B2 First Speaking Part 4: Quantities and Types of People

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In B2 First Speaking Part 4, when many questions ask about ‘people’ or ‘children’ or ‘businesses’, it is much easier to answer if you use expressions for quantities of people and types of people which means you can be much more coherent and also speak for longer. The following article goes with this article on Sweeping Statements.

It is not very natural to make absolute statements like All people like… or Everyone in Western countries thinks… This doesn’t sound very clever and can some­ times be rude. Even in one country or one culture, many people have different ways of life and different opinions.

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It is much easier to give shorter answers for each group, rather than try to talk a group so large (people / children) that it’s almost impossible to give a good answer.

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Quantities

You can use these expressions for quantities of people:
most
the majority of
a large percentage of
nearly all
a vast amount of
few
hardly any
not many
a minority of
only some

Types of People

You can also combine them with the expressions for types of people to say which people in society usually do something or believe something.

For example:

Look at some examples of how quantities and types of people words can be combined together:
Most young people can play at least one sport.
The majority of elderly people enjoy board games.
A large percentage of the population smokes too much.
Nearly all university students get far too much homework.
A vast amount of business people don’t get enough free time.
A tremendous amount of young girls care too much about fashion.

Here are some sample answers showing how you can use these groups:

Example 1 – Today, not many people like listening to the radio……… Pretty much everyone has a television now…….. For most people, televisions are very appealing because… However, there are many people that don’t share the same opinion……. It also depends on the lifestyle of the individual – many taxi drivers love listening to the radio because it is a very convenient way to hear news and plays without distracting them from driving.

Example 2 – In my country nearly everyone enjoys eating meat, though not in large quantities, However, some people, mainly Buddhists and young people who are members of animal rights movements, make a concerted effort not to eat meat for ethical reasons. Although some scientists say it is important to eat meat for health reasons………

Evaluating Opinions

When evaluating opinions, we should start by saying how many and what types of people hold those opinions.

Quantities of people
nearly everyone
almost everybody
the (vast) majority of + types of people
most + types of people
a large percentage of + types of people
some + types of people
a few + types of people
a handful of+ types of people

Types of people – ages
elderly people I retired people I the older generation
working people office workers students
adolescents/teenagers married couples

Types of people – behaviour
very active people/sporty people/energetic people religious people
animal lovers/food lovers lazy people

People with + adjective-noun combination
People with creative talent believe…
People with strong political views think…
People with a lot of energy like to…

People who have…
People who have an interest in art…
People who have lots of free time…
People who have their own pets…

More examples:
Most people with a lot of energy like to regularly play team and individual sports.
A handful of people who have lots of free time actually decide to do volunteer work.
A large percentage of teenagers have problems communicating properly with their parents and teachers.

Age Groups &Generations	Work-related Groups	Social Classes
the older generation	retired people	poor people
the elderly	office workers	rich people
younger people	white-collar workers	the working classes
school kids	unemployed people	the middle classes
the younger generation	housewives	the upper classes
adolescents	job seeker	the lower classes

It is much easier to give organised and very coherent speaking Part 3 answers, if you talk about ‘groups of people’ rather than just ‘people’. Here are some other ways to split them up. Be careful, though. Try to use only three groups at the most in an answer.

School children – pre-schoolers, kindergarten kids, primary school kids, middle school students, high school students, early developers, late developers

Income – extremely wealthy people, the well off, people in the middle-income bracket, low-wage earners, the unemployed

Class – upper class, the upper classes, middle class, the middle classes, working class, the working classes

Workplace – office workers / civil servants / manual labourers / farm workers / blue collar workers / white collar workers / military personnel, health workers / skilled professionals

Geography – people in colder countries, people in tropical countries, people from the north / south / east / west, people who live by the coast / in the mountains / on the plains / in the suburbs / in inner cities / in industrialised areas / in the countryside

Personality – more introverted, more extroverted, fun-loving, adventure seeking, couch potatoes

The ways to split them are too many to list here, but below are some more examples using some of the above.

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B2 First Speaking Part 4 Sample Answers

Question – Some people say that we spend too much time checking for updates on social networking websites. Do you agree? (Why? / Why not?)

Sample answer – I completely agree with that, to be quite honest with you, for various reasons. One of these reasons would be that these days everyone expects you to have all these social media things and maybe your boss, maybe your wife, maybe your friends and so on. And so they expect you to keep up to date with what they’re doing and what they want in the same places on the same apps that you use. Quite frankly, I hate that kind of thing, but there we go. I think in other aspects you can use social media to cheque on what your friends are.

Question – Should schools and colleges organise free time activities for students at weekends? (Why? / Why not?)

Sample answer – It’s something I’ve never really thought about before, but yeah, I think that would be quite a good idea. Because if you have activities especially if they’re free, I know it’s in their free time, but if you have activities at weekends, then it gives students an option because some people just play their computer games because there’s nothing else to do. They might need to do their washing or go shopping or something, but maybe that’s not interesting for them. And so if schools and colleges were places like that, that put on activities at the weekend, then they might find some interesting hobby.

Question – Are you interested in the cultures of other countries, for example their music or food? (Why? / Why not?)

Sample answer – I would say not really. Not as in deliberately going to find out about different cultures and so on I read a lot of books. I read constantly and one of the things I quite enjoy is to read stories like, for example, detective stories or other kinds of stories set in other countries. I find that quite enjoyable and as a result some cultural things come into it. I also quite enjoy historical fiction, which is another story but there’s quite a lot of culture in that too but actually pursuing Italian music……

Question – Tell us about something you’ve done which you are proud of.

Sample answer – One of the things in my life, the one of the things in my life that I’m quite proud of is I went by myself, in my forties, I went travelling around the world and I didn’t do it very expensively and going spending lots of money. I went and I worked in all the countries that I went to so that I could meet normal people and do normal things rather than continually being caught up in tourist traps and so on. And it was wonderful. Really wonderful. I met some amazing people and really became much more confident in myself.

How to Practice

AS ever the best way to practice natural English is with a native speaking teacher. For some students, that is difficult, so think about what you are confident in talking about. Think about the groups that you know about and answer questions using them. Once you start to become more confident, substitute other groups for the original ones.

Remember that you don’t always need to compare people from the same group as you can see from the answers above.

Conclusion

Well, try and put these into practice for your B2 First Speaking Part 4 and it will give you many more options and more to talk about without coming up with fantastic ideas. Good luck and remember the other article on sweeping statements which helps in a different way.