Page 40 - ielts speaking actual tests

 hesitate = to be slow to speak or act because you are nervous or unsure.

 give a lift = a free ride in a car [in this case, to the place where the elderly lady
wanted to go – the pagoda].

 to the door = directly to the place where she wanted to go.

 turned her down = I would have felt bad if I had refused to consider her request.

 dropped her off = I took her to the particular place where she wanted to go, while
I continued my journey to a different place.

 brings its own reward = the good moral feeling that I had from helping the lady
was enough, without expecting any payment or thanks from her.

 derived from = came from.

 gratitude = the feeling of being grateful and wanting to express her thanks.

 meant a lot to her = my help had been very important to her.

 suspicious of somebody = not willing to trust somebody.

21. Subject you didn't like before but are interested in now.

Today, I am going to share with you my experience with maths, a subject I didn’t
into it long time ago but I am currently keen on. I had to study maths from
elementary school onwards because it is one of the compulsory subjects.

There were so many reasons why I didn’t like maths. First of all, I think my
elementary teacher failed to guide us through the exercises which we had to do step

by step. She basically gave us many types of maths problems and the solutions to
each type. Consequently, I didn’t fully understand the subject or the logic behind
the solution like: how did you come up with that particular solution but not in a
different way? Secondly, she always assigned difficult problems for us to do at
home. Since I didn’t understand the lesson, I couldn’t solve a single problem. So I
was very discouraged when I tried to study maths.

It was not until high school that I started to like maths. At that time, maths was
divided into algebra and geometry. I found that I was very good at dealing with

numbers. In addition, my maths teacher was a great one. He focused on teaching us
to master the basic knowledge, then how to use basic knowledge to solve more
advanced problems.

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