Prepare for the speaking test on the IELTS exam with today’s Aussie English IELTs episode 5 showing you how to talk about the weather.

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AE 523: How to talk about THE WEATHER | IELTs Lesson 5

So, this is IELTS episode number five.

Wow.

I know, we’re getting there, guys, we’re getting there, guys. Hope you’re enjoying them. So, today we’re going to be talking about the weather and this is the discussion episode, where Kel is just going to ask me some questions and then answer them herself, but hopefully this will give you some ideas of how to respond to these kinds of questions if you get these kinds of questions on the IELTS exam, right? Or the PTE exam. If someone asks you about whether, even in real life, here are some ways of responding about it. So go for it Kel, shoot!

Before we start, I just wanted to mention that a lot of people on Instagram were asking for this topic. It is a very common topic. So, there you go! Now you can now study and make the most of it.

It’s one that comes up in small talk quite often too. If someone finds out where you’re from and they realize you’re in a different, you’re from a different location, they’ll quite often be like ”oh what’s it like there?” and you can talk about the weather as part of that. You know, it’s rainy, it’s sunny, it’s hot, it’s cold. So, anyway, go for it Kel.

So, the first question I have here is what’s the weather like in your country? So, that’s question they might ask you on your first task, the task one of the speaking test.

Yeah. What’s the weather like in your country?

Yeah. So, basically they want you to talk about yourself, like your experiences and your country. And I would answer that saying that my, the weather in my region is not very changeable.

Not very variable.

No. We pretty much have sunny days, blue skies all the time.

It’s consistent. It’s always the same thing.

Doesn’t fluctuate.

Doesn’t fluctuate. Yeah. So, what’s it like, though, it doesn’t change, but is it hot, is it cold?

It is hot all the time. Humid, we get a lot of rain. That’s, you know, I think summer, you say summer rain?

Yeah. So, is it seasonal?

Yes. So, you get a lot of rain, but still really hot and humid, which is, you know, really good if you, you’re the kind of person who likes going to the beach and sunbathing and doing sports outside, but if you’re more like me, I don’t really like those things. I don’t really like sweating, so it’s hard for me to get used to it.

Would you say that the weather is… it may not be very variable in your region in the country, but in the country as a whole is the weather variable in Brazil?

Yes. As you go south, further south it gets a bit cooler. It’s still hot, but you have more defined seasons. So, winter is a proper winter. So, when you have, you know, some places even snow. But as you go up, up north, it doesn’t change much. My place is very close to the Equator.

Yeah, exaclty.

So, the changes are really tiny, we can’t we don’t even say we have four seasons there because we don’t feel the difference, right? So, is it either raining hot or it’s sunny and it’s hot.

So, if would answer that question I guess I would say sort of the same in, well… not really, in Victoria at least, it is very variable. So, it changes all the time. So, at the moment it’s summer, but even then it’s, you know, pleasant days about 20 degrees, then some days that are like 40 degrees and then there’s a cool change in the afternoon and it goes down again to 20 degrees so, that’s kind of what it’s like during summer, but it’s it’s like that the whole year too, where the weather tends to fluctuate quite a bit. You’ll have hot days, cold days, wet days, sunny days, lots of rain, lots of wind as well. It’s very variable and changes quite a bit, but in the whole country it’s very variable. So, it’s sort of like you were saying about North in Brazil, the further North in Australia you go, the warmer it gets because we’re in the southern hemisphere and the more consistent the days will be with temperature, humidity and everything like that in the north. So, the further north you go, once you get to sort of right up North, it’ll be like you were seeing in Brazil with those… the wet season and the dry season, but you won’t get the distinctive, you know, summer, autumn, spring and winter seasons so, yeah… But it tends to be quite pleasant in most places in Australia, but pretty hot, especially in the desert.

Victoria is really the kind of weather I like, you know, we have… we might have one or two days when it’s really hot, but then the rest of the week is just like pleasant, nice and you have this breeze…Yeah. So, do you think the weather affects your food?

Does the weather reflect the mood? I think so. If it’s…I remember living in Melbourne and during winter in Melbourne it was always raining. It was always wet. It was always dark and gloomy and a little bit depressing and I think that kind of has a flow on effect to your mood as well so, if you’re going outside every day and you know you want to be active, you want to go for a run and you want to go for a walk, you want to see people, you want to go outside, if it’s always unpleasant, I think it bleeds over into your mood and makes you a bit depressed. What do you think? Does that weather affect your mood?

That’s what my friend who is from London says all the time like, ”I feel so depressed here, it’s always gloomy and you know grey and weird”.

Overcast with lots of clouds.

I honestly feel very different about it like, I hate leaving the house when it is too hor and bright so, when it’s overcast, that’s when I feel really good and I wanted it outside and I know it’ll be pleasant, right? I won’t be sweating all over, I’ll be uncomfortable in anyway.

But it has to be overcast without rain.

Yes, when it’s raining obviously it makes things much harder, right? ‘Cause for me I take public transportation, for example, to go to Melbourne where I study. So, you would make my life really hard to have to take the train and then, you know, it’s raining, I’ll get wet and everything, but yeah, I think when it’s too, and sunny and bright and like just… dry, like here in Victoria you have this really dry wind.

Dry heat. I like it, I like it. You don’t like it. But what was it like when you were back in Brazil in the north, living in a hot humid environment, that affect your mood?

Yes it does, but I again I wouldn’t leave the house. I would always have the fan on or the air conditioner on. It affects me in a way that I feel really uncomfortable and I feel gross and greasy and just like I don’t want to, I don’t like sweating at all so, when it’s hot like I’m the opposite like…. you feel more willing to do things at a time when it’s hot, but I feel like I want to avoid this, I don’t want to be outside because it’s too hot, but obviously if I’m going like sightseeing or on a holiday trip or something you want to take photos, right? You want to see places very clearly and that’s when I feel like yeah if it’s overcast, I can’t really take good photos, I can’t make the most of it.

It’s a tradeoff and this is I think why I like Victoria weather there’s so much because it does go up and down and it changes quite a bit so, you don’t… at least in spring and autumn, when it’s going in and out of winter, you don’t really get stuck in long periods of one type of weather, it’s not…it’s not hot and sunny for a year two weeks in a row and it’s also not cold and rainy for two weeks in a row, tends to change quite a bit. I like that aspect of the weather and the climate here in Victoria. What are some of the other questions you had here?

So, what do you usually do in the winter? There would be a hard question for me. I mean, talking about Brazil because I… in Brazil didn’t experience winter, right? It was really hot and humid.

You didn’t have winter, they don’t have winter in Brazil?

Well, not in my place, we don’t have winter, we have the wet season when it’s raining, but it’s not as if it’s cold or anything.

So, the first time you experienced winter was when you came to Australia?

Yes. Wow.

Basically, yeah, pretty much when we went to Canberra, because… that was freezing cold.

That was negative degrees, right? It got below zero.

It was foggy, it was really… it was a proper winter so, it was my first experience with the winter, but I just… I would say I stay at home, I have hot, a mug with my hot chocolate and try to be cosy and warm.

And just hide from it all.

I like being outside when it’s cold, to be honest. The thing with winter is, that’s my theory, If it’s cold, you can put layers on, you can have three jackets or whatever, but when it’s hot you can’t go out naked, right? There is no way you can avoid feeling uncomfortable.

You can’t take your skin off if it gets too hard as well, right?

But things that people are usually do in the winter, they go skiing, right? We went to the…. Perisher?

Yeah, exaclty. To the mountains to see the snow.

Yeah, it was really, it was really nice. So, those like… is it like winter sports like a popular thing in Australia, do you think?

Winter sports, yeah, I think so because at least in the south east so, in the south east of Australia we have the Alps, the mountains that are nearby and so people can go skiing because it snows there, but everywhere else in Australia it doesn’t snow. So, that’s a very New South Wales/Victoria they are the states where you can do that and for instance my brother in law goes snowboarding every year. Not everyone does because it’s quite expensive here too in Australia so, you can go skiing, you can go snowboarding, but because we have only a little bit of snow and a lot of people who want to go, it’s one of the most expensive places in the world to enjoy winter sports and also it’s just not that good. So, you could probably have a better time going to Japan or going to New Zealand, which are relatively close by, and you know skiing snowboarding instead of spending a lot of money to go to Australia where it’s somewhat limited.

Yeah, I guess that’s it for the first part, we’ve talked about like… we used a lot of weather vocabulary to talk about those things. Yeah, those are the kind of questions you might get asked.

Yeah, awesome, good job, guys! Well, we will see you in the next video. Don’t forget to sign up to The Aussie English Classroom if you want access to that, where we’ll be going through all of the different vocabulary, expressions and I guess, what would you call it? Grammar even you’ve got here on to how to set up structures and nice sentences when talking about this sort of stuff. So, we’ll see there.

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