Skip to main content

Transcript

πŸ“™ Part 2: Describe a time when you forgot or missed an appointment

Even our super-organized expert Rory can let things slip! Listen to his hilarious story of a disorganized get-together that never happened and find out why everyone, including Rory, ended up 'off the hook'.

Maria & Rory

Β· 10 min read

This episode’s vocabulary

Disorganized

adj. β€” badly planned and without order.

Time flies

idiom β€” used to mean that time passes surprisingly quickly.

To match up

phrasal verb β€” if two pieces of information match up, they are the same.

Schedule

noun β€” a list of planned activities or things to be done showing the times or dates when they are intended to happen or be done.

To materialize

verb β€” if an idea or hope materializes, it becomes real.

Slip someone's memory/mind

idiom β€” to be forgotten

Relief

noun β€” a feeling of happiness that something unpleasant has not happened or has ended.

Off the hook

idiom β€” if you are off the hook, you have escaped from a difficult situation.

Podcast cover
πŸ“™ Part 2: Describe a time when you forgot or missed an appointment
IELTS Speaking for Success
0:00 / 0:00

Questions and answers

Maria

Could you start speaking now, please?

Rory

Well, I missed a meeting with my friends for coffee last week, because it was a bit disorganized, which was a bit disappointing. In greater depth, it was the first week of my holidays, and I really wanted to see as much of my friends as possible before I got back to work. Time tends to fly when you have to take two weeks to have a holiday. So it's important to make the most of it. I'd already seen them one evening, but it was so short that I thought another round was necessary. To describe who I made the arrangements with in more detail, it was supposed to be with one of my best friends from my childhood, and his husband, who I'm also good friends with, plus two other friends, who I know through the first pair, the five of us are all radically different people, but it's always hilarious when we are together. To describe why I missed it further, I think it's because, in addition to having wildly different lives, we also have wildly busy lives. So matching up schedules is always hard. In this case, I thought we had a plan together. But on the day, the whole thing just failed to materialize and totally slipped my mind since I had a lot of other things going on. Well, in terms of how I felt about it, I was a bit annoyed with myself, actually, that I forgot. But there was some sense of relief as well, because it turned out that everyone else let the whole thing slip too. So I was off the hook as well as they were. Hopefully, we'll get something together again in the future because it's nice when we're all together. However, at least this time we all seem to have, well, just collectively failed to remember it.

Maria

And do you often forget things?

Rory

Oh, no, not often. My diary helps me remember. -

Plus and Pro

Unlock the rest of this episode

This preview is the vocabulary and the model answer. Plus and Pro add the recording and the discussion.

  • Full audio
  • Discussion
  • Speaking practice