Forgive me, I actually have to read my text. So celebrity chefs. There have always been celebrity chefs whose skill and creativity made them famous. But the passage of time usually means we know little more about them than their names. From ancient Greece and Rome, there's only one cookbook that survives in full that attributed to the Roman cook, Apesius, which dates actually from the end of the Roman Empire. I'm going to talk about the Western world. But I should point out that there were famous chefs in many places and periods, notably in the spectacular gastronomic cultures of the Islamic Caliphate of Baghdad, the Ottoman Empire, and Tang, Song, and Ming, China. But to begin with the Greeks, a chef named Miticus of Syracuse is mentioned by Plato and according to the Sophist Maximus of Tyre, Miticus was as great in the art of cookery as Phidius in sculpture. And since Phidius was the most famous sculptor of the ancient world, this is high praise indeed. Yet we have only one recipe attributed to Miticus that we know of. And I'll read it to you because it's really short. How to make ribbon fish. One, cut off the head of a ribbon fish. Two, wash and cut in slices. Three, pour cheese and oil over it and cook. So this is a little disappointing. We're told by Atheneus, the most accomplished gourmand of the classical world, that a certain glaucus of locre invented an excellent sauce called hisophagma. But we have no other information about this guy. Atheneus says that the sauce was made with fried blood, honey, milk, cheese, herbs, and sylphium. Sylphium was a sharp and sour tasting plant that grew in North Africa, a favorite condiment to the ancient world. And I put this in the past tense because it became extinct. It was so sought after. Legend has it that the Roman emperor Nero publicly consumed the last sylphium ever foraged. The first renowned chef in the Western world whose life we know something about is Guillaume Tyrell, known as Tyavan, who lived from about 1310 to 1395. He was chef to two kings of France, and he qualifies as an undoubted celebrity. King Charles V bestowed on him a knighthood and a coat of arms here depicted from his brass tomb cover. And on this tomb, Tyavan is dressed as a knight in armor and a sword, flanked by his first and second wife, not simultaneously. One died. Notice the dog at his feet and at the feet of the wife on his left. You can see that his coat of arms consists of two groups of three roses, top and bottom, with three stew pots along the center of the field. As symbols of chivalry, the pots may seem to imply contempt or amusement, but they remind the viewer that the chef was honored for his craft. At any rate, Tyavan, who designed his own tombstone, was quite pleased with this heraldic device. Tyavan was part author of a medieval cookbook known as the Viandier, which consisted of recipes from before Tyavan was born, but to which he seems to have added. The oldest version of the Viandier is this 15th century parchment scroll in the Cantona Library of the Valais in Sion, Switzerland. And there are over 150 cookbook manuscripts, from the 13th through 15th century, many of them still unedited. Nothing is further from reality than the Hollywood image of crude medieval dining in films such as Beckett, well, any number of films, where haunches of roasted meat are torn apart without regard for manners or ceremony. In fact, medieval cuisine was complicated, pecanth, subtle, and served according to very elaborate rules. So, for example, there are several medieval handbooks of carving, just of carving instructions, one of which from England in the 15th century is so finicky that it matches particular verbs to each cut-up fish or animal.  And if you make a mistake in this terminology, you've shown your ignorance. All authorities agree, by the way, that crab is the hardest. According to an experienced household manager named John Russell, writing in the 16th century, crab is a slut to carve. Medieval chefs loved trompe-loy. Meatballs glazed with parsley sauce to look like green apples, or cooked animals that appear to be alive, as with this pheasant, made according to a recipe of thievon, in which the feathers and skin are carefully sewn back onto the roasted bird. They also had a ponderous sense of humor. Here is another dish of thievons called coque au mai, helmeted rooster, in which the rooster is mounted on a suckling, glazed suckling pig. The renowned chefs of the Middle Ages, Renaissance and Baroque eras, were in the employ of great noblemen or princes. And they put on amazing banquets, and we have very few records of them worrying about any sort of financial bottom line. That doesn't mean they weren't free of stress. Francois Vattel committed suicide when the fish failed to arrive at Chantilly for a banquet celebrating a visit from King Louis XIV. But actually, he was not a chef, as much as a household official of the France de Condes. He had some other problems as well. But his fate has become a legend, emblematic of the pressures under which chefs operate. And you all know, I think, the tragic suicide of Bernard de Loisot in 2003, caused supposedly by his apprehension that the Guide Michelin would take away his three-star ranking. Chefs of this era also had to put up with annoying interventions from their employers. This painting of the Albright Knox Gallery in Buffalo, New York, is entitled The Marvelous Sauce by a painter named Jean-Georges Vibère. And it shows a cardinal instructing his dubious and harassed-looking chef in How to Make a Sauce. All of these irritations notwithstanding, there was a lot of fun and excitement. Just random example of many possibilities. A rather modest dinner served in 1524 during Lent to 24 guests at the court of the Duke of Ferrara in Italy included three courses, each with 45 dishes. 30 of them, the first two courses, were made with sturgeon. The head cooked in white sauce with pomegranate seeds. Sturgeon meatballs in sauce served on bread. Sturgeon slices in pistachio sauce. Sturgeon pies. Sturgeon with cherries and dates. Caviar. Sturgeon pasta fried with oranges. Sturgeon tripe on bread, and so forth. The author of this meal, a chef named Giovanni Battista Rossetti, was greatly admired in his time. Perhaps the most significant divide in the history of chefs and their fame is before and after the invention of the restaurant. Until the late 18th century, when restaurants were first established in Paris, great chefs cooked for ecclesiastical, aristocratic, or princely employers. The leading chef of the 19th century, here, Marie-Antonin Corème, followed this older career mode. He ran the kitchens of the Prince Talleyrand, the Prince Regent of England, the Baron de Rothschild, and was offered a job by the Russian czar, which he refused. Corème was certainly a celebrity chef, but he was also the last to spend his entire career in the employ of private individuals. He was famous because of his definitive published recipes, but few people had an opportunity to sample his cooking. Contrast with the experiences of another authoritative French chef, Auguste Escoffier, whose career closes the 19th and opens the 20th century. Escoffier collaborated with César Ritz, manager of the Savoy in London, and the Ritz Hotel in Paris. And then after Ritz had a nervous crisis, Escoffier returned to London as the chef at the Carlton Hotel. On one occasion, Escoffier prepared a dinner for Kaiser Wilhelm II, featuring his creation, Ville Orloff. The German ruler told the chef that while he, Wilhelm II, was emperor of Germany, Escoffier was, quote, the emperor of chefs, unquote. Escoffier cooked a magnificent one-off meal for the Kaiser, but his regular job was for an immense affluent public. Restaurants have allowed chefs to have a large audience. An invention of the 18th century, the restaurant was distinct from a tavern, chop house, in or takeout establishment. All of these have always existed. The restaurant was new because it was a destination, not a convenience. Rather than eating at a crowded board, whatever the landlord set out, you could arrive at a range of possible times, sit at a separate table with your friends, and order from an extensive selection of dishes. Restaurant chefs were no longer dependent on the whims of wealthy patrons. This does not mean, however, that Grand Cuisine as a spectacle was over. 19th century restaurants offered dishes as splendid as those of the Middle Ages, requiring days to prepare, immense cooking skill and decorative ability, such as this game purée on the top and the partridge chartreuse on the bottom. The nature of the meal service and the look of the table setting changed dramatically in the 19th century. The old, so-called French form of service placed the entire first course on the table before the guests entered the dining room. This provided a dazzling spectacle of food on magnificent serving dishes arranged in colorful patterns and shapes. There were only two or three courses for French service, but each one might consist of dozens of dishes. No single diner could try everything, but the meal was convivial in the sense that you depended on neighbors to pass things to you or on footmen standing behind you. In 1805, the first celebrity restaurant critic, Grimoire de la Reignière, ridiculed as excessive the dinners typical of the era before the French Revolution where 60 guests might be served over 120 dishes just for the first course. And for 60 diners, he advocated a frugal 35 dishes, nearly for each of three courses, a modest 115 in total. Who were these people? How could they dine like this? I don't have a good answer for this. The French service was perfected in the setting of the palace while the Russian service came into favor with the advent of the restaurant. Russian service gradually took over between 1830 and 1880, and here there were fewer dishes per course, but many courses. This is what we are familiar with. It meant the table was more decorated because the profusion of food did not itself provide the required grand effect. Flowers, apane, wine glasses, chargers, plates, fish forks, the way he looked of the Victorian era replaced the small plates and minimal table decor of the French service where the food itself provided the beauty. Modernist restaurants have tended to dispense with the starch table cloths and multiple wine glasses look, but now the presentation of the food has become once more highly stylized. From the point of view of the chef, both systems had advantages and disadvantages. The French service meant there was no way for the food to be piping hot, obviating that problem. A huge number of dishes were prepared, but there were only a few courses. In the kitchen, the Russian service meant a constant stream of orders bringing dishes back and forth, and it required lots of waiters and precision timing. The Russian meal service is also either long or rushed. Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York from 1862 until 1892, said he expected a 14 course dinner to take two hours and 20 minutes, 10 minutes per course, but he was quite happy upon request to accelerate the speed to allow eight minutes per course, so the repast might conclude in under two hours, and my original intention was that this would evoke gasps of astonishment, but since Noma is able to do this, maybe not. Now historically, most restaurant chefs were men, while the overwhelming majority of domestic cooking was performed by women. This is a unique profile in which professional and home practitioners have been divided by sex. Some exceptional women did manage to become renowned chefs. The so-called Maire Lyonnaise made the food of Lyon famous and created a self-perpetuating gastronomic culture. In New Orleans, Madame Elizabeth Kettering Begay was the most celebrated chef at the beginning of the 20th century. Of German origin, she mastered the Creole cooking of New Orleans. Her restaurant's main meal service was at 11 o'clock, a version of the German institution known as the second breakfast. Here, intended for the convenience of butchers when they finished their business in the neighboring meat market. Discovered by tourists around 1890, these Bohemian breakfasts, as they were called, became wildly popular and constitute probably the first form of brunch, a particular American passion. Liver with bacons and onions was Madame Begay's most famous dish. Again, maybe a little disappointing. Restaurants have allowed chefs to be creative and to become celebrated, not just for mastery of classic dishes, such as chartreuse of partridge, but as inventors of new things. So, Ranhoffer's lobster à la Nuburg, at Delmonico's, Escoffier's Peshmelba, named after the great opera singer or Jules Alchatorre's Oysters Rockefeller at Antoine's in New Orleans. Of course, there are disadvantages to restaurants. The public is inclined to be unpredictable, fickle, easily bored, heard like, and not always appreciative of quality. And I say this, of course, as a non-chef and member of that public. Restaurants in the 19th and 20th century renowned for their food have not always had famous chefs. Our colleague Alain Sanderin is an exception, but most great Parisian restaurants, such as Taillon to the Tour d'Argent, were known for their proprietors and front-of-the-house managers. Restaurants in the French provinces were more likely to be run by chef owners, such as Fernand Poin of the legendary La Périmide in Vienne or François Bise of the Auberges de Père Bise at Talois. The rise of modern celebrity chefs means a change in the balance between the restaurant as a stage set by its managers, where the chef is literally in the background, and the chef-driven restaurant. The waning of France's traditional dominance over what is defined as Grand Cuisine is a key factor in building a new kind of fame. As long as French cuisine was the international standard, the best chefs were considered master craftsmen, practicing a received skill, a body of knowledge that could be traced back to what Taillavent or the chefs at Versailles learned and later taught. The end of unquestioned French power to define gastronomy for the entire world is perhaps the most significant event in the modern history of restaurants and cuisine. And I say this not as something that I think is a great idea, but just as something that has happened. In 1969, the restaurant guide, authors Henri Goh and Christiane Mio were asked by the American magazine Holiday, what is the greatest restaurant in the world? And they contemptuously dismissed most of the globe, including Italy. Goh said of Italy, I don't have a single exciting memory except for the scampi at Harry's Bar in Venice. For Spain, ordinary and heavy food. For Denmark, they agreed that little children like Danish food a lot. As for the United States, the best restaurants there were French anyway, so why bother? Mulling over about 20 eligible restaurants in France, Goh and Mio came up with a tie for first place between the restaurant of Paul Bocuse and that of Jean-And-Pierre Toigreau. This holiday interview was a last manifestation of the serene assumption of the superiority of French gastronomy before La Nouvelle Cuisine of the 1970s started breaking it apart. As it happens, Goh and Mio both named and championed Nouvelle Cuisine. Goh and Mio were prescient in this article in one observation, particularly, it seems to me. The difference between the Toigreau brothers who in 1969 they said were working for the sake of art within an established tradition and Bocuse who they said was working for glory and whose food was lighter, more playful and creative. Partridge chartreuse to be sure, but Bocuse used juice from the pressed partridges rather than the meat of the bird. Restaurant cuisine and the outlook of chefs would tend to follow the Bocuse example in the next decades and in fact, the Toigreaux themselves took this past as well rather than serving as custodians of an unchanging heritage. This is not to say that chefs suddenly discovered innovation whereas before they had merely followed precedent. Grandmasters of the past like Scappi, La Varene, Carem and Escoffier made earth shaking changes in cuisine. But they replaced one authoritative system with another. What has happened since the 1970s, accelerating, since the 1990s I would say is the fragmentation of authority. The use, the absence of any agreed upon code, whether an old one or a new one. Chefs still influence each other of course, especially with regard to technique, but less in the creation and definition of canonical dishes. What we are seeing in the 21st century is fidelity not to tradition but to ingredients. This is appropriate to a food world undermined by industrial processing, agricultural unsustainability, mass market food and ecological damage. So Alice Waters just as an example. Leading chefs in recent years have tended to see themselves as advocates for a terroir, but they have expanded the definition of basic ingredients found in that locality. To include wild plants or previously ignored varieties, I can't remember how many kinds of horseradish renais says grow in Denmark, but it's over a hundred. Chefs have encouraged the restoration of forgotten breeds of agricultural products and livestock. A chef is not a contemporary artist exactly who can simply do away with traditional techniques and training, but the way is open. It seems to me as an outside observer for more creativity than in the past and that gives chefs more opportunities to achieve artistic and creative status. Yet, as Alex Attila has said, creativity isn't doing something that nobody has ever done before. It's doing the same thing that everybody does, but doing it better. And ideally, there should be a harmony between history and innovation. I hope it's not just banal to conclude my time with you by saying that achieving a creative vision as a chef comes from actual cooking and only secondarily from shaping a personality or taking positions on politics and sustainability. Our theme, what is cooking, represents more than a call to return to the stove, but I think a rejuvenated sense of our surroundings and our history. Thanks so much.


Part two of the IELTS speaking test for a long time has caused a huge number of problems for students, but it doesn't have to be that way. What I'm going to tell you in this video is a little secret that most students don't know about part two of the speaking test and understanding this information will mean the difference between you getting the score that you need and not getting the score that you need. So in this video, I'm going to give you our unique part two IELTS speaking strategy that has helped thousands of our students get the score that they need by understanding what the secret is and then applying a very simple step-by-step strategy that any student can learn and dramatically improve their score. So in this video, what we're going to do is first of all, we're going to look at the top reasons why students find this part of the speaking test so difficult and then share that little secret with you. Then we're going to give you the strategy and finally, we're going to give you practice questions and some samples. So in order to show you all of that, I'm going to jump into my computer and show you everything. Okay, so first what we need to do is we need to look at part two cue cards, particularly the format of those cue cards because this is going to give us the information that we need to understand what the main problems are, what this little secret is and it is also going to help you understand and implement our strategy. So at the start of part two, the examiner will give you a cue card and you'll have one minute to prepare your answer and then you'll be expected to speak for up to two minutes and don't worry, the examiner will stop you when you get to in around two minutes. So at the top of every cue card, there is going to be a main topic. This never changes. And then it says below the main topic, it says you should say, again, this never changes. And then there will be four bullet points. Again, this never changes. So this is a little gift to us because if there are parts of the IELTS test that never change, that means that we can give the examiners exactly what they're looking for because it's very predictable what is going to come up. So we can come up with a predictable solution to these problems. So let's have a look at a sample. So you'll have to speak for around two minutes about the topic below. Describe an interesting movie you watched recently. You should say what genre the movie was, when you saw the movie, what was the movie about and explain why you find the movie interesting. So again, main topic at the top, you should say on four bullet points. So let's look at a reason for failure. There are two main reasons why students fail to do as well as they could. So when I'm talking about failure, I'm talking about a student who should be getting a band seven or a band eight, but they're struggling. They're getting a band six or 6.5, not because their English isn't good enough, but just because they're not using the right system, not using the right strategy. So reason for failure number one, students often run out of things to say. So imagine you get this one and what happens is you talk about what genre the movie was, when you saw it. That's about 20 seconds or 10 seconds. That leaves you with one minute, 50 seconds remaining. What was the movie about? You talk about that for about 20, 30 seconds and then that leaves you with more than a minute to explain why you find the movie interesting. And then you get to that last bullet point and you just run out of things to say. And that affects your fluency, that affects your coherence. And this is the classic thing that many, many examiners see every single day when they are examining is students get to bullet point number four and they still have a lot of time left and the student is like, I don't know what to say. So that is going to dramatically lower your score if you do that. I'm sure many of you let me know in the comments, is that something that you have experienced yourself? So the reason number two for failure is students often get stuck on one or more of the bullet points. So describe an interesting movie you watched recently. What genre the movie was? What does genre mean? I don't know. So then you start getting very stressed out. You start second guessing yourself. You start becoming unsure about what to say. Again, that affects your fluency, that affects your coherence. When you saw the movie, let's say, oh, I can't remember when I saw it. What was the movie about? I've spoken to a lot of students and examined with many, many students who pick a movie or pick the question might be talk about an interesting book and they pick something that they don't really understand or they don't really know what to talk about. I actually did this with a few different students in the past, a question about movies and they were like, I fell asleep. So how are they going to speak about that movie if they were asleep for most of it? Explain why you find that movie interesting. I didn't find it interesting. I find it quite boring. I don't know what to say. So the examiners are looking for your ability to speak for up to two minutes fluently and coherently. And if you are running out of things to say or you find it very difficult to speak about at least one of these bullet points, then you are going to not get the score that you really deserve because you're not doing what the examiners are looking for you to do. So what is this little secret? The secret is you don't have to speak about all four bullet points. You can speak about them if you want to. It's no problem to speak about all four in order. That is absolutely fine, but you do not have to. And this is really important information for you guys because this gives you the freedom to create a different strategy because what your strategy really is at the moment is speak about bullet point number one, then number two, then number three, then number four. And as I've just shown you, that strategy does not work for the vast majority of students. And they are designed, the bullet points are designed to help you, all right? They're designed just to give you ideas to talk about. However, most students believe that they must speak about all of them which doesn't help them, it hinders them. So this is often the case in many areas of the IELTS test where Cambridge are doing something to actually help you but the teacher or the student creates a strategy that hinders them, that doesn't use the help that they are actually giving you. So to repeat this, because many of you, when I tell many of you about this, you're still confused, you don't have to speak about all four bullet points. You can speak about all four of them if you want but you don't have to. So what's the strategy that we use with our students? And this is the same strategy that we share with many of our VIP students and it has led to thousands of them getting the scores that they need and dramatically improving their scores. So the strategy overall 30,000 foot view strategy is that do things that help you to speak for two minutes about the given topic as fluently and as coherently as possible. Why do we use that strategy? Why is that our overall strategy? Because that's what the examiners are looking for. Everything we do at IELTS Advantage is examiner driven. All we do is show our students this is what the examiners are looking for and this is how to give the examiners what they're looking for. We don't give tips and tricks and shortcuts and things like that. We just teach you exactly what the examiners are looking for. So before we give you the step-by-step strategy, you need to avoid anything that prevents you doing this. So anything that stops you speaking for the given topic for up to two minutes as fluently and as coherently as possible for you, you need to avoid these things. So forcing yourself to talk about bullet points you don't know how to talk about. Remember, you don't have to talk about all of them. So if you see one that you don't feel comfortable talking about that one for whatever reason, just skip it, talk about something else. Try to speak about each bullet point for an equal length of time. You need to avoid this. This is one of the worst pieces of advice you could ever give a student because it makes their job so much more difficult because it's impossible to speak about each of the four bullet points for 30 seconds equally each. I can't do that. I've never met another student who could do that. So why would your teacher tell you to do that? It's impossible. Speaking about each bullet point and then having nothing else to say about the two before the two minutes are up. So as we shown you just rushing through four of them and then having like a minute 30 left or using a strategy that is very common online such as PPF which might lead to you answering the question incoherently or running out of things to say. PPF is an example of a tip, a trick, a shortcut. Students love these because it supposedly makes things easier for them in the short run but it leads to a huge amount of failure. So a lot of our VIP students have failed the test multiple times and when they come to us we ask them what have you used before and they say oh we used this PPF method for part two and we say how did you do with that method? And they said well I got a question where I couldn't really think of anything to talk about the past and I couldn't really think of anything for the future. So PPF stands for past, present, future. What happens if you get a question where you cannot talk about the past or you cannot talk about the future? That severely limits your ability to give the examiners what they want. So just because you see a tip or a trick or a shortcut or something that has millions of views on YouTube doesn't mean it is actually going to satisfy the examiners. So what is the examiner looking for? They're judging your ability to speak fluently and coherently for up to two minutes. This also gives them a chance to evaluate the other three criteria. So the first criteria they are thinking about is fluency and coherence but they're also thinking about pronunciation. They're also thinking about grammar and they're also thinking about lexical resource which means vocabulary. So you're speaking for up to two minutes.  So it's extremely important to get this right and students who follow our strategy not only nail fluency and coherence, they do really well in the other three marking criteria because they're just speaking naturally and fluently and giving the examiners what they want. So how do we do this? Number one, make sure you always talk about the main topic. So I've showed you this a couple of times. I'll also show it to you at the end when we give you the sample questions. Make sure you talk about that main topic for the two minutes. Don't deviate from that main topic. Pick the bullet points you feel comfortable talking about. Remember, Cambridge, IELTS are trying to help you with these bullet points. So pick out of the four, which one, two, three or four do you feel very comfortable talking about? What does comfortable mean? Easy, it's easy for you to talk about those things. It's easy for you to think about them. It's easy for you to articulate them. Number three, ignore the rest. If there are one, two, three or even four of the bullet points you don't feel comfortable talking about, ignore them. Feel free to just delete them with a pencil. Choose other things related to the topic that you feel comfortable talking about. So what this does is it gives you the freedom to talk about the main topic in the way that you feel comfortable talking about. So you don't have to use all of these. I'm just giving you examples of other things you could talk about. You could introduce the topic. You could provide details about the topic. You could tell a personal story. You could state how you feel about it. You could talk about the past. You could talk about the future or anything else you feel comfortable talking about related to the main topic. So you're not going to talk about all of these. What I'm doing is I'm giving you a wide range of tools in your toolbox. Because if I just gave you a hammer and a saw and told you to go and build a house, you would not be able to build a house. You need many, many, many different tools in order to build a house. Just like part two, you need a range of different things to talk about in order to talk about them fluently and coherently. So let's have a look. Choose an ad. So describe something you own, which is very important to you. You should say where you got it, how long you've had it, say what you use it for, and say why it's important to you. So what I'm going to be doing in the one minute before I'm speaking, I'm going to be looking at these and picking the ones that I feel comfortable talking about. So what I'm going to do is talk about my mobile phone because it's the first thing that I saw on my desk. So where you got it, I got it in the Apple store. I'm going to talk about that because it's easy to talk about, but that's going to take me less than five seconds to talk about and I need to be aware of that. Say how long you've had it. I can't remember how long I've had it. So I don't feel comfortable talking about that because I'm going to be really thinking about that. And I don't want to be thinking too much. I want to be speaking fluently. Say what you use it for. That's really easy for me to talk about because I use it for my job. I use it to communicate with my team to make this video right now and all sorts of other things in my job. So that's no problem. Say it's why it's important to you. It's really important to me for my job. So I'm not going to use bullet point number four because I don't want to be repeating the same things because that might lower my score for fluency and it might lower my score for coherence. Again, we need to be thinking not only about pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary, but we need to be thinking about fluency and coherence and how our brain works. If we are nervous, we are stressed, we are uncomfortable, we're thinking too much, it doesn't allow us to speak fluently and coherently. So what are things that I could add that are more comfortable for me to talk about? So I'm going to talk about bullet point number one and number three. And then I'm also going to talk about a new model you'll buy in the future because this week there's rumors about the iPhone 13 or something coming out and it has a much better camera and a much better microphone and those are the two things that I really want. So I'm going to talk about that one. Tell a story about when it broke so when my phone breaks, it is a disaster because I can't work. So I have a easy story that I can tell that will allow me to speak fluently. And then finally, I probably won't need this one because I probably won't get to this one before the two minutes and the examiner will stop me before the two minutes. But what I like to do is just add in one more thing because it removes any doubt, any nervousness, any fear. And I know that I can provide a review of this product very easily at the end if I get there but I probably won't even need this bullet point. So as you can see, using this strategy, what it does is it provides you with a huge amount of freedom to just do the job that you're supposed to do. It doesn't put any barriers in your way. It doesn't give you tips and tricks that don't really work. It doesn't make your job more difficult. It just makes everything much, much easier. So let's have a look at some sample questions, all right? So I'm going to use this sample question and I'm going to use the old method which is what most students do, which is just do bullet point number one, then two, then three, then four. All right, so describe a well-known entrepreneur. You should say who the person is, what kind of business this person runs, what you know about this person and explain what you think about this person. So I'm going to try and put myself in the position. If I was a student doing the real test, what would I say? Okay, so I'm going to talk about Elon Musk and the kind of business that this person runs. Well, he runs many, many businesses. He runs SpaceX, he runs Tesla, he runs The Boring Company, he runs, there's one that he runs that is to do with inserting things into your brain. And he also runs a company called Solar City and there he founded PayPal as well. What you know about this person? Well, as I already said, he runs lots and lots of businesses. Okay, explain what you think about this person. Well, I really admire this person because he runs all of these really successful businesses. So let's have a look at what I did there. So who this person is? I introduced who this person was, but that took me two seconds. So in the student's mind, and we know this because we work with our students really closely and we talk to them, like what were you thinking here? What were you thinking here? If the first bullet point takes you two seconds, what you're like, oh my God, I've wasted one bullet point and I'm going to run out of time. So the nervousness, the stress, the fear, the doubt starts to build. What kind of business this person runs? So I just answered that question naturally and what I did was I just listed lots and lots and lots and lots of businesses. And generally in the speaking test, you should avoid just listing things because it doesn't really take a great range of grammar and vocabulary and to just list lots of businesses. Like most people are able to do that. That's not really testing your ability to communicate clearly in English. What you know about this person? Then I started to repeat myself. So I'm like, oh, well, I know that he owns lots of businesses and he founded a lot and that's kind of why he's famous. So I just repeated myself and now I'm getting even more nervous because I know that I shouldn't repeat myself. Explain what you think about this person. Now I am so nervous, so frustrated, so full of fear and doubt that I just start repeating myself again. I completely lose track of time and it's really uncomfortable for me to talk about that one. So it's a disaster. So even though I have the ability to speak clearly in English and I have no problem answering these questions, using a method that doesn't work hinders me. It puts barriers in front of me. It makes me jump through hoops. So you should never do anything on the IELTS test that makes it more difficult for you to give the examiners what they want. So using our strategy, let's look at why this strategy works and how easy it is. So you should say who this person is. I'm not going to talk about the other bullet points. What I'm gonna talk about are two companies that I know a lot about. I don't know much about the other companies that he runs but I know a lot about SpaceX and Tesla. So he runs other companies but I'm gonna talk about those two because those are the two that I feel most comfortable talking about. So I'm still talking about a well-known entrepreneur because I'm talking about his two main companies. The thing that he has taught me in my business is you are paid in proportion to the size of the problems that you solve and a business is really just solving big problems. So that is what I'm gonna talk about. Why I admire him. It's very easy for me to talk about that because I genuinely do admire him and what he will do in the future. I probably won't get to this before the two minutes but again, I like to add something in there that makes it easy for me to talk about it. So what I'm gonna do now is demonstrate that strategy. So the entrepreneur that I'm going to speak about is a person called Elon Musk who in 2021 became one of the richest people in the entire world. And this was principally because of his company Tesla which is an electric car company but he's also quite famous for the company SpaceX which is a space exploration company. The thing that Elon Musk has taught me about business is that you are paid in proportion to the size of the problems that you solve. So when Elon Musk was in his early 20s he thought about the two biggest problems that the world faced. One was climate change and the other one was the inability for us to become an interplanetary species. So if there was some kind of event that threatened life on earth we wouldn't be able to actually survive. The other reason why I really admire Elon Musk is he's one of the only entrepreneurs that speaks very openly and honestly about how hard he works. And he actually backs it up with a huge amount of work. He is famous for working seven days a week 12 to 16 hours a day and he has done that for 20 years or something like that. And I truly believe that that has helped me in my business because I inspire my team to work extremely hard and I believe the harder I work the more successful my company becomes. In the future, Elon Musk will probably change the world significantly for two reasons. Number one, he will probably achieve his goal of getting people to Mars, which is very exciting. And secondly, he will probably also achieve a major milestone for autonomous cars which is full self-driving mode. So cars will basically drive themselves. Okay, so that was around two minutes. And I would not be able to do that without using this strategy. But one thing I would warn you is that you can't just look at this strategy and then go into the test tomorrow and perform at the highest level. What you will have to do is go and find some real questions. So this is one of the books that you will have to get. IELTS Academic 15 or any of the other ones. Use real questions. I don't have any affiliation with Cambridge. They don't pay me money or anything like that. The reason why I suggest these books is because these are questions that reflect the real test. And if you use fake questions, you'll get questions that have topics in them that are really, really, really difficult. But if you have a look at these books, you'll see that the questions are not that difficult, which will really help you prepare properly. So you need to get real questions, use this strategy and practice using this strategy until the point where you don't even have to think about the strategy. You just do it naturally, just like tying your shoelaces. You don't tie your shoelaces and think about what you're doing. You just do it automatically. Practice it until it becomes automatic. All right, let's give you guys some practice questions here and a little task. So this is your turn. Look at the question below. And what I would like you to do is don't take one minute when you're practicing. Take as much time as you need when you're first learning a new strategy and then try and get faster and faster and faster at it. So don't try and do it in one minute. Take two minutes, three minutes, four minutes, five minutes. Really focus on learning the strategy rather than trying to do it at exam speed. You wouldn't, when you're first learning to drive a car, drive it at top speed. You do it at 10 miles an hour, then 20, then 30, then 40, then 50. That's what you should be doing in all parts of the IELTS test. Start slowly, focus on mastering each technique, each strategy and then try to get faster. So in the comments, what I would like you to do is show me your little plan. So this was my plan. These were the things that I wanted to talk about. I want you to do the same thing. I want you to look at the question, look at the main topic and then try to create a number of bullet points that you would feel really comfortable talking about. Post them in the comments below. So describe a country you would like to visit. You should say which country you would like to visit, what the country is like, which attractions you would like to see and why you would like to visit there. So feel free to pause the video and take a screenshot of that or whatever you need or write it down and then practice using that strategy. And then at home, what you can do, just a little extra tip that you can use, what you can do is record yourself using that strategy on your phone. So get questions, use the strategy and then answer the question and record yourself on the phone and then listen back and give yourself feedback based on how fluent you were, how coherent you were, your vocabulary, your grammar and your pronunciation. Thank you very much and I hope you enjoyed the lesson. So I hope you enjoyed that video and I hope it was helpful. If you want any more help with your IELTS preparation, there's a few things you can do. Number one, take a look around our YouTube channel. There's a huge number of videos here that will help you prepare at home for free or you can email us. We have a huge team waiting to answer any of your emails. So if you have a question about IELTS, if you want a free course or free information, we're here for you, we're here to help you. Just send us an email, chris.ilterdvantages.com and we'll be happy to help you out. Don't forget to subscribe to the YouTube channel so you'll get new videos coming soon. I can't speak anymore. And then also if you're interested in getting some of our VIP education, one of our VIP courses where we work one-on-one with you and the VIP course has more success stories than any other IELTS course in the world. If you're interested in that, click below in the description and you can join our waiting list. And when a new place becomes available, our course advisors will contact you and let you know. Now, before my voice completely disappears, I'll go, thank you so much for watching the video and thank you for all of your support. Thanks, bye-bye.


It's definitely much more common than we think and one statistic that applies in America at least is and I've seen it Over the course of three years the same stat has been consistent Mm-hmm, and that's one in four girls in high school high school for America's age 14 to 18 So one in four high school girls have self-harm right 25% right there and then I tell you the teenage boys are doing it do