One of the most wonderful things that I
enjoy about being at IELTS Daily is how committed and how enthusiastic and
engaged all the students are, so thank you for being so positive. We're back, my
name is Chris with a video. It's Aaliyah today and Aaliyah is originally from
China. She is taking the test, a practice test and the examiner is Maddie, so let's go. All right, as usual please if you do like
this video, if you learned something from it please give the video a like. We love
to read your comment in the comment section below, truly we always read
through them and check them out and see how you're getting on, tell us whether
you think the questions in this test are easy or difficult, maybe you could write
a sample response how you would respond. So if today we've got Aaliyah from China.
Um, I'm going to put my headphones in and we should all press play now. Hello
and welcome to this practice exam conducted by IELTS Daily. My name is
Maddie and I'm your IELTS practice speaking examiner. The questions in this
test are designed to simulate the IELTS speaking test.
Let's start. Don't we love how positive and enthusiastic Maddie is
as an examiner. We see lots of comments about how smiley and friendly Maddie is
and in reality unfortunately not all examiners are as friendly as Maddie so
be prepared for an examiner to have a kind of a stern face and give no emotion
or maybe look away. Don't let that put you off, just pretend you're talking to a friend. What's your first name please? My first
name is Aaliyah. Thanks Aaliyah. Are you ready to begin? Yes. Let's talk about you.
Do you have a wide circle of friends or a few close friends? I would
say before COVID I have a wide range of friends but since COVID started
I have to kind of cut it, cut it tiny because I can't meet a lot of
people, I'm not allowed definitely and most of the times I can only contact
them by Zoom or on social media so that just hugely narrowed down my social circle and it's good to have close friends during such a time. Aaliyah starts really well. She gives
reasons for her answers. Remember in part one you don't have to give lots of
reasons but you do have to explain and expand a little bit. Aaliyah
does make some continual mistakes throughout the speech as well and a
couple of minor points to think about here, she said 'since COVID
started I have to cut it tiny'. Um, this wouldn't be correct either from
a vocabulary or lexical point of view or from a grammatical point of view.
A better sentence would be something like 'since COVID started I have had to cut down on the number of friends that I have'. 'Cut
down on' but not really 'cut it tiny', so there was a problem with the grammar, 'I
have to' it should have been 'I have had to' or 'I had to' but and also
not with and 'I had to cut it tiny'. She said 'most of the times', um, in English we would normally say 'most of the time'. 'Most of the time'. And she said 'that narrowed down my social circle', 'that narrowed down my social
circle'. That's a good use of language, when you narrow something down you
reduce the number of choices that you have. So good language there, let's see
how she does when she continues. And how often do you see your friends?
Well, right now it's daily but before I say maybe um twice a week at most. One thing is I have school the other
thing is obviously COVID. Really nice, um, no mistakes
in this sentence or in this question actually. Um, nowadays
it's daily and then she said but before twice a week
at most. And this use of 'at most' is a good way to talk about the
maximum. All right? I would give the person a band 8 at most which is it
means the maximum. And do you have a best friend? Well, um so how do you define best friend? I would say the time that I spend on most can be my best friend which is studying.
If you say like a real human I have so many. I will call them my best friends. I love this feature that she introduces
here. I don't think I have seen another student do this yet but Aaliyah
actually asks a rhetorical question to the examiner. Really
great feature there. She's, the examiner asks 'do you have a best friend'
and Aaliyah says 'well, it depends how you define or how do you define a best
friend'. And that would be an example of a rhetorical question which is a really
great use of language, something that native speakers do a lot. Super nice. I'd like to move on to the topic of evenings. What do you normally do in the evenings? Oh during the evening, um, usually
I'll play piano with my roommate and studying with her. It's always a nice quiet time between me
and her. I think she says 'usually I will play
piano with my roommates'. If it's a usual event we would normally
say 'usually I play'. We normally use the present simple tense and she says
'usually I will play piano with my roommates and studying'. Notice here that
you should have parallelism. Parallelism is when you have two words
or phrases which should be in the same form. So, um in the case of this it was 'I love, I usually play or I usually um, yeah, I
usually play with my roommates, piano and study'. Not the 'and studying'. You notice how
she's changed it from 'the play' to 'studying' and added the 'ing'
on the end. That wouldn't be an example of parallelism so she's a little bit faulty there. And what did you do in the evenings as a child? Um, as a child I'll go for a walk with my parents in the park after dinner and
then they would say go study and go practice piano. And would
you like to do an evening course in a subject? An evening
course? I never thought about it. Um, I wouldn't want to do that in the evening. Apparently at night it's not the optimal time for studying. I would like it to be pushed to the day. I like the fact that here that she says
I've never really thought about it. So the examiner has asked her a question
that she's never considered before so she's been honest with the examiner and
said 'I've never really thought about it', and then she says 'apparently
studying at night is not as good', I think she said 'it's not the optimal time'. This
use of the word 'optimal time' is a good example of collocation. That's a higher
level piece of vocabulary. Band 7 or band 8 there so well done to Aaliyah for that.
Now let's think about the topic of money. Are you good at saving money? Obviously no. As a young adult um slowly adapting to adult life meaning
that I need to pay for rent, pay for bills and everything and after paying that there's like negative figures in my account so I better save up. Grammatical
complexity here is good. 'After paying that', I'm not sure that you
would um say 'paying'. You pay for something so maybe she's used slightly
the wrong word there. 'After spending that money'. Um, she did make a couple of other
mistakes so she said 'obviously no'. Now the word 'obviously' here probably
doesn't fit because Maddie asked the question 'are you good
at saving money?' And when we use the word 'obviously' it
means it's really clear and for an examiner it wouldn't be very clear so probably
wouldn't use the word 'obviously', and she probably shouldn't say 'obviously no',
it should be 'obviously not'. And I think a better word for Aaliyah
there would be 'absolutely not'. So she wanted to really focus on the word 'no'
and using a different word for the word 'no'
is great, it's paraphrasing so when the examiner asks 'are you good at saving
money', you could say 'absolutely not'. So that's probably a more
natural way to answer that rather than 'obviously no'. And have
you ever made an expensive purchase? Yes for my graduation I bought a necklace that's worth $300. Yeah
and I paid it after five minutes of seeing it, it's really beautiful and I
terribly wanted it so I bought it. Have you ever made an expensive purchase?
Now Aaliyah talks about a piece of jewelry that she bought
after five minutes of seeing it, that's really nice but she did say 'I paid it'.
'I paid for it' or even better would be 'I bought it'. 'I purchased it after seeing it
for only five minutes'. And then she said 'I terribly wanted it'. Um, 'I wanted it really badly' is probably a
better word. 'I wanted it terribly' is okay but 'I wanted it really badly' which means
that you desired it and it was something that
you really, really, really wanted. And what would you do if someone gave
you a large amount of money? Um, I think they are called parents.
They give me a large amount of money, I'll save it up to pay for my tuition fees. Part two. In the next part of the test I'm going to give you a topic and I would like you
to speak for one to two minutes. You will have one minute to think about what you
want to say and I will give you a pen and some paper to make notes if you want.
Is that clear? Yes. Okay, here is your paper and here is your pen. You have one minute to prepare. What do you guys think about this question? A time when you were disappointed
by something or by somebody. So you have to know the word
'disappointed', that's the first and most important thing. You could use words like
'somebody let me down' or and 'I was crushed because somebody told me this
really bad you know news' or 'they um, they arrived late to a special function and
they really let me down', and this idea of 'let somebody down' is a phrasal verb and
that would increase your chances of getting a good lexical resource
mark. Let's see how Aaliyah does. Thank you. Now I would like you to talk about a time when you were disappointed by
someone or something. Remember you have one to two minutes for
this so don't worry if I stop you. I'll tell you when the time's up. Can
you start speaking now please? Yes. um the time that I was disappointed by
something was um, I was applying for a volunteering opportunity and they, I already submitted my
application and they said they want to arrange an interview uh, and they
arranged an interview at about 8:00 am, I just woke up and I was not prepared for that, these are all excuses, and later on after the interview they
told me that I wasn't, uh, it was a successful application. And I was really disappointed cause I
felt, I was so cocky, I felt that I could definitely fit into the role and after
that I think I learned no matter how confident I am I should
prepare for it and then pay my respect for whoever that was in the interview
and get up early. That, that was my experience and um, I think it's not about disappointment
at this point, at that point I was obviously disappointed but now I reflect
on that and then think it's just a learning opportunity to make me adapt to
into doing interviews, uh, being interviewed and
then actually putting work and making effort to apply. Uh, it is something that I barely talk about and not a lot of people ask me what I'm,
what thing disappoint me as long as I have a good
mindset, a growing mindset that will help me to continue going down
the path of life. Thank you. Wow, what do you think of Aaliyah? I
thought she started really well and her storytelling ability is great, she's able
to expand and she's not looking at her notes which is fantastic. I highly
recommend that you don't look at your notes when you're speaking. Try just to
speak naturally and tell a story. I thought her storytelling ability was
great. She said something like 'no matter how confident I am, I should
prepare' and that's a great complex sentence. 'No matter how confident
I am, I should always prepare'. And she used the word 'cocky' and the word 'cocky'
is an example of somebody who is arrogant or they think they
are better than other people. So, really pushing herself from the
vocabulary point of view which is nice. She described something as being a
learning opportunity, she made a little mistake when she said 'making effort'. We,
in English we normally said 'making an effort'. 'He really made an effort'. 'An
effort'. Um, she, she said something like 'I barely talk about this' or 'I barely,
barely talk about it'. Really she should be saying 'I
rarely talk about it'. 'I don't talk about it very often'. The word 'barely'
doesn't fit here. And she used words like 'a growing mindset'. Great collocation
there, really happy with her vocabulary at this point. Let's see how she does in
part three, the hard part. Now part three. Thank you I
want to stay on the topic of feelings. Is it important for people to share their honest opinion about things? In different situations, yes. I will say in
most situations it's better to be honest if you can be honest about something and
then solve the problem immediately that would be better if you put it,
push it back and then let things grow, eventually it's a
mess. Yeah, just stay honest. Umm. And is there a good way to give
constructive feedback to someone about something? Uh, its language, is out of language and as long as you are constructive
you're not targeting anyone then it's really good to provide constructive
feedback that can help a person grow, can make them like not badism but in a way they can benefit from that experience,
no matter it's like in the near future or in the long run, a constructive advice
is always useful. These questions are quite hard,
talking about honesty and giving constructive feedback. Um, this
would really push somebody if they were a lower level speaker.
I love the fact that um, Aaliyah said 'as long as you are constructive'. 'As long as'
it's a complex sentence and she used words like 'in the near future or in the
long run'. 'In the near future or in the long run' are great collocations pushing
herself up to that band 8 level in vocabulary. Um, let's see how she does towards the end of the test. And what can
people learn from feelings of disappointment? Um, the important thing to know is it's
common and we should be used to it, it's just human
nature of feeling being disappointed but what happens afterwards is the important thing. So um, yeah keeping a mindset of growing. Whatever disappointed you, um,
then find what is the source of that feeling and then target it. Great, I think there are loads of things
from this that you could pick out. So she used 'keeping a mindset, mindset of growing'. Nice language there. 'It's human nature'.
Two collocations working well together, using them well. Um, then she
does say 'find out what is the source of that feeling'. She's
used the inversion incorrectly there because when you um, when you have these complex sentences,
you often have to move the verb to the end, you would have to say 'you have to
find out what the source of the feeling is' not 'what is the source of the feeling'.
It's a complicated way for, for language to work and I think it's a bit
strange that we move the verb to the end but you do have to be aware of that when
you're speaking. It's really common for people from Italy or Spain or France because they don't change the words and they keep the
word as it is. Um, you the, they might say 'we need to find out what is the solution'
rather than what a native speaker would say, 'we have to find out what the
solution is' and you move the verb right to the end. So it's a little grammatical
mistake there but it's just a slip and I don't think that it's going to be a big
problem. Well, thank you. That is the end of this
practice IELTS speaking test. Thank you. Thank you.
Well that brings us to the end of Aaliyah's section. We should give her a
big round of applause. As I mentioned it's always really difficult for
students to come and sit in front of a camera and completely unprepared, nobody
is told about the questions before, nobody is told about what to say and
therefore it is a hard job for these students, so big thumbs up to Aaliyah in
this case and to all the other students that have taken the test.
What score would I give Aaliyah? Well, you should see the band descriptors
on the screen now and for the Fluency and coherence; for me it's
somewhere between a band seven and a band eight simply because um she does make noticeable and loss of control in part two. She has to look for
lots of answers, she struggles to be fluent and she could have spoken a lot
more. Um, probably, probably a band eight but a strict examiner might mark her
a band seven. For lexical resource, I think this was
her strongest area and I'm going to award her a band eight. She used lots of
less common vocabulary, she paraphrased ideas, she
was able to skillfully use vocabulary with precise meaning. Really nice. Grammatical range and accuracy;
on a good day she might score eight but um a kind of the likelihood would be
that she would score seven here. Lots of complex structures with some
flexibility, some of these little mistakes even towards the end when we
noticed that she put the verb in the wrong place. Frequently she produced error-free sentences and there were some mistakes
which persisted throughout so probably a seven there. And pronunciation; again I had no problems understanding
the majority of her speech. She used great features so this could be a band
eight. There was no strain, I didn't have to struggle to to hear what she was
saying. So this is a tricky one and I think my
final score would be eight, seven, eight, eight. Eight, seven, eight, eight. But
remember on a strict day, she might score eight, seven, seven, seven
which would take her down to a band 7. So it could be that she scores a band
7.5 and I think she deserves a band 7.5 and she's getting close to being at the
band 8 level, but it is possible that she would score
7 because of those little errors throughout and some examiners are strict,
it's a subjective test so you're not always going to get the same
kind of answers and same scores, so I would just say make sure
that you understand the band descriptors. Thank you for
joining us today. It's a real pleasure to have you on the channel.
Don't forget come and watch all our other mock exam practice exam speaking
videos, lots of variety of different students from all parts of the world.
Take care, study hard, be kind and I will see you in the next mock exam speaking
video. [Music] Hello and welcome to this practice exam conducted by IELTS Daily. My name is
Maddie and I'm your IELTS practice speaking examiner. The questions in this
test are designed to simulate the IELTS speaking test. Let's start. What's your first name please? My first
name is Aaliyah. Thanks Aaliyah. Are you ready to begin? Yes. Let's talk about you.
Do you have a wide circle of friends or a few close friends? I would
say before COVID I have a wide range of friends but since COVID started
I have to kind of cut it, cut it tiny because I can't meet a lot of
people, I'm not allowed definitely and most of the times I can only contact
them by Zoom or on social media, so that just hugely narrowed down my social circle and it's good to have close friends during such a time.
And how often do you see your friends? Well, right now it's daily but before I say maybe um twice a week at most. One thing is I have school, the other
thing is obviously COVID. And do you have a best friend? Well, um, say how do you define best friend? I would say the time that I spend on most can be my best friend which is studying.
If you say like a real human I have so many. I will call them my best friends. Great. I'd like to move on to the topic of evenings. What do you normally do in the evenings? Oh during the evening, um, usually
I'll play piano with my roommate and studying with her. It's always a nice quiet time between me and her. And what did you do in the evenings as a child? Um, as a child I'll go for a walk with my parents in the park after dinner and
then they would say go study and go practice piano. And would
you like to do an evening course in a subject? An evening
course? I never thought about it. Um, I wouldn't want to do that in the evening. Apparently at night it's not the optimal time for studying. I would like it to be pushed to the day.
Now let's think about the topic of money. Are you good at saving money? Obviously no. As a young adult um slowly adapting to adult life meaning
that I need to pay for rent, pay for bills and everything and after paying that there's like negative figures in my account, so I better save up.
And have you ever made an expensive purchase? Yes for my graduation I bought a necklace that's worth $300. Yeah
and I paid it after five minutes of seeing it, it's really beautiful and I
terribly wanted it so I bought it. And what would you do if someone gave
you a large amount of money? Um, I think they are called parents.
They give me a large amount of money, I'll save it up to pay for my tuition fees. Part two. In the next part of the test I'm going to give you a topic and I would like you
to speak for one to two minutes. You will have one minute to think about what you
want to say and I will give you a pen and some paper to make notes if you want.
Is that clear? Yes. Okay, here is your paper and here is your pen. You have one minute to prepare. Thank you. Now I would like you to talk about a time when you were disappointed by
someone or something. Remember you have one to two minutes for
this so don't worry if I stop you. I'll tell you when the time's up. Can
you start speaking now please? Yes. um the time that I was disappointed by
something was um, I was applying for a volunteering opportunity and they, I already submitted my
application and they said they want to arrange an interview. Uh, and they
arranged an interview at about 8:00 am, I just woke up and I was not prepared for that, these are all excuses, and later on after the interview they
told me that I wasn't, uh, it was a successful application. And I was really disappointed cause I
felt, I was so cocky, I felt that I could definitely fit into the role and after
that I think I learned no matter how confident I am I should
prepare for it and then pay my respect for whoever that was in the interview and get up early. That, that was my experience and um, I think it's not about disappointment
at this point, at that point I was obviously disappointed but now I reflect
on that and then think it's just a learning opportunity to make me adapt to
into doing interviews, uh, being interviewed and
then actually putting work, making effort to apply. Uh, it is something that I barely talk about and not a lot of people ask me what I'm,
what thing disappoint me as long as I have a good
mindset, a growing mindset that will help me to continue going down
the path of life. Thank you.
Now part three. Thank you I want to stay on the topic of feelings. Is it important for people to share their honest opinion about things? In different situations, yes. I will say in
most situations it's better to be honest if you can be honest about something and
then solve the problem immediately that would be better if you put it,
push it back and then let things grow, eventually it's a
mess. Yeah, just stay honest. Umm. And is there a good way to give
constructive feedback to someone about something? Uh, its language, is out of language and as long as you are constructive,
you're not targeting anyone then it's really good to provide constructive
feedback that can help a person grow, can make them like not badism but in a way they can benefit from that experience,
no matter it's like in the near future or in the long run, a constructive advice
is always useful. And what can people learn from feelings of disappointment? Um, the important thing to know is it's common and we should be used to it, it's just human
nature of feeling, being disappointed but what happens afterwards is the important thing. So um, yeah keeping a mindset of growing. Whatever disappointed you, um,
then find what is the source of that feeling and then target it. Well, thank you. That is the end of this
practice IELTS speaking test. Thank you. Thank you. [Music]
