said that’,

‘she argued that’,

‘they felt that’.

‘That’ is the complement of the verbs ‘said’,

‘argued’ and ‘felt’.

By now you should be familiar with using demonstrative pronouns to make reference
to time and space.

Let’s look at another group of pronouns – reflexive pronouns. There is one used
twice used in this clip. See if you can pick it.

Because there’s a growing Asian population in

Australia there’s a growing demand for durians.
So we import durians, mostly from Thailand and
Thailand’s certainly the world leader in durian
production. Throughout Southeast Asia it’s the
most popular tropical fruit and the industry
itself’s worth somewhere between 2 or 3 billion
US dollars a year.

New research is investigating ways of inoculating, or vaccinating, durian trees grown

in orchards with the good fungi to help the plant protect itself from disease.

He says: “the industry itself”.

‘Itself’ is a reflexive pronoun.

Page 3 of 5
One of the functions of reflexive pronouns is for emphasis, to mean ‘that person or
thing and nobody or nothing else’.

For example:

“The house ‘itself’ is beautiful but the street is

a bit noisy.”

“I wasn’t happy with the service, so I went to

confront the manager ‘myself’.”

In these examples, the reflexive pronouns

‘itself’ and ‘myself’ refer back to the subjects
of the sentences, the noun ‘house’ and the
pronoun ‘I’. They add emphasis to the
statements.

Let’s look at the whole group of reflexive

pronouns in this table.

I might want to emphasise ‘myself’ if I am

speaking in the first person, or ‘ourselves’ if I
am talking about me and my friends, using the plural form.

I could speak in the second person about ‘yourself’ or ‘yourselves’.

Using third person, I can emphasise ‘himself, herself,

itself or oneself’. The plural form is ‘themselves’.

All of these words are reflexive pronouns that can be used for emphasis.

Listen to the clip again.

Because there’s a growing Asian population

in Australia there’s a growing demand for
durians. So we import durians, mostly from
Thailand and Thailand’s certainly the world
leader in durian production. Throughout
Southeast Asia it’s the most popular tropical
fruit and the industry itself’s worth somewhere
between 2 or 3 billion US dollars a year.

New research is investigating ways of inoculating, or vaccinating, durian trees grown

in orchards with the good fungi to help the plant protect itself from disease.

The reporter says: “to help the plant protect itself from disease”.

The reflexive ‘itself’ refers back to the subject of this clause. The subject and the
object are the same - ‘the plant’.

Page 4 of 5
A common use of reflexive pronouns is to refer to objects or actions where the
subject and object are the same person or thing.

For example:

“I cut ‘myself’ shaving this morning.” (not ‘I cut me’);

“I got out of the bath and dried ‘myself’.” (not ‘dried me’);

“We made ‘ourselves’ a cup of coffee.” (not ‘made us’).

Ok, so today we’ve looked at pronouns.

We’ve talked about demonstrative pronouns
– ‘this’ ‘these’ ‘that’ ‘those’, and reflexive
pronouns like ‘myself’, ‘yourself’, ‘itself’.

To find more help on pronouns, you can visit

our website anytime. You’ll find today’s story,
transcript, study notes and exercises.

That’s all for today. I’ll see you next time on Study English. Bye bye.

Page 5 of 5
TRANSCRIPT EPISODE 11: MANGROVES

Hello. I’m Margot Politis. Welcome to Study English, IELTS preparation.

On Study English today, we’ll talk about the language of speculation and take a look
at identifying the future tense. Speculating about the future is a very important
language skill for the IELTS speaking test.

But first, let’s watch today’s story. We’ll visit a mangrove forest where we’ll meet one
of the more interesting animals that calls the forest home – the goanna, and a new
animal – the cane toad – that might be threatening the mangrove goanna.

Possibly because it’s very hard to get into the mangroves all year round, especially in
the wet season when there’s a lot of water. This site’s one of the only spots where
you can get in without a boat all year round so that’s why we chose it.

Are cane toads likely to come into mangrove

mud flats like this?

It’s probable that they’ll come in small numbers,

but from radio tracking these goannas it looks
like the mangrove goannas will head out onto
the flood plain and they do seem to eat frogs so
it’s possible that when the cane toads arrive
here on the flood plain in big numbers the
goannas will eat them. So it’s possible there’ll be an impact.

We expect that most of the goannas are going to eat a cane toad and die, but we’re
just hoping that some of them, even a small proportion, won’t be interested in eating
a toad and they’re the ones that will be living to pass on their genes and hopefully
bring numbers of goannas back up, eventually.

So the scientists aren’t sure what will happen in the future.

When we’re trying to ‘predict the future’ – or speculate about what might happen - we
have several language choices.

Let’s put together a list of our options.

First, we have verbs. We could use verbs like:

‘guess’

‘suppose’

‘imagine’

‘think’

‘suspect’ or ‘hope’

Page 1 of 6
Second, we can use ‘modal verbs’.

For example:

‘may’

‘will’

‘would’

‘might’ or

‘could’.

Or, we can use ‘conditionals’ like ‘if’:

For example:

“If I pass the exam I will buy myself a new DVD.”

Other conditionals use similar constructions like this:

‘If… I might’, or

‘If … I could’.

We might also use ‘discourse markers’ to speculate about the future.

Some examples are:

‘perhaps’

‘maybe’

‘hopefully’

‘possibly’

or even: ‘you never know’.

And, finally, we can use ‘adjectives’.

‘It’s likely that’

‘it’s unlikely that’, or

‘it’s possible that’.

Page 2 of 6
So here’s our list of choices:

We can talk about the future using:

‘verbs’

‘modal verbs’

‘conditionals’

‘discourse markers’, or

‘adjectives’.

Now, let’s hear some of these in practice.

Listen to James Smith talking about what might happen to the cane toads and
goannas.

It’s probable that they’ll come in small numbers, but from radio tracking these
goannas it looks like the mangrove goannas will head out onto the flood plain and
they do seem to eat frogs so it’s possible that when the cane toads arrive here on the
flood plain in big numbers the goannas will eat them. So it’s possible there’ll be an
impact.

He says, ‘it looks like’ the mangrove goannas will head out.

When discussing the future, there are many verbs we can use. For example:

‘it looks like’,

‘it seems’,

‘I expect’,

‘I hope’,

‘I imagine’ or

‘I suspect’.

These verbs are followed by future tense constructions.

In our example James says:

"It looks like the mangrove goannas will head out."

He uses the future tense, ‘will’, to say what the goannas will do in the future.

Page 3 of 6
Let’s hear more from James:

We expect that most of the goannas are going

to eat a cane toad and die, but we’re just hoping
that some of them, even a small proportion,
won’t be interested in eating a toad and they’re
the ones that will be living to pass on their genes
and hopefully bring numbers of goannas back
up, eventually.

James says:

“We expect that most of the goannas are going

to eat a cane toad.”

‘Expect’ is the verb.

And ‘are going to eat’ uses the future tense to

predict what will happen.

James also uses discourse markers.

He says that if goannas don’t eat toads then this will ‘hopefully’ bring numbers of
goannas back up’.

Discourse markers like ‘hopefully’, ‘maybe’, ‘possibly’ or ‘probably’ can all be used to
speculate about the future.

They can also give us an idea about what the

speaker thinks. James hopes the goannas will
survive.

The final item on our list was ‘adjectives’. Listen

to how James uses adjectives to speculate
about the future.

It’s probable that they’ll come in small numbers, but from radio tracking these
goannas it looks like the mangrove goannas will head out onto the flood plain and
they do seem to eat frogs so it’s possible that when the cane toads arrive here on the
flood plain in big numbers the goannas will eat them. So it’s possible there’ll be an
impact.

James says:

‘It’s probable’, and

‘It’s possible’

Page 4 of 6
These are examples of using adjectives to show that the speaker is talking about
something that ‘might’ happen in the future. James is speculating about things that
‘might’ happen.

In English, we can also say ‘it’s likely’.

So we can have:

“It’s probable the cane toads will come.”

“It’s possible the cane toads will come.”

or,

“It’s likely the cane toads will come.”

In each of these cases, we use the future tense - will come.

In English we have to decide which tense to use when referring to things that might
happen in the future.

English uses three verb forms when referring to future actions – the ‘simple future’,
the ‘present continuous’, and the ‘future continuous’.

We can use the simple future – that’s 'will' plus

a 'verb' – there will be.

We can also use 2 forms of the present

continuous - either the auxiliary verb ‘to be’ plus
the ‘present participle’, or the auxiliary verb
‘going to’ with a ‘main verb’.

Finally we can use the future continuous – 'will'

plus the auxiliary verb 'to be' plus the present participle.

Listen for the future tenses in this clip

We expect that most of the goannas are going to eat a cane toad and die, but we’re
just hoping that some of them, even a small proportion, won’t be interested in eating
a toad and they’re the ones that will be living to pass on their genes and hopefully
bring numbers of goannas back up, eventually.

There were three examples in that clip.

'Are going to’,

‘Wont’ be’, and

‘Will be’,

Page 5 of 6
Did you hear them? Listen again.

We expect that most of the goannas are going

to eat a cane toad and die, but we’re just
hoping that some of them, even a small
proportion, won’t be interested in eating a toad
and they’re the ones that will be living to pass
on their genes and hopefully bring numbers of
goannas back up, eventually.

He says: some cane toads ‘will be living’ to

pass on their genes.

‘Will be living’ uses the future continuous tense.

‘He also says ‘Are going to eat’. That uses the present continuous tense.

The present continuous tense is used to describe actions in the immediate future that
are definite or planned.

A good example of the present continuous tense is:

“What are you doing tonight?”

“I’m going to see a film.”

And that’s all for study English today.

Let’s take a look back at the things we’ve talked about.

First, we looked at the ‘language of speculation’ - the language you use to talk about
things that might happen in the future.

We saw examples of
‘Verbs’

‘Modal verbs’

‘Conditionals’

‘Discourse markers’, and ‘Adjectives’.

Then, we looked at examples of ‘future tenses’ – the ‘simple future tense’, the
‘present continuous tense’ and the ‘future continuous tense’.

And if sometime in the future, you need some help with your English – why not visit
our Study English website. You will probably find everything you need.

And that’s all for today. I’ll see you next time for more Study English. Bye bye.

Page 6 of 6
TRANSCRIPT EPISODE 12: CANE TOADS

Hello. I’m Margot Politis. Welcome to Study English, IELTS preparation.

Today, we’re going to talk about expressing attitude, and using the words ‘so’ and
‘such’.

And we’re going to find out about some nasty creatures called cane toads, and all the
trouble they can cause.

Curious? Let’s watch the clip.

You can see these large glands he’s got behind his
eyes, which contain a lot of toxin. It’s got various
compounds in there but basically what it does is
give you a heart attack. The toxin’s actually all
throughout the skin but the main concentration is in
these glands. So basically, something bites it, if it
gets into its bloodstream, there’s a good chance it
will be killed very quickly.

We found a dead freshwater crocodile, which was apparently killed. Certainly a one
death adder, which is a venomous snake, quite an important Australian snake, we
found one of those freshly dead with a small toad in its mouth. And even to small
children, if a child was to put them in their mouth, the toxin is quite severe.

The flip side of that is that there are a whole lot of

animals which will be out-competed by cane toads.
So they’re other animals, which eat insects for
instance, ‘cause cane toads are so numerous that
they suck up all the insects from the biota, like big
vacuum cleaners and so they can actually cause
other animals to starve.

Why are we literally sitting back and watching the

cane toad invasion move further and further up through Kakadu and through the
Northern Territory?

Well there has actually been quite a lot done, in fact, over a period of perhaps 10
years prior to this, a huge amount of effort and money has already been spent on
looking at some way and means of controlling cane toads. All that work has come to
nothing, and most people understand that now.

What we have to do is wait on the big guns in Canberra with their genetic
engineering and biological control work. That’s the only hope there is.

Cane toads are such prolific breeders, each female would produce 50 thousand
eggs. There will be millions of cane toads out there.

Page 1 of 5
Unfortunately, cane toads are a big environmental problem in Australia. They’re a
species that was introduced from another country. We’ll use their story to talk about
attitude or, more specifically, attitude markers.

Attitude markers can indicate the attitude of someone to what they are saying or what
others have said.

I just used one. I said: “‘Unfortunately’, cane toads are a big environmental problem.”

The word ‘unfortunately’ indicates my attitude to cane toads.

Other words that are attitude markers include:

‘actually’,

‘in fact’,

‘certainly’,

‘of course’,

‘really’ and

‘surprisingly’.

Let’s listen to a Wildlife Ranger, Greg Miles, answering a reporter’s question. Listen
for attitude markers.

Why are we literally sitting back and watching the

cane toad invasion move further and further up
through Kakadu and through the Northern Territory?

Well there has actually been quite a lot done, in fact,

over a period of perhaps 10 years prior to this, a
huge amount of effort and money has already been
spent on looking at some way and means of
controlling cane toads.

Greg Miles says: “There has actually been quite a lot done in fact.”

He uses the attitude markers, ‘actually’ and ‘in fact’ to show that he disagrees with
the reporter, and to advance his own view.

It’s a polite way of expressing an opposing opinion.

Other examples of words and phrases that are used to do this include:

‘as a matter of fact’,

‘to tell the truth’, or ‘well’.

Page 2 of 5
Let’s see some examples.

“Cane toads look harmless, but as a matter of fact,

they’re dangerous.”

“I thought you liked cane toads?” “Well, I don’t.”

Can you hear the attitude expressed in these

phrases?

Now here’s ecologist, James Smith again.

You can see these large glands he’s got behind his eyes, which contain a lot of toxin.
The toxin’s actually all throughout the skin but the main concentration is in these
glands.

James uses ‘actually’ here to introduce details. Because the details of the toxins are
surprising in nature, and perhaps unexpected, ‘actually’ provides this subtlety of
meaning.

Now here’s Greg Miles again. He uses two other attitude markers.

We found a dead freshwater crocodile, which was apparently killed. Certainly, one
death adder, which is a venomous snake, quite an important Australian snake, we
found one of those freshly dead with a small toad in its mouth.

He says: ‘apparently’ and ‘certainly’.

He says: “the crocodile was apparently killed”.

He uses ‘apparently’ because he got his information from someone else, and he’s not
certain that it’s true. Based on appearances, it looks like the crocodile was killed by
the cane toad.

Greg says: “certainly one death adder” was found dead.

Here, Greg is emphasising that there’s no doubt that this is true, that the death adder
was killed by the toxins in the cane toad.

From the use of these attitude markers, we can tell that he’s not completely sure the
crocodile was killed by a cane toad, but he’s definitely sure the death adder was
killed by one.

Okay. Let’s turn our attention to another way you can express subtleties of meaning
in English.

They’re co-relative subordinating conjunctions.

Page 3 of 5
The words themselves are short and simple:

‘so … that’, and

‘such … that’.

Listen to Greg Miles talking about the number of cane toads eating insects.

The flip side of that is that there’s a whole lot of

animals which will be out-competed by cane toads.
So they’re other animals, which eat insects for
instance, ‘cause cane toads are so numerous that
they suck up all the insects from the biota, like big
vacuum cleaners.

Greg says: “Cane toads are so numerous that they

suck up all the insects from the biota.”

This means that cane toads are ‘numerous enough’ to suck up all the insects from
the biota. There are enough of them to do that.

‘So … that’ is called an amount construction. It expresses a meaning similar to

‘enough’, which means an adequate number or amount.

But this construction also adds a meaning of ‘result’, using the ‘that-clause’.

Let’s study a sentence to see how this construction works.

“Cane toads are numerous.”

How numerous?

“So numerous.”

With what result?

“That they suck up all the insects from the biota.”

“Cane toads are so numerous that they suck up all the insects from the biota.”

The sentence uses the amount structure ‘so … that’ to define an amount and a
result.

Here’s another example: “Have you seen the film Cane Toads?”

“The film was so good that we went to see it twice.”

‘So’ tells us how good the film was.

‘That’ tells us the result: ‘we went to see it twice’.

Page 4 of 5
Let’s listen to how Professor Madsen expresses ‘amount’ in relation to cane toads.

Cane toads are such prolific breeders, each female would produce 50 thousand
eggs. There will be millions of cane toads out there.

He uses another construction to express the

amount. He says ‘such’:

“Cane toads are ‘such’ prolific breeders.”

He adds the result clause ‘there will be millions of

them’, but without using the word ‘that’.

‘That’ is sometimes omitted in informal English. It

is understood without being stated. More formally
he would have said:

“Cane toads are such prolific breeders that there will

be millions of them.”

‘So’ and ‘such’ in these constructions also provide

emotive emphasis.

For example:

“Cane toads are so ugly!”

“Cane toads are such a pest!”

So today we’ve looked at attitude markers and language for expressing emotion.

We’ve also talked about the degree or amount constructions ‘so’ and ‘such’.

Using these language features will make your language more interesting, and will
show an appreciation of subtleties of meaning.

And it’s time for me to go, but you’ll find today’s story and a lot more on our Study
English website.

I’ll see you next time. Bye bye.

Page 5 of 5
TRANSCRIPT EPISODE 13: WELDING

Hello. I’m Margot Politis. Welcome to Study English IELTS preparation.

Today we’re going to focus on word form groups – noun, verb and preposition
phrases.

Then, we’ll look at some words that can be used as both nouns and verbs, and we’ll
learn how to tell which is which.

But first, we visit an automotive factory – a place where they build cars - and we see
how a new piece of machinery is helping to avoid mistakes in the manufacturing
process.

Here, we have two faults, which are very

common in the automotive industry, where the
weld has deviated from the seam here.

Paint and grease are very common faults in the

automotive industry and where we’ve welded
over the paint, you can see that there’s bubbles
in the weld. Typically we call this porosity.

At the moment, you only take a sample of the cars. You’re not able to test every
weld in every car, and that’s a major advantage of our technology. We can test every
weld in every car.

Understanding English is much easier if you understand how words can be grouped
together. Knowing the function of a group of words can help you to follow a
sequence of ideas when you’re reading or listening.

The main word form groups are noun phrases, verb phrases and preposition
phrases.

Let’s begin with noun phrases.

A noun phrase is made up of a determiner.

That might be an article, like ‘a’, ‘an’ or ‘the’.

A determiner could be a number, like ‘one’ ‘two’

or ‘three’.

Or it could be a demonstrative adjective, for

example ‘this’ or ‘those’.

As well as a determiner, a noun phrase can have a modifier.

A modifier can be an adjective, like ‘big’, ‘green’ or ‘impressive’.

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Or it could be a possessive, like ‘my’, or ‘John’s’.

And finally, a noun phrase must have a noun.

An example of a noun phrase is ‘the IELTS test’.

It has a determiner, a modifier and a noun.

Now, let’s take a look at a verb phrase.

There are a variety of verb phrases.

The simplest verb phrase is a single main verb standing alone.

Other verb phrases are formed by an ‘auxiliary verb + main verb’ or different
combinations of ‘auxiliary verbs + main verbs’.

For example:

“She ‘finished’ her homework.”

“She ‘had finished’ her homework.”

“She ‘was required to finish’ her homework.”

“She ‘finished doing’ her homework.”

OK. So that’s noun phrases and verb phrases. There are also preposition phrases.

A preposition phrase begins with a preposition. It could be a preposition of time,

place or direction.

So a preposition phrase starts with words such as ‘at’, ‘on’, ‘during’, ‘up’ or ‘down’.

Let’s put a noun, verb and preposition phrase together.

In the sentence:

“The IELTS test finished at one o’clock on Friday.”

we have a noun phrase, a verb phrase, and a preposition phrase.

The function of verb, noun and preposition phrases depends on their position in the
sentence.

Noun phrases are often subjects.

They usually come before the verb phrase in a sentence. The noun phrase tells us
everything about the verb in the clause that follows.

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Let’s listen to Dr Trevor Gore. He’s talking about faults or weaknesses that occur at
points that have been welded together.

See if you can tell what is the function of the word ‘weld’.

Here, we have two faults, which are very common in the automotive industry, where
the weld has deviated from the seam here.

Dr Gore says: “The weld has deviated from the seam.”

‘The weld’ is a noun phrase.

It contains a determiner ‘the’,

and a noun ‘weld’.

‘The weld’ is a noun phrase that functions as the subject of this clause.

It’s followed by the verb phrase ‘has deviated’, and then the preposition phrase ‘from
the seam’.

Let’s listen to Dr Gore use the word ‘weld’ in a different clip. What is the function of
‘weld’ in this context?

Paint and grease are very common faults in the automotive industry and where we’ve
welded over the paint, you can see that there’s bubbles in the weld.

He says: “We have welded over the paint”.

The subject is ‘we’.

‘Have welded’ is the verb phrase. It functions as the verb of the sentence.

So here, ‘weld’ is used as a verb.

Notice that ‘over the paint’ is the preposition phrase.

There’s one more use of the word ‘weld’ in the story.

At the moment, you only take a sample of the

cars.

You’re not able to test every weld in every car,

and that’s a major advantage of our technology.

We can test every weld in every car.

He uses ‘weld’ twice.

He says with the old technology: “You are not able to test every weld.”

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But when talking about the new technology he says: “We can test every weld”.

In both of these sentences, ‘weld’ occurs with a

determiner.

The determiner is ‘every’. So weld is used as

part of a noun phrase - ‘every weld’. It’s a noun.

It occurs after the verb phrases ‘are not able to

test, and ‘can test’.

So here the noun phrase ‘every weld’ is an

object.

We’ve seen how different word forms can perform different functions.

For example, ‘weld’ is used in today’s story as both a noun and a verb.

There are quite a few words in English that use the same word for both the noun and
verb form.

Listen for some other examples.

Paint and grease are very common faults in the automotive industry and where we’ve
welded over the paint, you can see that there’s bubbles in the weld. Typically we call
this porosity.

At the moment you only take a sample of the cars. You’re not able to test every weld
in every car, and that’s a major advantage of our technology. We can test every weld
in every car.

Dr Gore says that:

“You only take a sample of the cars.”

The word ‘sample’ can be used as a verb or a noun. What is it in this sentence?

‘Sample’ occurs after a determiner ‘a’.

So we know that it is the noun in a noun phrase.

He also says: “You are not able to test every weld in every car.”

Like ‘sample’, ‘test’ can be a noun and a verb. Here, ‘test’ is part of the verb phrase
‘are not able to test’. It’s a verb.

So you can see that it’s a good idea to study a sentence closely for noun, verb and
preposition phrases if you’re confused about meaning.

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Let’s take a quick look back over what we’ve looked at today.

We practiced identifying and using noun and verb

forms in different functions.

We looked at what makes a noun phrase, a verb

phrase and a preposition phrase.

And we finished by looking at words that are both

nouns and verbs.

There are many more examples and exercises on the Study English website. So
don’t forget to log on for some more practice. It’s at abcasiapacific.com/studyenglish.

And I’ll see you next time. Bye bye.

Page 5 of 5
TRANSCRIPT EPISODE 14: TERMITES

Hello. I’m Margot Politis. Welcome to Study English, IELTS preparation.

Today, we’re going to talk about tenses, and different ways of making comparisons.

Choosing the best tense for formal writing, including your IELTS essay, is important,
and so is being consistent.

We’re going to start by listening to an ecologist talking about termites in tropical

Australia. What verb tense does she use?

This is another species of termite that we have

here in the Territory, and this species is nesuta
termes graviolis and as you can tell, it nests in
trees and their nests are nice and round around
the higher branches of the tree, and then they
build these little runways, what we call carton
runways, that run all the way from the nest, all
the way down to the base of the tree, and the
idea here is the termites just use them as shelter
so they’re not exposed to predators and not exposed to the hot sun. So they travel
down through these tunnels and that allows them to access food resources on the
ground.

So here in tropical Australia, termites are actually the major decomposer insect and
they also play a really important role in conditioning the soil, much like earthworms
do, so they help to turn over the soil, to create new soil and to increase the porosity
of the soil.

She says:

“Termites are the major decomposer insect.”

“They play a really important.”

“They help to turn over the soil”.

She used the simple present tense form of verbs: ‘are’, ‘play’, and ‘help’.

In IELTS writing tasks, the essay topics given are general and will require you to
write about actions. The simple present tense would be the most appropriate verb
form to use because you would be talking about general facts.

Dr Dawes-Gromadzki was describing general facts about termites, so she used the
simple present. Listen again.

So here in tropical Australia, termites are actually the major decomposer insect and
they also play a really important role in conditioning the soil, much like earthworms
do, so they help to turn over the soil.

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She starts using the present tense, and then continues with it throughout her
description.

It’s very important to be consistent in the verb tense you use. So when writing your
IELTS essay, try to use the simple present tense for the main verb, and avoid
switching tenses.

Keeping in mind that the essay will be about things in general, you also need to
consider the language of the noun phrases.

Listen to Tracey talking about the nesting habits of termites. What noun forms does
she use?

The idea here is the termites just use them as shelter, so they’re not exposed to
predators and not exposed to the hot sun. So they travel down through these tunnels
and that allows them to access food resources on the ground.

Most of the noun phrases she uses are plural –

‘termites’, ‘predators’, ‘tunnels’, and ‘food
resources’

She uses the plural for ‘termites’ because she is

talking about the species as a whole.

The idea here is about the habits of termites in

general, so the plural would be used.

It is not only one predator or a single tunnel or one food resource that is being
discussed, but all the ‘predators’, ‘tunnels’ and ‘food resources’ of the termites.

In formal writing, you will usually find nouns are in plural form when the statements
are general ones about groups, classes or things.

But, of course, you’ll need to watch for uncountable nouns, because uncountable
nouns do not have a plural form.

The various topics you may get in the IELTS test will be general in nature, and will
require you to ‘discuss’, ‘explain’, ‘compare’ and ‘contrast’ in general terms.

So for your IELTS essay, you should use the simple present tense as the main verb
form, and use plural nouns or uncountable nouns for your subjects.

Now let’s look at another aspect of the termite story – how comparisons are
structured in English.

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We use a comparative to compare one person, thing or action with another.
For example:

“Judy is younger than her sister.”

We can use a double comparative when we

want to say something is changing.

For example:

“They are getting better and better since starting

the IELTS program.”

There is another way we can use a comparative - to describe complementary

processes. That is, we can describe how something is changing, but changing
together with something else.

We can use this kind of form:

“In Australia, the ‘farther’ south you go, the ‘cooler’ the winters.”

Now watch Tracey talk about the rate at which termites break down mulch.

The more termites and the more other bugs you have in the soil, the quicker this
mulch is going to decompose and that means the faster the nutrients are going to
cycle through the system and help make it healthier.

She says:

“The more termites and the more other bugs you

have, the quicker this mulch is going to
decompose and the faster the nutrients are
going to cycle.”

She is comparing several things that are

changing together.

Let’s see how the basic structure of a

comparative expression like this works.

The form is:

‘the’ + comparative’ + ‘subject’ + ‘verb’.

Tracey said:

“the quicker this mulch is going to decompose”.

Then using exactly the same grammatical structure, she added the complementary
statement:

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“the faster the nutrients are going to cycle”.

Notice the symmetry of these statements? It makes it easier to remember and apply!

Let’s try another example.

“The older she gets, the happier she is.”

And another one:

“The harder I study, the more I learn.”

As with most languages, English users take

shortcuts.

For example, if someone asked me how I take my tea, I might say:

“The stronger, the better!"

The stronger my tea is, the better it will be.

When the subject is understood in this context, you only need to state the
comparison, leaving out the subject and verb.

“How would you like your haircut?”

“The longer, the better!”

This is short for:

The longer my hair is, the better it will be.

The short form is common with phrases ending in ‘the better’.

“When is your friend coming over?”

“The sooner, the better!”

“Do you like hot soup?”

“The hotter, the better!”

It’s also used to describe a good party – one that has lots of people. You might say:

“The more, the merrier!”

It’s understood that you mean:

“The more people there are, the merrier the party will be.”

These phrases are examples of more complex comparative structures. Why not
practise them with your friends? The sooner, the better!

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That’s all for today. Let’s review what we’ve learnt.

We talked about the IELTS essay task, and

using the simple present tense and plural nouns.

Then we talked about making different kinds of

comparisons, ones that described
complementary processes.

And don’t forget that you can watch the story

again and get more IELTS help when you visit
our Study English website.

I’ll see you next time. Bye bye.

Page 5 of 5
TRANSCRIPT EPISODE 15: ASTRONOMER

Hello. I’m Margot Politis. Welcome to Study English IELTS preparation.

Today, we’re going to talk about the IELTS speaking and reading tests.

The speaking test includes an interview, where you can be asked to talk about
yourself, your family, your job or maybe your studies.

But you won’t have to answer any questions today. Instead, we’re going to interview
a man called Perry Vlahos. He’s an astronomer. By asking Perry a series of
questions, we can learn a bit more about what makes a good response.

Let’s begin by asking Perry a typical part 1 type question.

“Perry, can you tell us about yourself?”

Well, currently I’m the Vice–President of the

Astronomical Society of Victoria. Another thing
I do is the tours at the Melbourne Observatory,
where a lot of people come in to get a look
through the telescopes and have been there for
a long time - very historical instruments, in
some cases.

Perry answered the question very well. He gave detail in his answer.

He’s the Vice-President of the Astronomical Society of Victoria, and he does tours at
the Melbourne Observatory.

Perry ordered points logically and he used linking words like ‘currently’, and ‘another
thing’.

Did you notice that he started his response with the word ‘well’?

He did this so he could have some time to think about his answer.

Sometimes people will use fillers like ‘well’, ‘um’ or ‘ah’ while they are thinking about
what they want to say next.

It’s best to minimise fillers. Don’t use them too often, because it affects fluency.

Fluency is an important feature of your spoken language that the examiner is

listening for.

What question would you ask Perry next?

Perry is an astronomer. We might ask him about his area of study, astronomy.

Page 1 of 5
“Perry, could you tell us about astronomy?”

Astronomy is very much a cutting edge science. It’s the oldest science and it’s also
the newest science.

And then, every time we find out something new and interesting out there, it also tells
us something new and interesting about ourselves and our place in the cosmos.

Perry used words that belong to the field of astronomy.

For example, he talked about ‘cutting edge science’ and ‘the cosmos’.

Perry also used opposites in his description. He described astronomy as being both
the ‘oldest’ science and the ‘newest’ science.

Perry didn’t just tell us facts about astronomy, he extended the description to tell us
his opinions about the effect that astronomy can have.

He said that: “It can tell us something new and interesting about ourselves and our
place in the cosmos”.

To enhance his response, Perry could have talked more about the cosmos. That
would show more of his vocabulary range.

So, let’s ask Perry:

“Why did you choose to study astronomy?”

When I was about eleven or twelve and had my

first science lesson at high school and the
teacher went up to the board, drew a semi
circle, put in various dots, labelled them, said:
“Right. Now copy this down into your books.
These are stars, planets and constellations, go
out there and find them tonight and then let me
know how you went.” It inspired me, fired my
imagination and gave me something to work
towards.

Perry answered this question by telling a story. He used narration.

He began the story by telling us when it happened, that is:

“when I was eleven or twelve”,

and he then told us where the story took place, that is:

“in my first science lesson at high school”.

The narrative follows a sequence of events.

Page 2 of 5
Perry used direct speech. He quoted exactly what the teacher said.

“The teacher said: “Right. Now copy this down into your books”.”

By quoting what the teacher said, his response is more interesting.

By listening to Perry, we can get a few useful tips for the IELTS speaking test.

Perry did a number of things that you should do in your IELTS test, to give the
examiner the best chance to hear you speaking clearly.

It’s a good idea to link ideas and language

together and give interesting answers.

You should also try to give details and answer

questions fully.

Remember how Perry told us that astronomy

was both the oldest and also the newest
science?

Using these opposites was a good way for him to describe the field. It also allowed
him to show that he was aware of the relationship between these words.

Understanding the relationship between words can help to build your vocabulary. It
will also help you to answer some questions in the IELTS reading test.

Let’s have a look at some word relations you should know.

First, synonyms - words that mean the same.

For example, for ‘interesting’, we have synonyms such as:

‘entertaining’,

‘fascinating’, and

‘intriguing’.

And for the word ‘beautiful’, we have:

‘gorgeous’,

‘handsome’,

‘lovely’, and

‘exquisite’.

Page 3 of 5
You should also know about opposites.

For example:

‘high and low’,

‘big and small’,

‘anxious and calm’,

‘cheap and expensive’.

Another group of related words that can be useful to know is words related by
degree. These are words we can put on a scale.

For example:

‘hot’,

‘warm’,

‘cool’ and

‘cold’.

‘Hot’ and ‘cold’ can also be opposites. So can ‘warm’ and ‘cool’.

Now here’s Perry talking about what it’s like to look up at the stars with his
telescopes.

Listen for adjectives and adverbs as we ask: “Perry, do you enjoy your work as an
astronomer?”

I imagine the closest that I come to a great

spiritual experience is when I’m out there with
my telescope, total darkness and the universe
above my head, and you feel this strong
connection between all of those elements, and
that really fires me, and I’m always looking for
new things to see as well.

Perry uses a range of adjectives such as:

‘total darkness,’

‘strong connection’, and

‘new things’.

Can you think of any synonyms for these?

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How about:

‘absolute darkness’,

‘firm connection’, and

‘unfamiliar things’.

What about opposites?

The opposite of ‘strong connection’ is ‘weak connection’.

The opposite of ‘new things’ is ‘old things’.

Perry also uses the adverb ‘always’.

The opposite of ‘always’ is ‘never’.

We could also form a scale from ‘always’:

‘always’,

‘sometimes’,

‘occasionally’,

‘never’.

Knowing how words relate is useful when

answering ‘true’, ‘false’ and ‘not given’ questions in the IELTS reading test.

But that’s all for today.

Let’s review what we’ve learnt:

First, we saw how Perry answered interview questions. We saw how linking ideas,
using narrative and giving detailed answers can be helpful.

Then, we looked at word relationships. We saw that learning synonyms, opposites

and scales can help build vocabulary and can also help in the IELTS reading test.

Of course, all of these skills take practice.

Make sure you visit the Study English website for more. It’s at
abcasiapacific.com/studyenglish.

Bye bye.

Page 5 of 5
TRANSCRIPT EPISODE 16: GLASS ARTIST

Hello. I’m Margot Politis. Welcome to Study English, IELTS preparation.

Today we’re going to look at how English users indicate negative meanings. One of
the ways we can do that is with the word ‘not’.

And we’re going to hear a glass artist talk about his craft. The ancient art of hot
glassblowing dates back 5,000 years to the Egyptians. Listen to Mark Douglass, the
artist, talking about glassblowing today.

I think people are fascinated about glass, in a

sense, I know my grandmother had a beautiful
glass vase on her dressing table or whatever,
and it was always, "Don't break the vase," you
know, it's this precious thing.

The techniques I use for glassmaking aren't

that dissimilar than what has been around for,
like, centuries.

When English speakers want to give something a negative meaning, they use
negative words such as:

‘not’ - “She’s not coming.”

‘no’ – “There’s no music.”

‘nobody’ – “Nobody saw the crash.”

‘nothing’ – “There’s nothing to eat.”

‘nowhere’ – “He’s nowhere to be seen.”

All these sentences have only one negative. When constructing negative sentences,
English only allows one negative.

Using two negative words, such as 'nobody' and 'not' together in a sentence, can
give the opposite meaning to the one intended.

So, for example:

“I did not see nobody.”

With this double negative, this literally means:

“I saw somebody”.

Page 1 of 5
However, watch Mark Douglass again, and see how he uses a double negative to
give a positive meaning.

The techniques I use for glassmaking aren't that

dissimilar than what has been around for, like,
centuries.

Mark says:

“The techniques aren't dissimilar”.

‘Aren’t’ is a contraction of ‘are’ and ‘not’.

So he uses the negative word form ‘not’.

‘Dissimilar’ is made up of the negative prefix ‘dis-’ and the word ‘similar’.

So he uses ‘not’ and ‘dis-‘, both negatives, in one phrase.

These cancel each other’s effect, giving a positive meaning:

Look what happens when we leave them both out.

“The techniques are not dissimilar.”

“The techniques are similar.”

By saying “the techniques are not dissimilar', he is drawing attention to the fact that
this may be surprising, and not what you might expect.

He’s saying that it’s surprising that the techniques used today are similar to ancient
techniques.

This idea is reinforced by Mark using the negative word ‘unchanged’ when talking
about the techniques.

Listen to how he uses ‘unchanged’.

So the basic techniques of gathering, blowing glass, putting a bubble into some
glass, shaping it, pretty much have been unchanged for a long time.

Mark says the basic techniques of blowing glass ‘have been unchanged for a long
time’.

He does not say the techniques are ‘the same’. He chooses a negative to draw
attention or emphasise that something has not changed.

Let’s try another example:

“The student was not unhappy with her test score.”

Page 2 of 5
Cancel out the negatives ‘not and un-’ and you have:

“The student was happy with her test score.”

The two negatives cancel each other out, leaving a positive statement.

However, ‘not unhappy’ is not the same as ‘happy’.

The student may not have received an excellent score, but she didn’t receive a bad
one either. The student is not happy, but not unhappy either.

So this sentence expresses a subtly different perspective and attitude than the
simple positive statement:

“The student was happy.”

You can practise this construction by adding the prefix ‘dis-’ or ‘un-’ to many words:

‘not disloyal’,

‘not dishonest’,

‘not uncommon’,

‘not uncomfortable’,

‘not unkind’.

Before you know it, it will ‘not’ be ‘unusual’ for you to use negative expressions!

In part 3 of the IELTS Speaking test you’ll be discussing something linked to the topic
you spoke about earlier in the interview.

Let’s focus on the features of a good response to part 3.

You’ll be expected to use more complex language because of the diverse tasks.

You could be:

describing something,

speculating,

suggesting,

stating an opinion,

comparing,

contrasting or explaining.

Page 3 of 5
Let’s imagine Mark Douglass is participating in the third
part of the interview.

Earlier we heard Mark talking about glassblowing as an art form. As a follow-on

question from Part 2, the examiner could ask, for example:

“Do you think some countries value glass art differently?”

Let’s listen to how Mark answers this question.

I think Australians' perception of glass is a lot

different than European or American. Like,
Europeans, because they've had you know
Venetian glass around for a long time, they
tend to appreciate how hard it is to make glass
or the value of it. Australian people tend to look
at whether it's mass-produced, then sit it next to
a piece of art glass and can't really see the
difference in it that much.

It’s not as if it’s sort of the money of it, I think it's just a psyche of collecting, which, I
don't think Australian people have that passion as much as European or American
people.

In response to this type of question, you’d be expected to state your opinion about
people’s perception and appreciation of glass art.

Did you notice the words he uses when giving his opinion? He says:

“I think Australians' perception of glass is a lot different.”

“I think it's just a psyche of collecting”.

“I don't think Australian people have that passion.”

“Europeans tend to appreciate how hard it is.”

“Australians tend to look at whether it’s mass produced.”

It is clear from his word choices that he is expressing his own views.

You would also be expected to make comparisons, like Mark does when he says:

“Australians’ perceptions are a lot different than Europeans’”.

It’s important to vary your sentence structure. Mark uses a variety of sentence
structures that are grammatically correct.’

He makes complex sentences – sentences that have more than one clause.

Page 4 of 5
He uses the subordinate conjunction ‘because’:

“I think Australians' perception of glass is a lot

different than European because they've had
Venetian glass around for a long time.”

He also uses the coordinate conjunction ‘or’:

“They tend to appreciate how hard it is to make

glass or the value of it.”

Mark’s speech flows smoothly because he uses contractions. He says:

“they've had Venetian glass”,

“it's mass-produced”,

“can't really see the difference”, and

“it's just a psyche of collecting”.

How would you assess Mark’s response to the

question? I think his answer was relevant and
effective.

He demonstrated good grammatical range and

accuracy. He spoke at a good pace, and he
used clear pronunciation.

These are all goals you should aim for too!

To find more information and tips for your IELTS test, just visit our website at
abcasiapacific.com/studyenglish.

That’s all for today. I’ll see you next time on Study English. Bye bye.

Page 5 of 5
TRANSCRIPT EPISODE 17: NATUROPATHIC MEDICINE

Hello. I’m Margot Politis. Welcome to Study English, IELTS preparation.

Today on Study English, you’ll have the

chance to practice your reading
comprehension skills.

These are important skills, not just for the

IELTS reading test, but for general
academic studies as well.

Today, we’ll focus on the skills you need to

answer the range of question types in the
IELTS reading test.

Let’s begin by taking a look at the text.

NATUROPATHIC MEDICINE

A. Since the earliest beginnings, every known culture has been

treating disease with natural therapies. Through centuries of trial
and error, healers in these cultures laid a foundation for herbal
medicine. The first known medical books of China, India and Greece
all mention formulas used in healing. The Chinese also espoused
the benefits of using insects and animal parts in their formulas, while
the Indians described the use of water in healing disease.

B. It is not clear when naturopathic medicine originated as a

science, but historians agree that one of the first “healers” to make a
link between food and health was the Greek philosopher,
Hippocrates, who lived from about 460 to 400 BC. He is regarded as
the father of naturopathic medicine, and also called the father of
Western medicine. The Hippocratic school taught that the principles
of good health and healing are found in diet and lifestyle. Patients
were treated with herbs, fasting, diet, hydrotherapy* and exercise.

* a natural method of treating disease or injury using water

So there’s our comprehension piece.

It seems quite long. But let’s start at the beginning.

Read the title.

We know that the passage is about ‘naturopathic medicine.’

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Do you know anything about the subject?

You know the word ‘medicine’, but maybe not ‘naturopathic’.

It’s OK if you don’t. You don’t need to understand every word. We can probably
figure out the meaning by paying attention to the context the word is used in, or by
looking closely at the parts of the word.

We know that ‘naturopathic’ is an adjective, because it qualifies ‘medicine’.

Now, let’s break naturopathic down.

The first part ‘naturo-’ sounds like ‘nature’.

The ending is the suffix ‘-ic’. Do you know other words that end in ‘-ic’?

How about ‘photographic’ or ‘historic’?

The suffix ‘–ic’ means ‘relating to’ or ‘of’.

So we could guess that naturopathic means something like ‘relating to nature’.

Then we can guess that the meaning of ‘naturopathic medicine’ is something like
‘medicine that heals in a natural way’.

Can you think of any words you know that might belong to this subject?

How about:

‘herbs’,

‘plants’,

‘health’,

‘healing' or

‘disease’

Let’s look at the text again. After you’ve looked at the heading, look for some other
clues as to what it is about.

Are there any illustrations or diagrams? What’s the layout like? All these things will
help your understanding of the subject.

What kind of text do you think this is?

It doesn’t look like a newspaper article or an instruction manual. It’s not an

advertisement or a timetable.

Page 2 of 5
It’s probably an article from a journal. We can tell by the style, the subject and the
way it looks.

Did you notice the asterisk near the end of the text?

When an asterisk is used like this, extra information or explanation is given at the
bottom of the page.

What we’ve just done is to use the skills of previewing and predicting.

We put together all the information we could

about the text we are reading.

We looked for a ‘title’, a ‘diagram’ or any

other ‘information set apart’ – like the
asterisk at the end of the text.

We also made some ‘educated guesses’

about what is in the article, by predicting
some common words we might expect to
see.

Previewing and predicting before you start reading can help you process information
quickly, because you know what to expect. It can also help you to follow the author’s
ideas better, because you’ve prepared yourself for the text before reading it.

Let’s get back to the text. How is it organised?

It’s divided into paragraphs. Here, we have 2 paragraphs: paragraph A and

paragraph B.

Usually, a reading passage would have an ‘introductory paragraph’, several ‘body

paragraphs’ and a ‘conclusion’.

Each paragraph should have a ‘topic sentence’.

The topic sentence will give the main idea or subject of a paragraph.

The skill of skimming involves reading over a paragraph very quickly to get a general
sense of what it is about. When you skim a text, you just want to get a general idea
of the content. You’re not trying to read every word.

If you just read the first and last sentences, you can often get a good idea of the main
subject of the paragraph.

Let’s try with paragraph A.

“Naturopathic Medicine”

Page 3 of 5
“Since the earliest beginnings, every known culture has been treating disease with
natural therapies.”

So what is the main subject of paragraph A?

Well we read about:

‘the early beginnings of cultures’,

‘types of natural therapies’, and

‘cultures and natural therapies’.

Can you choose which one of these things

tells us what the text is about most
accurately?

Number one talks about ‘beginnings of cultures’. The text is probably not about that.
It’s a bit too broad to be the topic sentence.

So you might think it’s number 2 – ‘types of natural therapies’. This choice is too
narrow. The text is about more than just natural therapies.

It’s number 3 that covers the idea of the whole paragraph. It is about ‘cultures and
natural therapies’. This is what the topic sentence is expressing.

You will be tested on your understanding of main ideas, so it’s a good idea to
practice matching headings to paragraphs.

When you need to look for specific information, like a name, date or place, you can
scan a text.

When you scan, your eyes move across the page very quickly looking for specific
information. You can then skip over less important words.

Let’s try to scan over the text to find answers to some short answer questions.

Here’s our question:

“The early books of which countries mention natural healing methods?”

We’re going to scan the text, looking for the key words.

“The first known medical books of China, India and Greece all mention formulas used
in healing.”

So we can answer by writing:

‘China, India and Greece’.

Page 4 of 5
Let’s try another short answer question.

“Who was the father of Western Medicine?”

Here are the key words. Let’s scan the text.

‘Hippocrates’ is the father of Western Medicine.

You can also use these skills when you need to answer multiple-choice questions,
label a diagram or complete a table.

Let’s take a quick look back over the skills we’ve used today:

We looked at using previewing skills to

predict what the text was going to be about.

We talked about looking at the title,

diagrams and style of the layout for clues to
what the text might be about.

We practised predicting the topic and

guessing vocabulary that might be in the
text.

Next, we practiced skimming to find the topic sentence of the paragraph.

Finally, we talked about scanning for keywords.

And that’s all for today, but you can try out these skills and more on the Study
English website.

I’ll see you next time. Bye bye.

Page 5 of 5
TRANSCRIPT EPISODE 18: OUTBACK TOURISM

Hello. I’m Margot Politis. Welcome to Study English, IELTS preparation.

Today we’ll practise using ‘hyphens’ in words, and talk about showing contrast using
the words ‘despite’, ‘although’ and ‘but’.

But first, we visit outback Australia and an isolated place called Marree. We’ll see
how the popularity of four-wheel drive cars has meant that a lot more people are
travelling through the outback, and now they’re even building luxury accommodation
there.

685 kilometres north of Adelaide on the

Oodnadatta Track is Marree. When the old
Ghan railway closed in the 1980s it just about
vanished off the map.

But despite the isolation and the population

dwindling to just 80, an out-of-towner is now
making a million-dollar investment.

Robynne Taylor bought the 120-year-old pub three years ago and is about to build a
two-storey guesthouse next door.

As well as a huge function room, it will have 14 luxury ensuite apartments and is
costing one and a half million dollars. The driving force behind the boom is four-
wheel drives.

Sometimes we join two or more words together to function as a single word or

concept.

We call these compound words.

An example is ‘father-in-law’.

Compound words can function as nouns – like father-in-law – or they can be

adjectives.

Here’s a clip about the isolated town Maree. See if you can spot the compound
words.

But despite the isolation and the population dwindling to just 80, an out-of-towner is
now making a million-dollar investment.

She says: ‘out-of-towner’ and ‘million-dollar investment.’

Here, ‘out-of-towner’ functions as a noun, a person who is from out of town.

When writing compound words, we use hyphens.

Page 1 of 5
In the phrase ‘million-dollar investment’, the compound ‘million-dollar’ functions as an
adjective.

It means that the investment will cost a million dollars.

When you write ‘a million dollars’, the word ‘dollars’ is a noun. The ‘s’ is needed to
show a plural number.

In English, adjectives don’t show number, so the ‘s’ drops from dollar. We just say
‘million-dollar investment’, not ‘million-dollars investment’.

When the phrase ‘a million dollars’ becomes an adjective, it needs to have a hyphen
added:

‘a million dollars’, ‘a million-dollar investment’.

‘Million-dollar’, with a hyphen is a compound word.

Let’s listen for another example.

Robynne Taylor bought the 120-year-old pub

three years ago and is about to build a two-
storey guesthouse next door.

She talks about the ‘120 year old pub’.

“The pub is 120 years old.”

Notice that the phrase doesn’t use hyphens,

and ‘years’ has an ‘s’.

But when we turn it into a phrase, it becomes: ‘a 120-year-old pub’, with hyphens,
and with the ‘s’ gone.

She also refers to a ‘two-storey guesthouse’.

“The guesthouse has two storeys”.

“It’s a two-storey guesthouse.”

Let’s listen to a description of the guesthouse.

As well as a huge function room, it will have 14 luxury ensuite apartments and is
costing one and a half million dollars.

She says: “The guesthouse will have 14 luxury ensuite apartments and is costing one
and a half million dollars.”

We don’t use any hyphens with these group of words, because they don’t make up a
compound concept.

Page 2 of 5
‘Apartments’ is the noun and ‘14’, ‘luxury’ and ‘ensuite’ are the qualifiers.

This is a noun phrase.

We could rewrite this information to use hyphens.

We could form a single concept from ‘one and a half million dollars’.

“The guesthouse will have 14 luxury one-and–

a-half-million-dollar ensuite apartments.”

Then the physical description would be a single

concept. We would join ‘one-and–a-half-
million-dollar’ with hyphens.

It’s important to remember that compound

adjectives, like all adjectives, cannot have a
plural form.

This is important when describing complex data, like in task 1 of the IELTS writing
test.

The town in today’s story is called Maree.

Maree is a very isolated town, but something unexpected is happening there.

Although the town is very small and far from the city, someone is prepared to invest a
lot of money there.

But despite the isolation and the population

dwindling to just 80, an out-of-towner is now
making a million-dollar investment.

Despite the isolation and the population

dwindling to 80, an out-of-towner is making a
million-dollar investment.

She uses the preposition ‘despite’.

She could also have used the word ‘although’.

Despite and ‘although’ have the same meaning. They show contrast with
unexpected results.

Let’s try an exercise. Here are two sentences.

“Margaret’s marks were low.”

“She managed to get into law school.”

How would you join these sentences together using ‘but’ ‘despite’ or ‘although’?

Page 3 of 5
Let’s start with ‘but’.

“Margaret’s marks were low, but she managed

to get into law school.”

Now, let’s use ‘although’.

“Although Margaret’s marks were low, she

managed to get into law school.”

We can also join the sentences using ‘despite.’

“Despite having low marks, Margaret managed

to get into law school.”

‘Despite’ can be followed by a noun.

We can say: ‘despite the isolation’ or ‘despite

the fact I had a cold’.

Or it can be followed by a verb. When it’s

followed by a verb, we use the participle form.

For example: “despite being isolated’ or ‘despite having a cold’.

Let’s finish with one final exercise.

Take a look at these two sentences:

“There was noise outside all night.”

“I managed to sleep.”

How would you join them using the word ‘but’?

“There was noise outside all night, but I managed to sleep.”

Now, look at the two sentences again. How would you join them using ‘although’?

“Although there was noise outside all night, I managed to sleep.”

And, finally, how would you join these two sentences using ‘despite’?

“Despite the noise outside all night, I managed to sleep.”

Using the words ‘despite’ and ‘although’ effectively will help improve your spoken and
written English.

Page 4 of 5
And that’s all for Study English today.

Let’s have a look back at the things we’ve talked about.

First, we looked at using hyphens to create

compound words.

Then, we looked at using ‘but ‘although’ and

‘despite’ to join sentences.

And despite the fact that Study English has

finished for today, you can continue to practice
your English skills. Just visit our website for
more information and IELTS tips.

I’ll see you next time. Bye bye.

Page 5 of 5
TRANSCRIPT EPISODE 19: OLD TREES

Hello. I’m Margot Politis. Welcome to Study English, IELTS preparation.

Today we’re going to look at a story about trees in Melbourne. Trees have certain
functions. They provide shade and shelter, they give scale to the tall buildings and
they demonstrate the changing seasons.

English is no different! It has a range of functions, or purposes. When you reach a

certain stage in your language development, you’ll need to focus more on the
meaning and functions of English at the sentence level, and also how to connect
sentences. With practice, your fluency and competence in both spoken and written
English will develop.

John Hawker, who is a horticulturalist with Heritage Victoria, is concerned that the old
trees planted in Melbourne in the 1850s are nearing the end of their lives. Listen to
John discussing the problem of managing trees in urban areas.

Trees are very much a part of our urban fabric.

People enjoy them for their size, variety and
colour and form, so we'd just be left with
nothing, which would be disastrous.

There's a need to assess the health and the

condition of these trees and embark upon a
removal and a replacement program.

We'll be helping the City of Melbourne doing that assessment and we'll be identifying
where, what trees should be replanted.

John is discussing the problems of old trees in Melbourne.

He begins with a statement of fact:

“People enjoy trees for their size, variety, colour and form.”

He follows this statement with an opinion:

“To allow these old trees to die and not replace them would be disastrous.”

Can you see the purpose or function of these two sentences? John is building a
persuasive argument about trees. He begins with a fact, and then adds an opinion.

Now he goes on to list some of the problems faced by these trees. The function of
this sentence will be to support his argument with reasons.

Page 1 of 5
Listen to the causes of the problem.

Well, there are quite a few problems with some

of the trees.

Firstly, the trees, some are very old and

nearing the end of their life. That's been
hastened to some extent by recent very dry
conditions in Melbourne and other
environmental factors.

John begins by identifying the reasons for the problem.

The ‘trees are old’ and nearing the end of their life. This natural ageing process has
been made worse by ‘recent dry conditions’ in Melbourne, and ‘other environmental
factors’.

His argument is more convincing because he explains the reasons for the problem.
This is one of the important functions of English you’ll need to learn – to order your
thoughts in a logical pattern, and support them with reasons and examples.

So to make a good, persuasive argument, John has given the facts of the problem
and given us opinions, reasons and examples. Then John explains a solution to the
problem.

There's a need to assess the health and the

condition of these trees and embark upon a
removal and a replacement program.

We'll be helping the City of Melbourne doing

that assessment and we'll be identifying where,
what trees should be replanted.

John’s solution is to ‘assess the trees’, and

then ‘remove older trees’ and ‘replace them with younger trees’.

The argument is further developed by another tree expert, Ian Shears, who works for
the City of Melbourne.

With replacement of elms, such as in St Kilda Road, for example, we want to be

putting in trees which are of a significant size. So if you do it on a short term basis,
you just can’t go out to a nursery and get something of any stature at all.

Ian makes a suggestion – to ‘plant large size elm trees’.

He adds the fact that large trees are ‘not available from nurseries’ in the short term.

His un-stated conclusion is so strong we understand it implicitly: we ‘must plan long

term’ for this to succeed.

Page 2 of 5
So you can see how both trees and English have certain functions. Like the different
parts of a tree all help to make it complete, English sentences have different
functions that combine to make effective communication.

Sentences serve several purposes or functions. These can be:

‘stating a fact’,

‘giving an opinion’,

‘making a suggestion’,

‘giving an example’,

‘stating a reason’,

or ‘giving a cause.

See if you can identify different functions.

“The world’s population is increasing.”

Is that an ‘opinion’, a ‘fact’, or a ‘solution’?
It’s a ‘fact’.

“Fines for drink driving are unacceptable.”

Is that an ‘opinion’, a ‘suggestion’, or a ‘cause’?
It’s an ‘opinion’.

“Poverty is rising due to unemployment rising.”

Is that an ‘example’, a ‘suggestion’, or a
‘cause’?
It’s a ‘cause’.

In an essay, ‘opinions and arguments’ are supported by:

‘reasons and explanations’,

‘causes and examples’,

‘facts and statements’,

‘proposals and predictions’,

‘results and solutions’.

Page 3 of 5
Let’s construct a short paragraph. Note how it is constructed, beginning with a topic
sentence, followed by a series of supporting and developing sentences with different
functions.

“Music has many benefits.”

fact

“It provides a common language, …“

benefit

“… which breaks down barriers. “

explanation

“The Beatles are popular around the world”.

example

“Music helps people relax.”

benefit

“Dance music is used for exercise, …”

fact

“… because it promotes movement.”

reason

“Some people prefer reggae.”

fact

“They seem very relaxed.”

opinion

Listen to John Hawker again construct his argument.

Trees are very much a part of our urban fabric. People enjoy them for their size,
variety and colour and form, so we'd just be left with nothing, which would be
disastrous.

There's a need to assess the health and the condition of these trees and embark
upon a removal and a replacement program.

We'll be helping the City of Melbourne doing that assessment and we'll be identifying
where, what trees should be replanted.

Well, there are quite a few problems with some of the trees. Firstly, the trees, some
are very old and nearing the end of their life. That's been hastened to some extent
by recent very dry conditions in Melbourne and other environmental factors.

Page 4 of 5
To stay with our tree analogy, you can see how
the argument is steadily built up with different
functions: the opening topic sentence is like the
seedling. Once the idea is planted, it grows
through benefits and facts, is strengthened with
reason, coloured with opinion, and develops
interesting offshoots with suggestions and
proposals. Explanations and examples fill out
the foliage, and the end result is a beautiful and
original creation!

So now that we understand the functions of sentences, let’s construct an argument

paragraph.

“Trees are lovely.”

opinion

“They make oxygen,”

fact

“which is necessary for life.”

benefit

“We should all plant one.”

suggestion

“It could change cities…”

prediction

“…by providing more shade.”

benefit

“Melbourne is planting trees…”

example

“…to replace its old ones.“

reason

And that’s all for Study English today. We’ve looked at a variety of different functions
in a text. You can find out more about the different functions of sentences by going
to our Study English website.

I’ll see you next time on Study English. Bye bye.

Page 5 of 5
TRANSCRIPT EPISODE 20: ZOOS

Hello. I’m Margot Politis. Welcome to Study English, IELTS preparation.

Today we visit a zoo, and we meet a man who designs natural looking habitats for
zoo animals to live in.

We’ll also talk about infinitive verbs and we’ll listen out for some common
conversation markers.

But let’s start by meeting Richard Rowe, a horticulturalist at Werribee Zoo in Victoria.
Listen to Richard talk about his work at the zoo.

My role is to create environments that allow

animals to display natural behaviour and for
visitors to see animals in areas which really do
appear to be very natural. The skill of what we
do is to create something, which looks as
though it’s been here a long time and looks
very natural.

Well, we originally look at where is it that the animal lives. So narrow it down to
geography. Is it Africa, South America, wherever? Then look at the particular type of
habitat. So is it riverine? Is it savannah? And then narrow it down even closer
again. Often, it’s very, very difficult to get vegetation from the specific area that an
animal comes from.

With some plants, you know, they’re already in the country so you can take cuttings
or collect seed. Botanic gardens are a great source for rare and unusual plants.

The simplest form of the verb is the infinitive form.

If you’re using a dictionary to find the meaning of a verb, you’ll need to know the
infinitive form. It’s the most basic form that’s used for dictionary entries.

Infinitives are generally used with the marker ‘to’. They can be used in many
different ways.

Here’s Richard describing his job.

My role is to create environments that allow animals to display natural behaviour and
for visitors to see animals in areas which really do appear to be very natural.

Page 1 of 5
Richard says:

‘to create’,

‘to display’,

‘to see’,

‘to be’.

These infinitives all function in different ways.

Richard says:

“My role is to create environments.”

He also says:

“The skill is to create something.”

In both examples, the infinitive is a complement following the main verb.

Take a look at this sentence:

“Before the IELTS test the important thing is to get plenty of rest.”

Here the infinitive ‘to get’ is a complement following the main verb ‘is’.

Let’s look at another use of infinitives.

Richard says:

“The areas appear to be very natural.”

In English, there is a set of verbs that can be followed by infinitives.

‘Appear’ is one example.

Other examples are:

‘afford’: “I can’t afford to go to university.”

‘begin’: “I can’t begin to explain how sorry I

am.”

‘expect’: “I expect to get my visa next week.”

To use these correctly, you should learn the list of verbs taking the infinitive.

Page 2 of 5
Now, let’s look at the third way Richard uses infinitives.

He says:

“Zoos allow animals to display natural behaviour.”

and

“They allow visitors to see animals”.

In English there is a group of verbs that can be followed by an object and an

infinitive.

‘Allow’ is one example.

You could write:

“Her parents wouldn’t allow her to stay out

late.”

Some other examples are:

‘ask’: “The professor asked him to explain the answer.”

and ‘encourage’: “Encourage the IELTS students to do more practice tests.”

Here’s a quick exercise for practicing infinitives.

Here is a list of verbs. We have:

‘join’,

‘look’,

‘submit’,

‘edit’,

‘lend’ and

‘buy’.

Page 3 of 5
I’m going to show you a sentence with one missing verb. You’ll need to work out the
right verb and the right construction to fill in the space.

Let’s start with an easy one.

“I forgot ____ some bread.”

Do you know which verb will fill the gap?

The completed sentence is:

“I forgot to buy some bread.”

Here’s another one.

“We’re going out for dinner. Would you like _____ us?”

“We’re going out for dinner. Would you like to join us?”

How about this one:

“The teacher reminded the students _______ their assignments on time.”

“The teacher reminded the students to submit their assignments on time.”

In spoken English there are a number of words we use to help manage our speech.
These words make it easier to keep our speech fluent.

They are called conversation management markers, but we often just call them
fillers.

Listen to Richard again. This time, he’s talking about how he designs a habitat for a
specific animal in his zoo.

My role is to create environments that allow

animals to display natural behaviour and for
visitors to see animals in areas which really do
appear to be very natural. The skill of what we
do is to create something which looks as
though it’s been here a long time and looks
very natural.

Well, we originally look at where is it that the animal lives. So narrow it down to
geography. Is it Africa, South America, wherever? Then look at the particular type of
habitat. So is it riverine? Is it savannah? And then narrow it down even closer
again. Often, it’s very, very difficult to get vegetation from the specific area that an
animal comes from.

With some plants, you know, they’re already in the country so you can take cuttings
or collect seed. Botanic gardens are a great source for rare and unusual plants.

Page 4 of 5
Did you notice where Richard used the words ‘well’, ‘so’ and ‘you know’?
It’s important to understand how and why these words are used. Let’s take a closer
look at each one.

We use the word ‘well’ to indicate that we are considering or thinking about what
someone has said.

Richard uses ‘well’ to begin his response to a question. He’s about to take up the
topic, so he’s thinking about what to say.

Well, we originally look at where is it that the animal lives.

Next, Richard uses the words ‘you know’. We use the phrase ‘you know’ to create a
sense of intimacy by asking the listener to agree or show that they understand.

Richard says ‘you know’ because he wants the person asking questions to show that
he or she understands what Richard is saying.

Like this:

With some plants, you know, they’re already in

the country so you can, you can take cuttings
or collect seed.

In that clip, Richard also used the word ‘so’.

We use ‘so’ to indicate that the things we are saying are connected.

Richard uses ‘so’ a number of times to connect the things he is saying, and to show
that they are all related to the questions he is answering.

If you listen to native speakers’ conversation, you’ll hear these words often. You
might also hear words like ‘ok’ or ‘right’. It takes practice, but in time you’ll be able to
sound more natural by making them a part of your speech, too.

And that’s all for Study English today.

We’ve looked at using infinitives.

And then we talked about conversation management markers and how to use them.

For more practice on today’s topics, go to the Study English website. It’s at
abcasiapacific.com/studyenglish.

I’ll see you next time. Bye bye.

Page 5 of 5
TRANSCRIPT EPISODE 21: HEALTH

Hello. I’m Margot Politis. Welcome to Study English, IELTS preparation.

The focus of today’s lesson is the IELTS Listening Test.

In the IELTS Listening Test, you will be tested on your ability to understand spoken
English in a variety of contexts, so it’s important to develop a range of skills that will
help you with your listening.

A good way to prepare for the test is to develop your ‘previewing and predicting’
skills. These strategies will help improve your listening comprehension.

Let’s imagine this graphic is a written part of a listening test – a ‘fact sheet’.

You are always given 30 seconds to familiarise yourself with the questions before the
listening section is played.

This is when you’ll need to use your ‘previewing and predicting’ skills. They will help
you learn as much as possible before you listen, so you will know what you will be
listening to and what you need to listen for.

Let’s start previewing and predicting. Look at the section again. Think about the
following questions:

“What is the topic?”

“Who is speaking?”

“Where are they?”

“Why are they talking?”

OK. Let’s think about the first question you should ask: “What is the topic?”

Page 1 of 5
We know from the title of the fact sheet that this section will be about ‘health and
well-being’.

Next: “Who is speaking?”

Because this is a section3 of an IELTS Listening Test, we know that it will be a

conversation between 2 to 4 speakers about an educational topic. The speakers
could be teachers or students.

“Where are they?”

We could guess they are at university.

“Why are they talking?”

We know from the fact sheet that they are discussing a health study.

These ‘previewing and predicting’ skills

are very important. You should go
through these steps before the actual
listening test begins, so you are properly
prepared.

It’s important to look at the key words in

the questions to determine what kind of
information you need to listen for.

The key words are highlighted:

“How many children are being tracked?”

We need to listen for a number.

“What are the researchers checking?”

We need to listen for something about the children’s health.

“How old are the participants?”

We’re listening for age.

Another skill the listening test assesses

is your ‘ability to follow instructions
correctly’.

If we look again at the written part of the

test, what does the question ask us to
do?

To answer using ‘no more than 3 words

or a number’. You must read and follow this instruction exactly.

Page 2 of 5
Remember that the listening test is played once only, so it is important to prepare
yourself well.

Let’s listen now. The announcer would start off by saying something like:

"You are going to hear a passage about a study on the health and well-being of
children. Listen to the talk, and complete the notes."

For the past two decades, scientists

have been tracking the health and well
being of 7,500 Queensland children in a
unique long-term study. It's rather like a
scientific version of the documentary
series '7 Up'. Every few years,
researchers revisit the participants to
check their growth and record their
thoughts on life. Now, those chosen to
take part in the study as babies are
coming of age, turning 21 and the data
they've provided is giving valuable
insights into just why some children are
healthier than others.

Well done! Now let’s move on.

Now we’re going to talk about ‘listening for main ideas and supporting information’.

This is important to test your ability to identify and understand the relationship
between ideas, such as: ‘comparisons’, ‘examples’, ‘facts’, ‘opinions’, ‘cause’ and
‘effect’.

Here’s an example. I’m going to give

some information about sport. Identify
what my main idea is, and what
information I provided to support my
main idea.

“Sport provides numerous benefits.

Participation in sport can have a positive
effect on a person’s well being, and at
the same time improve their
coordination. Also, it has been proven
to help fight disease.”

One way your comprehension might be tested is with a ‘summary completion test’.

Page 3 of 5
Let’s imagine this next graphic is part of a listening test where you have to complete
the summary.

Here’s our three-step strategy:

Skim the summary to get a general

understanding

While skimming highlight the key words

in the sentences

Then, think about the word form that is

needed for each answer.

Having skimmed the question, we know

that it is about a ‘scientific study on the
health of young people’.

The key words are: ‘young people’, ‘alcohol’, ‘drugs’, ‘data’, ‘things’, ‘happened’,
‘how’.

What is the word form we need in Question 1?

“The study focused on young people who have a _____ on alcohol.”

Before the blank we have a determiner,

‘a’, while the preposition ‘on’ follows the
blank. We need a noun.

What word form do we need in Question

2?

After the pronoun ‘she/he’, which also

functions as a subject, we need a verb.

Look at the other verbs - The verbs

‘pointed’ and ‘happened’ in the sentence
are in the past tense. We need a past tense verb.

We have now prepared ourselves for this section of the listening test.

Page 4 of 5
Let’s listen now. The announcer would start off by saying something like:

“You are going to hear a Professor talking about his investigation into the mental and
physical health of young people. Listen to the talk, and complete the summary.”

For me, it's compelling. It's totally

compelling. You look at someone at 21
who, say, has a dependence on alcohol
or is using illicit drugs or has a serious
mental illness or is violent and perhaps
already in prison, and you look back
through 21 years of that person's life;
you've collected data periodically, and
you look at the range of things that have
happened to that person and the ways
that person's responded.

Well done! If you practise your listening skills and strategies you will be better
prepared for the IELTS Listening Test!

Always remember our three-step strategy for ‘summary completion tasks’.

Skim the summary to get a general

understanding. Remember a summary
is a short presentation of what you hear.

While skimming, highlight the keywords

in the sentences.

Choose the correct word from (noun,

adjective, verb, adverb) that’s needed.
Remember look before and after the
blank space.
The strategies for answering questions that test this skill are covered on our Study
English website. Just go to australianetwork.com/studyenglish.

That’s all for today. I’ll see you next time. Bye bye.

Page 5 of 5
TRANSCRIPT EPISODE 22: PHONICS

Hello. I’m Margot Politis. Welcome to Study English, IELTS preparation.

Have you ever wished you knew more words when you were reading or listening?
Well, today we’re going to show you how you can – just by guessing!

It will take a little bit of effort, but you can learn strategies to help you guess the
meaning of words you may not know.

One of the strategies is using context to guess unknown words.

But what is context? Well, context includes the words, phrases or sentences before
and after the unknown word, which helps make the meaning clear.

Let’s consider an example. Today’s story is about helping children learn to read.

Here, Chris Brooks is using the ‘phonics’ method. If you don’t know what the
‘phonics’ method is, can you work it out from the other words used by the reporter?
Listen carefully.

Chris Brooks is teaching Ashley with what's called

the phonics method, which was used by most
teachers til the '50s. It breaks words down into
their individual sounds.

Well, as you've seen, Sonya, what we've done is

we've worked with some letters that have a variety
of sounds, so the letter 'c' had two sounds, the 'k'
sound and the 'ss' sound, and you can see with
our colour-coding, one's purple and one's black, and the same with the letter 's', it
has a 'ss' sound and 'zz' sound, so they're their common sounds.

The reporter uses the following words and phrases:

‘teaching’,

‘phonics method’,

‘used by teachers’, and

‘breaks words down into their individual sounds’.

So we can guess that ‘phonics’ is ‘a method used

by teachers that breaks words down into their
individual sounds’.

So using the context, the words surrounding the word ‘phonics’, we have some
understanding of it.

Page 1 of 5
Let’s now listen to Chris Brooks again. What other words or phrases help us with the
meaning of phonics?

Well, as you've seen, Sonya, what we've done is we've worked with some letters that
have a variety of sounds, so the letter 'c' had two sounds, the 'k' sound and the 'ss'
sound, and you can see with our colour-coding, one's purple and one's black, and the
same with the letter 's', it has a 'ss' sound and 'zz' sound, so they're their common
sounds.

Chris uses the phrases:

‘some letters that have a variety of sounds’,

‘the letter 'c' had two sounds’,

‘the 'k' sound and the 'ss' sound’,

‘colour-coding’,

‘the letter 's'’,

‘a 'ss' sound and 'zz' sound’.

So we can guess that the method focuses on letters that have a variety of sounds, for
example letter 'c', which has two sounds – ‘k’ and ‘s’.

We also know that colour coding is used to help recognise common sounds, and that
the letter 's' has an 'ss' sound and 'zz' sound.

So, we have quite a bit of information about

‘phonics’ now. From the various contexts we’ve
listened to, can you guess the meaning of the
word ‘phonics’? How would you define it?

Here’s a possible guess:

“Phonics is a method that teaches people to read

by learning to recognise the sounds that letters
represent.”

Remember, you don’t always need a dictionary to find the meaning of a word. Using
the strategy of ‘guessing the meaning of a word from the context’ helps with your
ability to understand, partly because you stay focussed on what you’re listening to.

It also helps build your vocabulary because you’re more likely to remember the word.
This skill is very helpful in the IELTS Listening test because you won’t have a
dictionary to assist you.

Here’s a quick test to try out your skills.

Page 2 of 5
Can you guess the meaning of the highlighted words from the context?

“Statistics show that over one-eighth of the adult

population in developing countries is illiterate.
Governments have set up educational centres to
teach this group to read and write.”

What does ‘illiterate’ mean?

We know that it’s an educational matter related to

teaching people to read and write, and that it’s a
large problem in developing countries.

‘Illiterate’ would mean ‘not able to read or write’.

Here’s another one.

“John loved singing, so he auditioned for all the

musicals. The directors liked the way he sang.”

What does ‘auditioned’ mean?

We know that John loves to sing, and he sang for

directors, the people directing the musicals.

So from this we can guess that ‘auditioned’ means

‘performed a song for directors to judge whether someone is good enough to be in
their show’.

OK, now we’re going to have a look at the verb ‘to be’. ‘To be’ usually functions as
an auxiliary verb.

But sometimes the verb ‘to be’ can function as the main verb. That’s when it links the
‘subject’ and an ‘expression that describes the subject’. For example, look at the
sentence:

“Chris is a phonics teacher.”

‘Is’ here is the main verb because it links the expression ‘phonics teacher’ to the
subject ‘Chris’.

OK. The reporter quotes children’s author Mem Fox on literacy. What does she say
about Australia’s literacy rate?

Internationally acclaimed children's author Mem

Fox says the crisis is a myth and Australia's
literacy rate is second only to Finland.

Mem Fox says: “The crisis is a myth.”

Page 3 of 5
When the verb ‘to be’ is used as the main verb in a sentence, what follows is called
the complement. This complement defines the subject.

The structure of these linking verb clauses or sentences is:

“subject + to be + the complement”.

So we have the subject, ‘the crisis’, the linking verb, ‘is’, and the complement, ‘a
myth.

“The crisis is a myth.”

Listen to the clip again.

Internationally acclaimed children's author Mem Fox says the crisis is a myth and
Australia's literacy rate is second only to Finland.

“Australia's literacy rate is second only to Finland.”

Let’s look at the structure of the sentence.

The subject is ‘Australia’s literacy rate’.

We have a form of the verb ‘to be’ - ‘is’,

and then the complement - ‘second only to Finland’.

‘Second only to’ is an interesting expression that means, in this sentence, “Australia
has the second best literacy rate in the world. Finland is number one.”

Let’s look at another clip. Can you find another example where a complement is
used?

She says we've achieved that by using a range of reading techniques, including
phonics, but phonics alone isn't a magical cure for reading problems.

She says: “Phonics isn’t a magical cure”.

The subject is ‘phonics’.

The verb ‘to be’ –‘isn’t’, short for ‘is not’,

and the complement - ‘a magical cure’.

Page 4 of 5
And that’s all for today’s study English.

Let’s review what we’ve looked at.

We talked about looking at context to guess the

meaning of words.

And then we looked at using the verb ‘to be’ to link

subjects and their complements.

Don’t forget to visit our Study English website to

find out more – it’s at
abcasiapacific.com/studyenglish.

That’s all for today. I’ll see you next time for more IELTS preparation. Bye bye.

Page 5 of 5
TRANSCRIPT EPISODE 23: ECO-SYSTEMS

Hello. I’m Margot Politis. Welcome to Study English, IELTS preparation.

Today we’re going to practice our pronunciation.

We’ll see how pronunciation can change when linking consonants, and then we’ll
practice pronouncing words beginning with 'h'.

Let’s begin by taking a look at the story. It’s about an area in Melbourne that used to
be home to the growling grass frog.

This really would have been a fantastic, biodiverse

area. It’s a situation where you’ve got the Yarra
River outflow meeting the bay. So you’ve got the
freshwater eco-system and the marine eco-system
coming together at that point.

These growling grass frogs were here in their

millions, hundreds of millions of them probably,
living in Melbourne, and they have disappeared
very, very dramatically.

Doing conservation with an animal that people recognise and where they’ve had a
personal experience of an animal disappearing, they really, they understand the
reality of what’s happening around them and they want to help, and we can get lots
of people to come along to a habitat like this and say, “I want growling grass frogs
back here for my kids and my grandkids because when I come down I want to be
able to find some tadpoles to show them.”

Spoken English can be quite different from written English.

When you listen to someone speaking English, their words will often flow together.

This is because native speakers will connect unstressed words with stressed words.
Where these links occur, sentences might sound different to what you’d expect.

Have a look at this sentence.

“He’s gone out to dinner.”

We stress ‘he’s’, ‘gone’, ‘out’ and ‘dinner’.

The ‘to’ is unstressed.

When we link ‘out’ (which is stressed) and ‘to’ (which is unstressed), the final /t/
sound in ‘out’ is held slightly longer.

“He’s gone out to dinner.”

Page 1 of 5
The /t/ sound is pronounced only once.

“He’s gone out to dinner.”

Now, let’s listen to Gerry from the amphibian research centre talking about the grass
frog’s habitat.

We can get lots of people to come along to a habitat

like this and say, “I want growling grass frogs back
here for my kids and my grandkids because when I
come down I want to be able to find some tadpoles
to show them.”

Gerry says: ‘I want to’.

The final /t/ sound in ‘want’ is held slightly longer on the tongue. Then, ‘to’ is
pronounced.

The /t/ sound is pronounced only once: ‘I want to’.

This type of linking is called consonant plus same consonant linking.

Let’s see what happens when a final consonant is linked with a consonant that is
similar.

Listen to how Gerry links the words ‘around them’.

Doing conservation with an animal that people recognise and where they’ve had a
personal experience of an animal disappearing, they really, they understand the
reality of what’s happening around them and they want to help.

Gerry says ‘around them’.

The final /d/ sound in ‘around’ is similar in pronunciation to the first sound in the word
‘them’. This means the sounds are articulated very close to the same position in the
mouth.

When you articulate /d/, you can feel your tongue against your tooth ridge, like this:
/d/.

And when you say /th/, your tongue is between your top and bottom teeth, like this:
/th/.

When you are linking words with similar sounds, the final consonant and the first
consonant will be pronounced very close to each other in the mouth.

This is the case with the final /d/ and initial /th/ sound in ‘around them’.

This type of linking is called consonant and similar consonant linking.

Page 2 of 5
You’ll notice that ‘around’ is stressed but ‘them’ is unstressed.

Gerry also uses the words ‘show them’.

Here, ‘show’ is stressed and ‘them’ is unstressed, so we say ‘show them’.

This is vowel and consonant linking.

In this example, Gerry clearly pronounces the /th/ in ‘them’.

Listen again.

We can get lots of people to come along to a habitat like this and say, “I want
growling grass frogs back here for my kids and my grandkids because when I come
down I want to be able to find some tadpoles to show them.

In spoken English, changes also occur when a word begins with the sound /h/.

Let’s listen to Neil Blake. He’s talking about an area they’d like to return native
animals and plants to.

You’ll hear Neil say ‘would have been fantastic’. Listen to his pronunciation of ‘would
have’.

You won’t be able to see Neil as he’s talking, but it’s good practice for the IELTS
listening test.

See how you go.

This really would have been a fantastic, biodiverse

area. It’s a situation where you’ve got the Yarra
River outflow meeting the bay.

Neil says: ‘would ’ave’.

When unstressed words begin with the sound /h/,

the /h/ sound is often dropped in connected speech.

Here’s another example:

“I think he’s in a meeting.”

The word ‘think’ is stressed in this sentence, and ‘he’s’ is unstressed.

When these words are linked, the /h/ is dropped.

Page 3 of 5
In spoken English, we would say:

“I think ’he’s in a meeting.”

Some common words that begin with the /h/sound

and are weak forms, include:

the pronouns - ‘he’, ‘her’, ‘him’ and ‘his’.

There’s also these auxiliary verbs – ‘have’, ‘had’

and ‘has’.

These pronouns and auxiliary verbs have both

strong and weak forms.

When they are unstressed the /h/ sound is dropped.

But when stressed, the /h/ sound is pronounced.

Now let’s listen to Gerry.

When he says ‘they have’ does he pronounce the /h/?

These growling grass frogs were here in their

millions, hundreds of millions of them probably,
living in Melbourne, and they have disappeared
very, very dramatically.

Because Gerry stressed the auxiliary verb ‘have’

the /h/ sound is pronounced.

He says: ‘they have’.

So, we’ve seen that when native speakers connect speech or link sounds in spoken
English, changes occur.

Being aware of these changes will help you in both the IELTS Listening Test, and
also in the Speaking Test.

Let’s practice the pronunciations we’ve talked about today.

I’ll show you a sentence, and see if you can pronounce the highlighted words.

Here’s the first one:

“What did you send her?”

‘Send’ is the strong form and ‘her’ is weak.

Because ‘her’ is not stressed, we drop the initial /h/ sound.

Page 4 of 5
So it’s pronounced ‘send er’.

“What did you send her?”

And finally:

“I told them not to be late.”

‘told them’

“I told them not to be late.”

That’s all we have today.

Let’s review what we’ve learned about linking words.

First we talked about consonant and same

consonant linking. The example we saw was ‘want
to’.

Then, we looked at consonant and similar

consonant linking - ‘around them’.

And finally, we saw how the pronunciation of the

initial /h/ sound can change when we link words in
spoken English.

Don’t forget to listen out for these changes when you talk with native speakers.

And if you’d like some more pronunciation practice, you can find help on our Study
English website.

And I’ll see you next time for more.

Page 5 of 5
TRANSCRIPT EPISODE 24: NEW TRAINING

Hello. I’m Margot Politis. Welcome to Study English, IELTS preparation.

Today we’re going to talk about adverbs.

Adverbs are useful because they give us more information about an action, event or
situation. If I said they were ‘very’ useful, that would be an example of using the
adverb ‘very’ to add to or modify the word ‘useful’

But first, let’s listen to our story about a new

training program, to help fix the problem of there
not being enough skilled workers in Australia.

For too long, we didn’t train enough people. We

didn’t put enough energy into getting people into
apprenticeships and traineeships. We just let
market forces, laissez-faire approach, dominate,
and it didn’t work.

We’ve established a school apprenticeship link program, which this year will have
500 young Western Australians, predominantly, but not totally, boys, providing them
with apprenticeships basically that they can take up in the mining and other
industries.

Fortunately, I don't think it has been left too late, so long as we very proactively
tackle the situation now and don't delay any longer.

OK. Let’s look more closely at adverbs.

Adverbs work by modifying words. Adverbs

modify verbs, adjectives, other adverbs or
preposition phrases.

Using adverbs correctly will improve your

communication skills.

They answer such questions as ‘how?’ ‘how often?’ ‘when?’ ‘where?’ and ‘why?’.

Because they have different functions, it’s useful to describe adverbs according to
categories.

Here are some of the categories that adverbs can

be divided into:

adverbs of frequency - occasionally, usually,

frequently, often;

adverbs of place - somewhere, here, outside;

Page 1 of 4
adverbs of manner - quickly, carefully, suddenly;

adverbs of degree - really, fairly, very, rather,

extremely;

and finally focusing adverbs - specifically, only,

particularly.

Did you notice that most of these adverbs end in

the suffix ‘–ly’? Many adverbs are formed by
adding ‘–ly’ to an adjective. For example:

frequent + ly – frequently

careful + ly – carefully

quick + ly – quickly

real + ly - really

Let’s listen to Alan Carpenter, a State Government minister, talking about an

apprenticeship program. He uses a number of ‘–ly’ adverbs. Can you identify the
category they belong to?

We’ve established a school apprenticeship link program, which this year will have
500 young Western Australians, predominantly, but not totally, boys, providing them
with apprenticeships basically that they can take up in the mining and other
industries.

Alan uses the adverbs ‘predominantly’ and ‘totally’.

These are ‘degree expressions’. They’re adverbs of degree.

Adverbs of degree can answer questions such as ‘to what extent’ or ‘to what degree’.
They also function as modifiers of adjectives and adverbs.

Look at this sentence:

“They will provide 500 young people,

predominantly, but not totally, boys, with
apprenticeships.”

‘predominantly, but not totally’

They answer the question: “To what extent will

the apprenticeships be offered to boys?”

‘predominantly, but not totally’

Page 2 of 4
Let’s listen to Dave Smith, head of the National Skills Shortages Task Force, talking
about recruitments. He also uses a number of adverbs. Can you identify their
category?

Fortunately, I don't think it has been left too late, so long as we very proactively
tackle the situation now and don't delay any longer.

He says: “So long as we very proactively tackle the situation”.

‘Proactively’ is an adverb of manner, which expresses how something happens or

how something is done.

In the sentence: “We must very proactively tackle the situation”, ‘proactively’ modifies
the verb ‘tackle’, saying how the situation should be tackled.

Next to ‘proactively’ we have another adverb, ‘very’. We saw this category of adverb
earlier. It is an adverb of degree.

Some adverbs of degree, however, can be further divided into intensifiers and
downtoners.

Adverbs that are intensifiers make adjectives stronger, and downtoners make
adjectives weaker.

In the sentence “We must very proactively tackle the situation”, the manner in which
the situation is tackled is made stronger by adding the intensifier ‘very’.

“How proactively? Very proactively.”

Fortunately, I don't think it has been left too late, so long as we very proactively
tackle the situation now and don't delay any longer.

He also says: “Fortunately’, I don't think it’s been left too late”.

‘Fortunately’ is an adverb in another category. We call it an attitude marker.

The adverb ‘fortunately’ expresses a viewpoint on a situation, and usually refers to

the whole clause.

Examples of other attitude markers include:

‘hopefully’, ‘surprisingly’, ‘apparently’ and
‘happily’.

OK. Now let’s consider how many words and

phrases used in English are borrowed from other
languages.

Some are pronounced as if they were English, for example ‘questionnaire’ and
‘restaurant’ are from French, but pronounced in an English way.

Page 3 of 4
However, other words reflect the spelling and pronunciation of the original language
– like ‘détente’, and ‘ballet’.

English borrows words easily. These words fill gaps in our language. Most of the
vocabulary in English for ballet, for example, derives from French.

Let’s listen to Alan Carpenter talking. Can you identify the foreign word and the
language from which it was borrowed?

We didn’t put enough energy into getting people into apprenticeships and
traineeships. We just let market forces, laissez-faire approach, dominate, and it didn’t
work.

He uses the phrase ‘laissez-faire’.

‘Laissez-faire’ is a borrowing from French.

It closely reflects the pronunciation of the original language, and the original spelling.

Do you know the meaning of the phrase?

Generally, it means non-interference or not

getting involved, allowing things to act of their
own accord.

Here are some other French words that are

commonly used in English: ‘au fait’, ‘faux pas’,
‘Grand Prix’, ‘encore’ and ‘entourage’ – and you
can look them up in the dictionary.

OK. So today we’ve looked at adverbs, and then talked about words borrowed from
other languages into English.

To find more on today’s story, and lots of other help and information, you can go to
our website at australianetwork.com/studyenglish. I'll see you next time for more. Bye
bye.

Page 4 of 4
TRANSCRIPT EPISODE 25: ACADEMIC WRITING

Hello. I’m Margot Politis. Welcome to Study English, IELTS preparation.

Today on Study English we’re going to give you some tips and strategies for
answering Task 1 IELTS Academic questions.

We’ll look at what’s involved in planning an essay, and then we’ll try planning
answers to some practice questions.

Task 1 of the IELTS Academic module asks you to describe data.

The key word is ‘describe’.

That means you don’t need to comment on or interpret the data. Your task is only to
describe the data.

When you’re writing a description, it’s important to know what the context is and who
your audience is.

In Task 1, the audience is usually a university lecturer or a teacher. So we know that

it should be formal.

Let’s review what we know about task 1.

The key word is ‘describe’, and the context is ‘formal’.

There’s a range of things you might be asked to describe. Let’s have a look at some
examples.

You might be asked to describe

data.

That could be in a ‘bar graph’ or

‘column graph’,

a ‘pie chart’ or a ‘line graph’.

Or it could be presented in the

form of a ‘table’.

You might have to describe some

kind of ‘process or cycle’.

You could also be shown a

diagram of a ‘machine or object’
and asked to describe the parts or
the function.

Page 1 of 5
Now, let’s take a look at a practice
question. Here’s an example Task 1
question:

This table gives participation rates in

higher education, in New South
Wales, for males and females
according to home location, in urban,
rural or remote areas, for the year
2004. We also have a graph.

The graph shows the same information as the table.

We can see that we have information about the number of men and women who go
onto higher education, or university, in three different areas.

Before we can describe this data, it’s a good idea to think about how to organise our
description.

There are two options. It’s up to you which one you choose, but let’s look at each of
them.

With Option 1, you could divide your

essay up into an introductory
paragraph and two body paragraphs.

One paragraph would describe ‘male

participation rates’ in each of the three
locations, while the other paragraph
would describe ‘female participation
rates’.

So our essay would be structured like

this.

The first paragraph is the introductory

paragraph. It should only have 2
sentences.

Sentence 1 should paraphrase the

question, and sentence two should
outline your approach to the data.

The second two paragraphs are body paragraphs 1 and 2.

Page 2 of 5
In the first, you might address ‘female
participation rates’ for each location –
urban, rural and remote.

In body paragraph 2, you’d talk about

‘male participation rates’ for each
location – urban, rural and remote.

Or, you could try Option 2, and divide

the essay up into three body
paragraphs, one for each of the
locations.

The essay would be structured like

this: with an introductory paragraph, as
always; then 3 body paragraphs.

Body paragraph one would discuss

‘urban participation rates’ for males
and females.

Body paragraph 2 would discuss ‘rural participation rates’ for males and females.

And body paragraph 3 would be used to discuss ‘remote participation rates’ for males
and females.

There’s no clear answer as to which way is better. They are both correct.

But remember that your essay needs to be at least 150 words.

Now, let’s take a closer look at how to structure your essay.

The first paragraph is always the

introductory paragraph.

There should be two sentences in your

introductory paragraph.

Sentence 1 aims to paraphrase the

question, by telling the reader what the
topic is. It is important not to just copy
the question. You can use the
language of the question and build
your own sentence.

In sentence 2, outline how you will organise the data and therefore how you’ll
organise the essay.

Page 3 of 5
Let’s try to write our introductory paragraph.

It might look like this:

“The table represents data, supplied

by the Department of Education,
Employment and Training, on the
participation rates in higher education
for males and females in 2004. The
data is for three locations: urban, rural
and remote.”

So, our first sentence tells us about

the question. It includes information about where and when the data has come from.

Our second sentence tells the reader that we have divided the data into three
sections. There will be three body paragraphs - one each about the ‘urban’, ‘rural’
and ‘remote’ data. This is an introductory paragraph for Option 2.

The order of the paragraphs will follow the order given in our introduction: ‘urban’,
then ‘rural’ and then ‘remote’.

So, let’s review and take an overall look at the essay we’re creating.

Let’s say we’ve decided to go with Option one.

Remember, that was an essay with two body paragraphs, one describing ‘female
participation rates’ for the three locations, and one describing ‘male participation
rates’.

So, let’s start with our introductory paragraph.

We might write:

“The table presents data supplied by the Department of Education, Employment and
Training (DEET), on the participation rates in higher education in 2004 from three
locations: urban, rural and remote. The data is divided into two sets: female and
male participation.’

Notice our second sentence tells the reader that the data will be presented according
to female and male participation rates.

Page 4 of 5
So our first body paragraph will be
about data for ‘female participants’.

Here’s the structure of body paragraph

1.

It shows ‘female participation rates’ in

each of the three locations.

Body paragraph 2 will describe ‘male

participation rates’ for each of the
three areas.

Now, let’s finish with another example.

Here’s our data.

It’s a table. You can see that it shows

data for the number of international
students studying intensive English
courses in Australia.

We have the number of students in

2002, 2003 and 2004 for five
countries: China, Korea, Taiwan, Hong
Kong and the Netherlands.

So, how could you structure this essay?

One option is to have body paragraphs for each of the three years. Within those
paragraphs you’d have to describe data for the 5 countries.

You might be able to think of some other structuring options as well. If you want to
practice with some more examples, just go to our study English website.

It’s at abcasiapacific.com/studyenglish.

And that’s all for today. I’ll see you next time, for more. Bye bye

Page 5 of 5
TRANSCRIPT EPISODE 26: GENERAL TASK WRITING

Hello. I’m Margot Politis. Welcome to Study English, IELTS preparation.

Today we’re going to talk about letter writing.

IELTS Task 1 in the General Training module asks you to write a letter. We write
letters to friends, strangers, businesses, government departments and institutions.

The tone of a letter can be formal or informal, depending on who is going to read it.

There are several purposes for writing letters:

giving or requesting information;

giving instructions;

relating an event;

giving good or bad news;

complaining;

describing.

Some letters can include several of these purposes at the same time.

Here are some examples.

Letters for ‘giving information’ might

include: travel plans; arrival details;
what to see and do on holidays.

Letters ‘requesting information’ might

be for: course information; library
hours; timetable information.

Some letters for ‘giving instructions’

include: how to get to your house;
how to operate a machine; how to
open an account.

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And ‘relating an event’: an incident or
accident; a wedding or function or a
holiday.

‘Giving good or bad news’: cancelling

an appointment; accepting a job offer;
informing of the birth of a baby.

Letters ‘complaining’ might include:

poor service in a restaurant; loud
noise in your district; a problem with
faulty goods.

And letters ‘describing’ might be about: lost property; a friend; or a place.

OK. That’s an overview of different types of letter. Now let’s consider the
organisation of the letter.

Letters have a clear and familiar structure. Formal letters begin with a greeting ‘Dear
___”’, and end with ‘Yours sincerely’.

In between the top and the bottom, is ‘the body’. But what sort of body? How do we
decide about the shape of the letter between the greeting and the closing?

Well, we write because we have a purpose. It is important to indicate at the

beginning of a letter what its purpose is.

Let’s consider some examples.

If your letter is for giving information, you might start with: “I am writing to advise
that”;

or for requesting information: “I am writing to request information about”;

for giving instructions: “I am writing to explain how to”;

relating an event: “I am writing to describe the accident I saw”;

giving good or bad news: “I am very happy to tell you that”;

complaining: “I am writing to complain about”;

describing: “I am writing to describe some lost property”.

It’s easier for the reader of the letter if it’s organised coherently.

In Task 1, the way the IELTS General Training question is laid out will help you in
organising your response or answer.

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For example, look at the following question – a typical question for Task 1:

The way the question is constructed tells you how to organise your letter. There are
3 bullet points:

• how long the course is,

• how much the course costs, and
• course pre-requisites’.

This tells you that you should construct 3 body paragraphs, one for each bullet point.
Thus your letter should look something like this.

First a greeting:

Dear Sir/Madam,

Then an introduction stating a

purpose:

I am writing because …

Then the body:

1. how long the course is

2. how much the course costs
3. course pre-requisites

And then finally, the closing:

Yours sincerely,

So when writing your IELTS letter, it’s a matter of being logical and organising your
ideas.

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Let’s look at another question and decide how to tackle it.

If we follow the same strategy as last time, our letter organisation will look something
like this.

First a greeting:

Dear Sir/Madam,

Then an introduction stating a

purpose:

I am writing because …

Then the body:

1. explain where you left your

briefcase
2. describe the briefcase
3. advise how to inform you, and where to send it, if found

And then finish with the closing:

Yours sincerely

The last thing to discuss about the letters you’ll be writing is the level of formality.

The two IELTS letters we looked at should be formal.

There will be times when you will have to compose a less formal letter, with different
language choices.

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Here are some examples:

more formal less formal

“I am writing to enquire about the cost of “I am writing to ask about the cost of your
your IELTS Preparation Program.” IELTS Preparation Program.”
“This is due to the fact that teaching costs “This is because teaching costs have
have increased.” increased.”
If you require further information If you need more information

“Please find enclosed” “Here are”

“We have been forced to increase fees.” “We’ve had to increase fees.”

“I regret to advise you.” “I’m sorry to ‘tell’ you.

“I will not be able to attend.” “I cannot come.”

Well, you should now be able to

practise letter writing. Remember,
each letter you write will have a
different purpose, and a clear purpose
statement will convey your intent to the
reader.

Organise the letter into several short

paragraphs, and choose the tone
carefully. Should it be more or less
formal?

To find more information and tips, don’t forget to visit our website. It’s
australianetwork.com/studyenglish. You’ll find all the stories, transcripts, study notes,
exercises and quizzes for the series.

That’s all for now. I hope to see you again for another episode of Study English. Bye
bye.

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