Hello and welcome to Real Exam English. My name is Trevor.

Today´s topic is travel. Holidays, sunshine, adventure, culture, cocktails by the swimming pool, what´s not to love about travel!

This is a very common topic in English exams, it can come up in any part of the test, speaking, listening, reading or writing so it’s something you need to prepare for beforehand and listening to this podcast will help a lot as will reading about tourism in general in newspapers, magazines, Instagram or wherever. You will need to get yourself some nice expressions, vocabulary and phrasal verbs that you will be able to use in the exam. And basically there are two types of questions relating to travel. Firstly there are personal experience questions such as where you have been and where you would like to go in the future and then there are general travel and tourism questions, regarding the positive and negative effects that travel and tourism have on various people and on things like the environment.

So, in today´s episode we have a few speakers from the UK, we have somebody from South Africa and we have 2 speakers from The United States, so you´ve a good mix of accents to listen to. 

And remember in case you can´t understand everything the speakers say then you can get the transcripts and worksheets to this and every episode on the Real Exam English pages on Facebook or Instagram. 

Also, it´s a good idea to replay each episode twice as in many English exams you get to hear the audio two times, and it´s amazing how much more you pick up the second time around.

Alright then, let’s go with the questions.

Trevor: What is the best region you have visited?

Keith(USA): Where?

Trevor: In the world?

Keith: In the world, gosh, I dunno. Y´know so many different places, so many different places for so many different reasons. Not for nothing, but y´know Ireland is so beautiful, like, when the sun shines there it is like some of the most beautiful country anywhere. I really like the coastline in the west and it´s really stunning to see the ocean and the ……y´know I didn´t know the Atlantic Ocean was blue until I saw the beaches there and I was like woah…look at that.

Trevor: It is saidn that tourism does more harm than good, what do you think?

Keith: I mean certainly there’s a lot of harm that can come from tourism, but I think travel is great and frankly if people were to travel. I can say that for examples here in Montana where people have not travelled very far they can be very sheltered in their perspectives of the world and therefore have a very insulated view on things as compared to those who may have the opportunity to travel an see things from a different perspective. So tourism and travel they kinda have to go together so I don´t totally agree that tourism is destructive. I think if it´s done right it can be a good thing.

Trevor: It is said that because of tourism countries worldwide are becoming similar to each other, what do you think?

Keith: I mean I dunno I entirely agree. Globalisation and commerce is something that makes places more similar. As far as tourism making places the same, I don´t think so, I don´t know how that would be the case really.

Trevor: In the first answer we heard some nice adjectives to describe Ireland, beautiful and stunning. And I TOTALLY agree by the way, go to Ireland, it´s amazing! It´s really essential have a few different words to describe how beautiful something is, because you very often need those types of words in the speaking parts of the exam, as well as in the writing paper, in a review or a letter for example. So other alternatives are spectacular, marvellous, magnificent, breath-taking, jaw-dropping, there´s loads of them, so make sure you learn and practice a few of them for the exam.

In the second answer we heard some great vocabulary such as people being sheltered in the perspectives which means they haven’t been exposed to other perspectives and we also heard they have an insulated view which is basically the same meaning, to be protected from outside influences. So an example would be, As a member of a rich and powerful family, she was insulated from ordinary life.

Trevor: Have you been to many other countries?

Mary(South Africa): Yes, yea I´ve been to many countries in Southern Africa, around South Africa. I´ve been to Namibia, Botswana, Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique, Swaziland, Lesotho and then obviously I´ve travelled quite a bit in South Africa. I´ve travelled in Asia, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore and Burma, or Myanmar. I´ve been to Australia and New Zealand and I´ve been kind of all over Europe I guess. I´ve never been to Russia or South America, I´d love to go. We were in Cuba a couple of years back which was brilliant and I´ve been to America once to California. That´s about it really.

Wow, what a huge list of countries that Mary has been to. I'm completely jealous of her. Umm, just a comment about Mary's answer in terms of an exam context. So it's not really recommended to give a big long list of items. Countries in this case or maybe movies or food, for example, and the reason is you're not really showing much language to the examiner apart from vocabulary. So what you want to do is to put some more structure on your answer. So, for example, Mary could have said something like, uh, well, I've travelled quite extensively in southern Africa. In addition, I've seen quite a bit of Asia. I've been lucky enough to go to Australia and New Zealand too, but there are still a few places I'm dying to go to. For instance, Russia and South America. And that way, OK, you're telling the examiner that you've been to all of these places, but you're putting lots of connectors in there and you're giving the answers some structure, which is what the examiner wants to see because ultimately they don't care where you have. It's about showing them English, you know, so I'm putting the structure on it will get you a few more marks.

Trevor: What place in the world would you most like to visit?

Karen(USA): Uhm…Dubai actually. That was on my bucket list.

Short and sweet answer there from Karen just to comment on this expression, my bucket list. So your bucket list is a list of items that you want to do before you kick the bucket, which is another way of saying dying or passing away. And typically, people have kind of these grand dreams, such as swimming with dolphins, flying to the moon or seeing the pyramids, for example. So let me know what items are on your bucket list.  Remember, you can find us on social media. On Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or YouTube, it's real exam English. And it would be great to find out. Yeah, well, what items make it onto your list

Trevor: What activities do you like to do when you are on holiday?

Paul(UK): Activities? If you could call it an activity I just like to wander around, basically. So, wherever I am I try and just wander Street to Street if I´m in a town, or from village to village or something like that and basically I would say walking is the greatest part of my activity. I´m not a big one any more for cultural activities exactly. I mean, I don´t really go to museums or any of that stuff. I have done in the past but I think I´ve seen enough museums.               

Just to comment on the phrasal verb in this answer, so the sentence was I just like to wander around basically and to wander around means to walk around without any great intention and it's something that you might do maybe if you have some time to kill while you're waiting for somebody, or typically something you do when you're a tourist in an Old Town, perhaps you would wander around and look at the shops and maybe buy an ice cream, something like that. 

Remember you can get the transcripts for this and every episode on the real exam English pages on Facebook or Instagram, and you can also find lots of great grammar exercises there as well as really useful tips on how to prepare for your exam. And if you want information on classes to prepare for your exam, then you can find that there also.

Trevor: What activities do you like to do when you are on holiday?

Ade(UK): When I´m on holiday I always want to know what´s around the next corner. I like to climb mountains and go to the ocean and see a bit of all the country that I´m in. I don´t just want to sit in one place. I´m not one of these people that can sit on a beach and read a book for 2 weeks. So yea…I nearly always will try rent a moped and go off and adventure and see the real off the beaten track aspect of a country, go and see the villages and the places where the real people live.

Trevor: Where would you go if you had a month's holiday and a lot of money?

Ade: I´d probably go to Japan at the moment. Yea…I´ve never been to Japan, I don´t think it´s as expensive as it used to be but I believe it´s still not the cheapest country in the world. I´ve never been and yea it looks beautiful in the north. There´s some real pristine islands that are not really touched that much by civilizations and I´d like to go those regions but also, y´know, to go to Tokyo and the sort of cyberworld, y´know, the real, sort of, futuristic part of Japan and see that as well. Y´know people are sleeping in these little bubbles and shooting around on bullet trains and stuff. I think it´d be interesting to see that polarisation of culture in the same country.

So 2 answers there from Ade who is from Bolton in the north of England. In this first answer he uses this expression off the beaten track. This is a really useful expression to use in your speaking or in your writing when you're talking about travel or tourism. And what off the beaten track means is to travel to places where other tourists don't usually travel to, so it's seen as some someplace more authentic. 

In Ades second answer, he has lots of really good vocabulary in there to describe the different places in Japan. Firstly, he says there are some real pristine islands and pristine means somewhere that's very, very clean and untouched by people. He also refers to Tokyo being a sort of cyber world and being futuristic, and he talks about people sleeping in bubbles and shooting around on bullet trains to shoot around means to travel very quickly and bullet trains are the high speed trains that they have in Japan and he also mentioned that it would be interesting to see the polarisation of culture in the same country. So that's the two different extremes. The very futuristic part, as well as the beautiful pristine islands in the north of the country. So that's the kind of language that you really need to be using at a higher level to impress the examiners rather than words like good or nice or beautiful. You know you need that kind of more advanced language.

Trevor: Do many overseas visitors come to your country?

Lesley(UK): In normal circumstances and in normal life, yes, lots of overseas visitors come to this country and in fact lots of overseas visitors come to this part of the country. So, we`re in a part of the UK called Yorkshire and it´s the most popular tourist area of the whole country. In fact, I read an article yesterday in a newspaper that told me tourism is worth 9 billion pounds to the Yorkshire economy. So you get tourists from all over the world coming to this part and it´s becoming quite famous. And so a sight you would see nowadays that you may never have seen, even…I don´t know, 8 or 10 years ago, there´s quite a lot of Chinese people wandering around York. You would never have really seen that a while ago, but it´s much more on the map now for international tourists.

This was recorded during lockdown for COVID and for that reason at the beginning the speaker refers to normal circumstances and normal life, and what I really like about this answer. Well, there's two things really. Firstly, it is very well structured with connectors such as so, in fact and but and also there are two really good modal verbs to describe past situations. The first one is you may never have seen this eight or ten years ago and the second one is you would never have really seen that a while ago. 

So if you're doing a Cambridge first certificate or advanced, then you'll be familiar with these because uh, you'll need to use modal verbs in the past. In part four of the use of English, and also probably in Part 2 of the speaking where you have to speculate about what has happened in the photographs and of course you can get this into your writing as well. And in IELTS you can get it into your writing and maybe part three of your speaking and I suppose the main thing to bear in mind is that anytime you're speculating in the past with a modal verb like may, could, might, would, could, any of these, then they have to be followed by have and then the past participle. So I would never have seen it. Or you may never have done it in the past. It's something that's really easy to use and if you get it right you will impress the examiner. 

That's more or less it for today's episode. Uh, so just have a a quick recap before your exam. It's worth thinking about the best as well as the worst places that you have visited. You need to also have a think about the positive and negative effects of tourism on people as well as on the environment. You're going to need some nice descriptive vocabulary and a few travel idioms would be very helpful as well. OK, so if you have all of those things, you should be prepared to give some nice answers in the exam. OK, then. Thank you very much for listening. I would be really grateful if you can leave a comment on iTunes, Spotify, or whatever podcast player you use. And I hope to see you next time. OK. All the best, Trevor.