Useful IDIOMS for Any Topic in IELTS Speaking

idioms are fun and i want to show you a bunch of idioms that you can use for any topic in ielts speaking let's do it [Music] hello this is keith um from the keith speaking academy and this youtube channel english speaking success and i'm here because i want to help you change from being an english student to an english speaker and i know you can do it if you study with me step by step we can make it so idioms i know lots of students can find idioms to be a real challenge right um which do i learn how do i use them well there are thousands of idioms in english and i suggest that you just learn maybe one a day right as a part of your daily english diet if you like i also suggest that you don't go and look for lists of lots of idioms and try and learn them right i don't think that's effective much better is that when you're watching a film or a video or listening to a podcast and you hear an interesting expression make a note check the meaning and then learn it because then you've got the context and you're getting kind of just one or two idioms a day which is easier rather than learning a list of 20. now i realize it's a bit ironic because i'm giving you a list today but i am gonna try and give you the context that will help you see how to use it better right now idioms are very important because they help you to understand natural spoken english but also they're very important in ielts speaking right because if you want a band 7 or above the band descriptors tell us over here that you use you must use some less common and idiomatic vocabulary so it is important i also think idioms are fun and i think people forget why we use idioms right we use idioms to add color metaphor or humor to the way that we speak this is why you hear news readers journalists politicians use them a lot right to make their speech really attractive and colorful now i'm a big fan of food i'm a real foodie and cooking and i think you can think of idioms as being the salt and pepper or a sal of your speaking right so they add a bit of flavor they are not the main dish but they give spice to your speaking right so also do not overuse idioms don't use so many because like your food right if you're putting in lots and lots of salt you're going to ruin your food it's the same if you use lots of idioms you will ruin your speech ruin your english so just use them sparingly pepper them into your speech to give a bit of spice and flavor now in this video i'm going to show you some idioms and idiomatic expressions that you can use for any topic right in ielts speaking we will look at how to express opinions talk about likes and dislikes expressing confusion saying that um things places and people are very good or even that things places and people are not very good right lots of flexible idioms what's more i'm going to help you with the pronunciation because idioms are not literal they're often metaphorical it's really important you get the pronunciation the stress and the intonation spot on so people understand you i'm going to help you with that and also show you an awesome mobile app called elsa speak which can help you when i am not here right now let's get into it okay let's have a look first at expressing opinions we can take maybe uh just a typical question about opinions what do you think about something for example right many governments are investing in space travel what do you think about this you could say my take on this is it's a good idea my take is my opinion right what's your take what's your opinion my take on this is right if you can connect the take on my take on this and stress the my because it's emphasizing your opinion my take on this try my take on this is it's a good idea great or you could say to my way of thinking it's a good idea to my way of thinking it's a good idea my way of thinking is again it's not literally a path or a way it's just a form of thinking and we would say to my way of thinking notice the of thinking of thinking to my way of thinking nice or if you're not sure if it's a good idea you could say i'm in two minds about this two minds boom two different opinions i'm in two minds about this and then you could go on to say well on the one hand on the other hand a similar expression is i'm on the fence about this so you might say i'm on the fence the meaning here is if you imagine a wall and you're on the wall you're not over here and you're not over here you're in the middle i'm on the fence a fence is a kind of wooden wall i'm on the fence the stress i'm on the fence because you're emphasizing on you're not off right i'm on the fence i'm on the fence on the one hand it's a good idea but on the other hand maybe it's not i think i'm on the fence might be more natural to say i think i'm on the fence okay now a nice idiomatic expression which is also a phrasal verb is to boil down to right and this means that the most important thing is this boil down comes from when you you have a sauce or a soup and you're boiling the liquid so that the liquid disappears so you're boiling it down to the essential thing the most important thing so we can say it boils down to money can we afford to invest in space right it boils down to plus the noun a simple way of of using it is to say it boils down to one thing and then you say what the most important thing is for example it boils down to one thing our planet is in danger so we must explore space it boils down to one thing nice so what about you many governments are investing in space travel what do you think about this lovely let's move on next up let's look at likes and dislikes so very often in ielts speaking especially part one you might be asked if you like something right do you like your job do you like football do you like fast food for example now if it's a singular noun like job or fast food there are certain expressions you can use and one of my favorite ones is it's the bee's knees right b as in z as in this part of your leg it's the bee's knees pronunciation bees knees it's that long vowel sound it's the bee's knees great so we often use this expression for a very particular thing right if you're talking about for example fast food sometimes if the truth be told we go to mcdonald's once in a blue moon and i love the big mac right for me the big mac it's the bee's knees or for example i watch football now and again and i was watching england in the euro 2021 well done italy and one of my favorite players harry kane right and for me he's the bee's knees so for very specific things we can use this expression notice if it's a plural noun we wouldn't use it in the same way so if for example do you like picnics speaking generally you can't say it's the bee's knees because it's picnics right so often we would make a noun phrase for so for example yes do you like picnics i love going to the countryside it's the bee's knees it's referring to going to the countryside the noun phrase i love going to the countryside it's the bee's knees all right so just be careful that we use it with singular nouns and usually quite specific ones now if there's something that you don't like a lot and you don't dislike we could say i can take it or leave it right um do you like your job i can take it or leave it take it or leave it it's i'm indifferent i don't really mind i can take it or leave it notice there's a nice trick there that when you're you've got a sentence with or you can pause there you can go i can take it or leave it i can take it or leave it it can help with your fluency right you can just break up into two little chunks i can take it or leave it and then finally if you dislike something you can say it's not my cup of tea it's not my cup of tea so that's usually used in the negative things that you don't like do you like do you like rugby ah it's not my cup of tea great let's move on now let's look at things that confuse you so sometimes in ielts speaking right there are some topics or subjects that can be confusing right maybe science or artificial intelligence what else maybe museums or art architecture and maybe you don't know much about it or you find it confusing there are a couple of nice idioms you can use to express that confusion for example right somebody says what do you think of artificial intelligence well to be honest i can't make head or tail of it it's just totally confusing for me i can't make head or tail of it right means i don't understand it it's a bit like when you look at an animal and and if you can't say well which is the head and which is the tail i don't know it's too confusing i can't make head or tail of it right often we would link head door tail of it i can't make head or tail of it nice and i think um in the u.s the americans tend to use the plural i can't make heads or tails of it either one is absolutely fine another similar expression is i can't get my head rounded if you get your head round something it's to understand it so if you can't get your head around it you don't understand it it's confusing you know what do you think of modern art i can't get my head around it it just looks like nonsense to me for example okay great right listen let's kick back and take a break from idioms if we can um what would you like a cappuccino all right well listen while we're waiting i want to tell you about an awesome mobile app um that i really really like it's it's second to none it's a cut above the rest um elsa speak it's a pronunciation mobile app um that i really like not only because of the the really cutting-edge technology it has using ai right for voice recognition but also because of its approach to learning so you're able to repeat phrases that you hear words or phrases and then it pinpoints your mistakes and gives you feedback and you can carry on practicing at your own pace until you improve it's great i think actually it's not just a great tool for pronunciation but actually building up your vocabulary right picking up idioms day by day as a part of your english diet let's go inside let me show you um the different things you've got in here right so you've got different features of pronunciation you can pick out any one that you want or you can go and look at different topics there are the common topics you get in ielts or everyday life in fact there are specific ielts topics topics for part one part two and part three even like conversations like this that you can practice brilliant right for your ielts speaking and there are also study sets where students and teachers are sharing different phrases or words that they want to practice i've got some study sets here i'm going to show you my study set for idioms for ielts speaking so let's have a look at this one here here is my idioms for ielts speaking i'm going to take this expression it's the bee's knees so i hear the model i then try i'm gonna do it wrong it's the business [Music] almost correct well 50 is not 57 is not great but what's the feedback bees pronounce the e with the vowel e yeah i said it should be e bee's knees try again it's the bee's knees excellent much better brilliant so listen you can go and download the app and uh you can start practicing my study set brilliant also elsa for my students that's you if you're watching this there they have some great discounts right if you go for the one-year membership you can get 30 discount if you go for the lifetime membership you get 80 percent eight zero eighty percent discount and then you've got elsa in your pocket for the rest of your life day by day improving your pronunciation with elsa fantastic you can check out the links below go and download the app check them out and start practicing with elsa speaking excellent now you can have your cappuccino to go because we're going back to find out more about those idioms let's go now in ielts speaking part two sometimes you have to talk about a person maybe a person you know or a famous person right and very often you may say i'm going to talk about or the person i'm going to talk about is my father well there's a nice little idiomatic expression you can use here which is the person i'm going to talk about is none other than my father none other than is just it's used usually when the person you introduce is gonna be a surprise for the listener right um the person i'm going to talk about is none other than donald trump oh what a surprise now the thing is because whoever you talk about is gonna be a surprise for the examiner because they don't know you so in fact you can use this for anybody right the person i'm going to talk about is none other than my english teacher at primary school absolutely fine just notice the pronunciation none other than we normally link none other than none other than try the person i'm going to talk about is none other than brilliant let's move on now we talked about ielts speaking part 2 you may have to talk about a person but you may also have to talk about a thing or a place now if you want to describe a person a thing or a place as being very good there are a number of different idiomatic expressions you can use let me take an example i'm going to talk about a celebrity a famous football player harry kane who else none other than harry kane i could say harry kane is hands down the best football player in the world harry kane is second to none he is a cut above the rest i think the world of harry kane so all of these expressions mean you know he's very good or he's the best you could also use these for places um or for things maybe your favorite restaurant right what's your favorite restaurant oh mcdonald's is second to none really no i'm joking what about you which is your favorite restaurant in your city now if you want to talk about um things places or people that are just normal right nothing special a really nice idiom is to say run of the mill run of the mill can you say that run of the mill run of the mill just means ordinary nothing special right i went to a restaurant last night in my neighborhood it was okay but it's a run-of-the-mill restaurant i've got this new game on my phone yeah it's okay it's a run-of-the-mill game like all of them really nice expression to use so we've looked at something that's very good something that's normal what about if something is not so good again we might want to say for example it's not a patch on it's not a patch on it's not a patchon can you say it's not a patchon and here we're comparing two things right um so for example i saw the latest marvel film the other day right the black widow have you seen it right it's good but it's not as good as the previous film right it's not a patch on the previous film or i saw a film and i've also read the book i mean the film's okay but it's not a patch on the book the book is much better it's not a patch on nice expression similarly another expression is it can't hold a candle to this one again meaning it's not as good as so the latest marvel film was okay but it can't hold a candle to the very first marvel film right i mean spider-man is good but he can't hold a candle to batman so you can use it with things with people with places as well yeah i mean manchester's a nice city but it can't hold a candle to london i shouldn't say that because manchester's my hometown but it's true london i think is a nicer city than manchester but don't tell anybody i said that great so we've talked about people places and things that are very good normal and not so good let's move on so remember just pick out one or two idioms from these start practicing them and slowly build up your base maybe one idiom a day so that over time you'll have a larger and larger base of idioms that you can use more confidently and will help you move from being an english student to an english speaker excellent if you like this video please do press the subscribe button turn on notifications and do remember check out elsa speak if you want to really improve your pronunciation or even just brush up on your pronunciation it's a fantastic tool to do that if you go down here follow the links you can download the app and you can get your 80 discount on a lifetime membership go and check it out and i look forward to seeing you very very soon in the next video take care my friend bye

Channel: English Speaking Success

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Keywords: ielts speaking, ielts speaking success, ielts keith, ielts speaking test, ielts speaking tips, ielts speaking vocabulary, ielts speaking idioms, ielts speaking vocabulary band 9, ielts idioms and phrases, ielts idioms speaking, keith ielts idioms, ielts speaking idioms and phrases, ielts speaking idioms for band 9, ielts speaking useful idioms, ielts speaking band 9 students using idioms and vocabulary, best idioms for ielts speaking, essential idioms for ielts speaking

Id: 6zoe5WQ1c8E

Length: 25min 1sec (1501 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 17 2021