IELTS Energy 1641: Holidays on IELTS Part 3: 'Tis the Season!

This is an IELTS Energy Podcast, Episode 1641, Holidays on IELTS Part 3, Tis the Season. welcome to the ielts energy podcast from all ears english downloaded more than 35 million times with examiner trained ielts whiz aubrey carter and lindsey 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.

During the holidays, it's easy to get swept up in the materialism of buying and getting gifts. Consumerism is a common IELTS speaking topic, so be ready with today's phrases and tips.

Hello, Lindsay. How are you doing? Hey, doing great, Aubrey. How's it going on your end? Excellent. The Christmas season is right around the corner. I don't know about you, but do you ever feel like the holidays become too focused on shopping and buying gifts?

100%. That's why I prefer Thanksgiving, to be honest, because there's no gifts to buy. There's no pressure. It's just sit down together with your family and enjoy a meal.

But yeah, we're way too hung up on buying things. That's so American. Yes, it's very American. I'm curious if it is as much of a problem around the world.

But a lot of people, if your love language is giving gifts or getting gifts, it's really easy to fall into that, to have that be more the focus and And this is a really common topic on IELTS as well. There's a good chance that you will need to discuss money, shopping, or consumerism on the IELTS speaking exam and possibly even writing test too. Oh my gosh.

Yeah. Great topic. Super important topic. So today in this episode, we're sharing seven band nine words and phrases to boost your vocab scores when you discuss spending money, which I feel like this question could come out in a lot of different ways, right?

Yes, this is super flexible. Because even if you're not specifically asked about money spending habits or consumerism, if you're asked about what you like to do, hobbies, you could end up talking about how much you spend on it, right? Attending restaurants, going to the movies. If you feel like you haven't said enough, you can always share some of this vocabulary about, you know, what's the focus of how much money you spend on something.

Exactly. So shall we go ahead and play the episode for our listeners, Aubrey? Yeah, let's do it. All right. Hey, Jessica. How are you doing today? Hey, I'm doing well.

I'm doing well. How are you doing? Feeling healthy, wealthy, and wise today. Oh, I love that. Healthy, wealthy, and wise. What does that say? As something, something makes us healthy, wealthy, and wise?

Maybe an apple a day keeps the doctor away. I know. That's another one. That's a different idiom. I know. Different one, different one. But as, you know, healthy, wealthy, and wise.

I am certainly feeling healthy. I feel – I'm feeling pretty wise right now. Lots of good work, creative stuff going on for us and our projects. Oh, yeah.

But wealthy, you know – As James is starting school and there's like school supplies and there's hot lunch or cold lunch and there's school clothes shopping.

I think I've spent some dough this month. Spent some dough, a little moolah. Yeah. I've definitely spent some moolah this month on James. Forking out the bucks on that.

Yeah. Way to work in those synonyms. I like that. I like that. Yeah. So as our listeners might be able to tell, guys, today we're talking about slangs for money.

And where on the IELTS exam, Jessica, do money questions come up? Oh, my gosh. So this, yeah. So the reason why we thought about this topic, we've never done it before.

But in the last episode, Lindsay and I did together, we did mention how, and speaking part three in writing task two, these concepts of consumerism, materialism, capitalism. Capitalism. These three concepts do come up, but it's also the easier questions in speaking part one and speaking part two. So for example, speaking part one, there could be a group of questions about shopping for sure.

That is commonly on speaking part one. And then speaking part two, there have been questions like, describe an expensive thing you bought, which you no longer use. I love that question. Yeah, I love that.

Ooh, how would you answer that on the spot? On the spot part two. Oh my gosh, an expensive thing I've bought that I no longer use. Honestly, I think I use everything I buy generally except for my sleeping bag liner because I rarely go camping these days and therefore I never use it.

I just spend a lot of money on it and I threw out the box and I just don't use it anymore. So bam, there's my answer. That was about 20 seconds. Yeah, it's a mini answer.

Let me... Let me remind you guys about the strategy for this difficult part two task, describing objects. It's the hardest one, you guys. So in this case, you would describe the object itself and then where you bought it, why you bought it, like the history of it, and then tell a story related to it, right?

Mm-hmm. Lindsay could have described what it looks like, how much it cost, and then describe why she bought it in the first place, where she bought it, and then the story of the one time she did use it, right? And then like finish up and be like, unfortunately, that's the only time I've used it and I've owned it for three years or something. Yeah.

And here, in this case, we could try to fit in some kind of a slang regarding money, right, Jessica? In speaking part two, is that a good time to add in slang? Totally. So these, the vocabulary from today's episode, you guys, is for speaking part one and part two.

The slang is. The idioms, however, you could use one idiom in writing task two. Not too many or it would seem informal, but you could throw one idiom in there to show your lexical flexibility, your vocabulary. Yeah.

The variety that you know. And also speaking part three. You should use some more formal terms in speaking part three, but it's still speaking, guys. You can use idioms in speaking part three.

I don't recommend using slang. That's for part one and two, but idioms for sure. Yeah, exactly. It's about the range, right? Range of vocabulary. We can't be one-sided speakers.

Exactly. Yeah, that's why. So today we're going to show you guys a handful of slangs that you can go ahead and use on these parts of the test, right? Exactly.

So take note, you guys. Write this stuff down. So the first one, oh, you do the first one. You're like excited about this one. Okay. Well, I like the phrase money bags.

So is that the one you were thinking of? I think this is cute. So this is used usually to talk about a person, right? Usually a person is called money bags.

Is that how you've heard it used, Jessica? Totally. And we usually use it after like Mr. or Miss because it's sort of a sarcastic thing to say. Yeah. That's how I use it at least.

Miss Moneybagg. Yeah. If I go out to lunch with a friend and she's like, oh, don't worry. I got this. And I'm kind of – maybe I'm sarcastic. I'm like, oh, Miss Moneybagg is going to buy everybody lunch or something.

That's exactly how I use it. It's sort of like a jokey thing. Yeah. It's lighthearted. It's cute. Yeah. It's not overly common. I think overly common expressions are annoying.

Yeah. But it's kind of cute. So try to add that in, guys. So on that note, guys, as Lindsay said, some expressions are annoying. There are some idioms that every student knows because they're in every textbook.

They're even the titles of units. They're like the chapter titles, these idioms. So one of them, guys, do not say it cost an arm and a leg. Please don't say that.

Yeah. It's just too common is all. It doesn't fulfill that idea of being impressive. It's not impressive because everybody uses it. And it's not really used anymore.

I don't use that. I don't know about you, Jessica. I mean, do you see yourself using that ever? I mean, no. No. It's come to the point of being a cliche.

So this is an important distinction, guys, between idioms and cliches. Idioms are like these phrases we're talking about that are common. People still use.

Take the words individually. They do not mean what the phrase itself means altogether. Right. That's an idiom. Usually has some interesting history behind it.

Clichés, however, are idioms that have been overused to the point of being annoying. Right. Right. So cliches are like it's raining cats and dogs. Nobody uses that anymore.

The only the only time you'll hear native speakers using stuff like this is to make fun of it, to use like maybe pieces of it, but never the whole thing. Yeah, that's a good point. And a lot of what you'll get in the general ESL courses out there, guys, are courses that are based on these old fashioned, out of date, cliched phrases that are just no longer used. And that's why with the courses that we try to build, we go out and we get the material from native speakers directly and we take it from them.

OK, we don't scour the Internet, as you were saying, Jessica, to try to find these lists of ESL words and then regurgitate them to you. Exactly, exactly. I'll be completely transparent about my process when coming up with vocabulary lessons for you guys for the YouTube videos.

To jumpstart my brain, I will Google search like idioms, transportation, whatever. Just to give me a jump start. I don't use those. I look through them and I think, do I say any of this stuff?

And then I start thinking, what do I say instead of this? And then I'll look at IELTS questions about the topic and think about how I would answer it. And that's where the slang and idioms come from is what I actually say in real life.

I like that. I like that. No, that's awesome. We're giving you guys the real stuff here. Moneybags, good one. I feel like any examiner would be super excited to hear that.

Yeah, this would be so cute, guys. So in speaking part one, an examiner, the question could be like, what did you do last weekend? I mean, simple, but it does happen on the exam. Or do you have any plans for next weekend?

You could say, to be honest, I did just get paid, so I'm kind of feeling like Miss Moneybags right now, and I'm Might just treat myself and go shopping. That would be adorable. The opposite of money bags is this next idiom.

This is a long one, guys. Therefore, it's more impressive. You could say, don't have two nickels to rub together. So... Maybe it's the end of the month.

You're trying to come up with rent. You don't have any extra money to go out with your friends. And your friend is like, you know, can you come to the movies? Or, okay, this should be IELTS.

So maybe the examiner says, how often do you go shopping? And you're like, man, I'm a student. I honestly don't have two nickels to rub together right now. I never go shopping.

Yeah. I love that. Wow. So natural. It would sound so natural and just so kind of unique if you said that, guys. Oh, man. Any examiner would be impressed.

And that's a long idiom. Sure, it's a bit informal because it's an idiom, but you could use it in speaking part three or writing task two. It's impressive, guys. The structure, the vocab, the knowledge you have to be able to use it correctly.

That's what scores highly. Okay, I'm going to do the next idiom, too, because this is funny. Okay, go for it. I won't hold you back. This is funny, you guys.

I obviously, like, I pride myself on my knowledge of English. It's my career, my passion. However, there's an idiom to make ends meet. It's very common.

I say it all the time. Like, oh, I need to get a second job or work a couple more hours to make ends meet this month. And seriously, literally, guys, up until I used this idiom in a lesson last year, I thought it was make ends M-E-A-T, like meat, because I thought, oh, you have to pay for meat for dinner. That's what I thought it meant.

Make ends meet. Oh, interesting. Yeah. But really, guys, it's to make ends meet like your like your money is one end. This is how I picture it, at least the amount of money you have is one end.

And the other end are all these bills that you have to pay and stuff you have to buy. And you need to make those meet. You have to make it like even. Yeah, no, that's true.

Yeah. I feel like a lot of people get confused about this idiom because why? Because we never see it written down because it's not really a written idiom. It's more of a spoken idiom.

Completely, completely. But on that note, I will tell you, you can use it in writing tasks too. All right. Just for the reasons I said before. But of course we are honest about what you can and can't use.

So that's why I'm telling you, you can, but only use one idiom in your essay. Okay. So Lindsay, take, take the next one. Okay, so I'm going to give our listeners three ways.

Yeah, so three ways to really refer to money that are just beyond just dollars. I mean, it's kind of boring if you're always saying dollars, guys. So there are some ways we can mix it up, right? We can say bucks.

And I personally use bucks all the time. B-U-C-K-S, right? 20 bucks. How much does it cost to park your car in Central Square? 25 bucks an hour, right?

For example. Yeah, exactly. I would never say dollars in that situation. Even my five-year-old says bucks all the time. Everyone says that. Oh, that's so funny.

I love that. I love that. So it's not rude. I mean, it's casual, but it's perfectly acceptable. So guys, I would definitely throw that in. And then two that are a little bit less common, but are also used are dough, right?

D-O-U-G-H, like the word dough that we use to make bread, right? But it means money. It means money. Exactly. I love that. I do say that a lot, actually.

Yeah. Yeah, you could say something like, oh, how much is it going to cost to get a new car? It's going to cost a lot of dough, right? Yeah. So, oh, that's a good point, though.

So how we use it. So bucks would be a specific number, 20 bucks, but you wouldn't say 20 does. So this is the difference, right? So you would say like a lot of dough or a little dough.

So like amount word plus dough. Like I need to make more dough. I don't have enough dough. Yeah. Exactly. That's a good point. And this next one, moolah, also is used in that same way.

Okay. So do you have a lot of moolah or you do or you don't this weekend, right? You can't go out if you don't have a lot of moolah. I mean, I don't use this one as much, but you do, Jessica?

I do. I love this word just because talking is fun and using sort of silly, weird words is fun. And I say this a lot. So yeah, think about it like this guy.

So bucks is a synonym for dollars, whereas dough and moolah are synonyms for money, right? So these are like countable and uncountable nouns that, so the grammar ties into it too. So make sure you are using it correctly in speaking part one and two.

Awesome. And then we have two more, right? So which one do I do? You go ahead, Jessica, you share the next one for us. What do we got? Um, so breadwinner, and I know this is, this might be something you guys already know, but I, or maybe hopefully not.

Cause it'd be nice if all of these were new. It's a whole new lesson. Um, but even if you already know what guys, the, the notion of breadwinner, so high scoring vocabulary is what we're talking about. But, um,

I want to connect this word to the culture of thinking as well, because challenging your notions of who should be the breadwinner in a family, gender roles are changing in almost every society now. You know, I mean, no matter how conservative your society is, people need to make more moolah these days. And so both parents...

Both parents are the breadwinners now. So whose responsibility should it be compared to whose responsibility is it actually? And what does that mean for families? What does that mean for relationships and gender roles?

And, you know, there are a lot of ideas related to this. If you reflect on the idea of breadwinner in your culture and what do your parents think compared to what you think, right? That's going to be different. Yeah.

Oh, yeah. I feel like this particular phrase breadwinner would be very dynamic. I mean, beyond just concepts of questions specifically about money, but about progress, about careers, about, oh, my God, so many things. I think that's what you were just saying.

So learn this one, guys. This might be a high scoring vocabulary word right here. This might be a dynamic one. Totally. I think this would be a great brainstorm for you guys, you know, encouraging this culture of thinking.

Let's explore what you think about it, because you very well might be asked something about this in speaking part three or writing task two. So you better have something to say. And I'm telling you, this is a common notion that comes up. So go ahead and do a brainstorm.

Have two categories under it, your ideas and your parents' ideas. Right. And just go from there. Lindsay, I really love this slang noun, money bags. A bonus chunk here would be to say, I'm no money bags, but which just means I'm not rich.

I'm not super wealthy, but examiners are going to be really impressed if you use this chunk. Yeah, this is a fun expression. It's kind of modern. It's kind of playful.

You can use it to tease people, right? Maybe someone's bragging about a raise they got. Money bags. Wow, right? Okay, money bags. Exactly. It's also useful for IELTS.

If you were asked about holiday shopping, you could use this chunk and say, I'm no money bags, but I do like to splurge a bit when buying holiday presents. I always go over my budget.

And if you're asked about travel, you could say, I'm no money bags, but I try to avoid discount hotels if I'm visiting a big city. And I feel like honestly, the examiner would be surprised and very impressed. I agree. Yes.

I don't know that I've ever heard a student say this, which makes it very high scoring. And so if you find yourself about to say, I'm not rich, or even the idiom that's a little more of a cliche to say, I'm not made of money, that's all right. But this is much more rare. I'm no money bags.

So this is exciting. We want to challenge you to use today's phrases, all of these high scoring phrases about money, finances, to practice answering questions. questions. So our challenge is for you to come up with your own answers using this high scoring vocab for a part one question and a part three question.

Can you share those with us, Lindsay? Yep. Here's the part one question. How often do you buy things that you don't really need? All right. Yeah. So that's going to be like one to three sentences, right?

Some of this more casual vocabulary use today's vocab practicing that one. Good. And then part three, part three is a little longer. It's talking more about society.

Here's the question. Have spending habits changed where you live in recent years? Right. So that's going to be closer to a minute, that answer. And you have seven amazing phrases here to practice using in these answers so that they're part of your arsenal on test day to boost your scores.

Yeah. Really, really good stuff. I was just listening to a podcast today that talked about the trend of BNPL, buy now, pay later, that people are using.

People are driving up a lot of debt through this new form of credit. And so maybe that's something that could come out on Speaking Part 3 if that's applicable in your country. Right. We used to have what we called layaway, right?

You're like, layaway things, get it later. But it's true. It's becoming even more common to rack up credit and for things that you might have difficulty paying off later.

Right. Even people are buying burritos on BNPL. It's like, wow. It kind of tells you a lot about where we are as a society right now in terms of people's situation with money.

But maybe this will come up on- That could be a real problem through the holidays. Yeah, for sure. So make sure you're listening to podcasts, you're listening to the news. So you have some material so you can answer this with a real answer, right?

Yes. Awesome. So good. Look up BNPL. You can use that on IELTS as well. Interesting. All right, Aubrey. See you next time. Have a good day. Bye. Awesome.

See you guys next time. 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.