Hello, lovely, I'm Maria.

And my name is Rory and we are the host of the IEL Speaking for Success podcast, the

podcast that aims to help you improve your speaking skills as well as your listening skills along the way.

We started this podcast because we want you to use high-level words and gorgeous grammar

in your everyday English and in your

IOT speaking exam. Rory, you're enjoying your holiday drinking beer, right? No, actually, I hate beer.

I prefer wine. Wine, yes. Now we're speaking the same language. Oh, that's a coincidence,

because today we're going to talk about languages. Ooh, yes, dear listener.

In Ayo speaking part one, they can ask you questions about languages.

Rory, do you like learning languages?

I think I like the idea of learning a language more than the practicalities of it. It's

fun to learn some isolated phrases to get by, but it's actually quite a difficult thing to do

to learn a language, and it takes up a lot of time. So it's sort of like 50-50 when I think about

it. What languages do you speak? Well, I speak English fluently, obviously, because I'm a native speaker, but I also speak

Russian, passively, and I can speak a little bit of Swedish and high school French from, like,

back in the day.

How good is your Russian?

Probably pre-intermediate for vocabulary and elementary for grammar.

I hate grammar.

Are you learning any foreign languages now?

Well, I'm still learning Russian.

Although the grammar is kind of like my white whale at this point, I don't think there's any way that I'm going to get any better at it.

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