Hello, Sunshine, 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 super podcast to give you good vocabulary and gorgeous grammar for your IOT speaking exam.

Rory, so you got accepted for this interview at university?

I did, yeah. So I have my interview a month from today, the 24th of March, which means,

well, it's in the future from there, but maybe it's on the day this podcast gets released.

Who knows?

But yeah, it means they accepted my maths qualification, which is super cool because I worked hard on it.

Hmm, your maths qualification. Shall we talk about maths and mathematics?

Let's hope everything adds up. Fingers crossed.

Yes, dear listener in speaking part one, they can ask you questions about maths, mathematics.

Roy, do you like maths?

No, and I probably never will. I think numbers are just too abstract for me, and I don't really understand them.

I understand that they're important, I get that, but they will never be my thing.

It's something that I share with my mum not really having a head for numbers.

Is maths difficult to learn?

Extremely. I can't describe how it feels to any great degree of accuracy, but I can just feel my eyes glazing over and my soul begs for all to end whenever I encounter

maths. I think it's just, or any mathematical equation, I think it's just the effort of creating

the abstractions in my head. I can do this with

words, like I'm good with language, but I can't do it with numbers. That area of my brain seems to

have completely atrophied by now. Do you think maths is hard? Well, for me personally, yes, but I don't,

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