Top 20 IELTS Speaking Idioms with Band 9 Samples

I will give you the most common

idioms

used by real

band

9 students and for each idiom I will also give you a

band

9 sample answer. We have helped hundreds of students get around nine in the IELTS

speaking

test and we take all their exams of practice and analyzed them using Ai and identified the most common

idioms

that they used and at the end of the video we will show you the number of idioms that band 9 students actually use. Hint, it's a lot less than you think and reveal the biggest mistake students make when it comes to idioms so you can avoid it and improve your score, so without further ado, let's get into it, so the first idiom is to bite the bullet , bite something and a bullet something you put in a gun to bite the bullet what it means to bite the bullet is to do something difficult or unpleasant bravely so you don't want to do something very, very difficult or unpleasant but you do it anyway brave and you do, so where does this come from?

Well, this actually comes from the battlefield, from the war all those years ago, if you had an injury, you got electrocuted or you got stabbed or whatever and you needed a very unpleasant procedure from the doctor. there was no anesthesia there was no painkillers so what they did is give you a bullet and tell you to bite that bullet I don't know if this helps or not but that's where it comes from and understanding where idioms come from really helps you remember them and use them correctly so let's choose a real question and I will answer it and use to bite the bullet in the answer.

I didn't really want to study law, but I was the only one. One in my family once got high grades in their A levels so my mum sat me down one day and told me it was medicine or law so I went to a hospital for work experience and fainted when I saw blood. Me too. squeamish about medicine so I decided to just bite the bullet and study law some common collocations of this idiom are bite the bullet normally it's bite the bullet not bite the bullet I decided to bite the bullet I chose bite the bullet and I had bite the bullet and the correct pronunciation of this is to emphasize or emphasize bite the bullet not bite the bullet the next idiom is a piece of cake a piece of cake means something is very easy and we often use this when we are reassuring someone who is worried about something so if my little one was worried for his math test, I would say don't worry, it will be a piece of cake, you don't always use it to help someone or give advice to someone we normally talk to. about this just when we are describing something that is simple and easy to make where does this come from well there is a big debate about where does this come from but the easiest way to think about a piece of cake is that it is nice, it is easy to eat a piece of cake is a very nice thing, you can also hear the idiom it was a cake walk, which means walking around looking at cakes, a very nice, enjoyable, easy thing to do, to be honest, compared to practicing law, teaching English is a piece of cake, to give you a concrete example, to qualify as a lawyer you need around six years of study and work experience to qualify as an English teacher, it only takes six weeks, the salary is obviously not that good, but the students and Customers are much nicer and friendlier.

A common mistake we hear a lot with a piece of cake is leaving the item to simply say it's a piece of cake. If you make that mistake, it won't improve your IELTS score, it will decrease your IELTS score, so don't do it. pick these and use them without really learning them properly and again the pronunciation is a piece of cake you are emphasizing peace instead of cake the following is a very very old idiom kill two birds with one stone what this means is achieve two goals with one action and this it actually comes from Greek mythology, it's thousands of years old and the story of Icarus where they killed a bird with one stone but they were able to get the feathers, that's one goal and to build wings to fly out of a cave, that's another. goal, but a good way to remember this is to just think about something in your everyday life and think of an action that you take that achieves two different goals, so let's ask a real question and I'll use this idiom in the answer yes, I really bought. my wife got a diamond ring last Christmas, so my wife's birthday is in November and Christmas is obviously in December, so I decided to kill two birds with one stone and buy her a gift for her birthday and Christmas and she was very happy with that because he got one.

One nice, expensive ring instead of two less expensive gifts. A common mistake we see with this one is using kill in its present simple form instead of kill k-i-l-l-e-d in its past form, so if you're talking about the past like I did in that question or that answer I used killed two birds with one stone I didn't kill two birds with one stone you could also say I decided to kill two birds with one stone or I chose to kill three birds with one stone just make sure you don't take the idiom and insert it into the sentence without thinking about the tense without thinking about the grammar the next idiom is to let the cat out of the bag to let the cat out of the bag is to reveal a secret Often by mistake, where does this come from?

Well, think about it if you had a cat in a bag and they let it out of the bag, would it be easy to put that cut back in the bag? It would be very, very difficult and this is the same with Secrets once you reveal a secret, once it's in the world you can't get it back so that's where you have to let the cat out of the bag. If you count watches as jewelry, then yes, for my last birthday, when I turned 40, my wife bought me a very special watch. which I have been looking at and lusting after for many years, funny story is my credit card and my wife's credit card are the same so every time my wife bought it it would ring on my phone and I would get an alert from my Favorite watch boutique and it was the exact amount of money for this watch because I've been eyeing this watch for years so the phone let the cat out of the bag a little but it was still a very nice gift. and a pleasant surprise, the pronunciation of this is to emphasize or emphasize the cat and the bag, let the lid come out of the bag like the cut of the bicycle.

The common mistake we see with this is again missing the articles. The lead came out of the bag. You shouldn't take the idiom and then say it, you hardly know that you shouldn't use it and use it correctly, many students believe that if you only use idioms and it doesn't matter if you use them correctly or not, you are going to get bonus points and you will get a high score again if the If you use it incorrectly you are lowering your score, not improving your score the next idiom is don't put all your eggs in one basket, what this means is don't concentrate all your resources or all your effort in one area to minimize the risk, Where does this come from?

Well, literally, if you had a lot of chickens, a lot of chickens laying eggs, and you put all the eggs in one basket. If you drop the basket, all your eggs would be destroyed. We often use this to talk about our careers or work or investment strategy, for example, you know, don't put all your money in one stock, don't put all your eggs in one stock. Put them in many different places and then you minimize the risk. Basically it's about diversification. Probably not because with the recent developments in AI, I don't think there will be IELTS teachers or even professors in the future.

It would be very foolish of me to put all my eggs in one basket and just hope for the best and hope that IELTS and teaching will last forever, but I honestly don't think it will. The next idiom is once in a blue moon, meaning it happens. rarely, so you're talking about frequency, you're talking about how often something happens and this happens rarely, probably less than once a year. This is a pretty literal idiom because it's literally rare to have a blue moon, but sometimes it happens. refers to I think it happens once every three years or once every two or three years, you'll have two moons in a calendar month, so once in a blue moon means something that doesn't happen very often.

I used to go out almost every night, but since I had kids, it's really rare that most of my friends have settled down with kids like me or moved away, so it's pretty rare to have an occasion where a group of friends are all together at the same time. Sometimes at Christmas when a lot of our friends visit Ireland over the Christmas period or in the summer when a lot of our friends have free time I can go out but it's a pretty rare occasion these days, a common mistake we see once . in a blue moon is trying to use it when it's not really appropriate to use it.

A lot of students have been taught that you know if you use this idiom and it's really easy to use because it talks about frequency, which is a pretty basic feature of English that will automatically increase your scores, kind of like easy points that students will insert in unusual situations. . Remember that you are only using it when the examiner asks you how often you do it. This might come up in the first part. second part, it might appear in the third part, but probably in the first, but if they don't ask you how often you do something you don't have to use, you won't get a lower score because you didn't use it. from time to time just use it when you can use it and when you're actually talking about something that happens very very rarely like once every few years, next I'll give you two idioms in one, burn the midnight oil and burn the candle in both ends there are similar meanings but they are slightly different so I will answer one question and use both in the same answer so burning the midnight oil is talking about things that are difficult that you are working hard on. something where you are literally sitting at midnight working on something, so we often talked about work or study.

I'm burning the midnight oil, that means you're working very, very hard on something, it doesn't have to be at night, it just means you're working very, very hard on something and where does this come from long before electricity, our main light source would have been oil lamps then you would have lit an oil lamp and used that oil so if you were burning the midnight oil it means you were not sleeping it means you were working at midnight which means you are working very hard burning the midnight oil now to burn the candle at both ends has a similar but slightly different meaning burning the midnight oil doesn't mean it's a bad thing, it's not negative per se, it's quite positive.

You know we're working hard on something. Burning the candle at both ends means you are working too hard. You're getting exhausted. Where does this come from? It actually comes from France. where they would like everywhere else to use candles for lighting, but if you were an aristocrat, if you were very, very rich, you wouldn't burn the candle at one end, you would put it horizontally and light both ends, and what this It meant that you were wasting that you were rich and just wasting for the sake of wasting, but over the years the meaning has changed to mean that you are working too hard and were burning yourself out.

It's often used in the context of people who work very hard, so they spend a lot of time and energy at work and then party too much, so you know, the typical lawyer, for example, or a banker who works very hard. , very hard all day and then goes out all night and burns the candle in both of us. ends and they are going to run out yes, I used to burn the candle with both hands. He had a work hard, play hard attitude because he was a lawyer. Lawyers are expected to work, you know, 80 to 100 hours a week, but we would.

I often go out to bars and restaurants after work to blow off steam and de-stress, which isn't really sustainable and now I'm still burning off the Midnight Oil. I work very, very hard in my career, but you are more likely to find me. tucked into bed at 9 p.m. m. than partying, the next idiom is in the blink of an eye and this means doing something quickly, immediately and without hesitation, so without even thinking about it, without debating it in your mind, you just do it. Where does this come from? Well, many, many years ago, hundreds of years ago, everyone wore hats.

If you look at pictures from a long time ago, you'll see that everyone in this country still wore warm clothes and whether people were going to fight or run a race. or compete in some way what people did is they took off their hats and when their hats fell off it was the signal that the fight was going to start or the race was about to start so people dropped their hats you started immediately without Thinking about it, we actually rent our house, we could afford to buy a house, but we really value our independence and freedom.

If you own a house you are stuck in that place because it may take a long time to sell that house but if you rent you can move anywhere in the blink of an eye, the next idiom is crying over spilled milk and this means not to waste time thinking about something, to have negative thoughts about something that you cannot change, that has already happened, where does this come fromliterally? If you spill milk, is there any point in crying for spelling milk? No, you can't put her back in the bottle. You can't change that scenario. What I dislike most about my job is dealing with people who only focus on the negative, esp.

When they receive negative feedback, they could be students, they could be employees, but people who make mistakes and don't learn from them. For example, I give a lot of feedback on students' essays and some students see mistakes and say Great, now I know what my mistakes are and I can improve. Other students will just cry about it for days and cry for weeks, but I'm going to fail, it's like there's no point in crying about the spelled milk you made. mistake and I learned from him the following idiom is that you cannot judge a book by its cover, this means that you should not judge people or things.

Things according to their appearance are usually people, but they can also include things. The origin of this is pretty obvious if you walk into a bookstore and you'll see a lot of book covers, but you actually need to read the book to judge it. You can't come in and say: I don't like that book. I think it will be terrible based on the cover because you actually have to read it to understand it and we apply it to people, you can't judge a person by their appearance, very rarely because I firmly believe that you can't judge a book by its cover and we should I judge people not by the clothes they wear on their appearance but by their character and the things that come out of their mouth.

My wife doesn't agree with this because she says that someone who gets millions of views on YouTube shouldn't wear the same t-shirt every day. day, so she encourages me to go shopping for new clothes, but I do so reluctantly. The next one is not to count your chickens before they hatch. Another chicken idiom and this means not assuming that something will succeed or that something will happen until it happens. actually happens, so you shouldn't assume that watching this video and using these idioms will guarantee you a sideline. You should actually take the test and see if you get a band name.

Don't count your chickens now, the full version of This idiom is "don't count your chickens before they hatch," but English speakers usually just say "don't count your chickens." You can use any of them in the test, but I think it's simpler and easier to remember and use the shorter form, no. Don't count the chickens, this actually comes from Aesop's fables about a milkmaid, this milkmaid was going to use milk to make butter and then she was going to sell the butter to buy eggs and then she was going to incubate the eggs and raise chickens and then sell the chickens to buy a new dress unfortunately it didn't work out, she didn't get her dress, so don't count your chickens.

I prefer to buy luxury watches than jewelry. I'm not sure if you could buy a luxury watch as a customer. jewelry, but the thing about jewelry is like diamond rings, necklaces, things like that often, as soon as you buy them, as soon as you leave the jewelry store, they lose value, whereas a lot of the watches that I've bought actually They have risen in value. I don't want to count my chickens, but if I sold these watches I would probably make a lot more money on them than I paid for them, which is why I prefer luxury watches over simple jewelry.

The next idiom is to go further. mile and this means putting in more effort or working harder than necessary, so for example, instead of making an IELTS idioms video where I just say all the idioms and go through them quickly, I go the extra mile and talk about the origin and I give Your example sentences, this is actually a biblical reference from the Sermon on the Mount and in the Bible it says that if someone forces you to walk one mile, go with them two miles and many people interpret this to mean that you should always do more than what is required of you.

My wife does the vast majority of the cooking, not because she's necessarily a better cook, but what I love about my wife is that in everything she does, she goes the extra mile, so if I were cooking a steak, I would just I would cook it and eat it with some bread, but my wife will have three different sauces, balsamic vinegar, two different olive oils, and four different types of potatoes. She really goes the extra mile when it comes to cooking at our house. The next idiom is raining cats and dogs, this is very useful because it is used to describe the weather and the weather will often appear during the first part, the second or the third part and it describes very, very heavy rain to rain dogs and cats , now there is a bit of debate about where this comes from and it is quite unusual, but what I find that helps you remember it and is a very vivid image is from many years ago, countries and cities did not have the same drainage that we have today day and when it rained a lot, when it rained a lot, the streets of the city were flooded, the dogs and cats that are the most common pets in most countries, so those dogs and cats drowned, and every time The storm passed, people went out into the streets and there were cats and dogs lying lifeless all over the place where they had drowned.

It is not a very pretty image but I am sure you will remember it yes and no where I live is one of the most beautiful places in the world. world and we are spoiled for choice in terms of outdoor activities and beautiful places like on our doorstep we have beaches, forests, lakes, mountains but unfortunately it is Ireland so it usually pours rain so you can't really enjoy it . A big mistake I see with this is trapping the cats. and dogs mixed up and saying dogs and cats and when students don't really learn this properly and just see a list of idioms, they come into the exam like it's raining dogs and cats, a native English speaker or someone with a high level of English. will detect this right away and it's basically you holding up a sign that says: I'm not very good at English, so make sure you use it correctly.

I also see students using the wrong tense of Reign, so it poured rain if you're talking about the past to talk about something that normally happens, so it usually pours rain or pours rain. You need to understand the tense of the word rain and use it correctly again if you are saying that it is raining. cats and dogs yesterday that is incorrect and is a big sign to the examiner that you really don't know what you are talking about. The next idiom is throwing in the towel, so a towel that you use to dry off after a shower. and this means stopping something that is very, very difficult or that has become impossible to throw in the towel and this comes from boxing, so if guys are boxing and a boxer is getting so beaten up that it's impossible for them to continue, you know, continue.

It's not going to result in victory, it's going to result in them getting seriously hurt. Your corner, your coach will throw a towel into the ring and every time a towel is thrown into the ring, the referee will immediately stop it to throw the towel however he can. When you look at me you can see that no, I don't have a very healthy diet. I try. I usually get up in the morning and have a healthy breakfast and a healthy lunch, but it's so easy to throw in the towel when you get home. A hard day at work and you know your wife has a delicious meal prepared, there's a bottle of wine on the table and your kids are half eating chocolate lying all over the kitchen, so I do pretty well most of the day and then I fail at night.

The next idiom is to cross that bridge when you come to it. People often say we'll cross that bridge when we get to it or I'll cross that bridge when I get to it and what this means is dealing with a problem. or a situation that actually happens in the future, you shouldn't worry about something that hasn't happened yet, so imagine you're outside walking and someone starts talking about a bridge that's miles away and you worry about crossing that bridge. Let's say: Let's cross that bridge when we get to it, so where does this come from?

You know, many, many years ago, bridges were not free and they were not reliable, so often people would charge tolls, charge taxes to cross a bridge or the bridge was not. It's very sturdy and crossing that bridge could cause you to fall or cause the bridge to collapse and die, so it's an unpleasant or difficult situation coming up in the future, but you don't need to worry about it, you know we'll worry about it. about that, when we get there let's focus on the here and now, it's not something I really like to think about because in the back of my mind I know that IELTS teachers and all educators are doomed because AI will replace them and Why would a student hire a human that's not as good as a machine that can do it for half the price or a fraction of the price and do it much more effectively and you know we'll cross that bridge when the time comes, um, but no.

I don't think it's that far away, but in the meantime I'm going to enjoy teaching as long as I can. Next we have two Roman idioms or idioms that originate from the city of Rome. Rome was obviously one of the largest empires the world has ever seen and it has a huge influence on the English language and a huge number of languages ​​to this day and the first is that Rome was not built in a day and This means that important achievements must be made to achieve something big, a big goal. It takes time, it takes a long time to achieve something significant, so in the past, many, many years ago, Rome was the largest city in the world, but it was built over centuries.

It took a long, long time to turn Rome into the greatest city in the world. the world and we often use this when someone tries to make us do something too quickly, so if someone said to me, you know you need to have the biggest best YouTube channel in the world, well, Rome wasn't built in a day. I'll do it one video at a time. It is also often used to comfort someone who feels bad about not achieving something. So, you know, if my little son said we lost a soccer game, you know, I'm not very good at soccer.

Rome. It wasn't built in a day, you know you will get better at football, but you won't get better at football right now, you have to keep working hard and constant in the future and then you will be a football superstar that he wants to be. What I hate about social media is the fact that these companies have so much power to change their systems and change their algorithms, but they choose not to do it for money, so to give you an example of my work and my work to become a YouTuber famous IELTS is Actually, it's quite easy, all you have to do is create some clickbait titles like tricks, hacks, predictions and things like that and put a pretty girl on the thumbnail, but that doesn't mean that the person making that video know something about IELTS. it just means they know how to trick the algorithm, you know, I get that Rome wasn't built in a day, you know it takes time to fix platforms and change algorithms, but these are sometimes billion dollar companies if they wanted to get them. people outside of your platform could, but choose not to because popular is more important than you know, educate the public properly.

Next up is When in Rome, Do What the Romans Do, but this is often abbreviated to When in Rome, so you're very weird. You rarely hear native English speakers say when you are in Rome do what the Romans simply say when you are in Rome and what this means is that when you are visiting a foreign place when you are a tourist or a visitor in a country from which You are not, you should respect the customs and I respect the religion, the culture, the customs of that place and this comes from the Catholic faith where Milan and Rome had different days to fast, so in many religions you have fasting days where you do not eat anything and in Milan It was Sunday, but in Rome it was Saturday, so they talked about when you fast, fast on Saturday or fast on Sunday, when in Rome you have to respect their culture and you have to fast on their fast day. when you are at home do it normally no, I actually hate it and it makes me feel very uncomfortable.

I'm from Ireland and in Ireland it's quite rare for someone to take your photo and if they want to take your photo it's rude to just take it without asking, so it's customary to just say: do you mind if I take a photo? and if someone says yes, you can take it, but if they say no, you definitely shouldn't take it. My wife, who is from Vietnam, in Vietnam they have a very, very different culture, they are taking photos all the time and they won't think about taking a photo of you and if I get angry at someone for taking a photo, they will think that I am the problem and I'm being rude so you know when you're in Rome so now you know all these different idioms that band 9 students use.

Does that mean you can use them in the IELTS test and automatically get a higher score yeah and no, and this is the most important point in the video, if you don't watch this part, you will probably ruin your exam, you will lose a lot of money, please watch it, so what I am going to say is very different from most YouTubers on IELTS and most IELTS teachers, so let's look As for the data and facts, none of this is my opinion, all I'm going to tell you are straight facts, so when we look at all of our students from the band 9 who got the band9 in the real IELTS

speaking

test, what was the number of idioms? that they actually used and the number is quite shocking 1.2 on average, this means that many of them did not use idioms at all, most never used one or two, but there was a huge variation and it was quite rare for students to use e.g. more than four or five why is this and why many of you know that you are writing the comments right now that is wrong you have to use idioms to get a higher score let me explain so if you go to the official descriptors of bands for IELTS, they talk to them.

I'll find them online about what it says for the lexical device, which is basically a fancy way of saying vocabulary for Bond seven, it uses less common and idiomatic vocabulary and shows some awareness of style and placement with some inappropriate choices, so I'll do it will listen. most IELTS YouTubers must use idioms to get a seven or above and this is a misconception, it is a misunderstanding of the official scoring criteria. Most IELTS YouTubers have not been examiners and don't really know what they really mean, let's look up the dictionary definition for idiomatic, what does idiomatic really mean, because most YouTubers and most students think that idiomatic means idioms, just use a lot of idioms, you will get about seven, eight or nine, does it really mean that well if Look at the Cambridge dictionary, the definition of idiomatic contains expressions that are natural and correct and this is what idiomatic really means to IELTS purposes idiomatic means natural English, in other words, English in which a native English speaker would use natural idiomatic expressions.

Contains idioms. but it also contains phrasal verbs, informal words, colloquialisms and many other forms of natural English because if you are studying English at school and you are only using textbooks, that is not the most natural English you will hear, only when you move to a country native English speaker and start copying these phrases and idioms that you sign as a native English speaker and that is what the examiners are listening to, they are not listening to how many idioms you used, they are listening to your entire performance and then think if they are using some idiomatic expressions or not and that includes idioms.

But it includes a lot of other things, so I just wasted my time with this lesson. You know you're telling us that you should learn these idioms and then you're telling us not to learn these idioms, so let me tell you what we tell our VIP students when we teach them vocabulary. We use something called the birthday cake analogy or the birthday cake method. If you think about a birthday cake, it looks very elegant. and it looks very, very impressive, but if you think about the ingredients of a fancy birthday cake, they are the most basic foods, the most basic ingredients in the world, things like milk, sugar, flour, water, butter, these are things that they can be found in any store in any country in the world they are simple they are basic most birthday cakes are made up of 98 97 of these simple basic ingredients but the sprinkles on top make it look elegant that is the exact approach we teach our students VIP 97 98 of the words that The use will be simple everyday basic words because that's how the English language works, that's how any language works, so you can use some high level words, you can use some idioms, you should use some phrasal verbs, you can sprinkle them on top, but Actually, it will be quite rare that when you use them, the examiner isn't looking for you to use them in every sentence now if you go back to this video and listen to my answers, although I tried to use idioms in every answer.

You broke down the words in all of those answers 90 95 percent of the words I use are simple, basic everyday words. Remember the birthday cake analogy, so it's great to have idioms in your toolbox and you can use them appropriately and accurately, but that's not the case. You don't have to use them. You know, if you're building a house, would you rather have a huge set of tools that lets you do a lot of things or would you just like to have a hammer that teaches you these idioms? It's about expanding. Acquire the vocabulary you know. to use and the keyword that is used you are not learning vocabulary you are learning to use the vocabulary effectively please please please do not do two things number one do not memorize these idioms and try to insert them force them in each answer you are going to fail because it will be inappropriate the you will use too much and you will use them incorrectly you know the words will be correct incorrect the collocations will be incorrect in pronunciation they will probably be incorrect try to incorporate them into your daily use of the English language, use them correctly and use them appropriately, that is the difference between a six-year-old student and a nine-year-old student.

The second thing you should not do is learn lists of idioms. The reason this is a very long video and why I'm talking. a lot and explaining all of this to you and why I didn't just give you a list of idioms and just take them out and show you examples was to show you that you should use them properly. I couldn't take those idioms and do them. a speaking test and I use them all in the speaking test, in fact when I took the speaking test I got a bar nine because I'm a native English speaker of course, but I didn't use idioms, that's because I don't They are judging me.

Just by my use of idioms, I'm being judged by all the words I'm using, I'm not just using fancy high level idioms, so if you're not going to use lists of idioms, how do you learn new idioms? And how do you learn new vocabulary? It is absolutely essential that you are constantly improving and expanding your vocabulary. Luckily, I took a full course, a free vocabulary course that will show you exactly how to learn vocabulary. It is a completely unique method, not available anywhere else. in the world apart from this video here, click on it and you can learn vocabulary effectively and improve your score, good luck.