IELTS Speaking Practice: Topic of The Countryside

welcome it's thursday here in not so sunny rather bleak and a santander welcome it's keith from the keith speaking academy great to see you here great to be back and today we're going to be looking at the exciting topic of the countryside what's it like living in the countryside what can you do there the pros the cons language idioms and even some listening and some videos i'm going to share with you today really looking forward to it can't wait um while we're getting warmed up let's begin with a little bit of this whoops let's try again you can tell i'm out of practice right of course i am [Music] hello it's keith from the keith speaking academy um and the youtube channel um english speaking success if you don't know me well i do run the uh the website and i'll show you here it's the website the keyspeakingacademy.com um as well as this youtube channel if you're on youtube and i run the facebook group which is this one some of you are watching on facebook as well it's keith's mastermind community for ielts speaking so listen it's great to be back um i've been uh off unfortunately i was off last week um i had a problem with my leg i had a torn ligament at the top of my leg so i had to go and sort that out but i am feeling much better now thank you all of you for your wishes um and you know for me to get better and get well i am feeling a lot better thank you um for those of you who are going to be taking the test soon i hope that you're feeling confident um wish you the very best of luck i hope that goes absolutely great i hope it goes swimmingly as we say swimmingly i hope it goes swimmingly very very well so a few hellos um first in the house today was sour rubbed and sajid khan hello artyom nice to see you we've also got indra who's been waiting for my class waiting for a two weeks right because i was off last week hello nice to see you uh rahul i'm i'm good thank you very much um nigar from azerbaijan great to see you who else is here yasmine hello uh zartasha hey keith hello there hanish nice to see you i'm very well good to see you as well people from all over the world fantastic we've got amir from iran hello amy guarav hello there who else steve is here steve's been following me for a long time thank you very much steve and for all of you i know a lot of you have been uh following me for a long time thank you so much for for studying with me i really do appreciate it if you are new um welcome welcome to the class i hope you enjoyed today enjoys i hope you enjoy today's class right um so i'm gonna let you know something if you're um following me and looking for resources as well as the youtube so i do live lessons on youtube right every thursday at 10 o'clock spain time why spain time keith because i live in spain are you spanish no i'm from manchester in england but i do live in spain and that's why so 10 o'clock every thursday live lessons um also saturdays i record a video goes out on youtube but i want to show you this because we've also got the website right if you some of you know the website um keyspeaking academy just to let you know because there's lots of resources on there as you can see you can find out by the way it's the fun and professional way to prepare for ielts you can find out about the test evaluation different topics part one two and three so all information about the test is there of course the live lessons like today are recorded on youtube and you can go and download them after the class you can come and watch them again if you want last week not last week two weeks ago we did um keeping fit so you can download the notes for free or you can just study the lesson and if you want the past lessons you can pick up the pdf and go and study the lessons just by clicking on the link i think i've updated all of the pdfs now i think so um do let me know if i'm missing anything but there you go lovely hunky dory now then if you're on youtube for those of you are um do remember just to subscribe on the channel so you can find out about the latest notifications if you turn that on about new videos coming up i had a great video last saturday that i enjoyed making about thinking in english if you haven't seen it go and check it out last week's video thinking in english i thought it was quite interesting interesting discussion that came up after it as well so um today what are we going to do today well let me um share with you right we're going to be looking at the countryside today i'm a big fan of the con countryside nature flowers leaves in your hair what hair you've got left we're going to look at the countryside right we're going to have a look at some vocabulary especially about um cows i don't know why but we're gonna talk quite a bit about cows today um we're gonna be looking at activities in the countryside i wonder what you do in the countryside right some people look at the stars some people feed the horses i don't know we're going to find out and talk about that we'll look a little bit about the pros and the cons of course the advantages and the disadvantages of living in the countryside as well as i've got a nice listening task with you with you for you with me in a video we'll also be doing some idioms right things like i mean do you know this one the early bird catches the worm it's one of those uh kind of older idioms but we still use it um absolutely so we're going to be looking at that and what it means and and how that can be useful for you and what else are we going to do we're going to finish up on kahoot the kahoot review brilliant our game as always that we uh we finish up on so the countryside let's begin with the countryside um now then i'm just going to come back and just check how you're all doing say a few hellos because it's been a long time right so we've got adil idris who says in fact i've got addicted to your thursday class oh dear i'm eagerly awaiting your useful tutorials thank you very much yan juan says we have a similar idiom in chinese about the bird the early bird catches the worm yeah it's true get up early and your life will be full of wealth prosperity happiness and worms right good we've got who else is in the house hello from hello shirley from hong kong hello shirley and you look fresh says ashraf i'm looking fresh great nice to know that i'm feeling a lot better and a lot fresher um so let's begin um let's begin with this if i can find my notes i've got a little puzzle for you to begin right um over here i've got some words and i've put the words um well i've split them up a bit like when you're chopping the vegetables and all the vegetables have mixed up so there are lots of words here to do with the countryside right i wonder if you can see them so for example you can see the word rural right that's the first word can you see the other words connected with countryside write them in the comments box and let's see what you can do brilliant sajid has found mountain well done sharon has found a valley nice one saurabh has found forest and lake well done we've got javina's found stream interesting nice one now then magdy has got rustic but i don't know where rustic is i didn't see rustic it's a good word but it's not in my list um just a random person just a random person has got hills yes well done hills is in there what else have we got up on facebook somebody's got um lake i'm having trouble with my comments today no they don't want to join sorry i can't get you in else have we got what else anything else no it's not working my comments my comments share is not working ah edith lake and farm well done well done you're still missing some uh says hill we've had great oh so there's one that's nobody's got yet i can can't see anybody with it ah carlos where are you carlos come back you just disappeared ah girl carlos had grays and also ashraf had grays well done great and fio had farm fantastic well done so let me just um separate them for you make it clear we've got mountain we've got hill valley we've got forest do you remember forrest gump if you're my age you'll remember if you're a millennial you're like forest who we've got fields we've got greys and we've got farm excellent great um now most of these words i'm sure that you know right i mean rural is basically just to be clear is related to the countryside to the country side similar to rustic right is a similar thing rural is the adjective rustic is also a nice adjective we talk about a rural house a rural valley a rural setting um rustic is more about things like a rustic house a rustic table um you know those wooden tables that feel they're from the countryside rustic the opposite would normally be urban right urban which is also an adjective which is connected to the city or related to the city urban landscape for example okay great so two important words rural and urban mountain i sure you know hills and valley i think you know forest and lake you know streams and fields greys you may know or may not know is to eat but normally to eat grass so we talk about the sheep grazing because they eat grass we talk about cows grazing they like to graze in the field or on the farm because they eat grass okay now all of these are straightforward words i think what's more important than the straightforward words is to look at the collocation right um vocabulary and collocations because this i think let me make this a little bit bigger is that bigger that's better because when you're learning vocabulary you do not want to learn just the one word right if you learn farm how do you use it you don't really know and if you learn rural how do you use it much much better is to learn collocations right collocations for those of you who don't know collocations are where you've got two words right that go together like in english we talk about black tea we don't say red tea we say black tea heavy rain rural landscape two words maybe three normally two that go together think of them as best friends right you've got words that like other words and they don't like other words but their friends are the color or the color collocates or collocations right so when we talk about collocations it's what is learning words that go together rural landscape great one right mountain range hiking in the hills steep valley right and i'm just going to show you this very briefly to make it clear what they are rural landscape right and i'm going to show this because i've been experimenting with my camera and let me see if i can do this for you right so if we have a rural landscape let's imagine we've got a few a few mountains over here maybe they're snow-capped mountains being up here in the picosterol bay in spain we've got lots of snow-capped mountains um so you've got here right or here you've got the peak so this would be a mountain peak the top of the mountain is the mountain peak all of these together would be the range the mountain range all of those together a rural landscape you've probably got a river running down to a lake or a river a lake and you've probably got a few trees dotted on the mountains probably fur trees dotted on the mountains right so this is a rural landscape great we've got a mountain range maybe we've got somebody over here who is hiking in the hills um there you've got it very very simple right so rural landscape the mountains the forest the stream the river mountain range is a group of mountains hiking in the hills common collocation a steep valley now a valley right if you don't know um let's imagine you've got a mountain over here and then down here you've got another mountain coming up and down here you've got some houses and this is a little village maybe a hamlet a bit of smoke coming up right now the houses are in the valley this is the valley and look at this mountain right it's not it's not kind of a a gradual hill it's a really steep mountain like a cliff so this steep mountain we talk about a steep valley it's a very deep valley or a steep valley right nice that's it that's when we talk about a steep valley other words we can use again collocations we can talk about a dense forest let me make these a little bit bigger dense forest so instead of saying i know i like to go to the forest or i visited a forest i visited a dense forest what is a dense forest a dense forest is with lots of trees together so here do you remember i said the trees were dotted so when you've got trees that are dotted that's just one or two but when you've got lots of trees together keith drawing lots of trees and the trees are very very close lots of trees very very close this is a dense forest we can talk about a dense population so if you've got lots of people living in the village in the steep valley there's a dense population there's a dense forest right great we can talk about a dense forest fresh water lake most lakes are fresh water i think you've got the dead sea that has salt you do have some salt water lakes but most of them are fresh water fast flowing stream here again right my little river or stream if it's moving very quickly then it's a fast flowing stream a stream is just a river exactly the same it's a normally a bit smaller than a river right and here you've got the lake where you can go fishing so you've got a salt sorry a fresh water lake a fast-flowing stream and fields fields full of corn flour or wheat fields of gold wasn't that a song by sting fields of gold yeah fields so when you talk about the field in the countryside often we say a field of something a field of flowers for example let me show you a field of lavender a field of flowers field of linked field dove field of field of flowers because it's a f flowers field of flowers can you say that field of flowers i saw a field of flowers nice so can you see when you use the collocation field of field of flowers your fluency goes up because you're not thinking word by word i saw a field of flowers no i saw a field of flowers i saw a field of flowers you're upping your fluency so collocation's really good maybe a field of wheat a field of wheat like this wheat is um a kind of cereal you often have it's used for making uh breakfast cereals a field of wheat can you say that a field of wheat a field of corn [Music] why is that so small [Laughter] that's a surprise i thought it was going to be a big picture now it's a big picture now you can see the behind the scenes how keith does his pictures on on his software um a field of corn and that there is a bit of corn on the cob brilliant so a field of something right all of these very very useful fields of or fields full of even better gosh i can even teach myself fields full of flowers and uh grazing we talked about this cows and sheep graze in the fields cows and sheep graze eat grass in the fields and finally farm produce now notice this word right the stress is on the prop produce farm produce why because it's a noun it's not the verb to produce no produce farm produce are the things like milk corn the food um maybe the meat they sell if they sell the the the pork or the the beef the farm produce are the things the farm sells right so basically your vegetables meat maybe eggs all of those things that's the farm produce so maybe bring that up farm produce can you say it because it's difficult it's not difficult it's just being careful you don't say produce but produce farm produce hey you've got it you've absolutely got it fantastic great um there you go we should draw a little farm but i'm not going to draw a little farm i'm going to give up my career as an artist and stick to being a teacher an english teacher okay some interesting vocabulary how are you guys doing greetings from russia karamanji talks about crops yeah it's a good word right so we could add um farm crops it's good let me add these and i'll share them with you in a moment farm produce well done helen talks about prawn produce eggs milk meat and cheese one of my favorites love cheese yep great fields of corn wool again that can be a farm produce could be i think i tend to think of farm produce as edible eating stuff but actually wool you're right magdi yeah they're actually fresh from the farm see that's what i'm thinking farm produce is fresh it's fresh food does it include wool hmm i'm going to double check that that doesn't sound quite right farm harvest we've got a nice collocation there yep um a field of cattle great yeah brilliant let me add that a field of cattle cattle just for your knowledge then cattle are things like cows uh yak maybe tend to be the bigger animals right cows or yaks brilliant anything else fields of cherry blossom there you go there's a culturally local one that sounds like something you'd see in um in asia rather than britain i don't think we've got much cherry broth and cherry blossom right and a good summary here thank you detect countryside is the topic today absolutely today is all about countryside nice that's a nice little reminder excellent so farm crop let me add that and just make this a bit bigger farm crops i like it a field of cattle nice word there's another word which we're going to see in a moment which is livestock well we're going to see it now what do you mean in a moment keith let's see it now why wait now cattle is your bigger animals tends to be the cows the yaks livestock is all of the animals on a farm so that's going to be your cows your sheep your chickens depends on your farm of course i i know not all farms have have animals or these animals but it's all the animals basically the livestock right accent on the eye the livestock great very good word to use a field of livestock the farm livestock feeding the livestock selling the livestock excellent good great okay so we've looked there at quite a lot of what we've been looking at countryside right so the first thing that we've looked at here we've looked at vocabulary are the cows um what's up next countryside activities well yes and no before we look at activities before i jump the gum let me move over literally over here um and i want to talk a little bit about where you live right paper over here i'm going to do another drawing for you where do you live so there are different places right let's imagine we've got here the city center right slap bang in the middle of the city center and then you've got the uh the city over here and then you've got kind of outside the city you may have something we call the uh the outskirts i know gosh the focus isn't great is it that's a bit disappointing or suburbs i'll put this on the thing in a moment outskirts or suburbs so you've got the city center or downtown as they call it downtown downtown when i was um many many years ago a long time ago when i left university i went to america for a year they i don't know if they still have it they had a scheme called bunak and a lot of british students would go to america i went to america for a year to live and i remember arriving in america thinking this is great and everybody will understand me i can understand american english and i remember on the first or second day walking into washington dc down our street and asking a couple of people saying where's the city center and they were like yo what i was like which way is the city center and they're like yo dude which city like washington i'm like no the city center and this conversation went on for like five minutes where they were like completely confused go what and in the end one another guy listening came up and said yo he wants to go downtown downtown and i'm like downtown what's that and then we all realized you know we're speaking english we didn't understand each other city center downtown but eventually i i found the downtown the city center great so city center outskirts suburbs and then of course you've got the countryside this is looking like a fried egg whoops and that's me knocking the camera countryside over here so all of this the kind of the rural area and of course you may have some towns on the on the outskirts or even in the countryside right so these are smaller than the city but if they're very small they're not called towns they're called villages and if they're really small they're called hamlets hamlets yes like shakespeare's hamlet a hamlet apparently is a very very small village but smaller than a village and hamlets don't have churches so that's the difference right so that's it um hello come over here where do you live so city center we've talked about city centre or downtown we've talked about suburbs countryside the village or the hamlet i'm interested what about you guys where do you live do you live in the city center slap bang in the city center or do you live in the suburbs in the countryside in a village or in a hamlet right which is a small village i mean a village is small but hamlet is really small i think that's very british by the way hamlet i'm not sure if they've got hamlet in the united states i wonder where you live right so we've got a few comments up here we've got in the city center oh i can't only one person lives in a hamlet no not one person but only a few people we've got bazak says i have been living on the outskirts of the city for donkey's years well done nice very very nice where else people we've got here we've got lacvier lives in a village great tino in a village i live in city center right very good point uh pericardi because this will help everybody to be aware that we say i live in the city center right i live in the city center i live in the suburbs i live in a village hello from peru angie i think you're our first peruvian ever bienvenida city center kadam cheetah says countryside great um really bgbt coke that's a great name love it btbt coca i live in the city center spot on well done nice nice um heartbeat is living in a village another one here in the city center fantastic in the remember the city center great please teach us the schwa sounds maliha okay maliha i will do good point brilliant now we've got some nice expressions i live in the heart of the city that's great somebody lives in the city of lights great lives in the middle of the city center right so there are all different possibilities so city center we can say um i live in the heart of the city uh i live let's put this i live in the heart of the city slap bang in the city center so all of these follow on i live in the heart of the city slap bang in the city center um what was the other one we had i live in the i can't remember what it was i live in the middle of the city yeah all of these are great right i live in the suburbs [Music] the same right in the suburbs in the countryside i live in the countryside blur coming to mind i live in a village [Music] or i live in a hamlet yeah you're probably not going to use hamlet but it's there a hamlet a hamlet is a very very small it's a very very small village i'm laughing because if i take you to um if i take you to google right let me show you over here let me just show you briefly google if we look up hamlet if google will let me i looked it up before right a hamlet um it gives us here a small settlement generally one smaller than a village and strictly in britain one without a church and when you go on the images right you get lots of very small settlements these are hamlets right very very small but look what happens if we look up the word hamlet without and this is a great way to remember it suddenly it becomes shakespeare hamlet the character right do you remember a last poor yorick i knew him horatio the famous scene with the skull there you go there's trouble trouble in denmark things there's problems in denmark right good that's hamlet so that's one way to remember hamlet and a hamlet the difference between a hamlet okay great now then countryside let's come back next what to do we talked about activities right activities to do in the countryside what the kind of things we can do in the countryside first of all the first thing you can do in the countryside is have a drink of water [Music] ah nice so things that you can do in the countryside let me share with you a few some ideas and then we'll discuss together um you can visit a farm right of course you can go and visit a farm you can buy produce you can learn about farming a lot of farms have little education centers in fact you don't need an education center just go to the farm speak to the farmer you can learn about farming rearing livestock so rearing livestock you'll remember livestock is animals and so rhea is to to breed which is to bring up animals you can't rear children you could but you can't uh and you don't really breed children to breed is normally when you look after animals in order to sell them or eat them um so that's breeding there's a specific purpose uh so rearing is to bring up look after rearing livestock you can learn about that go to a farm you can learn how they look after the cows how they look after the sheep how they look after the chicken hopefully if they do you can feed the animals you can buy local produce remember that so these are things you can do on the farm right some farms do let you feed the animals some of them don't we went to a farm in australia actually and this was quite a few years ago and it's absolutely brilliant in the farm they showed us how they look after the animals they showed us sheep shearing sheep shearing not ed sheeran but sheep shearing is where they take the coat off the skin of the sheep right the sheep has lots of wool they have a shaving machine like i use on my hair and they she they shear the sheep they shave the sheep it's called shearing so they shear the sheep and they take off the wool and we they showed us how they did it and they let us have a go so we could try our hand at shearing the sheep the farmer would hold the sheep and we would shear it and also we could feed the the little lambs they had lambs that had just been born it was springtime and they had bottles and especially some of the the weaker lambs or if a lamb was sick they would feed it with a bottle for a period and they would let the visitors feed it with a bottle of course most of the time it's feeding from the mother so yeah interesting farms can be really interesting places to visit especially if you are a city person a bit like me and a bit ignorant about farms if you live in the countryside maybe it's the opposite maybe you don't want to go to a farm maybe you want to go to the cinema in the city right it depends but looking at language right the language we can use um very basic right you can you can now notice it's not you can it's you can somebody was it marge who talked about the schwa sound the uh the schwa sound in english is the most common sound it's the uh sound at the end of teacher a teacher so most words that are not stressed have this sound right that's why when you listen to british people or american people they don't say you can visit a farm they say you can visit a farm can can and it's a can and it's just you can even the you becomes yeah you can you can right it's almost i don't know how to write it it's almost like you can it's almost like that you can you can visit a farm you can learn about farming try it with me you can visit a farm you can feed the animals you can buy local produce yeah perfect right it's almost like you can i'll leave that there just to help you remember so you can visit or you can say the countryside is great for visiting so here you're going to put the ing right the countryside is great for visiting the countryside is great for feeding the animals or the farm is great for feeding the animals the countryside is great for hiking in the mountains in the steep valley amongst the deep dense forests remember collocations right we're building up or a nice expression i'm i like nothing better than which means i like a lot so if i like cooking a lot i like nothing better than cooking at the weekend and notice it's ing again right i like nothing better than let me just put the ing on here i've got my camera in the way that's why i can't see i like nothing better than visiting a farm i like nothing better than learning how they rear the livestock i like nothing better than hiking in the steep in in the no i like nothing better than hiking in the mountains across the mountain ranges um through the dense forests following the fast-flowing streams down to the lovely freshwater lakes hooray collocations are the secret to your success my friend really um i mean just keep practicing collocations so what can you do in the countryside guys give me a message tell me what you can do in the countryside and let's have a look right we've got paolo hello paula paola is on one of our moderators in youtube i like nothing better than eating my most favorite local produce which is ant eggs wow seriously and eggs sounds interesting nice i'm hungry yanduang says i like nothing better than learning different cultures and languages spot on lovely blue moon fishing at river with friends cooking in the countryside great very nice so just be careful rather than at we would say fishing in the river yeah fishing in the river cooking in the countryside countryside usually has the in the countryside yeah fantastic nice helen is a after the same idea i like nothing better than fishing in the streams of the of the countryside don't worry helen this is going to catch everybody out the countryside it's so difficult to get it but uh it's it's there the countryside countryside is one word as well right countryside as one word very nice brilliant i mean that's got nothing to do with the countryside but lovely english lovely english tang tao says i can enjoy swimming in the river if i live in the countryside perfect nice very very nice says we can enjoy a long nature and magnificent hills great great carlos likes stargazing nice swans stargazing is great um the countryside is great for stargazing right the countryside is great for stargazing we've got yoserat says you can plow the field you can nice you can plow the field the countryside is great for unwinding that is true i like that unwinding relaxing i like nothing better than enjoying the lush scenery cactus wheat emoji lovely very nice great hugh likes nothing better than learning languages okay now kang you can milk the cows that's very true and that's great to milk the cows lovely very very nice love it swim in the ponds yeah why not indeed ah just you've got a typo there but that's fine swim i know you mean swim swim in the ponds great um you could also ride the horses yeah riding horses or riding the horse riding the horse if you say the horse you're talking about a specific horse right because it's the horse if you're just talking generally we would generally use the plural right i like riding horses you can go riding horses but i like to go and write the horse in my farm is a specific horse so we use the right great very very nice okay stock van thank you very very much brilliant let me share with you a few other ideas that i wrote down things you can do um in the countryside we've probably covered most of these let me just make that a bit bigger you can buy local produce from the farm of course from the farms all the local shops you can go hiking or the countryside is great for going fishing you can gaze at the stars yes somebody puts stargazing which is also nice [Music] you can look at the constellations right the constellations are the different shapes of the stars like the uh the big bear the north not the north pole what's it called oh we've got orion um pegasus these are all different constellations let me just make sure that you've got this let's have a look constellations here we go constellations so they're the shapes of the stars i mean the most some of the most common ones are up here you can see you've got capricorn sagittarius scorpius and of course these are typically the ones you get in the um in different skies but in the horoscopes as well right look at that stargazing touring the night sky it's too small but there's too small to see but those are the constellations anyway you know what i'm talking about right you can have a picnic of course you can learn to identify some trees or mushrooms or butterflies or constellations right let me just make that clear star shapes or patterns maybe great those are all different activities that we can do in the countryside okay lovely so let me come back let me take a moment see how you guys are doing see what's coming up next i always do forget which is why i need to come back and check it's nice to have this because i can come back and find out what i'm doing not only do you know but i know we've talked about things we can do in the countryside i'm going to spend a few moments looking at the pros and cons of the countryside now we had a bit of a mix right some of you live in the countryside quite a number of you lived in the city center um and some of you in between in the suburbs but i love that um i wonder what are the pros and cons of living in the countryside right what do you like and dislike about living in the countryside let's have a look let's make some comments and we'll discuss it together jan my leg is much better thank you very much excellent right while you're doing that i'll just have a little bit of music and grab another drink pros and cons in the comments for the countryside [Music] nice in the suburbs on the outskirts you can say both actually both with them right let's share a few of your comments here so harpreet talks about the good environment so i assume that's a positive right fresh oxygen yes we would tend to say fresh air i think unless you're a scientist a scientist will say fresh oxygen but i think generally in conversation we would say fresh air right mangesha talks about fresh air and clean environment these are great collocations by the way fresh air clean environment nice overcrowded in the city right good point right overcrowded um with an ed on the end overcrowded in the city in the countryside lots of greenery nice right good what else have we got i reckon the communication in the countryside is not so convenient nice yeah good i'm just going to make a few notes and add these in bear with me i'll share these with you in a moment good good bear with me bear with me wait what else have we got we can get fresh air we can nice we can get fresh air very nice slow pace of life that's nice in the in the countryside right [Music] yeah a slow pace of life or a laid-back pace of life we talk about as well um similar theme excuse me for pronunciation we can live there without stress yeah we can live there without stress just be careful on your spelling malika there as in there e-r-e right great uh quiet yeah it's quiet and peaceful yeah quiet and peaceful um quiet and peaceful so in english we have a lot of these we call binomials where you have blum and plum black and white uh quiet and peaceful neat and tidy right these are common binomials quiet and peaceful is a nice one right quiet and peaceful in the countryside uh good surroundings yep a slower pace of life says stanushka less air pollution and noise pollution yeah great that's a good one less air and noise pollution [Music] brilliant very nice thank you very much in fact let me share these with you as we're putting them up so again let me try and make these a bit quicker quicker bigger so we've got fresh air lots of greenery a slow or laid back pace of life quiet and peaceful less air and noise pollution okay i'm just going to change the font the color talking about the cons the kind of the negative we've talked about a weak communication network we've also got from michael fewer job opportunities now mija why do we say fewer instead of less i can't hear you mija you have to speak up i'm joking of course less right is used with uncountable things like less coffee less water few is used with countable few people few opportunities so fewer right is fewer fewer job opportunities rather than less let me just change that so just remember it's a great opportunity it's a great learning opportunity the whole what's happened sorry miha i've completely destroyed your post fewer job opportunities fewer job opportunities because we can count them so it's fewer right let me move that you can see fewer job opportunities uh christian says i don't like it when the hospital is far away yep good point anything else talking about negatives let's see lack of essential facilities nice let me add that one as well so that kind of includes the hospital idea so generally speaking lack of essential facilities very nice collocation love it thank you nat dang um yeah trippy has the same idea there are not so many opportunities for the youth in the countryside anything else anything else which is a con amulya says no no aversion towards the countryside fair enough low cost of living is definitely a pro i think right and that's a nice expression so let's have that as well low cost of living yeah i mean living in the countryside much cheaper than the city right for many many many reasons thanks track that's great okay great so listen there's a few ideas here we've got a few pros and a few cons of living in the countryside absolutely fine that's great um there's more ideas but i'm going to switch we're going to move right we're going to move on and have a look at not the pros and the cons but next up i want to do a listening task a listening activity and actually not last week but the week before when i set up this class um i always now set up a web page before the class so you can go in and do some activities to kind of activate your schemata if you're a teacher to kind of get you get you ready get you in the mood get you thinking about the vocabulary you need thinking about the ideas of the countryside so what we had is actually i'll show you i shared with you this page this was on the keith speaking academy website and we had this page um about the countryside and there was a task here uh to read the text and fill in the blanks right and we had wow 45 people i said i was going to mention everybody but i there's too many of you there's copy and there's christian um we're going to look at that in a bit more detail right and that page maybe the moderators you can share the link with everybody for that page so it's the one about the countryside ielts speaking lesson the countryside and what i will do is i will show you that activity uh closer up so let me just show you on my page [Music] okay so let me show you closer up this is the listening task right so what we're going to do in a moment is i'm going to ask you to listen and fill in the gaps but let's have a look first at the text so basically what i love about the countryside is the silence the sounds the blank and the views what can you not love about the countryside it's blank i think it's going to blank soon the mist look the mist is rolling in over the hills blank through the valleys in fact just over the road you can hear the blank if you can hear him he's starting to blank the milk from the cows right okay so that is the the text um before you answer don't give me any answers yet before we do that i am gonna have a look i'm gonna show you a short recording that i made of the web page and the different comments people made um some of the comments were great some of them were correct some of them were not correct i'm just going to show you my commentary about your comments right to show you what i thought of them so this will just be two or three minutes this is not the listening just sit back get your favorite beverage watch me on the facebook page and you can just listen uh to what i was talking about right so let's have a look at this over here and i'm going to have a look at some of the comments you made what i love about the countryside is the silence the sounds the and we've got khushan said the smells interesting a roller said the nature oh interesting i would say nature rather than the nature i think ben zebo says the weather right nice ben zebo also two comments why have you got two comments ben zebo mary says the weather and for number two what can you not love about the countryside it's limited access to healthcare ah that's interesting because when i say what can you not love about the countryside it doesn't mean what's negative it means what's positive i know a bit strange right that you have to love everything about it let's see what else we've got a hilda says it's peaceful now that makes good sense i think it's going to hilda again and ruta says i think it's going to rain soon here that's a good answer very good kanwal says drizzle beautiful that very soft rain we call drizzle and actually that's what was what was what it was like that day dr sheehan khan says for number four the mist is rolling in over the hills clouds through the valleys oh it could be but actually we're looking for a verb to describe the movement of the mist anna says shrouded oh adjective right the mist is rolling over the hills shrouded through the valleys shrouded meaning covered it could be a beautiful word anna on says um pass shall maybe passing interesting just over the road you can hear the farmer or neighbor great answer what a poetic exercise you are a frying british man thank you very much shakun says farmer as well i like that peking and glancing the mist glancing through the valleys very poetic shacoon um we've got melo also said the farmer and he's starting to draw the milk from the cows interesting right draw the milk that sounds quite nice also a bit metaphoric and another comment from melo haseena says express oh you mean like espresso expressing the milk possibly i don't think it's the best word but not bad bratty says to fetch the milk very good pratty there's a little mistake lots of extra comments there um about was talked about sceneries for number one network problem for number two remember number two it's not about the negative but the positive what else have we got earth paying the sound of the breeze rain heavily passing through great you've gone for collocations the villager and his sheepdog pup that is brilliant ted pang love it great prashi prasita talks about calmness that's nice number six squeezing the milk yes you can squeeze the milk antonio talks about extracting the milk which i think is better rather than expressing the milk antonio also went for drizzle which is beautiful for that soft drain mahesha talked about milking the milk well you can milk the cows but you can't milk the milk kalpana there's also milking gabriella also milking not really the others look very good gabriella but you can't milk the milk susan collecting now that's better i like that collecting the milk great uh hollow me says also milk the dairy man right and that's it thank goodness i thought i was going to go on forever and ever and ever great thank you so much for all of your comments there yeah and that was only about 20 of the comments there's another 26 but we're not gonna watch all of them i'm afraid but thank you for the comments some really good ideas there um so just to clear up there are a couple of interesting words that came out and i'm just going to clarify before we do the listening task right to talk about milking right to milk cows so the verb is to milk cows that's what we normally say you can't milk milk right but you can extract milk um from a cow that's possible and you can also um gather milk from a cow now one of you talked about expressing milk and as a verb yes it exists um but the expressing of milk is normally from a woman who has just had a baby and if you want to take the milk from the breast and put it into a bottle then you're expressing milk right you're taking milk from the the mother's breast so that's to express milk so not normally for an animal not for a cow that's to squeeze milk or extract milk express milk would be for for a woman really right and then that verb to drizzle came up a couple of times right to rain and to drizzle so to drizzle is to rain lightly and it's a really nice word to use right so those are really nice um vocabulary points so just to make that clear to squeeze milk says a facebook uh you can again you squeeze the udder so the cow has the udder and you squeeze the udder to extract the milk right so you can squeeze the udder to extract the milk yeah okay great somebody's just arrived sorry i'm late that's okay we're still going we've still got plenty to do plenty to go great okay um now let's do the listening okay so we're gonna listen to somebody walking in the countryside as you listen i want you to try and fill in the gaps in this text right um you'll see the text on the video and you can write your comment in the chat box right in youtube or facebook so on that note let's watch the video it's just uh i think about three minutes listen carefully write down your answers what i love about the countryside is the silence the sounds the wind the colours the views what can you not love about the countryside it's gorgeous i think it's going to rain soon here the clouds are coming in the mist look the mystery's rolling in over the hills billowing through the valleys and this is the paciego valleys down south of santander but in the north of spain and it's one of the kind of the oldie worldly places that still remains in spain sure tourism has come and i'm a great example of that but it's kept its kind of pastoral beauty and it's kept its closeness to nature in fact just over the road you can hear the farmer if you can hear him he's i'm starting to gather the milk from the cows and putting it through a churn the can you hear that no that's a dog oi dogs loads of them in the countryside and of course one of the big things they do in this area is they make cheese um lots of different kinds of cheeses i don't know if you're a cheese fan i am i love cheese whether it's blue cheese camembert french manchego spanish or the uh parmesan from italy all sorts of cheeses goes with all sorts of stuff but here they you know churn out some of the best cheese in cheese or cheeses jeez it's uncountable unless you're talking about types it's a bit like fish right fish but fishes only if it's different species of fish or types of fish funny language right english look at that you can see there are eagles up there the mist absolutely beautiful and there are some hello some people coming up close behind those are not people are they those are cows right time to get out of the way hello my friends how are you doing oh my friends the cows that was so much fun great so well done i'm looking at your comments uh you've got loads of very good answers in there um that was nice that was that was actually quite a few weeks ago that was when we took a weekend to go into the valle basigo which is in the kind of the south of cantabria in the north of spain beautiful countryside these rolling hills mountain ranges um dense forests really beautiful so great um let's have a look at some of the answers that you've got there um so give me a moment i'm gonna go gosh i'm gonna go right back to when you started posting cheese yeah it's strange blue cheese what have we got um number one let's bring this over here what i love about the countryside is the silence the sounds the right most of you said like jay said the wind um also rajvinder pointed out the color yeah the wind the colors i think i said colors because it's not just one color it was the colors right excellent great well done um sagna also had color colors what can you not love about the countryside it's so fatty said gorgeous well done it's gorgeous yeah meaning beautiful right i think it's going to something something i think it's going to sandia says rain it's going to rain yes exactly it's going to rain well done uh the mist look the mist is rolling over the hills something through the valleys this was difficult but a few of you got this neha billowing beautiful right to billow is describing the movement of smoke when it goes up right so when you see the the smoke go round and round and round and go up that's billowing so the smoke from a chimney in a house is billowing up uh the clouds as they're moving and if they're moving and kind of twisting they're billowing or the mist of course the mist is billowing it can twist much more easily actually i think it's difficult for the clouds to below but the mist and the fog certainly billows right with a ba not pillow like sleeping but below billowing well done then that was great um what else have we got in fact just over the road you can hear the the what yes ciao says the farmer and mara also says the farmer you can hear the farmer excellent great if you can hear him he's starting to ah the milk mayada was right to gather the milk also given said sorry it was jivan to gather to gather the milk from the cows i'm putting it through the churn one of the big things they do in this area they make cheese lots of different kinds of what did i say what did we get did anybody get it well jesus right we've got enos says cheeses re says cheeses lots of different kinds of cheeses again cheese or cheeses it's interesting because like fish and fishes right we say fish as the plural and cheese is the plural but if it's different species of fish or different kinds of cheese you can talk about cheeses so parmesan stilton camembert manchego are all different kinds of cheeses right right excellent well done so that was it very very nice um well done all of you i'm just going to show you very very quickly i'm just going to go through the whole script and just point out one or two interesting phrases right this will just take me a moment i'll just read through what i love about the countryside is the silence the sounds the wind the colors the views what can you not love about the countryside it's gorgeous right gorgeous meaning beautiful i think it's gonna rain here soon the clouds are coming in the mist look the mist is rolling in rolling in to the valley so we say in because it's rolling in to the valley but over the hills billowing through the valleys and this is the passiego valley down in the south of spain in the south of santander but north of spain it's one of the kind of the oldie worldly places now this is um a strange expression but oldie worldly places means old-fashioned or traditional basically right traditional when talking about a place it's oldie worldy so a traditional city or a traditional house so you can talk about an oldie worldly house an oldie-worldy village an oldie-worldy hamlet tourism has come and i'm a great example of that but it's kept a kind of pastoral beauty it's a nice expression pastoral beauty pastoral again is kind of rural or rustic do you remember rustic we had at the start rustic means connected to the countryside so pastoral also means connected to the countryside it's kept its closeness to nature interesting close closeness interesting using the noun in fact just over the road you can hear the farmer starting to gather the milk put it through a churn the churn is just the the container to cook to put the milk in there's a dog loads of them one of the things they do is they make lots of different kinds of cheeses and then i talk about countable and uncountable cheeses okay that's it that's just a quick quick look right that was the listening okay good um what's coming up next let me see how that says bobby's your uncle love it it's a very british expression it's hard to explain but when you finish something and everything is perfect you say bob's your uncle right we've done it bob's your uncle great thank you very much keith i hope you've recovered well yes i am on the mend i am on the road to recovery thank you very much getting better and better right um i'm going to move on very briefly i know i'm going to run out of time but don't worry um i i can stay if you can stay i can stay if you need to leave you can leave but if you can stay do stay because next we're going to move on and have a look at idioms right for example i mentioned this one right the early bird catches the worm apparently there's a similar expression in chinese probably i think it's one of those expressions that most languages have an equivalent of right something similar so let's have a quick look at some idioms on this topic right talking about the countryside so we can say to head outdoors head mean not meaning head but meaning to go in the direction right to head outdoors so that means to to go outdoors basically [Music] to go in the direction of outdoors so basically to go outdoors right let's go outdoors let's head outdoors um i'm going to head to the pub later that's not true but i'd like to but i'm going to head out for lunch later i'm gonna head uh to the supermarket i'm going to go right to head outdoors to go outdoors so literally in the direction of but basically to go outdoors soak up the views right to soak up is to absorb um to enjoy so it really means absorb but basically to enjoy the views if you have a cloth and some water and you put the cloth on the water it soaks up right it takes up the water so to soak up the views is to absorb or enjoy the view right whether it's a view of a dense forest a fast flowing stream a steep valley collocations right you can soak up the views or take in the views exactly the same right to soak up the views to take in the views it's that kind of typical thing it's right i remember when i was in in nepal nepal this was like quite a few years ago how many years ago was that i think five years ago we went to kathmandu and we were in kathmandu and we went trekking into the the hills and it was beautiful and we came over the top of a mountain and it was just the view was breathtaking and we just stood there like for minutes maybe 10 15 minutes without moving and we took in the views and we soaked up the views because it was awesome just the mountains the valleys unbelievable um for those of you who are from nepal you have a beautiful country you really do right the early bird catches a worm means that the person who literally gets up early can make the most of the day right if you get up early you make the most of the day meaning you get the most benefit you get the most benefit if you get up early so this is literally about getting up early but it's not literally about eating worms you can eat worms and i have eaten worms actually when i was in yen nan we had worms fried worms not bad actually a bit like crisps quite nice but this is not about eating worms this is about getting up early to make the most of the day right and another one to get up early is to get up at the crack of dawn to get up very early dawn is the start of the day so at the crack of dawn just means to get up very early i keep realizing how am i doing that my camera's in the way uh dear never mind it's as old as the hills meaning something is very very old right it's very old um and again you can use that for anything not only the countryside you could talk about this church is as old as the hills this hamlet is as old as the hills but also anything i don't know um my car is as old as the hills if it's a really really old car okay um and we've got to get away from the crowd i think that's the last one i've got which means to escape the noise to escape the noise uh or the hustle and bustle hustle and bustle um to find some peace and quiet so to get away from the crowd is to find peace and quiet do you remember we talked about binomials peace and quiet black and white be careful you must not switch them right you cannot say it's white and black no black and white i don't know why it's just neat and tidy you cannot say tidy and neat just doesn't know so peace and quiet right to find peace and quiet it's a nice uh expression to use right to find peace and quiet or get away from the crowd that's the uh the idiom i like to get away from the crowd now and again head up or head outdoors head up to the mountains soak up the views go trekking soak up the views you could do the whole thing right you could say i'd love to get away from the crowd i'll get up at the crack of dawn head out to the mountains go hiking across the mountain range through the dense forest and then soak up the views and take in the beautiful nature the whole shebang the full monty right i'm sure that you've got a few extra idioms and i've sorry i've probably missed all your comments let's have a look any other ones to add any other idioms charming stunning lenny says hello lenny can we say charming or stunning for a view a stunning view yes charming no charming person stunning view charming person yeah alex says i've got my exam tomorrow good luck alex you and anybody else who has their exam good luck oh pradeep this is interesting right because pradeep says run of the mill oldie worldy different meaning run of the mill means ordinary nothing special oldie worldy means old traditional so they're both very good expressions but different meanings yeah any others so lanji says what down in city do you love i hear that you're loving santander i do love in santander and i love heading out to the countryside to the valleys as you said as you saw yes any others oh i can't find any others we've got imran says taking the views absorb to enjoy the view lovely yuko says i soaked up the views from the peak of the mountain good well done peak of the mountain nice very nice milly says breathtaking the view is breathtaking yes what's your name teacher right kavindy my name is keith keith it's the same keith as the keith speaking academy love it thank you very much great the view of the countryside is breathtaking make my day soak up the nature every day great good i i think that's fine i don't think we've got any new expressions um my grandpa is as old as the hills yeah i wonder if he's happy with that hopefully he's not watching because well yes to say people are old it's not bad it's not offensive so idioms we've done idioms let us switch for a moment what comes after idioms i think we're on our last activity our last activity in the last five or ten minutes we're going to do a kahoot review we're going to review the language that we've looked at if you're new all you need to do is um keep watching on on another browser or another web page go to kahoot.it this is the address we you're going to need to go to kahoot.it we're gonna play a game together all of us together where we're gonna look at language we've seen in today's lesson okay so just bear with me i'm gonna get onto kahoot and sort this out log in why do i have to log in don't you know who i am it's me come on me.com ah seriously okay so let's log in so forgetful powerless says recommend to play kahoot on another device yep that's a good point i think that's a good idea so i'll just set it up it won't take long so keep watching me but you can play the game on another device that is absolutely true so let's turn on personalized learning which means you can go and play it later as well if you like okay so let me share this with you you can see what's happening okay so you need to go to kahoot and the pin that you put in is 388.0531 right you can go to www.kahoot.it or download the app go in put in your name and then the game pin is 388.0531 kavindy says please add subtitles in english to your video well that's interesting kavindy i am in the process actually of adding subtitles and captions to my recorded videos of course i cannot on the live video but on the recorded videos more and more of them will be having captions not subtitles but captions which means you have the choice to put them on or turn them off right that's a bit big let's get the screen a bit smaller we've got wow we've got 200 people in right okay don't worry if you can't get in you can put your answer in the chat box in the comment okay i'm in but i don't see anything aurelia have you put in the game pin the number 388.0531 and when you put your name yes there's nothing to see yet just wait a moment okay we've got a lot of people let's take this off let's start countryside number one cows blank in the fields the meaning is eat cows blank in the fields and the meaning is eat you've got 30 seconds you're welcome aurelian you could put the answers in the chat as well fatty's kitchen you are late we're almost finished well done inferno well done all of you look at that 179 of you got greys g-r-a-z-e meaning to eat uh to eat grass so this is for the cows and the sheep they eat grass or they graze in the fields well done let's see who's the fastest bow is the fastest let me make that a bit smaller with 962 well done bow great you're in the lead question number two a small village is called a blank a small village is called a blank what do we call a small village in england i love this question and those of you who like shakespeare will enjoy this saga well done well done [Music] lob well done hooray 181 people said hamlet so a hamlet is a small village you'll notice all of these are famous characters in shakespeare plays as well okay let's move on who's leading now donald trump is up at the top well there's a surprise and thank you keith is second how interesting i didn't know donald was learning english well let's move on question three the farmer is blank the cow the farmer is blank the cow be careful with this one well done mark and helen five seconds left well done pram the farmer is milking the cow well done right the others expressing milk extracting milk squeezing milk right but the verb is to milk the cow well done that was great nice so where are we sd rocks thank goodness sd rocks is up in first place it seems that we are attracting a lot of politicians today it looks like tony blair also needs to um brush up on his english probably as he's retired he's got a bit lazy and needs to improve his english but you're very welcome tony st rocks is up first let's carry on the last question i love hiking in the hills and blank up the views i love hiking in the hills and blank up the views up is a key word here here we go oh well done let's face it well done now well done right 176 got soaking up the views fantastic well done because it's taking in but soaking up the views perfect let's see what the podium is what was the final result alexander well done tony well done sir and number one sd rocks fantastic nice well done sd [Applause] oh dear excellent that was it that's the kahoot reviewed we've come full circle right um today gosh we've done lots of stuff today we've had what we had hang on a minute come over here today we've been looking at the topic of countryside right we've been looking at lots of different vocabulary including collocations right the power of collocations for your fluency um we've been looking at farm learning how to rear livestock we've also been doing the pros and cons of living in the countryside we've looked at some interesting listening um and the language around that of the countryside idioms i wonder if you are the early bird that catches the worm and of course we've done the final final review that my friends brings us to the end of today's class all about the countryside thank you so much for being here do remember if you're on youtube right you can um subscribe to the channel and you can turn on notifications if you want to find out about coming up videos videos coming up is that right um if you're on facebook um great if you're not you can find me on facebook i'm there at the keith speaking academy but we also have a facebook group if you want to join called the keys mastermind community have a look for that and you can come and join us and of course if you want more information keithspeakenacademy.com that's where i've got the website lots of resources for free about the um about what about ielts speaking the test part one two and three there's different things there you can find out you can also go later and download the notes from today's lesson we've made lots of notes i'll tidy them up i'll upload them to the website that'll take me about two or three hours because i know because i'm slow yes um but because i'm hungry and i'm gonna go for a little snack a little something in between doing that great well listen guys it's fantastic to see you again this week thank you for all of your contributions um really really enjoyable lots of good language coming out i hope this is helping you improve your english um to help you give better answers and get a higher score on ielts speaking that's it from today um i look forward to seeing you next week look out on saturday for a video um it'll be recorded and it'll be out about midday on saturday i think you're going to like it i'm not going to tell you what it is because i'm going to ask you tomorrow in the facebook group and see if you can guess okay take care my friends lovely to see you all and bye bye

Channel: English Speaking Success

Views: 82,546

Keywords: ielts speaking, ielts speaking test, free ielts speaking practice, free ielts speaking practice online, ielts speaking common topics, home ielts speaking, ielts speaking topics, ielts speaking practice, keith speaking academy, ielts speaking test 2021, countryside ielts speaking part 1, ielts speaking countryside, countryside ielts speaking, ielts speaking live classes, ielts speaking where do you live, ielts speaking practice live lessons, ielts speaking where you live

Id: o3TJgc7WJAc

Length: 99min 43sec (5983 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 03 2021