IELTS English Podcast - Speaking Topic: Museums and Galleries

greetings everyone and welcome back to another episode of the AL plus English podcast today's topic is museums and [Music] galleries I think I mentioned in last episode that this museums and galleries topic divides students in this Academy there are those who really enjoy this topic area they regularly go to art galleries museums but there are others who don't and I'm in that category I don't think this is going to be a particularly strong topic area for me so I think I'm going to have to really draw on my experiences from school where I did go

to museums so we'll see how that goes today I've got another language related challenge today like I did last week last week we focused on these adverbs that are useful for transitioning they replaced and so but this week I'd like to give you three idioms that I think are the three easiest idioms to just drop into most answers of course we don't want repetition you can't keep using the same idiom but if you drop these three idioms in one exam wow what a great addition to your English and a great way to upgrade your score

so let me tell you my three favorite idioms number one is over the moon now by the way I'm not saying these are the most impressive idioms I'm saying these are my favorite I genuinely use them and they replace very easy words so rather than say pleased or happy over the moon what a great easy idiom to drop into any answer you know you today perhaps we'll talk about we will definitely talk about museums and I could say that when I went into this Museum and saw how many incredible exhibits they had I was over

the moon very useful idiom the next one is costs an arm and a leg something costs an arm and a leg again it replaces a very easy vocabulary which is expensive and I think that's really easy to drop into an answer I went to this Museum in Madrid I was so excited but it cost an arm and a leg easy and I think you could go back through all of our topics and you could put that in a lot of answers it cost an arm and a leg the last one is a piece of cake

now it's a piece of cake but very often especially I suppose British English we say a piece of cake awah sound there pie of cake a piece of cake and a piece of cake means very easy um getting into that museum was a piece of cake doing whatever it was was a piece of cake it means it was very easy to do that thing so those are three idioms and I'm going to try to get them into my answers today all three of them okay so listen out for them that's an additional challenge for me

and you listen out for three easy idioms that you can use in your a talking about language you can use in your a we have a lovely language list today artifact preserve ancient contemporary uh these are some really impressive words that you can impress your examiner and boost your score and it's available in the is plus total speaking textbook available to you on www. Brit plus.net so go there check it out it's helped some students they've given me some great feedback and I hope it helps you too okay uh I suppose I should give you

a challenge before we start I would I I'm going to go off script again today and I'm going to ask you what's your favorite museum or Gallery in your country now the reason I'm asking this is I'm curious because maybe I will visit your country in the future and I'll check my comments and ah this student said this country's best museum is here so I'm going to put that on my holiday itinerary so that's what I want to know from you is what's your favorite museum or Gallery in your country let me know in the

comments you can do that on YouTube of course but you can also do that on Spotify CU I do check the comments there as well let's get started part one question one do you enjoy visiting museums and galleries quite honestly I do enjoy it but I rarely do it um I find in Korea there are some good museums and galleries um some of them do cost an arm and a leg so I I tend not to go to those ones but if there's an interesting exhibition then I'm very happy to go and and visit that

with my family okay maybe there was an idiom in there hopefully you caught it uh when was the last time you visited a museum or Gallery I don't know what I don't know the last time I visited one but the one that comes up in my memory is when I went to Paris uh maybe seven or eight years ago I went to Paris and I went to the lou uh in the middle of Paris and it was a wonderful experience it's something it's a place I had always wanted to almost like a bucket list item

so when I arrived at that iconic pyramid of glass in the Lou and I went down into the museum uh I was over the moon and I really enjoyed my experience but it was exceptionally busy okay well uh that's part one done by the way that's another way to uh improve or upgrade your language is it' be very easy to say very busy it was very busy but what did I say I said exceptionally busy just a little tweak from very to exceptionally or very to tremendously and that's a really good way of upgrading your

language let's do a part two same as usual get two minutes on the clock and the question is describe a museum or Gallery you have visited okay this is going to be challenging um let's go uh so 2 minutes on the clock okay let's start now I'd like to tell you about the British history museum when I was maybe 11 or 12 years old I think 12 years old um I was in high school maybe the first or second year of high school and we went on a school trip to the British history museum it

was of course an entirely educational uh experience for us students um and it was related to the things we were studying I think at the time we were studying ancient Egypt and um yeah I I I think that's the main memory for me was uh when we went to the ancient Egyptian exhibit and um just looking at all these artifacts and uh various you know the the cases from mummies I I can't remember all of the words for these things off the top of my head but the different artifacts from ancient Egypt are so beautiful

you know there's a lot of gold and different colors so it's a really memorable experience but it was such a long time ago um I think let me tell you a little more about the British history museum it's uh an incredible Museum huge um with some amazing exhibits and they've managed to preserve some incredible artifacts from history I mean really ancient history um so it's quite an experience for anyone and by the way it certainly when I went there it was free um obviously there's a lot of things you can spend money on such as

in the souvenir shop but uh the museum itself is free for me personally it was a very important experience because I was able to enjoy it with my classmates and we could get some kind of guidance I think okay good okay I was pretty happy with that by the way I it's coming to me now of course I freestyle these answers um and it's I'm sort of doubting myself am I right is it the British history museum that has the ancient Egypt exhibit we will see because I'm going to leave this in the podcast of

course but after I finish shooting this episode I'm going to go and check on the internet am I am I saying the right things am I mixing some museums up of course uh although I want to be accurate in a it doesn't matter your your accuracy in terms of you know is this Museum right or wrong doesn't matter they're only the examiner is only listening to your English so don't worry about that let's go to part three uh how can schools and educational institutions make use of museums and galleries wow um that sounds a difficult

question um I think that uh just most importantly they have to be proactive at uh making school trips where they go to various museums and galleries I think in school museums are perhaps more interesting to Children um in terms of learning about history I think if they can get a curator in the museum to guide them and and give that extra experience an extra knowledge that's fantastic I think that's what I experienced as well when I was young as I said in part two we went to the British history museum and I believe it was

a curator who who um spent some time with us and explains some of the exhibits okay next one should museums and galleries be free to the public I don't have a strong opinion on this um I I would say that ideally yes that a uh government that the country can fund these galleries in museums and and have it as a an important part of the culture of a of a country so ideally yes um but if you have to pay a small fee to maintain these museums and galleries to pay the curators and ensure everything

is run well I think that's reasonable as well so it depends on the country but uh ideally yes okay uh last question in what ways can technology enhance the experience of visiting a museum or Gallery nowadays I think technology is um having a big effect on everything we do but definitely in museums and galleries as well I think the the the obvious one is that you no longer need a human curator or guide with you you can stick your earphones in and have uh some it could be a recording or I suppose nowadays with AI

it could React to what you're seeing you know that there would be some QR I think there is something like this a QR code and then you can just hear for each thing that you look at so yeah I think that that aspect of technology I wonder what AI will do for this area um and whether we will be able to you know nowadays we have these Apple Vision Pro that type of thing so these um uh glasses with where where it can react to what you're seeing and information drops down I don't know I'm

I'm thinking about various things but uh I think technology can have a huge impact on the way we enjoy things like museums and galleries good okay not a not a great answer there I didn't love that but um I think overall that was a a reasonable uh episode what I didn't do was use a piece of cake and that's because I forgot uh I'm very sorry it is one that's easy it's a piece of cake to use that idiom uh in your a you know if I look back um certainly you know technology enhancing experience

I might say it's a piece of cake to use um or to to enjoy an exhibit while using technology uh or perhaps is a piece of cake to apply technology to museums something like that anytime you want to use Easy you can upgrade it to a piece of cake but as I said earlier don't repeat too much it just sounds like you memorized a limited set of idioms uh and you're just trying to use them so that's everything I have time for today I hope you enjoyed today's episode and uh next week we have nature

and Wildlife lovely a topic I love I love nature um so that's next week's topic I hope you have a fantastic week and I hope you study tremendously hard this week uh and see you next Monday for nature and Wildlife see you then [Music] [Applause] [Music]