Hello.
It's Chris from IELTS Daily and welcome back. We have a wonderful video. We're looking at Jed part two today. If you've already seen his video part one, don't forget that you can also see other students such as Talia and Tom and Saskia lots of opportunities for you to learn things So today we're looking at grammatical complexity and using higher kind of language lexical features So let's start! As usual, we will be looking in depth on the features that Jed uses I'm going to be stopping the video occasionally to talk about how he does really well and the things that he could improve Don't forget that just because Jed is a really high-level speaker doesn't mean that you can't aim for this. We're going to be applying the band descriptors at all times as we always do and don't forget, if you like the content of this video we have lots more and the best thing
the easiest thing the cheapest thing you can do is give this video a like. So if you do like it, please just give it a thumbs up below. Don't forget to leave all your comments all your feedback all your ideas We love to read them and love to hear about it. So, let's begin. Hello. and welcome to this practice
exam conducted by IELTS Daily. My name is Maddie
and I'm your practice examiner. The questions in this test are designed
to simulate the IELTS speaking test. Let's start. What's your first name please? Jedidiahf Thanks Jedidiah I want to begin by talking about you. Do you enjoy studying? Yeah, I definitely enjoy studying I think I have done a lot of it over the course of my studies even in university and I think the best part about it is knowing having that sense of confidence on exam day and when you get your results knowing that you tried your best Okay. So in Jed's speech, he uses something called a compound complex sentence or a complex compound sentence You need to know about simple
compound and complex sentences and there's lots of materials on the internet for you to read about That's not the purpose of today's class. In his speech, he says "when you get your results" which is a complex sentence and then he continues then he says "and making your parents proud" So he tries to use this idea of complex sentences which is when joining it with an and sentence and making it a compound sentence or a complex compound sentence We're looking for a range and a variety of complexity in his speech. This is a great start. Is it important for you to learn new information? Yeah, definitely. So as humans, I have... I have a firm belief that we should be constantly learning and evolving throughout our whole lives and that's a... I think that my dad has always taught me and i've learned from many different mentors So, definitely yes. Learning is very important Two things I want to say here both really positive The first one is that he gives this really well rounded answer. He gives him his thought then he gives an example and then he makes this concluding statement at the end I don't know if you notice, go back and watch it again. It's this extremely kind of sophisticated answer where he's putting forward his point and then concluding it at the end Super work. Promise you, he never knew these questions in advance. None of the students actually knew the questions in advance and it was all kind of adlib on the day. The second thing I want to talk about is collocation. If you don't know what collocation is, it can come in different forms and in this case, he uses something called a compound noun and he said "a firm belief" So the "firm belief" is using two words which fit together and you could see If you see on the screen a strong belief so we have a firm belief and a strong belief and those mean the same thing. If have a firm belief and a strong belief in something. You can also have other collocations when it comes to the word "belief". You can have a "genuine belief". I have a genuine belief and a sincere belief. So those four words firm, strong, genuine, and sincere are all different ways that you can fit words together and you have to be able to use those really flexibly to reach above a band seven that we're probably looking at a band eight If you wanted to know the subtle differences between those. Great use of the word "firm belief" there Which subjects do you prefer? I prefer the most science-based subjects just because I feel like I'm more analytical as opposed to a creative I struggle with drawing and more artsy things like that So, yes definitely I prefer the... the more mythological methodological
approach that science takes Three things I want to talk about in this case and the first one is as "opposed to" this is a great feature of thinking about ideas I like something as opposed to something else. You're recognizing that you are good
at one thing but not so good at another So using this language as opposed to as opposed to Now, the second thing that I want to talk about is his pronunciation and he makes a slight mistake here but he self-correct which is wonderful he used the word methodological Methodological. and it's actually really difficult even for a native speaker to say As I as you just noticed if you make a mistake on a pronunciation feature Don't worry try to do it again and if not, don't spend too much time worrying about it It's only a very small part of a big speech So there's one thing that he did really well there he took a mistake and he corrected it Wonderful. The final thing that I wrote down in this case was the fact that he used science-based subjects which is one way to talk about something and then he flexibly used a different way to make this adjective So when we have science-based subjects we're using "science-based" as an adjective It's describing. Then, he used the word "artsy subjects" and adding the letter "y" on the end of words can very often create an adjective So I like science-based subjects but i'm not so good at artsy subjects. You could even say "sciency subjects" and that's a great feature of a very high level speaker and that would probably be pushing
the band 9 using those adjectives in such varied ways Really great. Okay. Let's move on to the topic of sleeping. Do you fall asleep easily? I do. I... as soon as I hit the pillow I'm the type of person to just fall asleep sleep straight away and I am a very heavy sleeper So I love my sleep Did you notice here that Jade's pronunciation and this is something that Jackson talked about in his video There are a number of different features of pronunciation. One of which is this inflection and intonation and rising and falling The examiner asked him a question. Do you fall asleep easily? and he says "I do" Did you notice that he's placing emphasis and he's really showing the examiner kind of his feelings on something and that's a feature of band nine flexible use of pronunciation and I use this word "flexible" a lot because it's featured in the band descriptors and flexible use of grammar flexible use of language and flexible use of pronunciation features it means using them without even thinking about it The other thing that I wanted to talk about was his language. "as soon as I hit the pillow" as soon as I hit the pillow Idiomatic high level language Great work. Do you ever find it difficult to fall asleep? Yeah at times when I've had a long day and maybe when I've had a role with someone or some type of interpersonal conflict I tend to think about it a lot Okay back again sorry to interrupt Two things here, one good and one thing to improve Now, the first one which is great which is "when I've had a long day" We're starting to see this variety in the complexity of sentences. Wonderful. when sentences are complex sentences the second thing is the word "r o w" Do you know how to pronounce the word "r o w"? You'll see it on the screen now. Well, this is something called a homonym. A homonym is a word which can be pronounced in different ways or it's two words which are pronounced the same way. So, we have homographs and homophones. Learn more about them because you do need to know. English pronunciation can be very difficult when it comes to how words are written. So let's focus on this word which is the word "rou̇" or it's the word "rau̇". In Jed's speech, he actually uses the word "rou̇" which comes which is related to the sport of rowing on the water In fact, I think he wanted to say the word "rau̇" which explains an argument or it means an argument So, I'd want to hear this "ow" sound a little bit more "rau̇". If we look at the band descriptors together now, it doesn't make any reference to pronunciation problems at a band 9. It says effortless to understand sustains flexible use and full range of pronunciation features at a band 8. It does say sustains flexible use of features with only occasional lapses. Now, my question to you guys is what is this? What does it mean only occasional lapses? I received a lot of criticism in Saskia's video because she said the word advertisement and I marked her down because of that. I genuinely think a strict examiner would be looking for these lapses these slips in pronunciation So be prepared for a very strict examiner because words like "rou" and "rau" that examiner on that day could say that was a lapse should have known better band eight I just want to warn you. That's all. I'm not an examiner, so I don't know the the subtleties but I do think that you should be prepared for those little things. Learn about homophones, homographs, homonyms. Let's continue. or like maybe if I have a big presentation or event next day I'll often sort of just analyze what it is that I.. I want to say or do at that event so that keeps me up yeah How many hours do you normally sleep for and why? I definitely aim to get around seven to eight hours of sleep every day. I would even sacrifice study time or leisure time just for sleep because I know it's very beneficial to how I feel the next day how concentrated I am how nice I am to people So, yeah definitely. I love the part at the end where he he's making a list and then he has a kind of joke with the examiner. So he's making a list and then says "how nice I am to people" and did you notice again it's this pronunciation feature of this inflection intonation putting stress on words to emphasize them I love that. Great answer. He maintained control and flow throughout. No major pauses. He could speak a little bit faster but I think that I think an examiner would be very kind to him and say that all his speech is sustained, the features are great, he answers the questions with an explanations. Really really difficult to find fault at the moment Now, I want to talk about making decisions. Are you good at making decisions? I'm so so. Sometimes when it comes to personal decisions, I'm very quick and very calculated about it but if it involves other people, I prefer a more democratic approach. So, I'll always be asking like what do you think about this what do you want to do how do you feel and so I can be slow if there are others involved. Did you notice that in this section he starts with the phrase "I'm so so"? I'm not entirely convinced that when we ask a question such as "Are you good at making decisions?" that a native speaker would would answer "I'm so so" We would probably answer "hmm so so" rather than "I am so so". So I'm being very very very critical here. I'm nitpicking. That's what an examiner does. Just be prepared. I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt here. I loved the fact that he tells the story on one hand that he uses his hands and says and tells he's like an actor he points this way and then he points this way Lots of you asked me about "Can we use handed gestures during the test?" Absolutely! There is nothing in the band descriptors which prohibits you from doing that. If you are comfortable doing it, absolutely do it! You might find your tutor in your country tells you that you shouldn't this is completely wrong You are very welcome to use your hands during the test and what types of decisions do you make every day? I make a lot of decisions on a daily basis. Most of it has to do with food because I love food and cooking is really fun to me. So I'll take the time to decide what it is that i want to prepare for today's meal So yeah Now one of the things you should be doing in the test is to think about paraphrase where you say something in a slightly different way In this example, Jed uses a great case. The examiner asks him something about every day and he changes the language and actually says on a daily basis which is great from him. The other thing that I want to talk about is he makes a very very very minor grammatical mistake and I'm going to give him the benefit benefit of the doubt here because native speakers do this all the time. He said "most of it has to do with food" and he's talking about decisions, okay? Decisions are plural and so you would actually have to say to be correct "Most of them have to do with food" "Most of my decisions have to do with food" but you will find that native speakers make this mistake all the time even I do it when I would say something like "There's many reasons why" "There's many reasons and that would be "there is many reasons why" and correct as... a grammatically correct sentence goes you would have to say "There are many reasons why" There are many reasons why but you will find that many many many native speakers would say "there's many reasons why" and that would be an example of a typical slip for abandoned where an examiner would give you the benefit of the doubt. Other decisions that I make on a daily basis are probably to do with exercise I like to plan out my routines but i'll vary them from day to day So yeah. Wow So we've said every day on a daily basis and suddenly he comes up with "I'll vary them from day to day" which is a different way to say every day and he also uses a pronunciation feature called weak forms "I'd like to" which is which is great and i just want to bring that to your attention and I've made a video on pronunciation features as a live class Go back and watch that. Make sure that you take part in that class because I talk about all the different pronunciation features that we have Overall, in part one he gives great answers. He continues he expands he elaborates he talks at length Wonderful. I'm going to give you a topic and I'd like you to talk about it for one to two minutes. Before you talk, you'll have one minute to think about what you're going to say. You can make notes if you wish. Here is a paper and pencil for making notes. I am just going to interrupt here because I have a confession and this has been spotted by a couple of students. When we were making these videos, the wonderful Maddie who is a friend of mine and she's an actor. Maddie was given a script and she follows the script to the tee in English. We say to the tee she follows it really in detail and I'd written the script and I said "here's a paper and a pen" Now, somebody noticed that actually this is grammatically incorrect and it was a mistake of mine in the script. So I'm very sorry Maddie. This is not your fault. It's it actually should be there's here's a piece of paper and a pen or we could say here's some paper I remember when i wrote the script I actually wrote "here's a piece of paper and a pen" and I removed a piece of paper and I I just kept in our paper So I'm really sorry about that. Well spotted for anybody who did spot that. Remember that paper is uncountable and we wouldn't normally say "here's a paper" unless it's a newspaper. Actually you could say "here's a paper for you". So a bit little piece of advice there and a little bit apology from me I'm really sorry. and here is your topic I would like you to describe a time when you were disappointed. You have one minute. While Jed's preparing here, this topic of a disappointment could be really difficult So be kind of thinking of these ideas positive things and negative things before you go into the test and if you really struggle, my best piece of advice is to make something up. Think about some like as if you were writing a play or a tv show and think about somebody who would be disappointed by something. It could be something as wild as I proposed to my partner and they said no and that was a real disappointment and you could make up the most elaborate story. It is okay to be kind of creative during your test. Don't worry if you have to invent a story Okay. Remember you have one to two minutes for this so don't worry if I stop you I'll tell you when the time is up. Can you start speaking now please? Beautiful. So I remember at time very vividly when I was really disappointed. It was... I was at school with all of my classmates we were... we even though school was closed that day we all came because our IGCSE marks were being released that day and we wanted to be in an environment where we could support each other if we were feeling down or like celebrate with each other and so the marks came out and I don't know this is kind of... it might it might be a little bit pretentious but I was really disappointed I got 89 in A math because that was like an additional mathematics subject that because of schooling and like moving around country to country I had a huge disadvantage in I missed all of the basics but I struggled really really hard I took a lot of additional classes to try to catch up and like be at a level in additional mathematics where my friends were So yeah. A lot of my studying for that exam was on additional mathematics just because I was so weak in it and I started feeling more and more confident about it come exam day I was pretty confident but there was one question that was really easy that I knew how to do in and out on a normal day but on exam day, I sort of panicked and I completely messed up that question and so that took that one precious mark away from me and so I would have had a a clean a clean sheet on my IGCSE's with all a stars but that one mark kind of messed me over So yeah looking back at it I I think I am still very glad to have hit 89 just considering how far behind I was at the start of the year but I still I feel satisfied now looking back at it Great. Thank you. Unbelievable. Did you notice how Jed stopped at the two-minute mark? What a great example of a speech. I feel like he had a a timer in his brain. I promised there was nobody there telling him the time. Let's look at some of his language which I'd written down and you'll see on the screen here. We've got it was "I remember it very vividly very vividly even though" it's an even though sentence which is a great example of complexity complex language when I was feeling down or if somebody is feeling down if they're feeling depressed which is a phrasal verb "When the marks came out" That's another example of a phrasal verb. To catch up is another example of a phrasal verb. So using these types of less common language during your test is great just to show your the examiner the flexibility of your speech In the middle of the test, He said "so yeah " and then he starts to reflect on his ideas. He said "So yeah come exam day". Come exam day which meant on exam day. He used an in and out a clean sheet All fantastic pieces of lexical resource to get well above a band seven. I'm looking in a band eight or probably a band nine here. Looking back at it, this is some language that you could use during your test. So looking back at it if you're remembering something, you tell a story and then halfway through your story so looking back at it and then you just share your ideas and share your feelings of how you perceive that time now Looking back at it you know what did I learn from it how would I do it differently next time and what would other people do and what did other people think and these are all questions that you could use when you're answering your test Now, let's talk about solving problems. Why do some people find it easier to overcome problems than others? I think it's a lot to do with the mindset of people. Some people have a growth mindset where they look at challenges as something that they can overcome given enough hard work and the support from family and friends and things like that but with others they have a mindset where they see challenges as threats that may undermine them and sort of in a more pessimistic light and so often challenges stop them from actually getting started on trying to overcome that challenge Yeah In this response, I'm always really impressed with how Jed composes and gives this very detailed answer. It's a very well-rounded answer. On the screen here, you'll see some of the ideas and the language that I think was very impressive. So you'll see "It has a lot to do with" "It has a lot to do with" "A growth mindset" somebody who's always very positive given enough hard work given the details given the the consequences So using this word given is is a great connective and like a cohesive device which is wonderful and do you think people benefit from life coaches? life coaches I've never had one personally so I wouldn't be able to tell you out of personal experience but I know a lot of I... I have a lot of mentors and I know a lot of people that have mentors and mentors are sort of similar to life coaches and for mentors yes definitely. So I would imagine life coaches would be very helpful in sort of helping you understand where you are at in life and like if you need any advice on maybe interpersonal conflict or your career or things like that they would be able to help So I would say yes. Did you notice that Jed freely admits in this case that he doesn't have much experience and that very may well be the situation for you when you do the test It's not always the case that we have examples to
give from our own experience but what we can do is we can find connections and things which relate to that topic So he says "Well I don't have much experience with life coaches but I do have experience with mentors" and then starts talking about how mentors have aided him and helped him through his life. He gives these very complete answers which are kind of summarized at the end with a little conclusion Try and work on those types and styles of answers. It's something that you really could benefit from. Jed's a great example here. Do men and women differ when it comes to solving problems? Hmm that's a that's a good question I I think it would be it's a controversial question I would say but from what I know, I would say yes Just generally, I feel like guys tend to take a more sort of analytical approach to problems where they look at the problem and try to sort of go at it at the angle of just like trying to fix it without really thinking about like what the consequences are whereas from my female friends, when they're trying to solve a problem they tend to take everyone's feelings into account and like how they would react to the solution and i think that's also a really
really good way to solve problems I think it's a better way personally. Thank you very much. That is the end of the speaking test. I I love the fact at the end where he says "I think it's a better way personally" adding his little kind of opinions on subjects is it's wonderful It's a great use of language. It's so natural and so kind of well thought out and I as I say I promise we did not prepare students with these questions beforehand It's completely new for them. So, this reaches we've reached the end of the part three. Typical part three might be a
little longer and one thing which I would say to you that during the test because Maddie is not an official examiner you may find that your examiner interrupts you more during part three They'll say why or why not and why do you think that. So be prepared for some kind of interjection where the examiner is going to be asking and making you putting you on the spot and making you feel like you haven't answered enough Totally normal during part three. That's the reason why we have part three. It's so that people can kind of get their opinions in. Now, what score would I give Jed? and you will see that the marking the band scores are on the left. For me, I'm going to score nines across the board. I'm not going to mark him down. If there's anywhere that he might be marked down, it would probably be beyond the pronunciation, the little slip that he made. A very very very strict examiner would be nitpicking and finding little mistakes like that but I'm as kind as I can be following the band descriptors and I would see that as I still understood what he wanted to say he still had great flexibility and control of his pronunciation features So I'm maintaining and I'm going to support my band 9. He gave great answers in the fluency and coherence section. He spoke at length on his answers. His lexical resource his vocabulary was wonderful He gave I've given you lots of good examples of when he gave high level flexible not language which isn't as common and finally he used a wide range of grammatical structures. He didn't make any mistakes throughout which was wonderful. Big thumbs up. A band nine for Jed. If you liked this video if you benefited at all from this video make sure that you like the video share it with your mates share it with the people that are in your class If you're studying, preparing for IELTS with other people make sure they know about this We've got other videos as I mentioned You'll see those on the screen. Now make sure you go and watch them. We give lots of free materials that's our job to make sure that you pass as quickly as possible Hope I will see you soon in future videos. Take care of yourselves. My name is Chris from IELTS Daily and hopefully this is the best place for you to improve your IELTS every day. Take care!
