IELTS Plus: Episode 68 - Public Transportation

Hello everyone around the world and welcome back to another episode of the IELTS plus English podcast where today we're going to talk about public transportation. As you probably know, I live in Seoul, South Korea, and I have done for 15 years. And during that time, public transportation has been my way of getting around.

I think I'm going to be really comfortable with today's topic, public transportation, talking about the buses, the subways, the trains. I use it all the time. So lots to say. I am going to keep... things pretty simple today because last episode was a pretty long one. But I do want to point out two words which appear in today's language list. And that is incentivize.

and disincentivize. So let's really try to use those two today. And same for you in your comments. Let's really try to add those words to our vocabulary. What do they mean? Incentivize means to make or encourage someone to do something with a... Ah, I tell you what. Have you ever heard of the... carrot and stick approach. Carrot and stick. The carrot attracts people. It's a reward. The stick punishes people.

So when you try to make someone do something, you have two methods. You can either give them a reward and say, hey, do that thing and I'll give you the carrot. Or you can say, hey, do that thing or I'll hit you with the stick. It's a metaphor, but... the carrot and stick approach. The reason I say this is it's connected to incentivize and disincentivize. If I say to you, hey, study for your exam.

and I'll give you $10, then I'm incentivizing you to study. If I say to you, hey, if you don't study, I'll fine you $10. That's... disincentivising, not studying. The result is the same, but the method is different. So in today's topic, the government, generally governments... want people to stop using their car because it creates pollution, traffic, etc. So they have two methods. They can incentivize you.

by giving you cheap public transportation. Or they can disincentivise you by taxing the car use. or increasing the fuel price with tax, increasing the fuel price, various ways of making it harder to drive a car, they're disincentivizing you to drive a car. So I hope that's clear. Two really nice words, and we'll try to use them today. Of course, this language can be found in the textbook, which is my textbook, IELTS Plus Total Speaking, and you can find that on www.brit.

plus dot net head over there and uh once you come back let's get started we're going to go part one question one what types of public transportation are available in your city There are the typical public transportation options available. We have a very good bus system and subway system. We have trains. Great, plenty of taxis. And overall, everything is really reliable, even during rush hour. Question two. What do you like or dislike about using public transportation?

Overall, I'm very happy using public transportation. I like it because it's convenient, it's quick, and it's cheap. So to be honest, I don't really feel any downsides of using public transportation. That answer was short and sweet. Do notice. The question was, what do you like or dislike? So I don't have to give both. I decided to keep it positive.

Part two. Okay, let's see what we're dealing with today. Two minutes on the clock. The question is, describe a time when you used public transportation. I tell you what, it... That's one of those ones that it's really easy to understand, but what experience can you talk about? Taking the subway to work, that's not very interesting. Let me think. So I have to find an answer that's going to keep me going for two minutes. I think something comes to my mind. We'll try. So two minutes starts now.

I'd like to tell you about my train journey to the east coast of Korea. Last year I decided... Alone to take my, without my wife, to take my daughter to the East Coast on a trip to the beach and to spend one night there. And in order to get there, I decided to use... The train called the KTX in South Korea. The KTX is a high speed train and it's very comfortable. It's very convenient, fast. I suppose the only downside is a little expensive. So we took the train, we went to the East Coast.

And had a wonderful time, especially on the train where we sat opposite each other and we played games and we looked out the window at the mountains. And it was just overall a really nice experience. So let me tell you a little more about this train journey. So it's the KTX. It's called the KTX. And it goes from Seoul. This route goes from Seoul to the east coast, a city on the east coast.

The fare was fairly high, but worth it when you consider the time it takes. It takes half the time of a car. The nice thing about the KTX is that it's very reliable and the whole train infrastructure of the country is really good. It means that you can get... pretty much anywhere very quickly. So this was no different. We got to the East Coast in an hour and it was a great experience. For me personally,

Although I like driving, it's just nice to sit back with my daughter, chat. There you go. Okay. So as I have been doing recently, I did get to the opinion section. If you have my textbook, you'll know what to expect. I get to the opinion. I'll give you just a couple of sentences and then I'll give you the future. I very rarely reach the future part of my structure.

But that's good because that means I always know I have that as backup if I'm struggling to have enough content. But for now, I haven't needed it. Let's go to part three.

What are the benefits of using public transportation for individuals and society? For individuals, I think the benefit most of the time is price and convenience. Especially during rush hour, it allows you to get from A to B in a very predictable way. Society-wise... Of course, it really helps with the environment. It stops us polluting the environment with our cars and traffic jams. just helps the city or wherever to remain clean and peaceful. Okay, next question. How does...

Public transportation contribute to reducing environmental pollution. I think that public transportation stops, I think primarily it stops people from using cars. And I think cars are one of the big issues when it comes to environmental pollution, particularly you could talk about the dirt on the road, the rubbish thrown from cars. the air pollution created by the cars, the noise pollution created by the cars as they're driving. So there's a number of environmental issues that come from cars.

South Korea in Seoul where I live, they really do keep the public transportation as cheap as possible, as I understand. because they're trying to incentivize people to use it instead of choosing their cars. I don't know in Seoul, but I've heard in other cities like Shanghai, they disincentivize people to use their cars by... taxing them or putting heavy restrictions on them various methods and i think overall that's only a good thing last question

In what ways can governments encourage more people to use public transportation? Okay, well, I did just use incentivize and disincentivize. However... This is a much better opportunity. So let's just use it again just to practice and get it really in your memory. So in what ways can governments encourage more people to use transportation? Firstly.

governments can incentivize people to use public transportation by making it as cheap as possible and ensuring that the routes reach as many locations as possible so that when someone wants to get from one part of the city or one place to another it's easy and cheap on the other hand The government can disincentivise car use. They can do this by raising taxes, road tax. They can raise fuel prices. They can put restrictions on...

Certain models, certain cars, there's so many methods of disincentivizing car use. And I think a lot of them are fair and good. As I said before, a good example is in Shanghai. where specifically, as I understand, they only allow certain registrations to drive on certain days. I think registration numbers are divided into two.

And so half the population can drive one day and half the population can drive the next day and it alternates. So I think that's a great system. Okay, that's everything for today. Bit of a shorter one, as I said, but hopefully some nice language in there, good use of structures, and hopefully you're feeling a bit more confident about this topic in the IELTS.

So have a lovely week, as I always say, and study unbelievably hard. You know, I always ask you to do that. And get ready because I think next week's going to be a tough one. I'm looking at it. It's recycling. I'm looking at the language, I'm looking at the questions right now, and that looks a bit tricky. So let's be prepared, study hard, and I'll see you next Monday to talk about recycling.