IELTS Energy 1445: Is “Eve” a Transition Phrase?
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This is an IELTS Energy Podcast, Episode 1445. Is Eve a transition phrase?

Welcome to the IELTS Energy Podcast from All Ears English, downloaded more than 22 million times with former IELTS examiner Jessica Beck and Aubrey Carter, the IELTS whiz. 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. Go to allearsenglish.com

Today you'll learn about the word Eve and you'll also get three time markers, meaning before, that you can use to raise your IELTS scores in speaking and writing.

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when you visit buyatoyota.com. That's B-U-Y-A-T-O-Y-O-T-A.com. Toyota, let's go places. Happy Christmas Eve or Merry Christmas Eve. Aubrey, how are you? Great. I know I watched a British film and they were saying happy Christmas. It was the holiday. They say happy Christmas. I'm like, oh, interesting. But yeah, we usually say Merry Christmas in the States. Yes.

Both are fun. Both are correct, for sure. So since today, this episode is coming out on Christmas Eve, guys, we really ran with this idea of Eve as sort of the theme of today's show. What are we teaching today, Aubrey? We are teaching some amazing vocabulary for IELTS speaking when you want to share that something happened. Or writing.

writing. That's true, right? Because some of these are more formal. And this is something that comes up on speaking and writing. I'm thinking speaking because most of the examples that I wrote were speaking. But yeah, for anything that happened before in the past, you need transition phrases and interesting vocabulary because this is definitely going to come up on IELTS.

else for sure so eve itself is not a transition phrase right um but it does mean the night before so that's why we say christmas eve is the night before christmas and new year's eve is the night before new year's day right so it does have meaning even though we don't use it very often

But guys, like Aubrey said, you do need transition phrases for all over the speaking and writing exam because that's what you're graded on. Even in the task one letter, you need lots of linking phrases. So it's so important to have a wide variety and time markers

are very easy to use on IELTS, right? Anytime you want to say before, you could think about using today's structures. Yes, you're going to learn some great vocabulary today. And don't miss, recently we did an episode, 1393 was called Furthermore, You Need Formal Linking Phrases. We taught some amazing linking phrases there too. So after this episode, scroll up, don't miss that one. Yeah, exactly. And remember to subscribe online

or hit follow on this podcast, guys. If you're watching us on YouTube, hit subscribe because we come out with two amazing episodes every week and we've had so many really nice messages from students, from listeners lately saying that our podcast helped them get the IELTS scores they needed. - Yeah, so thank you for sending those messages. We really appreciate it. It means a lot, makes it feel like it's all worthwhile and definitely hit subscribe so you don't miss any of these great episodes.

So real fast, Aubrey, before we get into these transition phrases that we're teaching today, does your family have any special Christmas Eve traditions? Yes, we do. We always go out for Mexican food. I don't want to cook or clean up. Yes, so we always go to a restaurant and usually a nicer one. There's one called Barrio Queen near where we live. So we go there. It's a little fancier. Delicious. I love Mexican food. That's so cool.

But growing up, our traditions have really changed because growing up, we would always go to my grandma's and she would make oyster soup, which was brought over from where our ancestors came from Europe. And it was, I hated it. That was the oysters that were like green and gray globs in like a white milk soup. It does sound gross. As a child, I dreaded it.

I have let that tradition go. Oh, that's so funny. That does sound disgusting. Well, a tradition that I have kept from my childhood that James and I do, we open one present on Christmas Eve. So we always do that. And then outside of that...

a tradition that I'm really, really proud of our Christmas tradition is we go to this place called the grotto every Christmas and not on Christmas, but you know, like around it during the season. And it's like this Catholic nunnery on this beautiful like mountain. And every Christmas, every night you can go there, you pay this minimal fee and there's lights everywhere. And you walk all around these beautiful paths and there's Christmas lights everywhere. And there's this gorgeous, like,

simple wooden Cathedral where they have a choir concerts like every you know 20 minutes there's a new choir and they're singing and there's a puppet show and like all anyway James sounds magical it is magical because I love Christmas and Christmas is magic to me it always has been even now that I'm like 44 years old

And this place is so magical. And yes, I have a question. Is the Christmas Eve present you open always pajamas? Cause that's what it is for us. It's like you can open a present, but they know it's going to be pajamas. So they're not very excited about it. Well, no, because you could choose. Oh, you know, you get to pick anything under the tree. That's fun. That's fun. James usually chooses a present that like someone else bought him. Cause he wants to save all of my presents for Christmas morning. Um,

but yeah it's like the one you get to open it will be christmas pajamas for you to wear right now

I do almost always get James Christmas pajamas. Okay, let's get into IELTS, Aubrey. So what is the first phrase we're teaching today? Yeah, so the first phrase is way back when, which is very informal, perfect for part one questions. You are likely to be asked about your job, so why not share what you did before? You could say way back when I worked at a newspaper. It was the polar opposite of what I'm doing now.

That's awesome. Yeah, it just means a long time ago, right? Like in the past, a long time ago. That's all it means. Think about how easy that is to put in. And it's a phrase by itself. It introduces an independent clause, okay? Not a subordinate clause. That's tricky because it has that word when in there. So you might think it has to introduce a relative clause or something. It does not. It is a phrase by itself.

And again, it just means a long time ago. That's it. So anytime you're introducing a piece of information from a long time ago, you can say this. Yeah, this would be so great for general task one letters as well. Yeah, totally. To say like way back when service was better than this.

And I love that you're pointing out that grammar because that can be a little tricky. And this is very high level. I don't know that I've ever seen a student use this phrase. No, definitely not. All right. So the next phrase is prior to. What does prior to mean? This is more formal and it just means before something else. So you're going to be sharing a noun after prior to something and then you're sharing what happened before it.

Yeah. So it introduces a subordinate clause. It cannot go before an independent clause, right? So it has to be like prior to noun or prior to verb I N G, which acts as a noun in this, in this sentence. So it could be like prior to living in Portland, uh,

And I spent 10 years in Asia. Right? So notice that it's introducing, it's a subordinate clause and then you have the independent clause after that. Yeah. Or maybe in part three, you're asked about the environment or recycling. You could say, "Prior to the advent of recycling, city dwellers threw everything away and landfills were surely overflowing. Now, a lot of that is sorted and sent to recycling centers." That's a fantastic part three answer. Thank you.

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All right, the last word we're talking about today is previously. It does sound formal, but it could actually be informal as well. Like, I think you could use this adverb anywhere on IELTS, really.

Yeah, it also introduces independent clauses. And I agree, I think it could be used in every part of the speaking exam and definitely on every IELTS essay. This is going to be, it is even useful for academic task one, where if you're describing change over time charts, and you're going to share what the numbers were previously, and you're definitely sharing the dates to make it very clear, but useful all over the exam.

That's a good point, right? Because prior to also is a great one for academic task one. Exactly. So let's show an example of using previously in a part one answer, Aubrey. What could we say? You might say, you know, if you're asked about buying groceries, you could say, "These days, I buy my groceries online with an app. I previously had always gone to the store, but I'm too busy to do that now."

This should be more true for me than it is. Every time I go to the store, I see someone filling someone else's order and here I am shopping. I'm like, why didn't I think to do that? I love going grocery shopping, honestly. I really like going grocery shopping. It is like a chore if you're busy because I usually have to go after work on a Monday night and I'm like, ugh. But I do love going grocery shopping.

Also, like if you buy it on an app, it's more expensive. I'm not going to spend more money. Is it? I haven't really looked into it that much. So there's got to be some kind of fee to make it worth them having staff do it for you, right? Exactly. Yeah, totally. All right. So we can also use a previously in part three, of course, because as we said, it is both formal and informal.

So if you're asked about the reading habits of adults where you live, that is a part three question, by the way, you could say, I wouldn't say that people in my country read a lot. No, unfortunately. Previously, before the internet and such, people read more novels, self-help books, what have you. But sadly, I would not characterize my society as voracious lovers of literature. Yeah.

Oh, man, such great vocabulary in that sample answer. I love voracious to mean just like, often we'll talk about this with hunger for actual food, like you have a voracious appetite, but we totally translate this to a hunger for books and reading. Yeah, totally. I love that.

I can't like read fun vocabulary, like a great sentence or a great phrase like that without giggling. Like I get so delighted with words. We get delighted by the vocabulary. I know. And I also want to point out something really good in this answer. Sometimes it would be weird if you just say, previously people read novels. Now they do this. It really works better to do like Jessica did here to say previously before the internet and such to share like what was different, right? Yeah.

This and not only that, it gives you a chance to give more detail, more interesting facts instead of just like previously this, now this. Yeah. I mean, grammatically, it's complex. So that's impressive. But also for your fluency, like Aubrey said, these structures really add so much detail to what you're saying that it does help your fluency also. So the takeaway today, guys, is learn as many things

transition phrases and time markers as you can because you need to use a wide variety of these to score highly on IELTS speaking and writing. We also have a poll today, don't we? Yes, we want to announce the results of a recent poll. This is the

fun one. Episode 1438, we were teaching you how to lie on IELTS. And we asked the question, have you been kept awake by a neighbor's dog? And 80% of those who answered said, yes, they have. I'm sorry for all of you. And then 20% said no. But I am curious if this is more something where a lot of you, if you haven't been kept awake, then you wouldn't answer. Whereas those who have been are like, yes, I'm answering this poll. That's true, right?

Because otherwise, if your answer is no, you're like, "That's boring." And you just don't answer. Yeah, it just doesn't affect me. I'm not really concerned. Whereas someone who's yes is like, "Oh, I need someone to know that I'm being kept awake." I get it. I mean, there has to be another reason because those stats do not seem correct to me. That seems crazy that 80% of people have been kept awake by a neighbor's dog. I haven't. I've been kept awake by my own dogs. Maybe you can't hear your neighbor's dogs over your own dogs. That's true.

All right, guys. So we have a poll today as well on this episode in Spotify. We're wondering who celebrates Christmas Eve out there. And again, it's...

Not about religion, right? It's, I mean, for a lot of Americans, honestly, it's just a holiday. It's just your traditional holiday. And it really doesn't have a lot to do with religion anymore. So I'm just curious, like culturally, do you celebrate Christmas Eve? So go to Spotify and answer that yes or no. And we will announce the results very soon.

Awesome. Yes. Love it. Love this vocab. Definitely practice answering IELTS questions. Use this in your essays to boost your vocab scores. Very fun, Jessica. All right. I'll see you on Friday. Happy Christmas Eve. Happy Christmas Eve to you. Bye. Thanks for listening to IELTS Energy. Hit subscribe now and don't forget to find your estimated band score at allearsenglish.com slash my score.

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