Cambridge English exams Speaking Part 1 - Useful vocabulary. WHERE ARE YOU FROM? CAE, CPE, FCE tips

hello everyone thank you for joining me again and welcome to any new viewers this is to the point english with ben i'm ben and in this video i'm going to teach you 10 very useful adjectives that will help you to answer the question where are you from which is not only a very common question that you'll get asked in english and any any language of course but it's highly likely that it will be the first question in the speaking paper of the cambridge english exam whether it's the b2 first the c1 advanced or the c2 proficiency in fact in the c2 proficiency it will definitely be the first question you'll be asked so these adjectives will really help you to impress the examiners and as i said in general english you're going to need to answer that question sometimes and just just answering with a one-word answer of the the town or city you're from that's fine but you want to expand a little bit don't you that that's the polite way to answer a question so as you may have seen in a previous video i explicitly recommend that you don't try to force vocabulary into your speaking in the exam when you're taking the speaking exam but because this is the first question of the exam you it's a good idea to have something prepared at least a few adjectives that to help you answer this question because you will probably be nervous and it will help you to feel more prepared and calmer in the exam itself okay so i have my my whiteboard ready so let's look at the first adjective which is swanky swanky now swanky is a good adjective and it means sort of rich classy or stylish so it's generally a a positive adjective so when we talk about a swanky neighborhood or a swanky area of a city it's where the rich people live and you know they have the stylish with nice cars nice clothes now most of us probably don't live in a swanky neighborhood right i know i've never lived in a swanky area of any town or city i've lived in before but we can still use this adjective because we can often use it in the negative for example the neighborhood i live in is not in a particularly swanky area of the city so we can do this a lot with adjectives just by using them in the negative we're kind of expressing the opposite but in a less direct way which is how we speak in english often and the second adjective today is a nice one and it's bucolic bucolic which means relating to the countryside and it's a very positive adjective it's referring to the the nice things about living in the countryside so if you're from a village or a town in the countryside you can say something like i grew up in a pretty bucolic village and again if you didn't grow up in a bucolic village you can still use the adjective but in the opposite sense as we used with swanky okay number three now tightly knit tightly knit so in this case this adjective is referring to the people often the community or the the people who live in a a neighborhood or an area of a town or a city and it means that they are closely integrated or they have strong bonds so they have close relationships so an example sentence is the best thing about my town is the tightly knit community so we often collocate tightly knit with community and as i said it's very positive it's nice to live in a tightly knit community where everybody knows each other and they they help each other that's the idea okay number four is picturesque picturesque now this isn't a particularly advanced adjective it's a nice adjective it's pretty impressive but really i want to include something that is a an alternative to quaint because i taught quaint in a previous video i've used it in examples and i hear people using quaint a lot when they're describing where they're from which is great it's a very nice adjective quaint but i thought today's video was an opportunity to give you an alternative and picturesque is quite similar and it means visually attractive so pretty quaint so a very simple example i'm from a picturesque town in the east of the country and number five is suburban suburban now you may be thinking that suburban is not the most impressive adjective you could use and maybe you're right but i wanted to include it in this list because i think most people do live in suburban areas of their cities it's nice to have words like picturesque and quaint and bucolic but the reality is that most people live in suburban areas so we need the words to be able to describe those too suburban means that it means a residential area just outside the city so it's not particularly glamorous but it's the reality for for many of us so an example sentence again very simple is my neighborhood is located in a suburban area okay so number six now so i have two adjectives for the price of one here because um sometimes it's just good to describe the geographical features of where you live um so here we have coastal and mountainous because sometimes that's the most um interesting thing about the place you live is the geographical location so they're very self-explanatory adjectives you don't need a definition i'm sure coastal is on the coast mountainous is in the mountains so you could say i'm from a coastal town or i live in a mountainous region so very simple but these are the types of things you can you can use in the exam or if you're speaking to somebody in real life so to speak okay number seven now non-descript non-descript um let's be realistic now a lot of us live in places in neighborhoods and towns or cities which are not particularly interesting and not particularly beautiful picturesque swanky we need to say that right we need to be able to express that and non-descript is a good adjective to use it it means having no interesting features so we can use it for other things to describe other things too but here we're talking about where you are from the place you live and non-descript could be a very useful adjective for many for many of you so an example sentence again quite simple you just be honest and say to be honest my hometown is quite nondescript so it's good to be honest i think in the exams or in real life if you have nothing interesting to say about your hometown just say that it's nondescript okay number eight now run down run down we're looking at some quite negative adjectives now because they're equally as necessary to know as the positive ones right because as i said we don't all live in swanky neighborhoods and it means in bad condition and again that's the reality for many people maybe you live in a rundown neighborhood and you have to be able to to express that so an example sentence my neighborhood used to be swanky but now it's pretty run down that's very possible that that happens quite often in cities that neighborhoods change over time sometimes they go from rundown to swanky because that's gentrification and sometimes it's the opposite they go from swanky to run down okay number nine now drab grab another negative one i'm afraid um and drab means boring and colorless uh nothing special about it pretty gray so an example sentence is i'm looking forward to moving because i find my hometown quite drab now we often use dreary with drab we often put use the two adjectives together drab and dreary we put them together and have a very similar meaning so drab and dreary it's quite gray and depressing okay the last one now number 10 and this one's a little bit different because it's not really an adjective describing the place you live but it's a way to give more information it is an adjective and you need to use it with a preposition so it's notable for notable for so if you want to give some fact or history about your town or city you can use this just to give more information and it basically means famous for it's a synonym of famous for but notable is a bit more impressive and the example here well that would depend on your your hometown of course uh but you could say for example my city is notable for its architecture or my city is notable for its music or my town is notable for a famous resident for example okay so you have those 10 adjectives which will really help you answer that question where are you from do you have any other adjectives that you like to use when you answer that question of course it really depends on the place you live so share in the comments which adjectives you like to use and maybe we can build up a little dictionary of adjectives to to answer that particular question where are you from okay thank you for joining me and i look forward to seeing you very soon for another video okay take care bye [Music]

Channel: To The Point English with Ben.

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Keywords: advanced English vocabulary, c1 advanced vocabulary, advanced vocabulary, c1 vocabulary, c2 vocabulary, c2 proficiency vocabulary, c1 advanced Cambridge exam, c1 advanced Cambridge English exam, c1 advanced Cambridge, cae exam tips, c2 proficiency Cambridge English exam, c2 proficiency Cambridge exam, cpe tips, cpe exam tips, c2 proficiency exam tips, vocabulary for Cambridge English exams, vocabulary for c1 advanced, vocabulary for c2 proficiency

Id: JcAY9KXtEbI

Length: 9min 5sec (545 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 12 2021