Hi everyone! Welcome back!
I'm Jay from IELTS daily,
the best place for you to practice your IELTS every day.
Today, we're going to be looking at a question
from the IELTS speaking exam.
So let's get started,
okay?
So in today's video, we're going to be looking at
a question from part two of the IELTS speaking exam.
And helping me out today is my friend, Chris.
Chris, how are you?
Hello,
I'm very well.
I'm going to send the question as usual to your iPod,
and I'm afraid this question...
I'm sorry,
it's not very exciting.
It's actually really boring because
the question is on the screen now,
and you can see that it says:
Describe a time when you were bored.
You should say: where you were,
who you were, with what you were doing at the time,
and explain why you are bored.
This is a recent question from the IELTS test.
Students have had this quite recently,
so make sure that you are prepared in the test.
We want to hear what you're thoughts are, Jay.
Your minute to prepare starts now.
Well,
in other situations,
I would say that this question would be a really difficult question.
But considering the circumstances that we're experiencing right now,
I think I might be able to answer this one.
So, right now we're all isolated.
We're all sitting at home and stuck in our houses.
So I think I should be able to answer that.
So I was...
I am at home during this time that I was bored
because of the COVID situation.
I was with my wife.
And watching TV.
And why was I bored?
Because I was stuck in the house.
So we'll see how I go answering this one.
Seems relevant to the times that we're experiencing
One minute finishes.
OK,
so in the test, you're going to speak for over one minute,
less than two minutes.
I'm going to write down all the wonderful language that you are using,
and your time starts now.
All right.
So a time I was bored,
I'm going to just say,
probably in the last week, a couple days ago.
Right now,
we're experiencing the COVID-19 situation worldwide,
where lots of us are being isolated,
being told to be isolated in our homes.
So we can't really go out
to do some of the things that we did before this happened.
And being self isolated,
being stuck in the house can be a pretty boring experience,
so it just kind of hit me.
A couple of days ago, I was at home with my wife
and we were just watching TV.
And you can only watch so much TV before you start to get kind of sick of it or tired of it,
And...
just sitting...
sitting on the couch,
watching TV was really boring.
We tried to... Actually,
what happened was, we turned off the TV and we decided to play a board game.
So we got a board game out,
and I just kind of broke up the monotonous,
or the monotony of sitting in the house doing nothing.
So we ended up getting out that the board game cluedo.
I don't know if anyone knows about cluedo,
but it's a famous board game.
We have to solve a murder mystery.
And just changing things up a little bit,
and doing something different from sitting on the couch
and watching TV helped kind of,
alleviate or reduce that boredom.
So it ended up being an OK
couple hours while we are doing that.
So it turned into a good day for me.
Super and that was one minute and thirty four,
I enjoyed this.
Let's first talk about the difference between bored,
boring and boredom.
Could you explain that to the students?
So bored,
it would be an adjective to describe how a person is feeling, right?
So I am bored,
meaning that there's nothing for me to do.
I'm just kind of sitting there, feeling blah.
Boring would usually be an adjective to describe
something or a situation.
So this class is boring, or this book is boring, or this movie is boring.
This class is not boring.
[Laughs]
Sorry, I was just using...
I am a teacher,
and sometimes I just make that joke about my own classes.
And boredom would be the noun,
so it's the state of being bored.
So you would just say that it's a very common metaphor,
is it? Or maybe it's an idiom,
people say they're dying of boredom.
It's a bit of embellishment or an exaggeration there,
but just means you're just super bored.
Fantastic,
so you talked about 'in the last week', great.
And you said COVID-19.
I think using situations and experiences from your life is really,
really useful.
Lots of people around the world will have the same problem.
Yeah.
You talked about isolation, being isolated.
You said, "stuck in the house".
Where does that come from?
Where does it come from?
Yeah, which verb?
Oh,
to be stuck?
Stick?
Yeah
yeah.
It doesn't mean anything.
But it doesn't mean anything unless you add that bit
with the house...
So to be stuck in the house, what does that mean?
You are forced to stay or remain in a location.
Exactly.
So you can be stuck in the house, you can be stuck in an elevator.
You know, there's many...
Stuck in traffic.
Good.
And "pretty boring experience",
it comes from the word pretty.
Your pronunciation of pretty is pretty.
Pretty,
so you have a ðə sound, so pretty boring.
How would you use the word pretty? Pretty is is kind of like,
I believe it's a,
Quantifier it's a quantifier that just
tries to explain how boring something is.
So if I just say something is boring,
OK,
then is boring.
but if I say it's pretty boring,
or if it's very boring,
or if it's extremely boring,
then the person who is listening to me knows that
it's a higher level of boredom. Quite boring, yeah?
quite boring.
Now,
the next "board" is not the bored of boring.
It's actually the board game.
Yeah.
How do you use the word "board" in this case?
So in this case,
a board game refers to literally a board that you set on the table,
and it usually has little a path on it, or has spaces on the board,
where you would put the little pieces that you control
that you need to move to advance along the border,
to finish the game.
Excellent!
You said, "It broke up the day, and broke up the monotony".
What has broke up the day mean?
Broke up into pieces?
Well,
that's a good question.
It breaks the boredom.
It puts us a stop to the boredom, number one.
But it also adds a little bit of variety to what was happening previously.
So, if we want to use that phrasal verb to break something up,
you can use that to
describe something that you were doing and
you didn't want to do it anymore.
See you broke it up by doing something else.
Exactly, and then you used a really good filler phrase,
which was, "I don't know if anybody knows about".
"I don't know if anybody knows about",
and you can use that in the test by saying,
"I don't know if you know about", if you want to say to the examiner,
I really like that.
Sitting on the couch, couch...
Can you think of any other synonyms?
Words with the same meaning.
Sofa, lounge.
Good.
Sorry. Alleviate,
alleviate the boredom. Tricky word.
See if you can...
reduce the boredom,
try to lower the amount of boredom that you're experiencing.
Well, I don't know if any of those students found that interesting,
But I certainly did.
I thought it was super interesting,
and thanks so much,
that's all for me.
all right,
Thanks, Chris.
Thanks, everyone for watching,
and I hope you learned something.
We'll see you next time.
See you later.