IELTS Speaking Test - Band 9 sample answer with native speaker Vicki Hollett

hello it's key from IELTS speaking success and today I'm speaking to an amazing lady Vicki holla'd she's a published author a teacher and a youtuber today she is the candidate for the IELTS speaking test I will be the examiner do you want to learn some natural English do you want to see how she does then start watching hi hello to you how are you I'm very well thank you I'm great and it's fantastic to see you here thank you so much for coming to join us I'm delighted to be here it's gonna be interesting it is indeed today Viki you're going to be doing the IELTS test as a candidate how do you feel a little bit nervous but mostly curious because normally I'm the one asking the questions so it's going to be very interesting to see what it's like to be on the other side of it absolutely yes interesting for me as well as an examiner so before we begin the test let's talk a little bit about you tell tell you know me and the people watching a little a bit about you and what you do okay I'm an English teacher and I'm a writer as well so I've written lots of books textbooks about English for people like Oxford University Press and Pearson and I'm also these days a youtuber so I make videos with my husband J and they're called simple English videos on YouTube and we look at any sorts of different features they've their videos for English lands fantastic and then they are great videos I've seen a lot of them I like the way you and J work together on those well he's American and I'm British so there's a bit of banter I write both accents going on as well excellent well listen and Viki let's without further ado let's jump into the test are you ready yes okay so I'll do it as a normal alt test so it has a certain level of formality about it and I'll get my clock as well because I do need my watch right so this is the IELTS speaking test taking place online today and the candidate here is Vicki and the examiner is Keith O'Hare hello can you tell me your full name please Victoria Hollett and what shall I call you Vicky Vicky okay so Vicky I've seen your ID card in this first part of the test I'm going to ask you some questions about yourself let's talk first of all about your hometown tell me about the town where you live okay well these days I live in Philadelphia in the US which is I think about the fifth or sixth largest city in America and it is a very big city and we live bang in the middle of it in little Terrace house surrounded by skyscrapers all right and is it a good place for children and there are some children growing up here now a lot of families used to move out of the city in the 1970s and 80s when it was rather a dangerous place but these days a lot of families have been moving back so we've got lots of kids on our streets we know now what do tourists like to do where in your hometown we're a big Art Centre we have the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Barnes Museum some very famous artworks there and we have the rookie statue of course because rocky was filmed here and so people like to run up the steps of the art museum like rocky did in the film we have lots of well I'm going to move on now and talk about sleep how many hours do you sleep every day this is a really strange question for me because my sleep is very erratic sometimes I'll only sleep say four hours or sometimes it will be six hours or sometimes it will be ten and do you think it's good to have a nap during the day sometimes I can't help it right and did you sleep more in the past than you do now I think I sleep about the same amount as I did before it hasn't changed much my husband says I have no Canadian rhythm right now let's move on and talk about maths when did you start to learn maths oh I learnt maths at school when I was a kid and I always loved math essentially it was a really nice a really enjoyable subject for me and at one point I was thinking of studying it's at university but I wasn't so keen on all the I wasn't so keen on studying other Sciences like physics in chemistry so it never happened is maths important oh absolutely Wow yes I mean even from simple arithmetic when you go around the supermarket you need to be able to add up and check your bill I need arithmetic to do my taxes every year and but also I think some of the larger concepts that maths are quite interesting as well and what is a good way to learn maths I think a good teacher is essential and I think I enjoyed math so much because I had inspiring teachers who made it fun and interest all right okay so now Viki I'm going to give you a topic and I'd like you to talk about it for one to two minutes you have one minute to prepare and you can take some notes if you wish do you understand I do and I'm definitely going to make take some notes students who take notes do better they do don't they good advice I can tell you're a good teacher so your topic and I will share this with you on the screen so your topic is describe piece of information that you think is not correct okay so now remember you've got one to two minutes and to talk about this so don't worry if I stop you I'll tell you when the time is up can you start talking now please okay I've often heard it said that Americans are more direct and British people and we're if I heard or read this well I've heard people say it it's sort of common folklore that British people are very very polite and Americans are much more direct and I don't think it's true having lived in America for a few years and being British myself I think that there are the same very similar standards of politeness that go on in both cultures but the standard the way of being polite is slightly different so what will happen in the UK is that we will be worried about disturbing people or interfering with them or getting in their way whereas what will happen in the u.s. is that people will be more concerned about being friendly and open and warm and these things get confused in people's minds so people will go to the US and say why are people being so warm and friendly and people will go to the UK and saying and think why are people standoffish and leaving me alone and not welcoming me and what it's really about is that it's just two different sides of politeness that are going on and so I think the idea that Americans are more direct is further not quite the right way of putting it putting it because there are lots of things that Americans do that it quite indirect like us so for example if I say if you want me to pick my coat up off the floor you might say oh it's like your because great I'm gonna have to stop you there Vicki thank you very much good so we've been talking about a piece of information that you think is not correct I'd like to go on now and ask you a few more questions related to that so let's talk first of all about information do you believe everything that you read certainly not you can't do that these days I think with the internet there's so much false information out there in comparison to the past we didn't have these sorts of difficulties but it's getting worse and worse okay how can we identify reliable sources of information it's really important to try and work out where the information came from these days and tracking it down can sometimes be difficult sometimes it can be obvious when you look at it and read it it just doesn't ring true or there are errors that you know or things that are being overstated exaggeration is often a clue if things are exaggerated rather than factual that's an indication that this piece of information might not be direct correct so um the other thing is there are some organizations now that do fact check a lot of the new that we receive and they're worth looking at um there's a there's a a university in the south I think that does some wonderful fact checks of news organizations and also politicians of course to see how accurate they be and they're worth looking at there are also wonderful websites likes notes which you can go to if you've heard and sometimes if there's an internet meme or internet meme or story and you can go to Snopes and find fact-checking of that okay so how has the way that we access information changed in recent years I think before new sources were credible unbelievable generally speaking for most people it's rather different now because there has been an attack on media by a lot of politicians claiming that they're producing fake news it's it may be attractive for people to believe conspiracy theories and more of them spreading so that's another issue that you have larger quantities of fake news going around and also a lot of the places where people are getting use now are not regulated in the way that newspapers and media organizations have been regulated in the past so let's talk about Jobson information in which kind of jobs that people need to give information journalists and teachers all need to give information but I think it's true for most people if I were in any job it would be strange if I didn't have to give information to help my fellow workers I mean few people work on their own these days you need to get along with the people you're working with and if you can't give information clearly on correctly it's going to be a problem isn't it and do you think the ability to find information will be an important skill in the future I think it already is an important skill the ability to show that you can access and find and and also oh I've forgotten the word I was going to use generate different pieces of information curation has become a skill that wasn't so necessary in the past but for example if you can gather together different bits of information and make them easily accessible when you need them because a lot of the time people are going to put information at the moment looking for information at the point that they need it now we just want to go get the information we need and leave it I mean look at the success of YouTube videos like this we all use them to do all sorts of everyday tasks now like how to screw wall how to put a screw in a war or how to learn English yeah on that note it brings us to the end of the test thank you very much Viki brilliant well done Viki that was great so after your IELTS test how do you feel a little nervous I wonder what score I'm going to get I was trying to I was thinking to myself you should get a second or third conditional in if you can because then it will impress the examiners but it was actually very hard to do I know it's not exactly not for my students third conditional is always very impressive but they're hard to fit in when you're thinking on the top of your head right yes it was hard to think of things to say actually and I I'm quite glad that I had this experience because it's good to put yourself in this it with a student sometimes I totally agree I think it's interesting because students often say it's hard to find ideas and when you're giving a class you can give lots of ideas but when you're on the spot it's it's hard isn't it to think of things that's right and sometimes you think of things that wouldn't be appropriate you know how political should I get I was thinking and thinking I don't run exactly Trump was coming demand but I thought it's great I mean I love the language I was listening as an examiner to the language as well the things you came out with some great collocations there were idiomatic expressions you know like slap bang in the center of Philadelphia oh yes well I was really wasn't that interesting because of course I wasn't listening to myself speaking so I was more conscious about what I was producing but I wasn't listening to what I was actually producing but it was great and I'll do a kind of a full review somewhere below for people to look at the the natural language that you used so I guess as we wrap up here and Vicki I mean when you mentioned at the start the videos that you do the work that you do if people want to find out more where can they find you they can go to look up simple English videos and we have a website where you can see all our videos and they're nicely arranged and we also have a web we also have a YouTube channel so simple English videos on YouTube and you'll find me there with my husband Jay he works on it with me and we've been making a video every week for some time several years so there's quite a lot of stuff there on grammar vocabulary lots of unsocial English and politeness things as well and and also lots of British and American English stuff because of course he's American and I'm British so we we have that going on this well that's great and that's one of the things that attracted me actually and I know I've referred your videos to students because that the kind of the banter between the British and the American and the accents it's really good practice and especially for il students right to get that exposure I think it's really good great Vicki thank you very much lovely to see you and stay in touch okay it's been a pleasure bye-bye no I and that was Vicki from simple English videos thank you so much to Vicki for coming and being a candidate didn't she do a good job not bad at all I've done a brief language analysis down here in the show notes if you want to see more go and visit the website IELTS speaking success search for Vicki and you can watch the video and see more language down there in the meantime I recommend you check out Vicki's website and YouTube channel simple English videos there's a lot of stuff there really good to help you learn English and build up your fluency and confidence big thank you again if you like this video do subscribe and leave me a comment I look forward to seeing you soon [Music]

Channel: English Speaking Success

Views: 38,751

Keywords: native speakers, native speakers IELTS, native speakers IELTS Speaking, IELTS Speaking Success, IELTS Speaking Test, IELTS speaking test topics, IELTS speaking test questions, IELTS interview, ielts interview speaking test exam, ielts speaking test band 9, simple english videos, vicki hollett, examples ielts speaking section, ielts learning tips, ielts learning test

Id: X9HSY0hV5GM

Length: 19min 42sec (1182 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 26 2019