 I'm going to give you the most common idioms used by real BAN9 students and for each idiom I'll also give you a BAN9 sample answer. We've helped hundreds of students get a BAN9 in the IELTS speaking test and we took all of their practice tests and analyzed them using AI and identified the most common idioms that they used. And at the end of the video we're going to show you the number of idioms that BAN9 students actually use, hint it is much, much lower than you think and reveal the biggest mistake that students make when it comes to idioms so that you can avoid that and improve your score. So without further ado, let's get into it. So the first idiom is to bite the bullet, bite as in to bite something and a bullet, something that you put in a gun to bite the bullet. What to bite the bullet means is to do something difficult or unpleasant with bravery. So you don't want to do something, something very, very difficult or unpleasant, but you do it anyway. You're brave and you do it. So where does this come from? Well this actually comes from the battlefield, from war. So many, many years ago if you had a wound, if you were shot or stabbed or whatever it is and you needed a very unpleasant procedure from the doctor, there wasn't any anesthetic, there wasn't any painkillers. So what they would do is they would give you a bullet and tell you to bite down on that bullet. I don't know if this helps or not, but that is where it comes from and understanding where idioms comes from really helps you remember them and use them properly. So let's pick a real question and I'll 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 in my family ever to get high grades in their A levels. So my mother sat me down one day and said it's either medicine or law. So I went to a hospital on work experience and fainted when I saw the sight of blood. I'm too squeamish for medicine, so I decided just to bite the bullet and study law. Some common collocations of this idiom are to bite the bullet. It's normally to bite the bullet, not bite the bullet. I decided to bite the bullet, I chose to bite the bullet and I had to bite the bullet. And the correct pronunciation of this is to stress or emphasise bite. The next idiom is a piece of cake. A piece of cake means that something is very easy and we often use this when we are reassuring someone who is worried about something. So if my little boy was worried about his maths test, I would say don't worry, it's going to be a piece of cake. You don't always use it to help someone or give advice to someone. We normally talk about it just when we are describing something that is simple and easy to do. Where does this come from? Well, there's quite a debate about where this comes from, but the easiest way to think about a piece of cake is that it's pleasant. It is easy to eat a piece of cake. It is a very nice thing. You might also hear the idiom, it was a cake walk. That means walking around looking at cakes. A very pleasant, nice, easy thing to do. To be honest, compared to practising law, teaching English is a piece of cake. To give you a concrete example, to qualify as a lawyer takes around six years of study and work experience. To qualify as an English teacher only takes six weeks. The pay obviously isn't as good, but the students, the clients are much nicer and friendlier. A common mistake that we hear a lot with a piece of cake is to drop the article, to just say it's piece of cake. If you make that mistake, it's not going to improve your IELTS score, it's going to lower your IELTS score, so don't just pick these and use them without really learning them properly. And again, the pronunciation is a piece of cake. You're stressing peace rather than cake. Next is a very, very old idiom, kill two birds with one stone. What this means is to accomplish two goals with one action. And this actually comes from Greek mythology, it is 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 just think of something in your everyday, simple life and think of one action that you take that achieves two different goals. So let's get a real question and I will use this idiom in the answer. Yes, I actually bought my wife 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 one present for her birthday and Christmas. And she was very happy with that because she got one nice expensive ring rather than two less expensive gifts. A common mistake that we see with this one is to use kill in its present simple form rather than killed K-I-L-L-E-D in its past form. So if you're talking about the past, just like I did in that question or that answer, I used killed two birds with one stone, not kill two birds with one stone. You could also say I decided to kill two birds with one stone or I chose to kill two birds with one stone. Just make sure that you're not taking the idiom and inserting it into the sentence without thinking about tense, without thinking about 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 it was let out of the bag, would it be easy to put that cat back into the bag? It would be very, very difficult. And this is the same with secrets. Once you reveal a secret, once it is out there into the world, you cannot take it back. So that is where to let the cat out of the bag comes from. If you count watches as jewelry, then yes. For my last birthday, my 40th birthday, my wife bought me a very special watch that I've been looking at and desiring for many, many years. The funny story about that is that my credit card and my wife's credit card are the same. So whenever my wife bought it, it pinged on my phone and I got an alert from my favorite watch boutique and it was the exact amount of money that was for this watch because I had been looking at this watch for ages. So the phone kind of let the cat out of the bag a little bit, but it was still a very nice gift and a nice surprise. The pronunciation of this is to stress or emphasize cat and bag. Let the cat out of the bag, let the cat out of the bag. Common mistake that we see with this one is again missing out the articles. Let cat out of bag. You shouldn't take the idiom and then say it, you know, partly. You shouldn't use it incorrectly. A lot of students believe that if you just use idioms and it doesn't matter if you use them correctly or not, you're going to get bonus points and you're going to get a high score. Again, if you use it incorrectly, you're 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 of your resources or all of your effort into one single area in order to minimize risk. Where does this come from? Well, quite literally, if you had lots of chickens, lots of hens that were laying eggs, and you put all of your eggs into one basket, if you drop the basket, all of 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 of your money into one stock. Don't put all your eggs into one basket. Put them into many, many different places and then you're minimizing risk. It's basically about diversification. Probably not because with the developments in AI recently, I don't think there are going to be IELTS teachers or even any teachers in the future. I think it would be very foolish for me to put all my eggs in one basket and just hope for the best and hope that IELTS and teaching last forever. But honestly, I don't think it will. The next idiom is once in a blue moon, which means it happens rarely. So you're talking about frequency, you're talking about how often something happens and this thing happens rarely. Probably less than once a year. This is quite a literal idiom because literally it is rare to have a blue moon, but it does happen sometimes. This refers to, I think it happens once every three years or once every two or three years, you will have two moons in one calendar month. So once in a blue moon means something that doesn't happen very often. I used to go out nearly every night, but since I've had kids, it's really once in a blue moon. Most of my friends have either settled down with kids like me or they have moved away. So it's quite 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 during the Christmas period or in the summertime when a lot of our friends have time off, I might go out, but it is quite a rare occasion these days. A common mistake that we see with 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 if you use this idiom and it's really easy to use because it's talking about frequency, which is quite a basic function of English, that it will automatically bump your scores. It's kind of like easy points. Students will insert this in unusual situations. Remember, you're only using it when the examiner asks you, how often do you do that? This might come up in part one, it might come up in part two, it might come up in part three, but probably part one. But if you don't get a question, how often do you do something, you don't have to use it. You won't get a lower score because you didn't use once in a blue moon. Only use it when you can use it and when you are actually talking about something that happens very, very rarely, like once every few years. The next one, I'm gonna give you two idioms in one, burn the midnight oil and burn the candle at both ends. They have similar meanings but are slightly different. So I'm gonna answer a question and use both of them in the same answer. So burn the midnight oil is talking about things that are difficult. You are working hard on something. You are literally sitting up at midnight working on something. So we would often talk about work or studying and burning the midnight oil, that means that you're working very, very hard at something. Doesn't have to be at nighttime, just means that you are working very, very hard on something and where does this come from? Well, before electricity, our main source of light would have been oil lamps. So you would have lit an oil lamp and used that oil. So if you were burning the midnight oil, it means that you weren't sleeping. It means that you were working at midnight, meaning you're working very hard, burning the midnight oil. Now to burn the candle at both ends has a similar meaning but slightly different. Burning the midnight oil doesn't mean that it's a bad thing. It isn't negative per se, it's quite positive. You're working hard on something. Burning the candle at both ends means that you're working too much. You are exhausting yourself. Now where does this come from? It actually comes from France where they would, like everywhere else, use candles for light. But if you were an aristocrat, if you were very, very rich, you wouldn't burn the candle on one end, you would turn the candle horizontal and you would light both ends. And what this meant was that you were wasteful, that you were rich, and you were just wasteful for waste's sake. But over the years, the meaning has changed to mean that you are working too hard and you are exhausting yourself. It's often used in the context of people who work very hard. So they spend a lot of time and energy in work and then they party too much after. So it's typical lawyer, for example, or a banker who is working very, very hard all day and then going out all night, they're burning the candle at both ends and they're going to exhaust themselves. Yes, I used to burn the candle at both ends. I had a very much work hard, play hard attitude because I was a lawyer, lawyers are expected to work, 80 to 100 hours a week, but we would often go out to bars and restaurants after work to blow up steam and to de-stress, which isn't really sustainable. Now I do still burn the midnight oil. I work very, very hard on my career, but you're more likely to find me tucked up in bed by 9 p.m. than to be out party. The next idiom is at the drop of a hat. And this means to do something quickly, immediately, and without any 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, everybody wore hats. If you look at pictures from a long time ago, you'll see that everyone on this country anyway wore a hat. And if people were going to fight or run a race or compete in some way, what people would do is they would take their hat off and when they dropped their hat, that was the sign that the fight was going to begin or the race was about to begin. So people would drop their hat and you started immediately without thinking about it. We actually rent our home. We could afford to buy a home, but we really value our independence and freedom. If you own a home, you're kind of stuck in that location because it can take a very long time to sell that home, but if you rent, you can move anywhere at the drop of a hat. The next idiom is cry over spilt milk. And this means not to waste time thinking about something, thinking negative thoughts about something that you cannot change, that has already happened. Where does this come from? Literally, if you spill milk, is there any point in crying about spilling milk? No, you can't put it back into the bottle. You can't change that scenario. The thing I dislike most about my job is dealing with people who only focus on the negative, especially when they are given negative feedback. That could be students, that could be employees, but people who make mistakes and don't learn from them. So for example, I give a lot of feedback on student essays and some students see mistakes and they're like, great, now I know what my mistakes are and I can improve. Other students will just cry about it for days and they'll cry about it for weeks, be like, I'm going to fail. It's like, there's no point crying over spilt milk. You made the mistake, now I learn from it. The next idiom is you can't judge a book by its cover. This means that you should not judge people or things based on their appearance. Normally people, but can also include things. The origin of this is quite obvious. If you go into a bookshop, you will see lots of covers of books, but you actually need to read the book to judge it. You can't go 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 this to people. You can't judge a person based on their appearance. Very rarely actually, because I'm a firm believer in you can't judge a book by its cover and we should judge people not on what clothes they wear in their appearance, but by their character and the things that come out of their mouth. My wife firmly disagrees with this because she says someone who gets millions of views on YouTube shouldn't be wearing the same shirt every day. So she does encourage me to go and buy new clothes, but I do it begrudgingly. The next one is don't count your chickens before they hatch another chicken idiom. And this means don't assume something will be successful or something will happen until it actually occurs. So you shouldn't assume that watching this video and using these idioms is going to guarantee a band nine. You should actually go and do the test and see if you get a band nine. Don't count your chickens. Now the full version of this idiom is don't count your chickens before they hatch, but English speakers normally just say don't count your chickens. You can use either of them in the test, but I think it's just simpler and easier to remember and use the shorter form, don't count your chickens. Now 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 hatch 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 count a luxury watch as 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 walk out of the jewellers, they lose value. Whereas many of the watches that I've purchased have actually gone up in value. I don't want to count my chickens, but if I were to sell these watches, I probably would make a lot more money on them than I paid for them. So that's why I prefer luxury timepieces over simple jewelry. The next idiom is to go the extra mile and this means to put more effort or to work harder than what is required. 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 give you example sentences. This is actually a biblical reference from the Sermon on the Mount. And in the Bible, it says if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles. And many people interpret this as you should always do more than is required of you. My wife does the vast majority of the cooking not because she's necessarily a better cook, but the thing I love about my wife is in whatever she does, she goes the extra mile. So if I was cooking steak, I would just cook the steak and eat it with a little bit of bread. But my wife will have like three different sauces and balsamic vinegar and two different olive oils and four different types of potato. She really does go the extra mile when it comes to cooking in 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 come up during part one or part two or part three. And it describes very, very heavy rain to rain cats and dogs. Now there's a bit of a debate about where this comes from and it's quite unusual, but the one that I find that helps you remember it and is a very vivid image is back in the day many, many years ago, countries and cities didn't have the same drainage that we have these days. And when it would rain hard, when it would rain heavy, the city streets would flood. What are the most common pets in most countries? Cats and dogs. So those cats and dogs would actually drown and whenever the storm was over, people would go into the streets and there would be cats and dogs lying lifeless all over the place. They had drowned. It's not a very nice image, but you'll definitely remember it. Yes and no, where I live is one of the most beautiful places in the world. We're spoiled for choice in terms of outdoor activities and beautiful places. On our doorstep, we have beaches, forests, lakes, mountains, but unfortunately it's Ireland so it's normally raining cats and dogs so you don't really get to enjoy it. A big mistake that I see with this one is getting the cats and dogs mixed up and saying dogs and cats. When students don't really learn this properly and just see a list of idioms, they go into the test and they're like, it was raining dogs and cats. A native English speaker or someone with a very high level of English will spot this immediately and it is basically you holding up a sign saying I'm not very good at English so make sure you use it properly. I also see students using the wrong tense of rain so it rained cats and dogs if you're talking about the past to talk about something that normally happens so it's normally raining cats and dogs or it rains cats and dogs. You need to understand the verb tense of the word rain and use it correctly. Again, if you're saying it's raining cats and dogs yesterday, that's incorrect and it's a big flag to the examiner that you don't really know what you're talking about. The next idiom is to throw in the towel. So a towel that you use to dry yourself that you after a shower and this means to stop something that is either very, very difficult or has become impossible to throw in the towel and this comes from boxing. So if guys are boxing and one boxer is getting so beat up that it is impossible for them to continue. Continuing is not going to result in victory. It is going to result in them getting badly injured. Their corner, their trainer will throw a towel into the ring and whenever a towel is thrown into the ring the referee stops it immediately to throw in the towel. As you can tell from looking at me no, I don't have a very healthy diet. I do try, I normally get up in the morning and have a healthy breakfast and have a healthy lunch but it's so easy just to throw in the towel when you get home after a hard day's work and your wife has a beautiful meal prepared, there's a bottle of wine on the table and your kid's half eaten chocolate is lying all around the kitchen. So I do quite well most of the day and then fail in the evenings. The next idiom is cross that bridge when you come to it. People often say we will or we'll cross that bridge when we come to it or I will, I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. And what this means is to deal with a problem or a situation when it actually occurs in the future, not to worry about something that has not happened yet. So imagine you are out for a walk and someone starts talking about a bridge that is miles away and they're worrying about crossing that bridge. You would say let's cross that bridge when we come to it. So where this comes from is many, many years ago bridges weren't free and they weren't reliable. So often people would collect tolls, collect taxes to cross a bridge or the bridge wasn't very sturdy and crossing that bridge could result in you falling off or the bridge collapsing and you dying. So it's talking about an unpleasant or difficult situation that is coming up in the future but you shouldn't worry about that. You know, we'll worry about that when we get there. Let's just 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 IELTS teachers and all educators are doomed because AI is going to replace them. And why would a student hire a human that is not as good as a machine that can do it at half the price or a fraction of the price and do it much more effectively? You know, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it but I don't think it's that far away but in the meantime, I'm just going to enjoy teaching for as long as I can. Next we have two Roman idioms or idioms that originate from the city of Rome. Rome obviously was one of the greatest empires that 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 one is Rome wasn't built in a day. And this means that significant accomplishments. So to accomplish something big, a big goal takes time. It takes a long time to achieve something significant. So back in the day, many, many years ago, Rome was the greatest city in the world but it was built over centuries. It took a very, very, very long time to build Rome into the greatest city in the world. And we often use this when someone is trying to get us to do something too quickly. So if somebody said to me, you know, you need to have the best, biggest YouTube channel in the world, well, Rome wasn't built in a day. We'll do it one video at a time. It's often used as well to console someone who is feeling bad about not achieving something. So, you know, if my little boy was like, we lost a football match. You know, I'm not very good at football. Rome 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 need to keep working consistently hard into the future and then you will be a footballing superstar which he wants to be. The thing 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 decide not to for money. So, to give you an example from my work and my job, to become a famous IELTS YouTuber is actually quite easy. All you have to do is come up with some clickbait titles like hacks and tricks and predictions and things like that and put a pretty girl on the thumbnail. But that doesn't mean that the person making that video knows anything about IELTS. It just means that they know how to trick the algorithm. You know, I understand Rome wasn't built in a day that it takes time to fix platforms and change algorithms but these are sometimes trillion dollar companies. If they wanted to get these people off their platform they could but they decide not to because popular is more important than educating the public properly. The next one is when in Rome do what the Romans do. But this is often shortened to when in Rome. So you'll very rarely hear native English speakers say when in Rome do what the Romans do. Just say when 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 that you're not from 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 for fasting. So in many religions you have fast days where you don't eat anything and in Milan it was on a Sunday but in Rome it was on a Saturday. So they were talking about like when do you fast? Do you fast on a Saturday or fast on a Sunday? When in Rome you should respect their culture and you should fast on their fast day when you're home do it normally. No, I actually hate it and it makes me feel very uncomfortable. I'm from Ireland and in Ireland it is quite rare for someone to take your photo and if they want to take your photo it is rude to just take it without asking you. So it's customary just to say do you mind if I take a photo and if somebody says yes you can take it but if they say no you should definitely not 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 will think nothing of just taking a photo of you and if I get angry with someone for taking a photo they'll think that I'm the problem and I'm being rude so you know when in Rome. So now you know all of these different idioms that band nine students use. Does that mean that you can use them in the IELTS test and automatically get a higher score? Yes and no and this is the most important point in the video. If you don't watch this bit you probably will mess up your test, fail, waste a lot of money please do watch it. So what I'm about to say is very different from most IELTS YouTubers and most IELTS teachers. So let's just look at data and facts. None of this is my opinion. All the things I'm about to tell you are straight facts. So when we analyzed all of our band nine students who got band nine in the real IELTS speaking test what were the number of idioms that they actually used? And the number is quite shocking. 1.2 on average. This means that many of them didn't use idioms at all. Most of them maybe used one or two but there was quite a variation and it was quite rare for students to use say more than four or five. Why is this? And why are many of you typing in the comments right now? That is wrong. You must use idioms to get a higher score. Let me explain. So if you go to the official band descriptors for IELTS speaking, you'll find them online. What it says for lexical resource which is basically a fancy way of saying vocabulary for band seven is uses some less common and idiomatic vocabulary and shows some awareness of style and collocation with some inappropriate choices. So what you'll hear from most IELTS YouTubers is you must use idioms to get a seven or above. And this is a misconception. It is a misunderstanding of the official marking criteria. Most IELTS YouTubers have not been examiners and they don't really know what these actually mean. Let's look up the dictionary definition for idiomatic. What does idiomatic actually mean? Because most YouTubers and most students think that idiomatic means idioms. Just use lots of idioms. You'll get a band seven, eight or nine. Does it actually mean that? Well, if we look at Cambridge Dictionary, the definition of idiomatic is containing expressions that are natural and correct. And this is what idiomatic actually means for the purposes of IELTS. Idiomatic means natural English. In other words, English that a native English speaker would use. Natural idiomatic expressions. It does contain idioms, but it also contains slang, phrasal verbs, informal words, colloquialisms, and many other forms of natural English. Because if you are studying English in school and you're just using textbooks, that is not the most natural English that you will hear. It's only when you move to a native English-speaking country and start copying these idiomatic phrases and expressions that you sign like a native English speaker. And that is what the examiners are listening out for. They're not listening for how many idioms did you use. They are listening to your whole performance and then thinking, are they using some idiomatic expressions or not? And that includes idioms, but it includes many, many other things. So have I just wasted your time with this lesson? 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're teaching 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 fancy and it looks very, very impressive. But if you think about the ingredients of a fancy-looking 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 can be found in any shop in any country in the world. They are simple, they are basic. Most birthday cakes are made up 98, 97% of these simple basic ingredients. But the sprinkles on top make it look fancy. That's the exact approach that we teach our VIP students. 97, 98% of the words that you use are going to be simple everyday basic words because that is how the English language functions. That is how any language functions. Then you can use some high-level words, you could use some idioms, you should use some phrasal verbs. You could sprinkle those on top but it's going to actually be quite rare when you use them. The examiner is not looking for you to use them in every single sentence. Now, if you go back in this video and listen to my answers, even though I tried to use idioms in every single answer, if you broke down the words of all of those answers, 90, 95% of the words that I use are simple basic everyday words. Remember the birthday cake analogy. So it is great having idioms in your toolkit and you can use them appropriately and accurately but you don't have to use them. If you are building a house, would you rather have a massive toolkit that allows you to do many, many things or would you just like to have a hammer? Teaching you these idioms is about expanding the vocabulary you know how to use and the keyword there is use. You are not learning vocabulary. You are learning to use vocabulary effectively. Please, please, please do not do two things. Number one, do not memorize these idioms and try and insert them, force them into every single answer. You are going to fail because it will be inappropriate, you'll use them too much and you will use them incorrectly. You know, the words will be incorrect, the collocations will be incorrect and the pronunciation probably will be incorrect. Try to incorporate them into your everyday use of the English language, use them properly and use them appropriately. That is the difference between about six student and about nine student. The second thing you should not do is learn lists of idioms. The reason why this is a very, 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 rhyme them off and show you examples was to demonstrate to you that you should use them appropriately. I could not take those idioms and do a speaking test and use all of them in the speaking test. In fact, when I did the speaking test, I got a band nine because I'm a native English speaker, of course, but I used zero idioms. That is because I'm not being judged on my use of idioms alone, I'm being judged on all of the words that I'm using, not just the fancy high level idiom. 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's absolutely essential that you are constantly improving and expanding your vocabulary. Luckily, I made a whole course, a whole free vocabulary course that'll show you exactly how to learn vocabulary. It's a completely unique method. It's not available anywhere else in the world other than this video here. Click on that and you will be able to learn vocabulary effectively and boost your score. Good luck.