hey aubry i hear you have a a good story to to start us off today yes jessica it's really tough
being a working mom sometimes as you know and i my children like guilt shame me sometimes but i think
they do it accidentally so i'm just going to show you guys and if you're watching on youtube you
will be able to see this so if not check out ielts energy tv on youtube so you can see this episode
because last night i was teaching a web class which was awesome lindsey
and i did it if you guys didn't attend come to the next one they're so fun
but my daughter slides something under the door and i saw something get you know slid under the
door but i couldn't read it because i was teaching web class so i went and checked it out after and
this was it this is what it said oh my god oh my god that is so sweet though will you play
with me which is so sweet i love that she wants to play with me but then my mom heart is like
i know so much guilt you know i know we have so many roles to fill you guys
making sure especially with four kids making sure each of them gets like quality time
it's tough it's tough it's tough you guys um and we know that you guys also have a lot to do in
your lives and thank you for spending time with us today on isles energy um and we want you to
study smarter so you save time and you can play with your children instead of like reading some
ielts forum that's not going to help you anyway um so if you have just five minutes of time
you can get your free estimated ielts band score from us go to all years english dot com slash
and as like a working parent there's so much pulling on your attention right and
you really need to have as much information as possible so it's like if you need a seven
and you're only at a 5.5 you know you have to study for longer but if you're already almost
there you're like great let's book this test yes let's do this you can be confident yes for sure
all right so today guys we are gonna give you some interesting vocab and tell you where you can use
it on the exam very specific vocabulary um and it came from a facebook question right yes exactly so
this are three keys out facebook group students are able to ask questions about
anything and this student was writing an ielts task 2 essay and having a difficult time coming
up with synonyms and like you guys have heard us say you can't always just trust the thesaurus if
you look up a word you're going to get all kinds of synonyms that aren't necessarily
accurate in the context you need them right so i love that she knew to post it on facebook to
find out like what synonyms are actually correct here and so there's two groups of vocabulary words
we're going to talk about because there are some overlapping words and i want to just point out
quickly that um how aubrey said that the thesaurus can give you inaccurate synonyms with this second
group of words words to describe immigrants words to describe people that are moving to your country
um there are some very negative words listed in the thesaurus for those people right and we don't
want you guys to choose the wrong word to learn and you think like it's just a straight-up synonym
for people moving to your country like one of the the synonyms i saw in a thesaurus for this was
intruders and that is not i would never use that word as a synonym for immigrants
right there is so much judgment yeah it was offend immigrants anyone who has
family and their immigrants which surprises everyone in the united states right right
anyone whose family came from another country and that's true that's a good point that it's a very
loose um comparison often what you're going to get in the thesaurus right and it's that is certainly
not one that we would use not speaking not on writing it's not like it's just not appropriate
one place on ielts it wouldn't be appropriate even for like a conversation with people in your life
no you're only going to use that word if you're talking about criminals yeah someone breaking
into your home right that and that's it that is the only use for that word um okay so
can you read us the facebook question and we'll get into some vocab yes so this is sarah's
question she said hi aubrey and jessica what are other synonyms for extraterrestrial creatures
aliens and other forms of life and then she gave some that she was thinking might work and wanted
to know she said could i use some strangers and unknown creatures so i love this too when i see
students are really making an effort they're not just saying what can i totally they're like what
about these i found these what do you think i love it i love it such a good question um so yeah there
might be some students out there that are like i when would i talk about aliens on the ielts exam
this could totally come up in speaking part three or writing task two i would say most likely
speaking part three though because um if you were talking about space and science you know what i
mean like exploring other worlds then you need to talk about this vocabulary like do you think there
are other forms of life in the universe do you think we are alone in the universe do you think
there are aliens from outer space yes this could totally come up in speaking part two right i mean
speaking part three and then in writing task two i could see this as a question like many people
believe that we are not alone in the universe what is your opinion that would be a pretty awesome
writing task too question yeah i i wouldn't be surprised if that's coming up soon because it's
one that like we haven't seen it before you're not gonna just see it on line somewhere but it's very
possible very possible right it's very similar in line with lots of task to writing questions
so today we're going to give you lots of vocab you could use for either of those speaking part 3
or writing test 2 to boost your vocab score i just want to say real fast that when when you just said
it's very possible for some reason i totally thought you were saying like it's very popsicle
and i don't know why like it sounded like you were gonna say that and it just it made me laugh um
okay if you're listening to this on the podcast then of course thank you but do check it out on
youtube because you can see all of our facial reactions right now i know you're flowering i
didn't know why i don't say i was like i have to explain this laughter because people are watching
this um okay so aliens right aliens usually it'll mean uh creatures from outer space so there's the
first paraphrase creatures from outer space i think the most formal synonym would though would
be extraterrestrials so i just want to break this down real fast because extra means outside right
it doesn't just mean too much extra as a prefix means from outside and then terrestrials terra
means earth so it literally means like people from outside our earth right i love being able
to recognize the parts of the vocabulary words and you guys should do that for reading that's
an important skill so i missed that's the most important to pronounce too right just to point
out if you're going to be extraterrestrial there are a lot of r's in there this is probably not one
you're going to want to throw into your speaking part 3 without ever having said it aloud right
listen to definitely practice it because it's a very high level word high scoring but you're going
to want to pronounce it accurately and it's a long word it's not easy to spell like you guys need to
study this before you're going to use it um okay so that's the most formal synonym so that would
be for writing task two or speaking part three now on speaking even part three we can throw in some
slang guys it's better than repeating yourself and it does show idiomatic language which you need for
a seven or higher for vocab so you could say like little men from outer space or little green men um
and that's just an accepted phrase that we use to uh instead of saying aliens little green men
yes exactly right and it's probably gonna give the examiner at least a smile a little chuckle
totally i love you're doing air quotes around little green men because yeah if you're in
speaking part three you've already said aliens you've already said extraterrestrials and you
want to get a little creative then you're wanting to say like i realize they might not actually be
small green people so you're doing it in air quotes like little green men recognizing
that you realize this is a stereotype of what aliens might look like totally totally i love it
um or we can just say alien beings unknown beings um you could even say martians right
martians would specifically be creatures from mars but you could just say martians that's an accepted
synonym for aliens people know what you mean if you say martians there's only one meaning for that
right right um generally to talk about people from other total ants possibly even though yeah that's
true it it really is someone from mars where we're like yeah we'll just use that to talk about
anyone from anywhere yeah totally um okay so now where this gets a little bit dicey a little bit
tricky is that aliens could also be a synonym for immigrants it could be a synonym for people from
outside your country who have moved to your country right immigrants now do you
think this is a proper way to speak about immigrants these days do people still say
aliens what do you think i do still hear it but it bothers me to be honest i will hear outsiders
and aliens i haven't heard intruders that would really make me mad but i will hear people and
this is political guys it depends kind of on how you feel about immigrants are you welcoming and
excited and hoping people come to your country to give diversity or really are you more of the
type of person that feels like borders should be closed and you're not really wanting that
the language you use here is going to show how you feel politically about immigration so that's
one thing to think about i would never use alien or outsider i just say immigrant i've never said
aliens to refer to immigrants i can tell you that it feels very exclusive and i'm interested there's
a judgment in there inclusive yeah exactly yeah um intrusive i meant i'm inclusive i'm not intrusive
which is another word man we are thrown out just so much gold today even accidentally um guys
you're not gonna you're not technically gonna like lose points it like the examiner won't mark you
down if you have a disagreeable political opinion like we're not supposed to right um i am sure
superficially yes like that's totally like i'm not gonna decrease your score because i
don't like your political views on immigrants um however i'm still gonna encourage you guys to not
express views of hatred um because it might impact the examiner's opinion of your fluency even if
it's subconsciously right they don't yeah maybe mean to but they get this idea of you and if they
strongly disagree it might be hard for them to divorce that from your scores so totally just not
to and above all i think it's good for you guys to be aware that this connotation is there because
you might not you might use the phrase illegal alien without realizing that this political
or sort of negative connotation is there is being implied and it might be accidental that you're
doing that yeah exactly um we describe phrases like that as being charged right charged as like
it has an energy it has an electricity and in this case it's negatively charged that phrase um so
okay acceptable ways right to refer to people who have moved to your country from elsewhere just say
immigrants you could say foreigners and like there's no inherent charge to that word um so you
can if it's in the context of you know positive view that's fine foreigners i like newcomers
as well that's i think that's sort of a delightful uh phrase and if you want to get more specific
now there's a group of immigrants that we could refer to as refugees now this is a more specific
word what does refugees mean that means they're forced to leave where they live for some reason
and they're displaced it might be permanent it might be temporary but it usually is not
by their choice that they've had to leave their homeland exactly exactly um okay so guys remember
there are plenty of places on ielts speaking and writing that you could uh utilize this amazing
vocabulary today remember that you can also watch us on youtube ielts energy tv and again
we're talking to busy adults we know that you guys are high achievers you are listening because you
want to get better scores on ielts so go ahead and take our free quiz guys go to all your english
dot com slash my score all right awesome aubry i'll uh i'll see you next week yep see ya bye