IELTS Advanced · Cuối khoá · Speaking: Transport and Inventions

1. Most days I ride my motorbike, because it's the only practical option where I live; the bus takes almost twice as long. That said, since the new metro line opened near my office, I've started taking it once or twice a week, and it's far less stressful.

2. Definitely, although it's been gradual. A few years ago the buses were old and fairly unreliable, but now most of them are air-conditioned and you can track them on an app. The metro is the biggest change, though. It still only covers a small part of the city, but it's a real step forward.

3. If time weren't an issue, I'd choose the train every time. You can actually see the countryside, walk around and stretch your legs, and there's none of the hassle of airport security. But realistically, for a trip from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City, the plane is so much quicker that it usually wins.

4. I do, as long as I'm not driving. I find that long journeys give me a rare chance to switch off, catch up on podcasts or just stare out of the window and think, which I hardly ever do in daily life.

5. I've always wanted to go to Japan, partly for the food and the scenery, but also because I'm fascinated by how efficient their transport system is supposed to be. I'd love to take one of the high-speed trains and see whether it's really as punctual as everyone says.

I'd like to talk about something that probably sounds quite ordinary, which is the ride-hailing app on my phone, the kind that lets you book a motorbike taxi, a car or even a food delivery with a couple of taps.

I first used it about seven years ago, when I'd just started university and moved to Hanoi. I didn't know the city at all, and I remember being quite nervous about negotiating prices with drivers, because I'd heard stories about students being overcharged. A friend showed me the app, and the first time I used it, I was genuinely impressed: the price was fixed in advance, I could see the driver's route on the map, and I didn't have to explain where I was going in a city I didn't know.

These days I use it almost every day, not only for getting around but also for ordering lunch to the office and, occasionally, for sending documents across the city.

As for how it's changed my life, I'd say it's made me far more independent and given me back a lot of time. Before, if I wanted to go somewhere unfamiliar, I'd have to plan the route carefully or ask someone to take me. Now I can go anywhere at a moment's notice. Having said that, I sometimes wonder whether I've become a bit too reliant on it. I'll often book a ride for a distance I could easily walk, and if the app ever stopped working, I suspect I'd be surprisingly lost. But on balance, I think it's one of the inventions that has made the biggest practical difference to my everyday routine.

1. I'd probably single out antibiotics and the internet. Antibiotics have saved hundreds of millions of lives by turning infections that used to be fatal into minor problems. The internet, on the other hand, has transformed almost every aspect of how we work, learn and communicate, so its impact is broader, even if it's less dramatic in a life-or-death sense.

2. I think it's done both. Routine tasks like calculations or filing are far quicker now, which should, in theory, free people up for more meaningful work. But in practice, because we're always reachable by email and messaging apps, the boundary between work and personal time has become blurred, and many people feel they're never really off duty. So the tools themselves are helpful; it's the expectations that have come with them that create stress.

3. Ideally, a mixture of both, but I'd argue governments have a particular responsibility for basic research. Private companies naturally focus on projects that are likely to be profitable within a few years, whereas many of the most important discoveries came from research that had no obvious commercial use at the time. If everything were left to the market, I suspect that kind of long-term work would simply not get done.

4. One risk is that we might gradually lose basic skills. If navigation apps always tell us where to go, for example, we may no longer be able to read a map or even remember routes. More seriously, if essential services all depend on digital systems, a large-scale cyberattack or power failure could cause chaos, because there'd be no backup way of doing things. So I think it's sensible to keep some low-tech alternatives in place.

5. It's hard to predict, but I imagine medicine will see the biggest breakthroughs, perhaps treatments tailored to each person's genes, or devices that can detect illnesses long before symptoms appear. Transport could also be unrecognisable; if self-driving vehicles become genuinely reliable, cities might need far fewer car parks, which would free up a lot of space. Of course, some of these predictions may turn out to be wildly optimistic.