IELTS L2 | Speaking | People | Relationships, emotions

A. Relationships
Family Friends Others:
- Talk about your family - Talk about your best friends - Neighbours
- Talk about your relationship with your - Social media and friendship: - Teachers
siblings make friends online - Classmates
- Talk about family reunions/ occasions - Co-workers

1. Family and relatives

Exercise 1: Listen and write down some topic-specific words or phrases that you hear
1. Tell me about your family 2. Who are you most similar to in your family?
Our Spanish friends are always phoning their brothers and sisters. I think family ties in Spain are
much stronger than here.
There’s a close bond between Rushda and her aunt. [relationship or feeling of togetherness]

Exercise 2: Tell me about your family

Are you a close family? Do you get on well with other members of your family?
How often do you talk to your parents? siblings? What do you do together?
2. Friends
Exercise 3: Study links early friendships with high-quality sibling relationships
Children who experience a rewarding friendship before the birth of a sibling are likely to have a better
relationship with that brother or sister that endures throughout their childhood.
When early friendships are successful, young children get the chance to master sophisticated social
and emotional skills, even more than they do with a parent. When parents relate to a child, they do a
lot of work, figuring out what the child needs and then accomodating those needs. However, this is
not usually the case when two children are interacting.
The research showed that the benefits of early friendship are long-lasting. Children who as
preschoolers were able to coordinate play with a friend, manage conflicts and keep an interaction
positive in tone were most likely as teenagers to avoid the negative sibling interaction that can launch
children on a path of anti-social behavior. From birth, parents can nurture and help develop these
social competecies and skills by making eye contact with their babies, offering toys and playing with
them.
Match the words to the following definitions
1. help someone/ something develop and grow …………………………………………..
2. agreeing to a demand …………………………………….
3. respond to somebody …………………………………….
4. giving a lot of pleasure …………………………………….
5. communication …………………………………….
6. continue to exist for a long time …………………………………..
7. organize the different parts of an activity and the people involved in it ………………………………..
8. abilities ………………………………
Question: Do you agree that children with good friends from childhood will have good
relationships with their siblings?
3. Phrases and idioms for relationships
Verbs: start, build, establish, develop, maintain, foster, nurture, cherish, invest in a relationship
>< destroy, ruin /ru:in/ a relationship
Dishonesty can ruin a friendship. Lack of trust destroys many relationships.
break up, seperate, split
Their marriage has broken up.
He separated from his wife after 20 years of marriage.
The singer split with his wife last June.
Lily and I get on well (with each other). [have a good relationship]
My sister and I are brutally different. We have nothing in common >< have a lot in common
Jack and Amelia don’t see eye to eye. [often argue/disagree] My father and I don’t see eye to eye
on most things. [have different opinions on things]
My brother fell out with my father again. I couldn’t stand it. [disagree, fight] >< fall in love
Let’s try and make it up. [be friends again after a row/quarrel]
He’s dating a Spanish girl. They’ve been seeing each other for a couple of months. [meeting and
spending time together]
Jack and his sister have been on bad terms for a long time. >< on good terms
Our marriage has had its ups and downs, but basically, we’re OK. [had good and bad times]

B. Emotions
- Speaking with enthusiasm, express your feelings
- Describe a time when you felt happy >< sad, angry,
disappointed, in a hurry, etc.

1) People and feelings

We use emotion and feeling(s) for something which someone feels strongly about, e.g. love,
hate or anger.
Emotions are part of our character, e.g. Timo is a very emotional person >< calm, even-tempered
Feeling is often plural, e.g. She doesn’t like talking about her feelings

My friend Julie is an expressive person. She is very good at expressing her feelings. Sometimes,
you can read her like a book.

Some men are just not very expressive. Some men, I reckon, it’s not that we don’t how to express
our feelings, it’s just that we don’t always know how we actually feel! We don’t spend a lot of time
thinking about feelings and analysing them. We just are!

I’m not usually a very emotional person, but when we walk around these schools and see the joy in
the faces, it hits home.

She’s obviously an emotional person and leads with her heart and cares a lot about the people in
her life, especially her family, even if it’s hard to express that sometimes.

To have mood swings = your mood changes a lot (negative)

To be on an emotional roller coaster = to be experiencing lots of different emotions (negative)
2) Positive feelings
a. Desire
- have a (strong/ burning) desire to do something/ for something
- have a craving for/ have a thirst for something
- long for / yearn for
- look forward to doing something (mong đợi, nóng lòng muốn làm gì) >< dread (sợ)
I’m looking forward to hearing from you.
I have a strong desire to see the Himalayas before I die.
Look forward to means think about something in the future with pleasant anticipation. The opposite
is dread, which is rather strong. I’m looking forward to going to Fiji but I’m dreading the long flight.
After this long, cold winter, I’m longing for spring.
Pregnant women crave / have a craving for strange things like tuna and banana pizza!
Young children often seem to thirst / have a thirst for knowledge.
b. Pleasure and happiness
I was glad/ pleased / delighted/ joyful to hear you’re getting married!
He’s very content with his life. (= satisfied with)
She was so thrilled/ elated when she got a job with a TV company. She’s always wanted to work in
the media. [how you feel when something extremely exciting and pleasing happens]
I felt inspired after the concert. I’ve decided to take piano lessons (= stimulated)
I’m really grateful to you for helping me with my project.
*Idioms about feeling happy:
My daughter has just had a baby girl. We’re thrilled to bits at the news.
I feel on top of the world. It’s great to have a job again.
I’ve been floating on air ever since I heard I got into drama school.
I was over the moon when you scored the winning goal?
I take problems with a pinch of salt = I don’t worry too much
Exercise 4: Describe a time when you felt happy about something
c. Interests
- to be (completely) interested in something
Exercise 5: Describe something that you enjoy doing
You should say:
What it is
Where and when you do it
How often do you do it
And explain why you like doing it

3) Negative feelings
a. Sadness
I don’t want any dinner, I am not in the mood, leave me alone.
You’re looking a bit down/ blue today. Anything wrong?
to feel down in the dumps = to feel sad
I feel out of sorts = I don’t feel comfortable or happy
The argument I had with Eva the other night really upset me.
I felt disappointed when I didn’t get the job.
He always looks so miserable and never seems to smile!
I was devastated when I heard of the death of a good friend of mine. [very shocked and upset] The
news was distressing. I felt distressed.
Depression is considered an illness in some severe cases.
I felt depressed after having ten job interviews and not getting a job.
b. Anger
- annoyed = irritated [slightly angry] furious [very angry]
He was beginning to get very annoyed with me about my carelessness.
His constant joking was beginning to annoy her.
It annoys me when people forget to say thank you.
She was getting more and more irritated at his comments.
Her comments gave me an intense feeling of irritation.
I was furious with the waiter. The service was slow and he spilt coffee over my shirt.
- keep >< lose someone’s temper
I struggle to keep my temper with the kids when they misbehave.
- to be fed up with / sick and tired of
I’m fed up with Olivia's rudeness, and sick (and tired) of her bad behaviour.
Exercise 6: Write true sentences about yourself
1. I feel irritated whenever …… 2. I feel thrilled when….. 3. I feel excited when….
4. I feel down in the dumps when…. 5. I’m fed up with … 6. I’m furious when …
c. Hatred
- Loathe = detest = despise = cannot stand = cannot bear = very dislike = hate + N/ V-ing
I loathe / detest / despise / can’t stand / can’t bear bad-mannered people.
I can’t bear listening to her stupid stories
Exercise 7:
1 I was feeling (quite / absolutely) ……………………………… because she had not phoned to say
she had arrived safely.
2 I am (quite / absolutely) ……………………………… of her selfish behaviour. I’ve had enough!
3 It’s all so complicated. I feel (a bit / quite) ……………………………… Can you help me?
4 I was (absolutely / a bit) ……………………………… when I heard the wonderful news!
5 It made me feel (quite / a bit) ……………………………… that I still couldn’t play any songs after six
weeks of guitar lessons.
6 You always seem so (absolutely / quite) ……………………………… with life. How lucky you are!

Homework 1: Describe a time when you felt extremely ...........................

Homework 2: Describe a very difficult task that you succeeded in doing as part of your study
You should say:
• what task you did
• why this task was very difficult
• how you worked on this task
and explain how you felt when you had successfully completed this task.
Homework 3:
Why being bored is stimulating – and useful, too
This most common of emotions is turning out to be more interesting than we thought
A We all know how it feels – it’s impossible to keep your mind on anything, time stretches out, and all
the things you could do seem equally unlikely to make you feel better. But defining boredom so that it
can be studied in the lab has proved difficult. For a start, it can include a lot of other mental states,
such as frustration, apathy, depression and indifference. There isn’t even agreement over whether
boredom is always a low-energy, flat kind of emotion or whether feeling agitated and restless
counts as boredom, too. In his book, Boredom: A Lively History, Peter Toohey at the University of
Calgary, Canada, compares it to disgust – an emotion that motivates us to stay away from certain
situations. ‘If disgust protects humans from infection, boredom may protect them from “infectious”
social situations,’ he suggests.
B By asking people about their experiences of boredom, Thomas Goetz and his team at the
University of Konstanz in Germany have recently identified five distinct types: indifferent, calibrating,
searching, reactant and apathetic. These can be plotted on two axes – one running left to right, which
measures low to high arousal, and the other from top to bottom, which measures how positive or
negative the feeling is. Intriguingly, Goetz has found that while people experience all kinds of
boredom, they tend to specialise in one. Of the five types, the most damaging is ‘reactant’ boredom
with its explosive combination of high arousal and negative emotion. The most useful is what Goetz
calls ‘indifferent’ boredom: someone isn’t engaged in anything satisfying but still feels relaxed and
calm. However, it remains to be seen whether there are any character traits that predict the kind of
boredom each of us might be prone to.
C Psychologist Sandi Mann at the University of Central Lancashire, UK, goes further. ‘All emotions
are there for a reason, including boredom,’ she says. Mann has found that being bored makes us
more creative. ‘We’re all afraid of being bored but in actual fact it can lead to all kinds of amazing
things,’ she says. In experiments published last year, Mann found that people who had been made to
feel bored by copying numbers out of the phone book for 15 minutes came up with more creative
ideas about how to use a polystyrene cup than a control group. Mann concluded that a passive,
boring activity is best for creativity because it allows the mind to wander. In fact, she goes so far as to
suggest that we should seek out more boredom in our lives.
D Psychologist John Eastwood at York University in Toronto, Canada, isn’t convinced. ‘If you are in a
state of mind-wandering you are not bored,’ he says. ‘In my view, by definition boredom is an
undesirable state.’ That doesn’t necessarily mean that it isn’t adaptive, he adds. ‘Pain is adaptive – if
we didn’t have physical pain, bad things would happen to us. Does that mean that we should actively
cause pain? No. But even if boredom has evolved to help us survive, it can still be toxic if allowed to
fester.’ For Eastwood, the central feature of boredom is a failure to put our ‘attention system’ into
gear. This causes an inability to focus on anything, which makes time seem to go painfully slowly.
What’s more, your efforts to improve the situation can end up making you feel worse. ‘People try to
connect with the world and if they are not successful there’s that frustration and irritability,’ he says.
Perhaps most worryingly, says Eastwood, repeatedly failing to engage attention can lead to state
where we don’t know what to do any more, and no longer care.
E Eastwood’s team is now trying to explore why the attention system fails. It’s early days but they
think that at least some of it comes down to personality. Boredom proneness has been linked with a
variety of traits. People who are motivated by pleasure seem to suffer particularly badly. Other
personality traits, such as curiosity, are associated with a high boredom threshold. More evidence
that boredom has detrimental effects comes from studies of people who are more or less prone to
boredom. It seems those who bore easily face poorer prospects in education, their career and even
life in general. But of course, boredom itself cannot kill – it’s the things we do to deal with it that may
put us in danger. What can we do to alleviate it before it comes to that? Goetz’s group has one
suggestion. Working with teenagers, they found that those who ‘approach’ a boring situation – in
other words, see that it’s boring and get stuck in anyway – report less boredom than those who
try to avoid it by using snacks, TV or social media for distraction.
F Psychologist Francoise Wemelsfelder speculates that our over-connected lifestyles might even be a
new source of boredom. ‘In modern human society there is a lot of overstimulation but still a lot of
problems finding meaning,’ she says. So instead of seeking yet more mental stimulation, perhaps we
should leave our phones alone, and use boredom to motivate us to engage with the world in a more
meaningful way.
Questions 20-23. Match each person with the correct idea, A-E.
20 Peter Toohey
21 Thomas Goetz
22 John Eastwood
23 Francoise Wemelsfelder
List of Ideas
A The way we live today may encourage boredom.
B One sort of boredom is worse than all the others.
C Levels of boredom may fall in the future.
D Trying to cope with boredom can increase its negative effects.
E Boredom may encourage us to avoid an unpleasant experience

Questions 24-26. Complete the summary below.

Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.

Responses to boredom
For John Eastwood, the central feature of boredom is that people cannot 24……………………………,
due to a failure in what he calls the ‘attention system’, and as a result they become frustrated and
irritable. His team suggests that those for whom 25……………………….. is an important aim in life
may have problems in coping with boredom, whereas those who have the characteristic of
26……………………….. can generally cope with it.