IELTS Speaking

Er....I'm not quite sure, let me think. It was a while ago now. I think the last time was last year when I went up to see some friends I had not seen for a while in the north of the country. Yes, that was it. It was a journey of about 3 hours and I had to change trains once during the journey. The first train was a bit crowded and noisy as I think there were people on there going to a football match, but it was an ok trip most of the way..

Yes, I quite like them. If you are on a train you can relax and look out the window, read, use your lap top - it's all quite comfortable. On the bus it's more difficult to do those things because there is less space and the movement can make you travel sick too. The only problem with trains in my country is that they are often delayed or late. That can ruin your journey.

I think it is probably when you are at work. When out of work, it's not really going to affect things too much, or at least only yourself, if you are late to meet friends or for an appointment, or if you are getting things done in your house. But at work, it will cause problems if you don't manage your time effectively because you could miss deadlines or miss appointments. You could lose your job. So at work is when it is most important to manage your time.

As I said, I don't have any specific system in place to manage my time. For example, if I am at work and I have a lot of cases, I just go through them each day and decide which I need to tackle first. At work we do have an online diary which I guess I use, so in that sense I do manage my time to an extent.

It's usually on long trips across the country if I want to visit friends or I have an appointment somewhere. For short journeys around where I live or to work it's much easier to drive or take the bus. As I said before, you can do things such as read on the train so it's good for long journeys.

Actually I'd say I'm not too good! I don't really have a system in place to organize things. I know some people have an electronic organizer or use some device to plan what they are doing but I don't do that. But I always make sure I am on time for appointments and things like that, and I meet deadlines and get things done.

I think any time is ok, but when I read I like to concentrate, so I can't read for a short time like on a bus ride like some people do. I like to put time aside to enjoy it. So if I have some free time at the weekend I might read for a few hours. And I nearly always read before I go to bed - this really helps me to sleep.