Band 9 Vocabulary That is a Necessary Evil

This is an IELTS Energy Podcast, episode 1563, Band 9 Vocabulary that is a Necessary Evil. Welcome to the IELTS Energy Podcast from All Ears English. Downloaded more than 35 million times with examiner trained IELTS whiz,

Aubrey Carter and Lindsay McMahon, the English adventurer. If you are stuck with a low score, our insider method will help you get the score you need to unlock your dreams. Get your estimated band score now with our two-minute quiz at allearsenglish.com myscore. On IELTS Speaking Part 1, you will be asked about work or study or home or hometown.

Today, learn new words that will win you a band nine to talk about things that are mundane. A lot of students think they need to study more before they can even understand their IELTS level. But actually, the smartest first step is to find out where you are right now. We made a free IELTS band score quiz to help you do exactly that. In only two minutes,

you'll get your estimated score and free resources to help you improve from your level. Stop wondering and start preparing strategically. Go to allearsenglish.com slash myscore today. That's allearsenglish.com slash myscore.com. Hey there, Aubrey. How's it going today?

I'm great Lindsay. How are you? Good. Excited to be here chatting about IELTS. Aubrey, what have you done today that was a necessary evil? Oh, I love that you're using the phrase,

a necessary evil. This is a band nine expression. Yes. We're going to teach today.

I love it. I had to move a bunch of furniture today. We're having windows replaced. A lot of the seals are broken.

And they have newer high-tech windows that keep the heat out and the cooler. It's like, so it'll be more energy efficient to have these new windows.

but we had to move everything four feet away from the windows. So beds, couches, everything. You don't realize how much is next to a window. It was a huge pain.

It's a huge pain. I honestly, any kind of construction in your home is a major disruption. And you don't even, we don't even realize like how much it kind of disturbs the mind.

We came home from vacation in Italy and stuff was everywhere. Uh, we've got like our bed downstairs in the living room because the upstairs is being worked on, major necessary evil to have to move around. But yeah, if you want to get construction done in your house, you have to get it.

You have to do it, right? That's such a good example, right? When you're having to live in a small part of your house while there's construction in the rest of it, that's just a necessary evil.

If you want to do any updates. Yeah. I mean, on IELTS Aubrey, do they ever ask us about chores? Yes.

You could be asked about chores about lots of different things that you don't really like doing. So this today's for phrases will be perfect for being a little, you know, exaggerating a little bit. Okay, so what are some of the questions we might get then just to maybe a preview here? We'll see what we might be asked, Aubrey, on part one. Okay, on part one,

you might be asked, what's your least favorite chore? How often do you do chores? Did you do chores as a child or something like who usually does the housework in your home? Okay. And then as we move into part two, part three rather, it's going to be more societal questions, right? For example, should everyone in the family share housework? Why or why not?

This is theoretical, right? Philosophical. Do you think children should do chores? What's the benefit? How have chores changed compared to your parents generation? Right. So you could tell the nature of these answers are going to be very different. Exactly, right? And today's because vocab is perfect. Nobody loves chores or at least not very many people. So this is

great vocab for that. And part two as well, it could come up if your part two question is describe a chore you dislike or describe a person and when you describe a friend or something that happened, if you want to share what they don't like doing, this would be great vocab for that.

Yes. Let's dive into the vocabulary because we know we need this or we may need it for IELTS. So let's the first one. I love it though. It's a grind. This is a good one. My daily commute is such a grind. What am I saying here? Yeah, this is like long, tiring, repetitive, often work or just anything. You're commute, you're anything that's kind of boring

and also hard. Yeah, this was one of my dad's like signature phrases on Monday mornings. He would always say back to the old grind. Yes, totally. My dad says that too. And you It might feel like your IELTS study is a grind, right? If you've been studying for quite a while,

so if you're asked about something related to test preparation or work, this is a perfect phrase to call it a grind. And it's fun, and it's just not, it's not that common.

I could guarantee that other candidates before and after you are not gonna use this. Right, yeah, it's band name. Unless they listen to the show.

Right, all of these phrases. Yeah, exactly. Drudgery, another amazing word. Aubrey, what does it mean?

Yeah, work that is. hard, boring, repetitive, tiring, especially tasks that require effort, but don't have a lot of reward. Right? It would be like, oh, this drudgery. Oh, so a way we could put this into words, we could say my first job was pure drudgery.

So I crossed over into sales and really love it. Yes. You know, you might be asked about work or study. You need high-scoring vocabulary like this to answer those questions. Yep. And another one that fits in with these words is a slog. Hard work that feels slow and unpleasant.

Yeah, like getting through tax season is always a slog for an accountant. You could say studying for IELTS has been a slog. It just means it's like hard and it feels, you know, like it's taking forever. Yeah, I've even heard someone use this around a commute. My commute is a real slog. Yeah, that makes sense too.

You drive two hours and sit in traffic both ways, that kind of thing. It's miserable, yeah, for sure. Or mundane, a lot of people would describe their commute as mundane as well.