IELTS Speaking Band 8 Philippines with Feedback and Tips

good afternoon my name is eli can you please tell me your full name my name is rachel and de la cruz okay and what should i call you um i go by the name rachel oh okay rachel now in this first part i'd like to ask you some questions about yourself let's talk about the town or city where you live have you always lived in the same town or city um no i actually moved one place to another so i uh i was born in a small rural town and i stayed there until i was in high school and then by the time i had to go to college i went to another city again and then when i had to uh to go to work i moved to another city but basically i was born and raised in curino province um what do you like about this city that you currently live in oh i currently live in dubai and what i love about this city is it's everything that you need like if you want to go hiking there's a place to go to hike in a nearby emirate and then if you wanted to go to malls there's so many malls in dubai i think it's the center of all shopping malls in the world and then if you want to just have some quiet time there's also the desert and some you can go for camping so everything is here and everything is very accessible that's what i love about my city would you like to always live in this city um no as i've mentioned a while ago i was born and raised in a small town so i am always a rural type of girl and i always wanted to to be also in just a quiet little town outside outside the city because i believe it's cheaper to live outside the city let's move on let's talk about singers do you have a favorite singer i do have a lot but for me to say favorite i have i have a lot of favorite singers actually it doesn't count as favorite if you have a lot but um i always love the music of lamy it's it's a three um a three-member band and they just started off from soundcloud and then eventually they moved on to the bigger bigger crowd and now they started playing in different cities um have you ever been to a live concert to see a singer i wish i i wish i did my my cousin has gone to like twice of their concert but since they never they have never gone to dubai and then they did go to philippines but at that time i was already in dubai so i never got the chance to see them are singers from other countries popular where you live yes yes they do um actually bts is very popular here and also k-pop it's it's a huge thing everywhere so here also if if you could go to the billboard top 10 songs in dubai there's also a lot of international songs that are in would you like to be a famous singer it's a it's like a kid's dream for me yeah it could be because i did try singing when i was a kid but it's up until there let's move on let's talk about gifts are there any special gifts in your country that people give to others um yeah we we do have some special gifts it's more like a native um like the native plots native foods it's what you give let's see when you go to philippines for vacation and then you go you go back to dubai for example like me we often bring those dried fruits like dried mangoes and then different abaca products so it's more of like ethnic um ethnic stuffs that we give to other people whenever we come home from philippines uh are there any gifts you have received that were especially important to you um yes yeah um i i had once received a gift from uh from my mom and it's not it's not a simple it's it's just when i was a kid we often believe in um how do you call that um there we do believe that there is like a secret santa so when i was a kid my mom used to sneak some some bags in her room and then when we go to our room he she will just say oh maybe it's the santa give it so until now i can still recall that secret gift that she she gave me and for me it's one of the most uh remarkable gifts memorable gifts that i got and what was the gift it's a bag it's a bag me and my brother we got each other's uh a new set of bags because i think it was near uh the start of the school year now rachel in this next part 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 can you'll have one minute to think about what you're going to say and you can make some notes if you wish do you understand sure okay so here's your topic can you see that yeah okay so you'll have one minute to prepare this topic all right remember you have one to two minutes for this so don't worry if i stop you and i'll tell you when the time is up can you start speaking now please sure um a famous person that i would like to spend a day with is probably um queen elizabeth um i'm just um queenies elizabeth as they head um i'm very amazed of like i i was always wondering how this she spends her day so it got me thinking what would what would it feel like to be with her for just a day so i chose her because i wanted to see how she runs she runs the country and what what as a normal apart from being a queen she's also a person so i would like to know what does she feel like doing whenever she's just a simple um just a simple person at home what does it feel like when you're not in the eyes of so many people and i would like to go to where would i like to go with queen elizabeth probably i would like to go to a place where she she um normally spends her a simple time let's say in the library or i would like i really love to see um what she does on a normal day without the eyes of so many so many people so many media and so many paparazzi i want to see the real um simple person because beside in because in in the eyes of so many people she's in this posh um palace that everyone is just looking up but to her but i know that like deep inside her she's also a person she would also have her morning coffee she would also have her breakfast she would also have just a simple a quiet time to herself so i would like to go to a place where she normally spends her um her quiet time and um i would like to i'm just going to stop you there do you think you will ever have a day like this i don't think i will ever have a date it would be it's just wishing for a star okay so thank you so now in this next part in part three i'm going to ask you some more questions related to this topic and let's consider first of all spending time with others so how why do you think we are influenced by the people that we spend time with um we are influenced by the people we spend time with because they give you an insight of what they're thinking about they give you a glimpse of how um what's in their mind like uh being with a person gives you the idea or gives you the reality of what what does she do those little uh things that whenever even just a simple single lift of how they lift a cup of coffee it makes you wonder it makes you uh one step closer to that person and so do you think it's understandable then that parents try and control who their children spend time with i think it also it gives them controlling who your child um spends time with it's like guiding them as well because sometimes um especially as a child you're in a year at an age when where what you see or what you usually see at a person you sometimes mimic them or because you're very young you will think that what an adult is doing is correct so as a parent you want your children to know what's right from wrong so you you guide them and also by guiding them you want them to only be with the right uh right person does that happen a lot in your culture um yeah yeah we do actually uh sometimes whenever especially when your kids are high school you tend to just uh tell them okay just go with this type of friends don't go with those type of person so they tend to really um take a hold of who their kids gonna be friends with and um for ourselves do you think it's a better idea to spend a lot of time with lots of different people or is it better to spend your time getting to know a few people very well um i like i think i like the best of both worlds for me uh being with a lot of people gives you a diversity and also it gives you a people from different walks of life were raised differently and it gives you the knowledge and it gives you also a glimpse of how how is it to be like them so if you if you limit yourself in a small crowd um your knowledge also can be limited there's a tendency that your your knowledge can also be limited because you only know what is in your circle and then not like uh let's say for in my case where i work in a diversified country you get to experience and you get to work with different types of people you get to know how they thinking or like a simple task how do they do it everybody has different ways of doing it and it depends also in the culture it has a big impact on the person let's move on let's talk about time and other priorities in life um do you think and this is quite a tricky question do you think that the way that we document experiences so for example the way that we take photos or videos of the things that we do um do you think that changes the way we think about those experiences if we put on um if you put on record like what we're doing for example with social media the way we can take photos of our holiday and when we take those photos look at those photos maybe we think of our holidays in a slightly different way um yeah i think it's a good idea that we are also capturing those memories because it it gives you a memories is that's what you have forever you may not you may not be in that uh place or in that vacation house forever but whenever you see or your record the things that you did there it gives you also uh a good memory of what you've been doing there and also when you grow old you get to look back on the things that you've done at your young age it's a it's a very good experience what are some different ways that people um record their experiences uh they record experiences um i think so there's also even some old school um people where they still do write what they did on the vacation and they also take a snapshot of it and and they do it just like a scrapbook some do it like a vlog and some do it uh just um you know a series of photos and but um the normally people do it by vlogging if you're into videos so that's really more of like an actual you can see yourself moving and when you grow old you can see yourself oh that's how i looked when i was young and some people say that um it's important for us to have difficult times in our life in order to live a more fulfilled life what do you think about that um i think it's a that's a the reality of it because sometimes you get to learn um you get to learn about you get to appreciate the good things if you have experienced the bad things because how else will you know that this is already a good thing if you haven't been through the worst so if it's like um you if you've always been eating a ripe banana like a super ripe banana and you've always thought that okay this is what a banana is and you haven't tried what it's what what a real banana is like then you're just contented with what you have so i believe that um you have to experience the bad things or yeah you have to have a glimpse of what it is from the other side to experience already so you could weigh in what is good and what is bad and what is satisfying and what is not thank you very much that is the end of the speaking test so how did it feel uh i don't know i in my uh this is speaking test where you have you you have to honestly for my question and which famous person you have you want to spend your day with i never got the chance to have my pen and paper with me so normally in a speaking test you have to have to write it right and then just put some bullet points and list on what what do you want to say in preparation for your one minute one minute speaking but at that time i was everything in is just in my head right right because you didn't have the piece of paper on the pen there with you yeah yeah but honestly in my in in this normal speaking class when it's it's really the actual speaking test and ever you got to read the question it was given to you my experience is like everything is clouded and then when you start to do some bullet points on what you want to say maybe you you just you will have to just write one line and that's it it's already your your time stop for preparation yeah yeah because one minute actually is no time at all to prepare for a two-minute speech yeah yeah because if you if you re read your your uh question and then you want to read it again that would be like your 30 seconds or you're 15 seconds and then you've got to think of the idea so you've got to think of the person yeah and then that takes about 20 seconds so you've just got 10 seconds left to write one sentence yeah and also i i usually thought about queen elizabeth because i recently watched this bridgette bridge recon series and then the crown and i was really curious how is it like right so it's kind of at the forefront of your brain you know so it's just came straight to you um now you've done the ielts speaking test before is that right yeah and you got um band eight in that test i got one seven i think but no overall the ielts is overall band aid and then my speaking no i think your speaking was banned eight your writing was banned seven if i'm not mistaken and and there's no there's not a requirement actually i just took it and i i cannot remember what were the scores that i got i only remember that my listening was the highest yeah yeah well i mean i remember because i i looked at your video where you describe your ielts tips and your your your score so you got you've got nine in listening it's funny that i'm telling you this yeah so congratulations 7.5 and reading seven in in writing and you actually got eight in your speaking oh oh yeah congratulations actually my speaking test was very long at that time like i there was three of us so i was the last one everyone got uh the speaking test and they just finished in 15 to 20 minutes for me it's like it took me 13 24 20 to 30 minutes that's quite unusual it's a very long time yeah it is and and the questions never stop it's like one after the other and she never stops asking me questions and then i said why i feel like it's very long and i did some practice tests on spotify only and in spot if i the questions doesn't come that long yeah it will be finished in 15 minutes like that yeah exactly right so ielts tests are usually between 11 and 15 minutes and actually in this test we went on a little bit longer than it would be if you were in a real ielts test so that means you're a real ielts yeah went on for way too long yeah but how did that why or in the philippines um no i did it here i did it here i did it in idp it's just here in charge okay um did you do it a long time ago or recently december just this right um [Music] it's it's already one year oh okay right so yeah it's already one year yeah so december 2019 you did it in 2020 oh 2012. now it's 22. no yeah yeah yeah a year and two months and for two months so um yeah i can definitely see why you've got a band-aid you've got absolutely amazing english um and i just like the highlights of the nice vocabulary and things that you did in this test um so i really liked in part one little collocations like rural town born and raised um to have quiet time describing um dubai as being accessible you described yourself as a rural type of girl this is all very nice language chunks that you were using um and then i you also had lots of very nice conditional sentences which you used perfectly so if you want to go on if you want to go hiking so that's an example of the first conditional and then you also had like another conditional here when i was asking you about your favorite singer and it says it doesn't you said it doesn't count as a favorite if you have a lot of singers so again another nice use of a consequence and conditional sentences are considered advanced grammar so the examiner is already thinking you can use advanced grammar accurately so that's really nice um i also liked the billboard top 10 singers as well um and then the mistakes were only very small mistakes um so little things like you said moved one place to another so you forgot the preposition from moved from one place to another yeah very small mistake um and i think most people wouldn't really pick up on that but an examiner um speaking to someone of your high level is going to be paying a lot of attention to try and pick up on any of those small little mistakes um and sometimes when i asked you a question and you gave a short answer sometimes you chose the wrong verb so for example i i said [Music] what was my question it was about singers so i said um have you ever been oh yeah have you ever been to a live concert to see a singer and you said i wish i did but in this case because it's have you you would be i wish i wish i had i wish i had yeah just a small little mistake but then um i think you made the same mistake just like one question later when i said um um [Music] yes uh i sing it are singers from other countries popular where you live and you said uh yes they do and because the question is are singers uh popular from like they are yes they are yes they are yeah so these were just like very very little small mistakes but um you know it's those little mistakes that maybe stop you from getting kind of bad nine because you're a very strong band eight um and then um and then when we were talking about gifts i kind of lost you a little bit you said like something like albaca products when we were talking about gifts that people give in your country it's like a dried it's a leaf it's a leaf that they use it to make some you can turn it to bags you can make it into a cloth the national costume is um they they turn it into this abakka is like it's it's a very huge leaf and then they just strike it up and turn it into different stuffs like bags clothes right yeah okay i'm gonna have to google that because i heard that yeah but wait what is that um um in philippines right okay in the philippines no okay i'll have to look that up um yeah because i wasn't sure for example whether it spells us how you pronounce it like a-b-a-c-a yeah not google after this um so what else do we have oh i loved your sentence again with your conditional as long as i have the capacity to give for me you can hear me right there okay great yes i really like um as long as i have the capacity to give which was very nice and um when you were talking about warms the heart as well talking about when you give gifts to other people so really nice um vocabulary there um in part two part two was maybe your weakest out so part one was your strongest part two was your weakest and part three was kind of in the middle um and in part two there were some false starts where you started talking and then you began again and a little bit of repetition again that's the kind of thing that was slightly mild score it might be because um you didn't have time to actually plan and prepare for part two yeah yeah that's it sometimes a good way to avoid that is just to kind of tell a story so you just say something like um i would spend the whole day with the queen first thing in the morning we would go and have breakfast in buckingham palace and because i'm with the queen of england i'm going to order tea after that we would go to and then if you if you start to telling a chronological story it's easier to kind of get in a lot of information and to avoid those falsehoods oh yeah repetition yeah yeah that's that's right um but yeah some really nice language there as well like in the eyes of so many people um and i liked as well you said i wanted to see how she runs the country but there was just a little bit of hesitation there you said i want to see how she runs and then you kind of pause and i was like you want to see how she runs imagining and then she was like and i was like oh okay that that little little kind of hesitation again that was your score um number three uh in part three was very nice we had phrases like insight into their mind guiding your children to mimic very nice uh language tend to i love this phrase as well best of both worlds um diversity different walks of life is a very nice idiom very very powerful you wanted to have a glimpse of how they something so to use glimpse like that is very nice [Music] and talking about the circle that you live in about old school people who like to use scrapbooks um and i really really really liked the example of the banana that you used to highlight how some people don't really know what they don't know in life so using an example is a great way to um to get higher score for your ielts speaking so very very nice now before you go do you have time for me to ask you some questions just about learning english in general and some of your tips for ielts preparation sure sure okay so um i watched your video which was absolutely wonderful and i'll put a link to that below this video you mentioned um that you liked to learn from podcasts could you tell me some of the podcasts that you think are useful um i am i free to mention the podcast um yeah um actually i just discovered post podcast when i was reviewing our ielts because normally i travel like one hour from home so i i just listened to i used the spotify by the way so i used to listen to spotify music i download music and just listen to it all throughout my travel and then i i um came through i just suddenly um searched ielts with no intention i just i got curious is there an ielts and spotify and then when i and i click it i saw so many ielts and then um there are like one minute one minute podcast one minute um listening uh tools but i don't really find it um helpful so i searched for 35 minutes 15 minutes like that and then i came across ben worthington ben birthington's podcast gives me helps me with it helped me a lot on my listening skills not only on the listening uh ben worthington's podcast also has a practice test on speaking so he will ask you questions in the podcast and then there will be a asylum there will be a moment where he gives you the chance to answer so like when i was walking when i whenever i'm walking to home and i do this speaking test for ben worthington i answer i answer his questions in the podcast and that way i was doing listening and uh speaking all together it's like it's a great um and did you find it similar did you find the questions were similar to the real exam or to the practice test that we just did yes yes it's very similar he will ask you where were you raised or like can you what's your name um have you lived in a city it's it's very much like the questions uh in ielts great and how else did you prepare for maybe some of the other parts of the test um what i did is i only got one month to prepare so i i initially in my video i mentioned that i was planning for a november exam and then i was procrastinating i keep on saying okay i will start my review while starting until i decided no i have to book my exam first and then start the review and that that that did the trick for me because i for this four weeks before my exam the first week i was only doing pure listening so one week all mocked us for listening the second week i did writing i know the second week was reading so the whole week i was only doing reading and then the third week is writing and the last one was speaking right that's interesting because your highest score was listening so what you did right at the beginning yeah yeah and also um for the right for the reading reading and uh writing for me the review for that goes hand in hand because you were you're reading some um reading materials at the same time you're you're seeing different um like languages so you can capture their words that you could use on your writing exam so while you're reading you're also preparing for your writing exam so i think this two types of exams the review goes together so list listening listening and speaking goes hand in hand and then writing and reading is together some teachers call that the receptive and productive skills so like reading when or listening for example is the receptive skills and the productive is the speaking yeah and what about vocabulary was that something that you tried to improve upon before the test um initially i thought my vocabulary was okay because i use it on a day-to-day basis at the office to just speak english there but then when i came across a cambridge um vocabulary booklet it's just even the simple um words that you thought you already know when i when i i saw that book initialized like okay i think i i don't i need to refresh my vocabularies so what you know is not enough refreshing your vocabulary is really helped especially in in your reading also there are some words there that are very much like it's a very high level english some of those words that you can read on the reading exam it's very difficult to understand so refreshing your vocabulary is helpful what uh what advice would you give to someone on ways to refresh and learn new vocabulary what would you suggest um reading yeah you have to read a lot um reading books and also if you're into movies you can make use of it like put the subtitles because sometimes there's so many uh words that you can see that especially for english um english and those um actually yeah and it i just i just watch netflix and i watch a lot of english movies in there and my vocabularies are also being practiced there yeah it's like you've been you've been watching the crown recently so that's a great way to get a lot of yeah vocabulary that you hear in uh in england at least how did you feel you gave yourself um just kind of one month did you feel confident when you went to do the exam or did you feel kind of nervous um honestly when i'm already in the last week of reviewing i kind of crammed i got the feeling that when i wat i watched um the actual ielts exams or like such as this like when i when you go through youtube and you see how people answer their speaking exam you kind of i i felt like all the reviews that i did all down the drain i feel so scared and then when i went to the exam and i saw a lot of people and then going in one after the other for their speaking exam i suddenly feel scared i feel like i'm not i'm not prepared at all and then when they listen and when the listening when listening exams started as well i was i was also very because listening exam the very crucial part is you have to get the first uh question right because that's when you know you're in the right track because if you miss the very first answer that's it you're just cramming the whole thing so you're like just get the first one right and we can take it yeah yeah because another tip further for the reading based on what i had experienced all questions go consecutively like it will never miss let's say you if you have answered one and then you found the answer to number three it's just here in between it will never be after three it's just there every all the answers are consecutive as for what i had experienced on all my reviews and and the actual exam that i had that's why it's quite useful to make sure you understand the current question you're looking for but also the next question as well so that you're looking for the answer for the two questions because if you if you find yourself getting the next one you know you've missed it and it's gone and get prepared for the question after that even um now why did you do the ielts test what was your reason and the main reason i did ielts was i we wanted to move to canada so when i was browsing what are the requirements in creating an account for canadian immigration the basic requirements are ielts and educational assessment so i first did educational assessment because that takes time and expiration is longer and then ielts expire ielts is valid for two years only yeah so uh that's the main reason why for immigration so do you think i do well i hope you'll be moving to canada quite soon then well within the next two years i hope so yeah i hope before my ielts expires like i can because i i only have like one year left for my ielts example validity otherwise i'll have to take the exam again how would you feel about taking the exam again um i felt like i need to i need to have a higher score that that's my goal overall band 8 is pretty pretty damn impressive thank you so any last tips or strategies or anything that you would like to share with the people watching this um actually what the a lot of people say you will never be ready you will never be ready like you will you will be you will you'll take the a lot of time in reviewing but when the time comes you will feel you're not yet ready so that's what they say you'll never be ready but my very very tip is that um just focus one thing at a time because if you're cramming and you're like okay i haven't reviewed for writing i haven't reviewed the reading just take one topic at a time or like one exam at a time that's how you can smoothly prepare yourself for ielts and and if you have you see yourself um you have to assess first like you have to assess yourself so which type of exam am i which type of exam is the weakest for me like i'm weakest and let's say your weakest point is listening you could probably take much longer time in there because individually we learn differently like some might learn faster than the other so my tip is just focus one topic at a time and which topic is harder for you take longer time in there and probably make that the first first type of exam you have to prepare so if you're you're more into listening spend more time into listening so you can probably prepare yourself for that and then the rest will follow i think that makes a lot of sense work your weaknesses yeah mercury weaknesses yeah great okay thank you very much for coming on and sharing your tips and doing the practice speaking test with me thank you ali thanks for having me thank you [Music] you

Channel: English Pro Tips - IELTS Preparation

Views: 60,097

Keywords: IELTS Speaking, IELTS Speaking Test, IELTS Band 8, IELTS Band 8 Philippines, IELTS Filipino

Id: VaUbv3iDROI

Length: 41min 38sec (2498 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 22 2022