IELTS Energy 1627: How Television Can Boost Your IELTS Listening Score

This is an IELTS Energy Podcast, episode 1627, How Television Can Boost Your IELTS Listening Score. Welcome to the IELTS Energy Podcast from All Ears English. Downloaded more than 35 million times with examiner-trained IELTS whiz Aubrey Carter and Lindsay McMahon, the English adventurer. If you are stuck with a low score, our insider method will help you get the score you need to unlock your dreams.

Get your estimated band score now with our two-minute quiz at allearsenglish.com slash myscore. Did you know that you can increase your IELTS listening score by enjoying TV shows? Today, get six of our favorite shows and watch your score go up while you have fun.

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This week only, you can save up to $100 off the normal price. One more time, go to allearsenglish.com slash SOCIAL. Hello, Lindsay. How are you this fine morning?

Doing great, Aubrey. The sun is shining here in Denver. All good, all good. But I was up late watching TV last night. So yeah, I mean, you get tired in the morning when you watch TV at night.

Yes, so true. And speak of the devil, we are talking about TV today because we've had a lot of students share with us their concerns about being able to understand the IELTS listening audio. And I get it, right? Because there's lots of accents.

It's not only about vocabulary, but just listening comprehension. So we have today, we're going to talk about one of the best ways to improve your listening comprehension.

Yes. I'm so excited to get into this. We're going to have some great recommendations on TV series. I mean, that is really the trick, Aubrey, right? Is to get into a TV series and it becomes entertainment as well as preparation.

But before we get into our exact recommendations, guys, hit the follow button right now on the podcast so you don't miss a single episode of the show so you can be ready for your exam. Okay. Exactly. Yes, I love this.

I'm excited because if you – yes, if you find podcasts you love, that is going to help so much with listening comprehension. But it's just a fact that TV shows can really pull you in to where you want to watch the next episode, you want to binge, and you'll find yourself – if you can, keep yourself from watching those TV shows in your first language. Instead, find a show in English that you really love, you really look forward to watching – This is where you're really going to improve that listening comprehension so you're ready for the listening exam.

Yeah. And there's just so much TV out there now. There's something for everyone, right? So by the time you have your exam date, you'll be able to understand that audio and get those answers correct.

Obviously, you have to complement this with true preparation where you're getting to know the test, doing practice tests, doing practice exercises. Yeah. So this is not 100% of your preparation, right, Aubrey? Exactly.

You can't just watch shows on Netflix and then be ready, right? You need to be practicing strategies. You do need to be completing listening exams, listening to actual IELTS listening audio, completing those questions. But when you're thinking of improving overall listening fluency...

which is also a big part of IELTS exam preparation, especially if you still have a few months before IELTS, you should be listening to English that you enjoy, something that you really look forward to listening. Don't burn yourself out by just doing listening exams, right? Find something you really love to help improve listening comprehension. Yes.

And speaking of something you really love, let's go into our recommendations, Aubrey, and see what we can recommend for our students, our listeners. It's so funny that you came up with this one because I was going to recommend this one. I also just started listening. What is it?

Yes, it's called The Four Seasons. Wow. I and I'm only on season one. So no spoilers. In fact, we're not going to give you guys any spoilers at all because you may not have watched this show yet.

But it's created and starring Tina Fey, who I love her. I love her sense of humor so much. And also Steve Carell. If you loved The Office, you're probably going to really love this show, the humor of the show, right?

Yeah, yeah. We were just talking last night whether the other guy, Will Forte, is actually on SNL because he looked familiar, but I guess he is or has been on SNL, right? Yes. I love Will Forte.

He's MacGruber, which if anyone who watched the old show MacGyver, he was on these SNL skits kind of poking fun at that show. I love those. He's really, really funny. All right.

So what's the show all about, Aubrey? Yeah. So to give a little synopsis without spoilers, right? This is about a tight knit group of friends, longtime friends who have always vacationed together.

And then one couple ends up divorcing. And one of them starts bringing a younger partner on their trips. And this is hitting really close to home for me, for a lot of people who, if you have traveled with friends, maybe you have experienced this or you could imagine it.

Anytime someone goes through a divorce, it's tricky to know sort of which friend to choose, who gets to come on the trip. And then if they have a new partner, that's tricky because you have loyalty to your original friend. It would be so tricky. Of course.

Of course. And so it kind of goes through the challenges that I think couples run into as they get into middle age, right? This is really, I think, tailored for a 40 plus audience. Don't you think, Aubrey?

Yes, I agree. There are so many shows for young adult audiences, right? My kids are constantly watching like The 100 or You know, there are a lot of shows that are teenagers or young 20s, right?

Those can be fun as well. But if you're wanting to watch a show about, you know, people my age, which also a lot of life experience leads to some really crazy plot lines, some really funny humor. So I definitely recommend checking it out. Yeah, I was just thinking about the show last night.

I think it's just very honest. Like it's very, very authentic. And the scenarios are very real. It's like exactly what you could be going through, right?

Yes. Tina Fey felt like me and all my friends, like everything she says and does, she just feels like such a real person. And all of them, all of them do. Very real.

We love real. So a great way to work on American accents. You do hear a couple different, I feel like maybe they're based in upstate New York or something like that. So you hear a little bit of that regional accent.

Really good one. What's the next one, Aubrey? All right. Now we're going to talk about ghosts. I know you have mentioned this before, Lindsay, or we have, maybe on the Allers English podcast.

I'm not sure we've talked about it here on IELTS. This is a fun show for a lot of reasons. First of all, there are many different accents, which is fun because there are all these ghosts from all these different places and time periods, right? So you get used to a lot of different ways of speaking, but that's only one of the fun benefits of this show.

What happens here is this show has characters that all died on a old – again, in upstate New York, a old mansion property. All the ghosts died on that property in one way or another at a party, at an event, or they owned the home, right? And then each individual ghost represents their time period. There's someone from revolutionary times.

There's someone from the 1800s, Victorian times, all the way up to the 80s, right? And each line they deliver is incredibly tailored to their time period. That's why it's so fun. It's so fun.

It's so witty. So clever. We laugh. I watch it with my kids because it's also pretty clean. There's a little bit of adult humor, but it's pretty clean and just so clever.

I laugh all the time. And then it's really been fun because there's a lot of wordplay. And my kids will ask, they're like, wait, explain the joke to me, right? Because often younger kids won't always get the like double meaning and the double.

So there's a lot of that that's fun too when you're learning a language. So yeah, it's a fun show. I love that. Good way to learn about history too, American history, world history.

Really good one. Big Mistakes is your recommendation, Aubrey. Yeah, so this is brand new. It's a dark comedy thriller created by and starring Dan Levy.

I've been watching it on Netflix. It's about two neurotic siblings. And if you're not familiar with this adjective neurotic, that means emotionally unstable, right? Anxiety, self-doubt, worry, which creates a lot of funny banter back and forth with them.

And they accidentally get mixed up in organized crime after they're blackmailed into committing increasingly dangerous missions. So it's interesting. This is sort of what we'd call a dramedy, where there are funny lines, like you will be laughing and just the sort of the hilariousness or the craziness of everything is funny. But it's actually pretty dark.

Like they're, they're worried, they're anxious, all these crazy things are happening. And so it's interesting how a lot of shows like this blend the plot that's very much a drama, but there's still all these really funny lines and crazy situations.

Oh, fantastic. I feel like that show would make me nervous, though. Oh, scary. Those scenarios. I'm really curious because it's interesting how you'll really relate to these characters.

Like they are still being themselves and really funny. And sometimes that's what makes it the funniest is that they're still cracking all these jokes in the middle of this really tense... scenario. So it's really still a comedy.

It's still really very funny. But I'm curious if you check it out, Lindsay, I'd love to know what you think. Everybody out there, if you give this show a try. And it's interesting.

I noticed when I was traveling in Mexico recently that Ghosts was on Mexico. It's on Netflix was available. And so you never know what's available on Netflix where you live. It might be different than what's available for us, right?

So you could try wherever all of these shows are available streaming online, but we're not sure exactly what platform you'd be able to find them on. All right. Good to know. So just check it out and see if you can find these.

You can always ask AI where you can find them. That's always helpful. I want to make another recommendation. It is the show Younger. I may have talked about this last year.

I got into this show. It's written by Darren Star, who was the creator of Sex in the City. So, of course, the show is based in New York. And the plot line is there's this woman in her mid-40s who has a child who's like in her 20s and she is not able to get a job, right?

Because she's re-entering the work world after raising her kid in journalism and she just can't seem to get a job. It feels like all the younger women are taking the jobs. And so what she does is she pretends to be 24 or 26 and she gets the job at a famous publishing house, which I think is supposed to be Random House or something, a big one.

And so it's the whole story of her essentially pretending to be a 26 year old and changing her character and what she says and how she acts. That actually would be hilarious. It would be like you or I trying to pretend to be a millennial. That's so funny.

I need to check out that show. I think I would love that. You would like it. I really enjoy the show. There's a romance in there. It's kind of got everything for a good like if you enjoy New York based shows as well.

It's good. Yeah, right. It's also fun just to see New York and see people living in New York because it's such a vibrant, fun city. So that's a good benefit for that one, especially if you love sex in the city, you're going to love younger.

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Join us now at allearsenglish.com slash social. Save up to $100 before this offer ends later this week. Go to allearsenglish.com slash S-O-C-I-A-L. All right, Aubrey, we are back with some dramas to recommend to our listeners.

What is your first recommendation? Yes, those were more comedies and some dramas here. The first one is called A Good Girl's Guide to Murder. This was a very famous novel.

I read it. It's three books now, actually. And I loved all three books. And then they made this mystery thriller based on these novels by Holly Jackson.

And so it follows a young girl named Pip, Pippa. And it's all British accents. It's in a small English town. And she takes on this five-year-old cold case that happened in her town.

So everyone knows about it. The people are still alive who knew these people who died, right? It was a local girl who disappeared. And then her boyfriend committed suicide right after her.

But there are all these questions about the case. It really wasn't solved. No one really knows what happened. It was a great book. It's a great show. Highly recommend.

Really good for practicing British accents, which you are going to experience on IELTS Listening, all of these different accents. And it will pull you in. You're going to want to watch the next episode. It's very much like a page turner for a book, right?

There are cliffhangers, and you're going to find yourself listening for hours if you have time. Very cool. We've done other episodes here on this show about, you know, what accents should I prepare with? And the answer is all accents, right?

But you don't need to speak in any one accent, of course. So check out that content about accents, guys. The more you consume, the better off you'll be. The better you'll be at hearing these different accents because the British and the American accent, Australian, can be very different from each other.

Aubrey. Exactly. Right. Exactly. So true. And we have a couple of a few shows here that will really get you that accent training so that you're used to hearing it.

Right. Yes. And then The Diplomat. What's this one all about? Oh, I think my partner's into this show. I think I've seen it on the TV occasionally. Yeah.

What's this about? So So this is a more serious drama. It's a political thriller series starring Keri Russell. She's a career diplomat, and she's appointed as the US ambassador to the UK.

So most of it takes place in the UK in the first season. Later, they're in the States more. And they're in the middle of an international crisis. And she's sort of trying to diffuse global tensions with these different countries.

So it's very much you feel like you're inside... that political world that we don't usually see all of these confidential conversations and all of these things happening where right there preventing like global crises. And because it's in the UK, but there are a lot of American politicians as well. You do hear American and British accents in this show.

If you like a more serious show like that, that's about politics, but it still feels very real and very present. Like it feels like about today's political climate, then you'd love this show. I always wondered what it would be like to be a diplomat, to be on the inside of these conversations.

So maybe that's a hint. Watching the show, I think it feels like it's probably pretty accurate. And I'm like, no, thank you. I think it would be so high stress, so high stakes that I'd be like, not for me, not for me.

Oh, for sure. What about The Gentleman? This is your last recommendation with Guy Ritchie. Jeez, that guy's been around forever, I feel like. I know. And it's such a specific style.

So it first was a film, a film called The Gentleman by Guy Ritchie with an all-star cast, right? Everyone in the film is famous. Matthew McConaughey, Charlie Hunnam. Hugh Grant, who is fantastic in the film, The Gentleman.

And lots of interesting accents, mostly British accents, but from all over England. And some of the strong, like Londoner, and then like Northern England, all of these different accents, some Irish maybe. But then they made it into a TV series. So it's available on...

Netflix here in the States and it follows. So Theo Vaughn is one of the main actors in this one. He also was on white Lotus. I really love Theo Vaughn, but he, um, he was like a Duke who they're having financial troubles and then they discover like a weed plantation, marijuana under it's like hidden under this estate.

And so he sort of ends up becoming this like drug baron, uh, And so it becomes this whole criminal dynasty. So it's sort of him transitioning from this aristocrat into like a drug dealer. But it's definitely a dark comedy as well.

So lots of different accents. And for a lot of these shows, if there are accents you're not familiar with, we definitely recommend that you turn on the subtitles, especially for the first couple of episodes until you've gotten used to the accents a little bit. But then what should listeners do, Lindsay? Yeah.

And then after a few episodes, go ahead and turn off those subtitles to get used to listening without them. You don't want them to be a long term crutch in your preparation, right? Because for the IELTS listening exam, you're not going to be able to see any kind of subtitles. You have to get used to listening without seeing them.

Yeah. And I think overall, as we think about listening practice, this can be one of the funnest parts of your IELTS study plan. So enjoy it, right? Find something great that you really identify with as a show.

And also make sure you're addressing the listening test, the sections, the practice, the exercises inside a course too. Absolutely. But make sure that that's not all you're doing. You don't want to dread your listening practice, right?

Because otherwise, you won't do it. You'll find yourself not spending the kind of time you need to. So find a balance here of watching a TV show you love and look forward to watching, listening to podcasts on a variety of topics, and also doing those listening practice exams. And then you're going to find yourself ready on test day to listen to understand any accent and

and to get a high score on that listening exam. Exactly. So guys, go ahead and hit that follow button right here on IELTS Energy Podcast to not miss a single episode of our show. This has been fun talking about TV, Aubrey.

I know. Awesome. And whichever show you choose, enjoy it. We're excited. Leave a comment on YouTube to tell us what show you watched and what you liked about it.

Or if you hated it, let us know. I know. I'm very curious, right? Yeah. Awesome. All right. Take care, Aubrey. Have a good day. Thanks, Lindsay. You too.

Bye. Bye. Thanks for listening to IELTS Energy. Hit subscribe now and don't forget to find your estimated band score at allearsenglish.com slash myscore.

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