good morning Aubrey how's it going excellent I'm excited for this episode because I'm going to
share a story with Jessica that she's never heard at the same time I share it with you guys so and
it would be a great story for a speaking part to answer so how about we talk about speaking part
two Jessica what do you think no what if I just said no um that's a terrible idea I love it when
um when we're planning episodes you guys and sometimes like for this one I love it when this
happens when like one of us has just a really cool story we want to tell you and then we like
extrapolate an IELTS lesson out of that story I I love these episodes so first guys we're going
to teach you some vocabulary about saving money um because spending money saving money budgeting
Finance stuff like this comes up all the time on IELTS speaking and writing so first we'll give
you the vocab and then Aubry you're gonna share a very uh special part two answer that's correct
yeah this is great we recently not recently it's been a little while now but we did an episode
that you definitely want to check out with some related vocabulary 8 26 it was called avoid being
a cheapskate with today's band 9 IELTS vocab we taught the adjectives Frugal stingy Penny Pincher
and Cheapskate which are great nouns this is such high level vocab today we're going to teach
a couple of idioms and some nouns you could also use and if you are armed with all of this vocab
anytime money comes up you're going to be able to get such a higher vocabulary score yeah I that was
a long time ago episode 826 long time ago but I do remember it because the vocabulary from that
episode is so fun guys so if you haven't listened definitely go back and listen to
um IELTS energy 826. okay so let's get into some new vocab so um take a shortcut
um I feel like it's almost always paired with the verb take right to take a shortcut so what
does that mean Aubry to take a shortcut yeah it's interesting how there are two
very different meanings for this idiom one is a little more literal like if you are needing
to get around a park instead of taking the long way on the sidewalk you could take a
shortcut and cut straight across the park right so we do use it that way but we also use it to
talk about saving money when if something is cheaper if it's going to save us either
sometime or some labor or some money we'll we'll say we're going to take a shortcut yeah
um or anytime you're trying to do something more quickly by not doing a couple steps and yeah this
can go horribly wrong or it can be fine but I feel like um for example when James is doing math
homework or something like he can do a lot of the stuff in his head and so he takes shortcuts when
he's writing out his math problems and he gets in trouble for that because he's skipping steps right
so taking a shortcut we can use that in so many different ways um actually this makes me think of
another idiom to cut out the middle man oh yes and we use this a lot when we're talking about saving
money as well instead of like paying somebody for a service and they do the service right for you
that's more expensive than just doing it yourself you know what I mean so for example people hire
people to like clean their home or organize their closets stuff like that so I don't do that I just
I cut out that middleman and I do it all myself or DIY stuff around the home I try and save money
by doing things myself all the time absolutely this is very true for me too and I don't know
about you Jessica but often I regret it something will happen something will go wrong and I'll end
up this is going to come up in my part two answer guys stay tuned but I end up regretting it a lot
in fact okay this is really funny if you guys are watching this on YouTube you can see that there's
like a closet door behind me because when James had a sleepover one of the kids broke the closet
and so like I removed the doors myself and I hung up curtains to like replace them but like it it
just it didn't quite work and every time every time I'm cutting Corners at home like something
goes wrong same so now I just have a closet door behind me for no reason and you just used the
third one we were going to because these are so very similar right you said every time I'm cutting
Corners this happens that's the third one is just cut Corners which means same thing they're very
related they're really synonymous it just means to eliminate steps to try to do something quicker
more easily and yeah sometimes it goes very wrong 98 of the time all right so the last words we have
um to get a bargain or find a bargain or find a deal so they mean the same thing these nouns
bargain and deal it just means that something is a good price that's all I mean it's like you got
a good price on something all right so let me get out my timer here and Aubry is going to answer
the part two question um describe a time you tried to save money recently so this could definitely be
an IELTS topic guys and I can't wait to hear your story yes um all right you can start speaking now
believe it or not this just happened to me a couple of weeks ago for ages we had been wanting
to plant trees in our backyard to hide this grotesque cinderblock wall that borders our yard
but they're extremely expensive um to get them from an actual Nursery would have been about four
hundred dollars a tree so we never did it but then we finally found them on sale at Costco it was
such a deal um and I'm kind of a bargain shopper so I couldn't resist they were only 70 bucks
so we decided to cut out the middleman not get them at the nursery which would have been easier
because they deliver them they plant them for you instead we got to pick them up at Costco so it
was definitely taking a shortcut but I figured it would really be worth the cost savings so I
take my car to Costco and I load the trees in my SUV and thinking okay everything's fine get them
home first problem I realized I had punctured the roof of my car so there's a whole feeling which
is going to be crazy expensive to fix or I just deal with the hole in the car not ideal second
problem when I go to plant one of these trees I accidentally pierced the irrigation line [Music]
irrigation is by far more than I saved by getting this deal at Costco buying the trees
myself so the moral of the story is it's not always ideal to cut corners and definitely in
this case I have so many regrets I regret putting the trees in my car in the first
place I should have asked someone to borrow a truck or paid if I needed to to get a truck
or a trailer to transport these trees in a more reasonable way and everyone can do this thank you
guys gonna start going into how the guys at Costco were like really really you're putting these trees
in this car you think that's a good idea oh my gosh if you are just listening to the audio on
the podcast guys please go watch this on YouTube I know you heard me laughing I was trying so hard
not to like respond and laugh but I couldn't help it you couldn't help it I had like both hands
covering my mouth trying to keep the laughter in because this is so funny I can't believe you put a
hole in your room it's so terrible I felt terrible I didn't realize at the time what happened was
they were stacked in there and one of them sort of slipped and when that happened it like kind
of shoved it to where the top of the tree went straight through the like cloth of the sunroof
I love this oh my gosh you guys okay worst case scenario I could talk to you about this story for
so long but I'm gonna bring it back to IELTS here guys for our listeners so a couple things that you
can um extrapolate I used that word earlier in the episode and I wanted to use it again
um extrapolate from aubry's answer that you guys could use I'll just point out a couple
so to begin your answer with believe it or not that's such a great phrase to introduce
a surprising story anything surprising that you are sharing you can introduce it with believe
it or not and you could use this in anywhere on the speaking test guys um and then the the
other thing I'll point out is that um you said it's not ideal so when something is really bad
right you don't have to just say like oh this is awful this is horrible that's great vocab but
we can insert some really natural communication and sarcasm into our answer by being like and
this was not great this was not awesome so I love the intonation and stress you get by inserting
that little description into your answer it adds so much personality for your pronunciation score
um and your vocab score if you use a good adjective not ideal not fabulous you know so guys
those two things you could definitely use in your speaking part two answers oh my gosh Aubry I can't
believe that I know and then yeah so we've got we we got the sprinkler repaired but it's not cheap
you know I haven't even gotten the car repaired yet I don't I kind of just want to sell it
just like let someone else deal with it and pretend it never happened
sometimes especially with cars that's the best way just be like it'll cost more money to fix
this than for me to buy a new car so I'm just gonna get rid of it okay guys definitely listen
to aubry's answer a couple times today because you used most if not all of the vocabulary we
taught you in the beginning of the episode so that was amazing so definitely listen to that
for context for today's vocab and it's really a testament to telling a story makes those two
minutes fly I could not believe it when you said thank you I'm like I can't believe it's been two
minutes yeah I flew by so quickly whereas a lot of part two answers when I don't tell a story
I I'm like oh what else do I say I know exactly that's such a difference totally
um that's the final takeaway today guys tell a story in part two we've done a lot of episodes
on that so if you're new to the podcast um just look at our feed search for story
um or come back to the website allearsenglish.com and you can
search for uh blogs on podcast episodes and YouTube IELTS energy TV you can search
there as well all right awesome uh thanks for sharing that vulnerably awful story
I am we're keeping it real here right I do dumb things sometimes hashtag keep it real on IELTS
energy all right okay well we'll see you in the next episode guys all right see ya foreign [Music]