Six Band 9 Phrases for Soft Skills

Aubrey Carter (0:00)

This is the IELTS Energy Podcast, Episode 1632, Six Band 9 Phrases for Soft Skills.

SPEAKER_2 (0:09)

Welcome to the IELTS Energy Podcast from All Ears English. Downloaded more than 35 million times with Examiner-trained IELTS Whiz, Aubrey Carter, and Michelle Kaplan, the New York Radio Girl. If you are stuck with a low score, our insider method will help you get the score you need to unlock your dreams. Get your estimated band score now with our two-minute quiz at allearsenglish.com/myscore.

Aubrey Carter (0:46)

Are you good at reading the room? Do you think well on your feet? Today, we share six high scoring phrases to describe soft skills on the IELTS Speaking Exam.

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Aubrey Carter (1:33)

Hey there, Michelle. How are you today?

Michelle Kaplan (1:35)

Hi, Aubrey. I am good. How are you?

Aubrey Carter (1:38)

Excellent question for you. Do you have a lot of soft skills?

Michelle Kaplan (1:44)

Yes, I would hope so.

I think that communication is one of my stronger skills, not in certain ways, but I think I'm able to express myself well and explain how I'm feeling to people. And I'm also pretty good at reading emotions.

Aubrey Carter (2:06)

I agree.

Michelle Kaplan (2:07)

Yeah. Thank you.

Aubrey Carter (2:08)

This is interesting. If you're out there listening and you're not super familiar with what does that mean, soft skills, we are going to share what exactly that means and how you could talk about it on IELTS. This is becoming more and more important with the business world and can definitely come up on IELTS. If you're asked about work or study or what you're planning to do or about your talents and skills, a lot of this could definitely come up. These are personal attributes, character traits, interpersonal abilities, how well you work with others and how well you navigate your environment, whether that's at work or with people in your daily life. Like Michelle was saying, if you have good communication skills, empathy, teamwork, adaptability, all of these things that are really important for both co-workers and friends, people you want to spend time with, right?

Michelle Kaplan (2:57)

Right. Yeah. Problem solving, emotional intelligence, time management, leadership, all of these are really good soft skills. I mean, this makes me think of actually the Strengths Finder we did. Right.

Aubrey Carter (3:10)

That's going to point out a lot of your soft skills if you take one of those.

Michelle Kaplan (3:14)

Yep.

Aubrey Carter (3:14)

But the problem is a lot of IELTS students prepare to talk about these bigger issues, right? The environment, technology, education, but you may not have thought about being able to talk about your skills or the skills of other people you know, or why this is important in the workforce, right? So today, we are exploring some of these invisible skills that you might not put on a resume, but are going to show up in an interview.

Michelle Kaplan (3:40)

Right. Exactly. So on today's episode, this is going to be really all about these hidden abilities, right? That people develop over time. So they're not the typical skills that you might see on a resume, right?

Aubrey Carter (3:55)

Right. Exactly. And you want to really think about vocabulary here, because if you are describing yourself or others, you don't want to use those band 6 adjectives like kind, smart, friendly to describe them. If you can instead describe what they actually do, these skills, this is going to boost your vocabulary because a lot of students won't know this vocab, they won't have thought about using this. So it's less common and therefore higher scoring. So for example, Michelle, instead of describing someone as very nice, my friend is very nice. What might you say that would be really would give you a much higher vocabulary score?

Michelle Kaplan (4:34)

Yeah. Well, you could say something like she builds rapport easily and knows how to diffuse tension during difficult conversations. Yeah. So it's really like pulling out. Nice is just such a, it could mean lots of different things. And this is pulling out, right? It's way more specific explaining, really kind of analyzing that person actually.