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In this episode Andrea describes some common Task 2 topics and suggests ways in which students could prepare themselves for the IELTS Test.
The key point is to take action as part of your preparation and to actively seek out the common topics in the news and in general. Some topics recur in the IELTS Test time and again and no one can accurately guess when they will reappear.
So effort spent thinking about the “large” topics, e.g. health, space, education etc. will be wasted.
Some of these are discussed in this episode and Andrea suggests ways in which students can better prepare themselves for the topics they will face in the IELTS test.
IELTS Task 2 Topic Ideas and links mentioned in IELTS Test Prepcast, Episode 17
Topic One – Sports Celebrities
Here are two possible questions for this topic:
1. The sports world is criticised for paying its celebrities far too much money, when other more caring professions such as nurses are only just paid a living wage.
To what extent do you agree with this criticism?
Here are some websites to give you ideas and useful expressions.
www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2014/feb/26/wayne-rooney-contract-manchester-united
www.theguardian.com/business/economics-blog/2012/mar/02/public-salaries-sports-superstars-business
2. Sports stars and celebrities are often role models for young people.
To what extent do you think this is a good thing?
www.theguardian.com/sport/2012/aug/11/olympics-women-body-image-role-models
Topic Two – The Ageing Population
Here are two questions on this topic:
1. The growth of the ageing population is placing a huge burden on the taxpayer.
What are the causes of this?
What solutions can you suggest?
Here are some websites to give you ideas and useful expressions.
www.theguardian.com/healthcare-network/2012/mar/01/elderly-hospital-care-bankrupt-britain
www.nesta.org.uk/blog/systems-fit-future-how-support-ageing-population
2. With today’s lack of funds for the NHS, it is thought that we should offer care to the more deserving of patients.
Do you agree or disagree?
Here are some websites to give you ideas and useful expressions.
www.boards.medscape.com/forums/?128@@.2a2e45a5!comment=1 (You’ll need to sign up for a free account to access this website article)
www.telegraph.co.uk/health/elderhealth/8879476/The-elderly-deserve-far-better-from-the-NHS.html
Topic Three – Crime
Here are two questions about crime:
1. There is a saying that Life should mean Life.
To what extent do you agree that a life sentence should be for life?
Here are some websites to give you ideas and useful expressions.
www.theguardian.com/society/2011/jun/08/prisoners-prefer-jail-sentence-to-community-service
2. Some people believe that young adults turn to crime because they have no hope for the future.
Others say that people turn to crime for survival.
Discuss both these views and give your opinion.
Here are some websites to give you ideas and useful expressions
www.historylearningsite.co.uk/why_do_people_commit_crime.html
Topic Four – Health
Herre are two questions about health:
1. Childhood obesity is on the rise.
What do you think the causes are and how can we solve the problem?
Here are some websites to give you ideas and useful expressions.
www.weightlossresources.co.uk/children/childhood_obesity.htm
www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-19661085
2. Some people believe that healthcare should be free. Others say that the NHS is a burden on the taxpayer.
Discuss both views and offer yours
Here are some websites to give you ideas and useful expressions.
www.theguardian.com/healthcare-network/2013/apr/16/healthcare-reform-first-steps
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-22528719
Topic Five – Space
Here are two questions on the topic of Health:
1. We should not spend money on space research when there are people who are hungry on earth.
Do you agree with this statement?
Here are some websites to give you ideas and useful expressions.
www.news.discovery.com/space/history-of-space/space-exploration-cost-1104081.htm
www.nasa.gov/missions/solarsystem/Why_We_01pt1.html
2. There is Life on Mars. Some people believe that there is life on other planets apart from Earth.
Do you agree or disagree?
Here are some websites to give you ideas and useful expressions.
www.spaceplace.nasa.gov/review/dr-marc-solar-system/life-on-mars.html
science.howstuffworks.com/space/aliens-ufos/extraterrestrial-life-odds.htm
Podcast Transcript
IELTS Test Prepcast Episode 17
IELTS Task 2 Topics: Ideas and How to Prepare
I’m Steve Price. I’m the founder of the Pass IELTS Higher website, which was started in late 2010 and has been successfully helping students achieve higher band scores since. Andrea Price currently lives and works in London, teaching IELTS. She has been teaching the subject at home and abroad for over twenty years.
And now for today’s IELTS lesson.
Steve: Hello. Today I’ve got with me Andrea, and we haven’t seen each other for a while, so how have you been, Andrea?
Andrea: Yes, I’ve been good. I’ve been busy doing this and that. How about you?
Steve: I’ve been quite busy too. I’ve been enjoying the break in the weather that we have over here in the UK, but I’ve also been a bit busy planning and preparing for a group of webinars that we’re hoping to tell students a bit more about next month into April. So that’ll be the subject of a future podcast.
Andrea:Oh, that sounds exciting.
Steve: Yes, I think it should be. I’m just trying to gauge interest in it, really, so we’re doing some limited surveys of some of our listeners that we can see what sort of interest we get. If there’s enough interest, then we’ll try running some.
Andrea:That one’s brilliant.
Steve:The thing we’ve also been giving a bit of thought to is whether or not we should think about doing a coaching program for maybe a most select group of students, so it’s more a group, and see if we can coach some to achieve the results they need to get into university or into their jobs or whatever that they need, the high band scores.
Andrea: Oh, I think that sounds as though it’ll be really popular.
Steve: Yes, so hopefully we’ll hear a bit more about that as we go into April and maybe into May. So okay, what have we got lined up today?
Andrea:Well, it’s something that students are always asking about. It’s the task 2 writing topics, and students xxx “Oh, what are the typical topics?” Of course, you can only guess, because nobody knows. But there are lots of topics that you can write around. I thought of five today and variations of the question. What I think you should do, what I think the students should do, and I recommend them to my students, is to look at the newspaper online or a hardback newspaper, a hard copy, or the TV and look at the topics. Look at what’s in the news maybe a few months before your exam. So imagine your exam’s on April the 5th. You look at what’s in the news in February, and I think, quite often, the examiners also look there for their inspiration for topics. So that’s what I’ve done today. And I think that the students start training themselves to do this, they’ll be really improving their vocabulary, and of course, lots of collocations from many of the newspapers or in the news online.
Steve: Okay, so I guess the students across the world who are taking the course in an institution of some description, hopefully, their library might have access to some of the worldwide news services. But I guess, otherwise, it’s not hugely expensive to subscribe to a one of the suites of newspapers maybe owned by the Murdoch corporation or something like that to get their online newspapers.
Andrea: Yes, I agree. I would just say just be careful about which newspapers you look at. Obviously, the language is a lot easier and more basic in some of the newspapers.
Steve:Okay.
Andrea:So I’d suggest The Guardian or Telegraph or the Financial Times.
Steve: Okay. If people are in America, perhaps The Wall Street Journal, you know, those sorts of . . .
Andrea: Yes, good idea. Yes, just where you get quite academic language maybe, or a little bit more complex language.
Steve:Okay. That sounds like a good idea.
Andrea:So I’ve chosen, the first topic I’ve chosen is sports celebrities. There are two, here I’m giving you two possible examples of questions for this topic. Here’s one: “The sports world is criticized for paying its celebrities far too much money when other more caring professions such as nurses are only just paid a living wage. To what extent do you agree with this criticism?” And here I point out also some websites to give you ideas and useful expressions. And I think just go away—you can even google the ideas, really, and see what comes up and then read and write down the expressions and learn them and see how you can include them into what you’re writing when you practice it. So recently Wayne Rooney was given a huge contract and was paid a fortune, and this article can be found in The Guardian, and it’s called football blog 2014, on February the 26th, and it’s about Wayne Rooney. Another one is in The Guardian and business and economics, and this is about public salaries for sports and superstars, and that was in 2012, on March the 7th.
Steve:Okay.
Andrea:I pulled out some expressions from here.
Steve:Sorry, just to interrupt there, what I will do is I will put these links onto the website, on the page which has got this post, this episode on, so hopefully, people will be able to go there and click to see these articles.
Andrea: And sorry, I’m about to give you another example of the kind of question they can ask: “Sports stars and celebrities are often role models for young people. To what extent do you think this is a good thing?” An article I pulled out for this one is in the Daily Mail, and it’s a debate on the London 2012 Olympics and the stars that are role models. There’s another one in The Guardian on August the 11th, 2012, about Olympics, women body image, and role models. Here are some expressions I’ve pulled out from either of these articles: “Paying Wayne Rooney or any celebrity so much money only adds insult to injury when services like the NHS are losing government funding”. So this is quite some formal language, complex language. There’s also an idiom there: “adds insult to injury”. So I think you’d get lots of marks from the examiners for this one.
Steve:Okay. Can I just put it in perspective? I believe I read somewhere that Wayne Rooney was being paid £300,000 per week. This is clearly much, much more than people even in the wealthier countries are typically earning.
Andrea:Yes. And if you think about doctors and nurses and what they earn or even teachers, social workers, so that’s why people sometimes get a bit angry. I don’t know what you think about Wayne Rooney earning so much money?
Steve: He’s very unique, very unique. I’ve xxx “unique” xxx but he certainly is unique. He’s a very highly skilled player. There’s not that many of him to the pound, to use, I suppose to partially use an idiom. But he, whether he’s worth £300,000 a week, whether anybody’s worth £300,000 a week, is, I think, something which is really open to debate. I suppose you could say the same for bankers and so on as well.
Andrea:Oh, as people do, don’t they?
Steve:Yes.
Andrea:Who get very irate about bankers and their bonuses.
Steve:They do.
Andrea:Okay. Choosing positive role models is more important than ever nowadays. So obviously, what is a positive role model? David Beckham is one. Young people really look up to him. He’s actually a very kind and giving character. He earns a lot of money, but he spends lots of time helping charities, so he’s often held up as a positive role model. I don’t know if you’ve got any that you think are good.
Steve: I follow rugby, and it’s endemic in the culture of professional rugby, rugby union, that the players in rugby union tend to go and join in with the clubs in their local areas. To a degree, it depends on the time of a season, whether there’s a cup run on or whatever. But largely speaking, there is a, quite a good connection between the professional game and the amateur game.
Andrea: Okay, so they help each other.
Steve:They do.
Andrea:Yes. And another one: “Teenagers start to look to their peers for a sense of what’s socially acceptable or desirable, and that’s linked a little bit to the behaviour of our teenagers today”. I think, especially in Britain and America, when people claim that teenagers are getting a bit out of hand. So what—they might join a bad crew, and that’s why it’s saying they look to their peers for a sense of what’s socially acceptable. Or obviously, there are groups where you’ve got to have a certain fashion, a certain brand name, a certain look, and that’s also something else that a typical teenager will do.
Steve: Actually, interestingly, that extends to sport as well. One of the reasons I follow rugby, not the main reason by any means, but it’s because I actually like the culture of rugby in terms of how the referees are treated. Certainly what you will not see is groups of players standing around the referee like you see in soccer, shouting at him and claiming how unfair it was or whatever decision he’s made. That just doesn’t happen in rugby. The captain will step forward, inquire what, the reason for the judgment, and then will accept it and walk away and—
Andrea:It’s quite controlled.
Steve:Yes, it is. And of course, that instils in the players a sense of what is socially acceptable. It seems to me to be a lot more polite than you see in football.
Andrea:And yet, well, they do say that a rugby crowd is much better behaved than the football crowd as well.
Steve: That’s true. I was listening to a conversation between a couple of people at work the other week, and they were talking about, in the UK, there’s a big problem with alcoholic sports events, and at many football stadiums, and I suspect—I don’t follow football, so I don’t know for a fact—but professional football stadiums, you’re not allowed to take alcohol into the crowd.
Andrea: Yes.
Steve: Whereas at rugby, it’s almost xxx You drink from the bar into the crowd.
Andrea:But it doesn’t cause—
Steve:It doesn’t cause any trouble at all.
Andrea:Yes.
Steve:No trouble at all.
Andrea: Funny, isn’t it? Okay. We’ve got another topic, the aging population, and unfortunately, this is causing the government a bit of a problem. And recently, the government has been imposing on funding the older population. Obviously, as people get older, they’re costing more money. And the older they get, the more money they could possibly cause the NHS. And where is this money coming from? It’s coming from the taxpayer, but the taxpayer, they’re the younger people, and we’ve got fewer younger people. And it’s what they call a vicious circle, really. The questions that could be for this: What are the causes? What solutions can you suggest? And a couple of websites I’ve pulled out are, again, The Guardian, and this is the health-care network 2012. Or something called nesta.org.uk, and there’s a blog that’s talking about how to support the aging population and the elderly and their hospital care, which may be bankrupting Britain.
Steve: Okay, just to reiterate that all of these things will be placed on the webpage that this episode appears on.
Andrea: Another question that could come from the aging population is this, and it’s exactly what the government was talking about a few weeks ago: “With today’s lack of funds for the NHS, it is thought that we should offer care to the more deserving of patients. Do you agree or disagree?” Again, some more useful websites, and remember always to read, pull out the useful expressions, write them down, learn them, and try to recycle them. So on a website called boards.medscape.com, there are forums, and there are forums obviously about this topic. Or look in The Telegraph, and there’s an article on health and elder health and the elderly deserve far better from the NHS. Expressions I’ve pulled out from either of these article are “Aging is widely seen as one of the most significant risks to global prosperity in the decades ahead”. And of course, that’s because the older people are living longer and eventually will need quite a lot of health care from the NHS, and that’s obviously going to damage the economies of all the world, really. Global aging will dramatically alter the way that societies and economies work, and exactly that. You have to look at society. Societies might start resenting the fact that older people are taking away money that could be used on people who’ve got a lot longer to live. And here’s an expression that talks about that: “The aging population causes problems such as a dearth of workers”. So too many workers because we’re all getting older and not retiring. Strange pension systems because where is the government pension coming from when we’ve got fewer people working and overburdened health care systems. And then another thing: some people automatically assume that young people have more right to treatment than the elderly, as the elderly have already had a good innings, and “a good innings” is a cricket idiom, really. It just means they’ve been around for a long time. And I don’t know what you think about that, Steve.
Steve: It’s interesting, isn’t it? It’s, this is very similar to the sort of problems that we used to have to write about when we were at school, where you have perhaps a people in the boat and the boat is sinking very slowly, so the only way to stop it sinking is to ditch some ballast, and the only thing that’s left at the end is people. So you then have to debate whether or not you get rid of the youngest or the largest or the oldest or whatever. So it’s a very similar problem, and that’s just expressing it in slightly different terms.
Andrea: Yes.
Steve: But yes, I certainly agree that global aging is where people are getting older because health care systems are improving, and so people are living longer is actually dramatically affecting the way that governments have to work. It’s interesting that the poorer nations obviously don’t yet have this problem, but they’re going to have this problem. And the way that the poorer—and perhaps this is part of the debate the students might want to consider is the way that the poorer nations cope with it is of course, they actually do look after their elderly within the family units. So rather than do as perhaps we do over here and have specialists, care homes for people with Parkinson’s disease or other debilitating diseases, and in those countries they can’t afford that luxury.
Andrea:Yes.
Steve: So they’re looked after by their families.
Andrea: I agree. I get students in the class who are horrified by the fact that we don’t look after our elderly. They are put into homes. They think that their elderly—well, our elderly—elderly people teach us lots. They’ve got life experience. And anyway, they’re family, so of course, you should look after them. That’s your duty.
Steve:Yes.
Andrea: Okay. The next topic is crime, and “There is a saying in Britain that life should mean life”—and what we call life is being put in prison for twenty-five years. Some people think it shouldn’t be twenty-five years. It actually should be life. And that’s the meaning of the saying. “To what extent do you agree that a life sentence should be for life?” And this has been in the news quite a lot recently because of two episodes which bring to mind the two radical Muslims who shot a soldier and, of course, really upset the British society. And they actually have been given life. And then there was another girl who had mental health problems, and she shot and killed quite a few of her friends. And she was also given life because, quite often in Britain, a life doesn’t mean life. People are out after a few years, with good behaviour, etc. But these, especially in these two cases, these people really have got life. People, what a lot of people think is that prison has no value. What’s the point of sending criminals to prison, really? What do they learn in prison? They’re only mixing with people who are like-minded, and so they might come out even more socially unadjusted, I suppose you could say. But this article actually says that prisoners would rather go to jail because community service is actually quite demanding. There’s another article in The Independent, again about “life means life”, and this is actually about those people I was telling you about, the girl who shot all her friends and the radical Muslim who killed a soldier with the help of one of his friends.
“Some people also believe that young adults turn to crime because they have no hope for the future. Others say that people turn to crime for survival. Discuss both these views and give your opinion.” And again some more websites to give you ideas: The Telegraph with law and order: “A generation of young people could turn to crime as jobs go or please. Or a site called historylearningsite.co.uk, which says “Why do people commit crime?” I’ve pulled out some expressions from these articles, and one of which is what a lot of probably right-wing people—and maybe even nowadays, the more we promote social politics in this as well—some people think that spending all day in the cell is a soft option. So there you’ve got a nice collocation, “a soft option”. So you can throw that in, and then you also learn about “spending all day in the cell”, and that means, really, that people in prison don’t really do much except lie around. They might play games, they might learn this, they might do that, but life actually in prison is not very hard, and that’s what a lot of, I think, parts of society thinks today. Another expression is “Community programs can achieve many more positive outcomes in prison as they force people to understand the impact of their actions”. So that’s why some people promote community programs. They would like—and you have to talk to people who’ve actually participated, I think—to introduce the victims of the crime to the people who committed the crime, and then hopefully it makes these criminals think about the damage they’ve done to the people that they carried out the crime on. There’s also a generation of young people who do not see much hope for future job prospects, and these people are also likely to turn to crime. So that’s quite a nice collocation, “to turn to crime”, “future job prospects”, and “a generation of young people who do not see much hope”. And I think, yes, sometimes young people have just got to, they steal to survive, really, and then is that, do you think that’s something that’s wrong? I don’t know what you think, Steve.
Steve:Yes, there’s been a lot of debate about it in the last maybe decade or so, where there is a school of thought that says that people can, people who commit crimes, some of them are coming from impoverished backgrounds. In fact, if you remember Tony Blair’s government, before they got in, they came out with a mantra, which was “Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime”, and the causes of crime in the Labour view was the social deprivation which then caused crime to flourish. And of course, if you talk to a right-wing person, the causes of crime are the influences of parents who already turned to crime. So their argument is you put the people in jail, and it stops it at that point. So clearly, there’s two different views, which could even use the same mantra if they wanted to, but it’s certainly an ongoing debate. There’s certainly a debate we have with how likely prison is to stop people turning to crime, and equally, the longer-sentences issue that you describe earlier, where there is a school of thought that says “If you have sentences that are too long, then they, the prisoners, are never going to change their ways because there is no incentive for them to do that”.
Andrea: Yes, exactly. That’s like the Great Train robber, isn’t it?
Steve:Yes.
Andrea:He just died as well. He had no choice.
Steve:Ronnie Biggs, yes.
Andrea: And the other, the Moors murderer as well.
Steve: Yes.
Andrea:Yes, and neither of those have the chance to change their ways of life, really, did they? Okay. Another topic is health, and health’s one that they really love and that’s also always in the news. And the one that people love to talk about at the moment is childhood obesity, which is on the rise. What do you think, what the causes are, and how can we solve the problem? And here are a couple of websites that give you your ideas and expressions again. So weightlossresources.co.uk, and that’s about children and childhood obesity. And there’s another one with the bbc.co.uk, and in their news magazine, there’s an article on childhood obesity. Another topic about health, but there are —you really have to sit down and think what the examiner might ask you about health because there are lots of variations, and it’s actually, I think, quite a typical topic. “Some people believe that health care should be free. Others say that the NHS is the burden on the taxpayer. Discuss both views and offer your own opinion.” Here are some websites to give you ideas and useful expressions. So again, theguardian.com, health-care network, and health care reform first steps, and the bbc.co.uk. And they’ve done a news article on just this topic. Some expressions from either of these articles: “Obesity currently costs the country 2 billion pounds annually and shortens lives by nine years”. So here, you see there, there are a couple of nice collocations, really, so “cost of country annually” and “shortens lives by”. Remember always the preposition because you lose marks for your wrong preposition. Another expression, “there’s been an alarming rise”. That’s a nice collocation as well. “In a number of children diagnosed with diabetes as a result of childhood obesity”, and of course, “childhood obesity” is a collocation, and it’s a topic that many people are talking about. Health-care reform is an international challenge, and of course, nowadays, it is, because all over the world, health care, I think, is mainly getting better, and it becomes a challenge to pay for it. So, Steve, what do you think are some of the causes of childhood obesity?
Steve:Child obesity. I guess, the view I have is that, and this is me with a, basically a scientific engineering background, is that energy in and energy out are related. So the more energy put in in the form of fizzy drinks, sugars, fats, then, and if you don’t do as much exercise to expend that energy, then that energy has to go somewhere, and your body doesn’t pass it straight out. So therefore, it tends to lie on the body. Certainly you don’t see that many obese athletes. By large, athletes tend to be, to hold a low level of fat on their body. They also tend to have a slightly more complex diet, where their body is having to work to extract energy as well, so they tend to eat what is, in essence, a lot more healthy. Interestingly, the extremely poor countries, very often you don’t see obese people because they can’t afford to be obese.
Andrea: Yes.
Steve:Because they can’t afford to get the bad foods, if you like, which are causing obesity. And they do have an active lifestyle because they cannot drive to work. They have to walk. They have to cycle. So therefore, they have a more active lifestyle. So what you’re seeing is that obesity is almost a curse of being, a curse which arises as a result of being a wealthy nation. But it’s also a lot deeper than that, and of course, that’s what these sorts of questions are begging students to answer.
Andrea: You were right, though, there, because it has also to do with culture. In some cultures, it’s better to have fat, fat, shall we say fat on you, because that shows actually that you are quite well off. Or just some people like curvy bodies. So there’s different cultural reasons too. I don’t know what you think about, people often say, “Oh, it’s in my genes”, because that doesn’t seem to go with what you were saying, or they say, “Oh, I’ve got heavy bones”.
Steve:Well, the only experience I’ve had is watching documentaries on television, which, of course, is one of the aspects that you recommend—
Andrea:Yes, I do.
Steve: That the IELTS students do, where they very much—in fact, I’ve seen three different documentaries. Each one of them basically concludes that there is no such thing as a genetic predisposition towards weight. So you don’t get heavy bones or whatever. It’s actually the bad eating and bad lifestyle. It’s a combination of both.
Andrea: Which they are not, might be inherited from your parents.
Steve:Yes, it is.
Andrea:Even if it’s not in your genes.
Steve:And as a result of your background.
Andrea: Yes.
Steve:And all sorts there.
Andrea:Yes. Okay. And the next topic is space. This doesn’t come up very often, but it’s good to think about it because if it does, then you’ll at least have some ideas on it. So people say we should not spend money on space research when there are people who are hungry on earth. Do you agree with this statement? And again, websites to give you ideas and useful expressions: news.discovery.com and space, history of space, and space exploration cost can be found in that article. Or nasa.gov and missions and solar systems and why we spend money on space.
Steve: Well, I guess with a topic like that, it’s very tempting to see the many, many billions of dollars, normally US dollars, but also Russian rubles, which have been spent, and Chinese money being spent on space when there are so many people, even within their own countries, who are very, very poor and malnourished and have poor health. I think, what these questions are looking to students to do is to highlight the benefits as well as the negatives. So you know, it’s contrasting, what are the benefits and what are the negatives, and draw a conclusion. I guess, in IELTS, as you’ve said before, then what you’re looking for, what the examiners are looking for is a student who’s able to present a coherent argument and then conclude.
Andrea:Yes, exactly, exactly. And then another topic from the same thing is, is there life on Mars? Some people believe that there is life on other planets apart from earth. Do you agree or disagree? And again, you could read something like spaceplace.nasa.gov, which is a review of the solar system and life on Mars. Or science.howstuffworks.com, and that talks about aliens, UFOs, and extraterrestrials. And an expression I pulled out for you to think about here is “scientists have not yet found any solid proof”—so “solid proof” is a nice collocation—“that life actually existed on Mars, but they have found evidence that the planet could have been inhabited or could have been habitable”. I don’t know. What do you think about life on Mars?
Steve:To be honest, it depends on how you’re defining “life”. If you’re defining “life” as being humans, humanoid-type people or even animals, then currently, they haven’t found any examples of those on other planets. But given that even within our own Earth, in the deep depths of the oceans and in the, even going into layers approaching the very, very hottest parts of volcanoes and geothermal areas, they’re finding bacteria that are surviving in those areas. So given that if you treat bacteria as being life of some description, then it’s more likely that you’re going to find that on other planets.
Andrea:Yes.
Steve:But I think, if you think a bit purely, if you narrow your focus and think of purely in the way that we think of humans and animals, then I think, at the moment, there’s no evidence to suggest that there is elsewhere.
Andrea: Okay. Well, I think that’s been interesting, hasn’t it? Those are all the topics I’ve got today. Of course, there are many, many more topics which the examiner might ask us to discuss, and there’ll be another podcast on those in the future.
Steve:Okay. Well, that’s good. I think, in terms of what we were trying to achieve today—and that’s to introduce topics to students, to get them thinking about it, to get them listening to us debate, and also to think about how they would want to debate—I think we’ve achieved what we set out to achieve. In terms of what’s happening going forwards, the next podcast is going to be a piece of student task 2 writing. You recall in episode 15 of this IELTS Test Prepcast, then Andrea had gone through a whole load of typical student errors, and what we’ll be doing is we’ll be taking a piece of student task 2 writing, and Andrea will be critiquing it in light of those typical student errors. So until next time, thank you very much.
Andrea:See you soon.
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