IELTS Energy 1493: Mistakes You Make With “High” and “Tall”
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This is an IELTS Energy Podcast, Episode 1493, Mistakes You Make with High and Tall.

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 forward slash my score. There are very big differences between the adjectives tall and high, and students make mistakes with these basic adjectives all the time on IELTS. Listen today so you don't make these errors on your next IELTS exam.

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Aubrey, are you a tall person? I'm not that tall. I'm like 5'5". I think you're a couple inches taller than me, right, Jess? I'm 5'7". But you present like a taller person. Thank you. I thought you were taller than me, honestly. That's really funny. I know. I thought Lindsay was taller than me. And then I discovered she's not. But close. We're about the same height.

So what if I described a person as being high? Is that the same as being tall? No, that would mean they're on drugs. Very different, right? It's a very different meaning.

So imagine guys, what if you were to describe your very tall brother on the IELTS exam and you're like, my brother is extremely high. That would be bad. And we don't want you to make those mistakes. So today we're explaining the difference between tall and high. Yes, we see students, we hear students make mistakes with this quite often because it is a little tricky knowing whether to say tall or high. And you can't translate directly from your first language. This works differently in a lot of other languages.

I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of languages just have one word. One word. Right? Like I would imagine. But anyway, English has two. So let's get into it. Aubrey, when do we use the word high? Yeah. So we use high when we're talking about vertical distance or elevation, especially impressive vertical distances or elevations, right? And this can be physical space or

Or it can also be figurative. So we can be describing actual heights relative to the ground or relative to sea level. Or we also use this very abstractly, like to say high hopes or high aspirations.

But if you are a student and you read that and you think, okay, impressive vertical distance, you might think, well, why can't I describe a person? Because it's not just like person height, right? It is like distance, meaning like, you know, meters, miles high, for example.

Yeah, and it does get tricky because we would say like, wow, that tree is so tall. But then we'd look up and be like, oh, that branch looks really high up there. So this is a little confusing. I can totally see why students make these mistakes.

Yeah, totally. So let's give some examples with the word "high," and we also have a very cool idiom to teach you with the word "high." Aubrey, what are some sentences we might use on the speaking exam with the word "high"? Yeah, if you're asked about hobbies or things you like to do and you're talking about camping or hiking, you might say, "The mountains are extremely high where I live."

And this is especially tricky because if we're saying buildings, we describe as tall trees. We just, what about mountains? And I have seen sort of a pro tip that if something is wider than it is tall, we also say, hi, I don't know. It's a little tricky. Do you feel like you could say the mountain is tall, Jess, or just the mountain is high?

You know, if I heard a native speaker say the mountain is very tall, I wouldn't think it was a mistake. Right. I think it's acceptable to describe mountains as both high and tall, honestly. Yeah. And this is one of those some physical things like this. And this is what I was looking at this up because I'm like some of these cases. Why? Why is one right and why is not? And it said a general rule is if something is wider than it is tall, often we do say high instead of tall.

Well, that explains why people are tall and not high. I think that is a great rule. Can you repeat that for us, please? What is that great difference between high and tall? If something is wider than it is tall, we'll often instead of saying it's tall, we'll say it's high. So then it's not going to apply to like buildings and trees and people that can't be wider than they are tall. Awesome. I love that tip.

We can also use high figuratively, right? We often describe hopes as being high, like it's a big hope.

We don't say a big hope. We say a high hope. Like, I have high hopes of getting an eight on IELTS. Yes. And this would be useful for speaking as well. Anytime you're saying what you were excited about, I had high hopes for that. Or talk about future hopes, right? I have high hopes that I'm going to finish medical school in two years.

Yeah, totally. Now, task one, where we describe numbers. I have seen students make this mistake and say tall instead of high when they're trying to look for synonyms to describe the highest numbers, right?

Can we use tall there or do we have to say high? No, you have to say like the sales were high, right? If we're talking about numbers, money, all of this type of thing, we never say tall. Tall is a physical description of something that has height. And anytime it's more, you know, figurative, abstract numbers, it's always going to be high.

Yes, exactly. So here's an idiom for you guys, high-minded. If someone is high-minded, it means they have ideas based on very strong moral principles or moral beliefs, like what it means to be happy, what it means to be successful, to be high-minded about something like that. So for example, if you're describing your grandma on the speaking exam, you could say,

my grandmother was or sorry has high-minded ideas of what a good person is it means

she thinks being a good person means you have very strong morals. And her definition of strong morals is very strict. Yeah, this is a great idiom for IELTS speaking. I feel like it does have this little bit of an interesting collocation of like snobby or snooty. Totally. I would most likely describe, you know, I kind of imagine being like they have high-minded ideals and I'm sort of impersonating someone who thinks they're better than others.

I'm so glad you said that. There is judgment in this adjective, right? So I could see using this in IELTS Task 1 general training letter if you're complaining about staff, right? Complaining about bad service on an airplane or something. You could be like,

I regret that your flight attendant was quite high-minded when she was serving us dinner. And then you could say why, give details. I'm not sure what those would be. But it is possible, right, to use this in a complaint letter. Definitely love that.

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Tall. When do we use tall? Yeah. So tall is to describe something that has a greater height, especially compared to average things, other objects, right? So this, when we're talking about people and describing height, we would say this person is tall or taller than someone else. We wouldn't ever say a person is high, like we said, to describe height. Yeah, exactly. And it's

A good tip is if you're wondering whether to say high or tall is that tall describes things that are living like people and trees, for example. Yes, right. And also manmade structures like buildings. Yes. I've seen this mistake, you know, to say the building was very high. And I understand that seems to make sense, but we would describe a building as tall. So, for example, on the speaking exam,

Anytime you're describing statues, if you're traveling, you could say, I couldn't believe how tall the statue was. It had to be at least 13 feet.

Yeah, nice. Or in task one, if you're describing like a nature diagram, right? Maybe the instructions are the chart below shows the heights of three types of trees in the UK in 2004. So a student reading that might just use the word high all the time, right? Would that be correct in that essay?

No, right? If you wrote pine trees were higher than both fir and oak, for example, this is a mistake. Instead, you would want to say maybe pine trees were tallest among all categories.

And it's interesting, we have to use the word heights as the noun because there's no noun for tall. So heights, like my height is 5'7", right? But I can't say I'm 5'7 high. No, I have to say I'm 5'7 inches tall. And this is probably the other thing that really is confusing about these words because height and high are so much more similar and yet they're used so differently.

Ugh, English, I tell ya. This is an awesome episode to share with someone who's studying for IELTS. So if you know anybody that is also studying for IELTS, share this episode, tell them about IELTS Energy. And if you have a question, send us an email, support at allearsenglish.com. Awesome. Thanks, Jess. I'll see you next time. Okay, bye.

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