IELTS Plus: Episode 78 - Time

Hello IELTS students and welcome back to the IELTS Plus English podcast. Today's topic is time. A really broad subject today, time. You can see from today's language that there are so many things related to time. So, you know, I'm looking here, we've got deadline, postpone, procrastinate, some really nice words. As I always say, go and get these from the Arts Plus Total Speaking textbook on www.britplus.net. But...

As we're talking about time, I'd like to give you some time tips for the IELTS exam. Basically, how to manage your time well while answering. You see it a lot in my podcast that generally I keep my answers to certain time limits. I have this sense of time, especially part two. So I just want to give you a few tips to think about. Tip one. These are my guidelines for the whole IELTS speaking exam. Tip one.

Part one questions, generally your answers should be around 30 seconds. Part two, I really want you to hit the two minute mark. Don't get to one minute 30. and then sit back and wait. I want it to be your habit at home that you, without fail, hit two minutes. There's no reason why not. And part three, this is a tricky one, but I go with 45 seconds to one minute. That's a suitable answer length. I find that...

It gives you enough time to go through my structure and ensure that you give a good example to support your answer. But also, you don't want to go much beyond a minute because that's getting very long. for the style of question so those that's my guideline for how long you should spend on each question in speaking now tip two Easier said than done, but develop your sense of time. Develop your sense of time. What this means is in all parts, but particularly part two.

I want you to answer questions with the timer in front of you and you have to answer a lot of questions, same as I do in my podcast, but develop a... An internal sense of, okay, I've been talking for about 30 seconds, about one minute. I can generally sense in part two. When I hit the minute mark. Because you'll very often hear me switch to the next part of the structure. I don't look at my timer. I keep the timer out of the way. But through a lot of repetition.

That sense of time allows me to manage my answer better. That's my second tip. My third tip, and this is one of my favourites. In part two... Add time constraints to your preparation time. One of the difficulties that my students have when they first come here is that... In part two, you have a minute to prepare. And very often I put a minute on the clock. I wait for them and I say, okay, one minute is over. And they're shocked and they find, wow, a minute is not long.

What I do with them over time is I reduce the allowance to 50 seconds and then 40 seconds and then 30 seconds so that by the time they reach the exam... We are always, they get 30 seconds preparation. That way, with that extra time constraint, when they do the real exam, it's very comfortable. One minute is a long time to prepare. So remember, added time constraints in your practice time can make the exam feel a little easier. I'm particularly talking about part two preparation.

I don't see any necessity to do this in part one or part three. So those are my three time tips. Number one is the rough guide to each part. Part one, 30 seconds. Part two, two minutes. Part three, 45 seconds to a minute. Next is develop a sense of time. And then the tip three was time constraints for part two. That's everything I'll say.

Let's get into today's topic, an interesting one, and we'll go for part one, question one. How do you manage your time when you're busy? Well, I'm... I'm pretty diligent with managing time. I set out a to-do list. I often put it in chronological order on my iPad. I try to just set some deadlines, some time limits on each task so that I can realistically complete it by the end of the day.

Next question. Do you prefer to plan your activities or to be spontaneous? I, it really depends on what I'm doing. General life. I like to plan. I'm pretty keen on that, actually. And perhaps you can sense that from getting to know me through the podcast. But when I travel... I like to be almost entirely spontaneous. Perhaps we'll have a rough itinerary, just, okay, we're going to go to this location, and of course we book a hotel.

But in terms of the activities, I do like to be spontaneous and just see restaurants or shops or activities and just go and try them. Good. Nice clean answers. Let's get on to part two.

Describe a time when you were very busy. Wow. So many times in my life are coming through my head. But yeah, let's give it a try. Two minutes starts now. I'd like to tell you about the birth of my daughter alongside running my business. Five years ago, in 2020, my daughter was born. And as you can probably imagine, it made me exceptionally busy. My wife was at home and she raised our daughter and she did...

the majority of the things required to raise my daughter. But any time that I wasn't working, I had to be at home doing chores, cleaning, cooking. feeding my daughter, changing her, all of these things that are naturally required for raising a baby. But on top of that, I came here and I ran my business. So of course I had to be punctual to my lessons. I had to hit all of these deadlines, especially related to my online business, such as the podcast and writing textbooks and things like that.

There were all these things that I had to do at the same time and it was very hard to manage. Let me tell you a little more about this period. So I'd say 2020, maybe 2021 as well. which was the busiest time, the hardest thing was just making sure I kept on top of writing lesson content and textbooks. Because it's quite easy to...

to do lessons and be there present. And it's quite easy to be at home and do the things required there. But the hardest thing was just putting time aside to, as I said, write content. So periodically, I would take myself on a Sunday normally to a coffee shop and try to have three or four hours where I can do that really focused work. And it was a challenge, but... Oh, wow. I was nowhere near...

Even the opinion section. So clearly I had a lot to say about that. Of course, that's not a problem as long as I'm saying relevant things. And I think I use some nice language in there that's from today's list.

So I'm pretty happy with that. Let's go straight on to part three. Why do some people find it difficult to manage their time? I've heard about this, that actually it's innate. Now, I can't remember the name for this, but basically some people are born with a sense of time and some people are not. So the people that are not find it very difficult to know what time it is now, difficult to arrive on time to appointments.

And then some people have no trouble with that at all. Another issue is that some people, I'd say everyone, I do the same, we procrastinate and that can be a big issue. I don't think that's such an... There's not such a divide between people. I think humans innately procrastinate tasks that they don't want to do. So, yeah, I... I don't know why but I think a lot of it is innate. Next question. How can time management skills be improved?

Of course, nowadays we have a lot of applications on the phone that can be used. I think mostly when it comes to time management, a lot of it comes down to prioritization. And prioritizing the tasks that need to be done versus the ones that you can postpone to another day. That's been a big one for me is that although I'm quite good with time. I sometimes focus on tasks that don't need to be done urgently. And there are other tasks I should be prioritizing.

There are a number of ways nowadays to manage your time, but certainly using applications and hardware like iPads can be great for doing that. Okay, last question. How do cultural attitudes towards time differ around the world? That's really interesting. And I've had a lot of experiences with this. I would say that... Firstly, depending on where you are in the world you value time more or less.

And that doesn't matter. Whether you value it more or less doesn't matter because it depends where you live and the culture you're in. But if you are someone from, let's say... Perhaps Germany, I think England and Japan, where there's a high value on being on time and doing things by a deadline. that can clash with another culture where they're a bit more easygoing and there can be a bit of a delay and that's okay. A country that comes to my mind...

And by the way, I might be wrong. You can certainly correct me. But I felt in Spain when I was there, there's just less emphasis on... time you know you you can take your time more you can take time to eat to drink to to take a rest in the middle of the day with the siesta and um i i really enjoyed it while i was on holiday But perhaps I would struggle with that in business. So really, the cultural attitudes are all about how different countries value time in different ways. Okay.

A reasonable answer, but I tell you what, I was starting to stray into too much I. I don't like doing that. I always tell you, let's try to keep the examples. general and about countries and other people. But overall, I think my answers were reasonable. I use some good language and that's everything I have time for today. So next week, we are going to be talking about tourism. Wonderful. And we're getting near the end. Next week is episode 79.

Now that's 39 of season two. So we only have two episodes left. Wow, time flies. So have a lovely week and I'll see you next Monday to talk about tourism.