Eight Places, Eight Words
Eight small places. Each one shows you the fact its word carries.
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Each panel shows the fact, not the feeling. That fact is what the word is worth.
Words for places that actually tell the listener something, instead of beautiful and nice.
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Tick the words you would use. Then read what each one actually tells a listener.
Why "beautiful" scores nothing, and what to say instead.
What would this tell someone who has never been there?
Beautiful tells them you like it. That is an opinion, and the examiner already assumes you like your home town.
Scenic tells them there is something worth looking at — hills, a coast, a river.
Well-connected tells them there are buses and trains.
Run-down tells them the buildings need repair.
Each of those is a fact someone could agree or disagree with. That is what makes them worth marks.
Eight small places. Each one shows you the fact its word carries.
Each panel shows the fact, not the feeling. That fact is what the word is worth.
Sort twelve place words by whether they praise, criticise, or simply report.
Sort each item into the correct category
Three places described by fact. Choose the word that reports it.
Chain 1
The fact: there are three bus routes and a train station within ten minutes' walk.
Candidates: well-connected / modern
The word that reports it:
Because:
Chain 2
The fact: the flat is only forty square metres, but the ceilings are high and there is very little furniture.
Candidates: big / spacious
The word that reports it:
Because:
Chain 3
The fact: half the shops on the street are boarded up and the pavements are cracked.
Candidates: quiet / run-down
The word that reports it:
Because:
A Speaking Part 1 answer about a home town, with the place words removed.
Examiner: Tell me about your home town.
I grew up in a small town about an hour from the capital. It is quite — there is very little traffic and you can hear birds in the morning, which is not something I can say about where I live now.
It is not a town: most of the buildings are two or three hundred years old and nothing much has been built since. Some parts are honestly rather — there are shops on the main street that have been empty for years.
What it does have is the setting. It sits in a valley with hills on both sides, so it is genuinely , and people drive out at weekends just for the views.
The main drawback is that it is not very . There are only four buses a day and no station, so without a car you are fairly stuck.
Where I live now is the opposite in every way. It is much more — there are restaurants open until midnight and something happening every weekend. My flat is small but surprisingly , because the ceilings are high. The only real problem is that the road outside is extremely , and I have never quite got used to sleeping through it.