hi and welcome to this the third in my series of videos about the IELTS exam in
the first video we looked at how to avoid the killer mistake of silence when
trying to think of answers to experience-based questions in part 1 of
your test in the second we did the same thing for opinion based questions in
part 3 of your test using some fillers to give yourself a little bit of time to
think I hope those videos were useful and if
they were then please subscribe to this channel please subscribe to this channel
if this video is useful for you in this particular video the third we're going
to look not at giving yourself time to think in response to part 3 questions
about opinion but rather about how you can give a really good answer to a part
3 speaking question that asks you about a topic that you know absolutely nothing
about how is that possible I'm going to show you in this video so to be clear I
would always advise students to read articles on the Internet as part of
their preparation for the IELTS test to read articles on the Internet
about common IELTS topics such as the Internet Advertising technology the
environment the more reading you do the better the chance that you will be able
to think of an opinion to give about a part 3 topic but sometimes no matter how
well you prepare you will get a curveball a curveball is an English
expression an informal word which means a surprise and it's a word this word
curveball which you could also use in your speaking test to describe something
that really surprised you in your life so sometimes they will ask you to give
an opinion about a topic that you know absolutely nothing
about for example what if you were asked this question how has art in your
country changed in the past 20 years I'll be honest I would not have anything
very much to say about this in English and I'm a native English speaker I don't
really know I don't know anything about art I don't know what's changed in this
country in the past 20 years so how would I try to answer this
question well I would seek to use native ways of talking and idioms to do two
things number one to tell the examiner that I am NOT interested in this
particular topic and number two to tell him that's because I'm not interested in
the topic I don't really know anything about it and now I'm going to show you
exactly how to do this let's look first at native ways of saying that you just
are not interested in a topic here are several ways of doing this and each of
the ways that I am going to show you involves saying things that native
speakers might say we're going to news the example of that question about art
and how it has changed in the past 20 years for these answers so lack of
interest number one art has never really been my thing
to be honest number two art has never been my bag number three art has never
done anything for me number four art has never been my cup of
tea number five art has never really floated
my boat number six I've never really given two
hoots about art number seven art is not something that
I have ever given a monkey's about okay so they are all native ways of saying
that you are not interested in something now let's look at native ways of saying
that you lack knowledge about a topic number one I haven't got the faintest
idea about this topic number two I haven't got the first idea about this
topic number three I haven't got the slightest idea about this topic number
four I haven't got a clue about this topic number five I haven't got the
foggiest about this topic number six what I know about this topic ie art
could fit on the back of a postage stamp so it's a small space and if you wrote
everything that you know about art it would fit only on the back of a postage
stamp so you know almost nothing about it so these are all native ways of
rescuing yourself from a situation in which you know nothing about a part
three topic so if you do get us an opinion topic about a question that you
know nothing about what you can do is combine an idiomatic sentence that means
you are not interested in something with an idiomatic sentence that means that
you know absolutely nothing about it for example combinations could include art
has never really been my cup of tea so I'm afraid that I haven't got a clue
about it art has never been my bag and so I'm afraid that I don't really have
the foggiest about it I've never really given two hoots about art and so what I
know about it could fit on the back of a postage stamp you can use any
combination of one sentence indicating lack of interest and one indicating lack
of not doing so would be much much better than
just being silent or hesitating for a long time Wells desperately trying to
think of something sensible to say now a word of warning to be clear this is not
an approach that you should use with more than one and part three question
what you need to do is to keep this strategy in reserve for a part three
question that you really do know nothing about using these idiomatic sentences to
say I don't know anything about this and I'm not interested in it will give you a
good answer because you will score highly for using appropriate idioms to
communicate your message to the examiner so that's it for today but keep your
eyes peeled which means to look out for my next video in which I will show you a
really good way to help your grammatical range score in part two of the speaking
test okay so that's it from me today thank you and goodbye