Keith and Chris - Student feedback - teacher discussion

hello ielts daily friends it's chris we're back with keith hi keith we're going to have another video with you today we're going to listen to some ielts sample speaking submitted by students and we are going to talk about all the things the person does well and maybe how they can improve are you ready keith i am fantastic i can't wait to get started let's go now then keith you're back on the ielts daily channel thank you so much for doing the the last video the students have told us how great it was um we came over to your channel and watched the second installment and now we are on the third installment of this and we're going to look at a sample answer by a couple of different students and if you're happy to we'll talk about the great features and maybe give some ideas on how the person could improve is that okay with you oh that sounds great chris yeah it's a great idea i think feedback is really valuable for the students and so as to give feedback and ideas i'm looking forward to it wonderful now we're going to be actually talking about the topic of weather and the topic of weather is really common in the ielts speaking test isn't it it is it comes up an awful lot in different aspects maybe part one part two or even part three sometimes yes wonderful so we're going to listen to a few different topics maybe a part one maybe a part two and maybe part three about weather and listen to the two students and we'll think about some of the great features and how they can improve we're going to play the first student now and let's see how they do and the question will be at the beginning do you enjoy hot or cold weather i am really fond of cold weather because in my country i have literally spent my entire life in hot weather and i really think that i am a cold person as in i would really appreciate or really really enjoy being around cold breezes snow and i really enjoy wearing winter clothes right keith now this person here and the question was do you enjoy hot or cold weather and their answer was uh that they prefer cold weather and there were some features that were really great and there were some things that i thought maybe this person could improve um the person started by saying i lit i've literally spent all my life in hot weather so they're giving kind of a situation now and then they made a contrast and said well this is what is like now and actually i prefer cold weather would you say that's a good technique in the test um i i think that's a good approach if this is absolutely in a part well even part three or part one yes you can give a a general comment at the start and then go more specific as you move on and develop the answer i think that's a good approach yeah and it allows you to expand a little bit doesn't it and and give a little bit more detail for the examiner to listen to but i did i disoriented sorry to interrupt you i did hear a pronunciation mistake and i was actually struggling to hear what she said and it was something like the word weather and did you hear the same thing there was a word i couldn't pick out it wasn't very very clear on pronunciation um i i think she had an interesting balance that she had some nice word stress to emphasize certain words she had that kind of intonation of when she gave a list of something that was dead but yes there was there were occasions where a word wasn't so clear yeah she used the um the phrase as in um and i don't actually remember the the specifics but if i use the word as in i think it means kind of for example doesn't it exactly it's a nice expression to use it's quite it's less common but meaning for example um as in this and this and this yeah yeah great is there anything else that you liked about that um i yes i mean that she her use of i'm a cold person quite kind of idiomatic that she's not literally cold but she's a person who who likes the cold i i thought her idiomatic use there was very nice yeah what would you say in this example are you a person who's fond of cold weather or do you prefer hot weather yeah what would you say what would i say i would probably say i'm a winter person or i'm a summer person um i might say something like that yeah or i i don't mind the cold um something like that i'm a little bit like a reptile i'm like a lizard i love the warm weather so whenever it's warm i'm outside enjoying the sun basking in the sunshine and i actually lived in a really cold country once and it was hard you know it was minus 30 degrees and it was really tough well if the truth be told i'm the exact opposite right i i have very fair skin i don't do well in hot weather and sunshine which is partly why i'm in the north of spain and not the south i do prefer the cooler weather a milder climate um and i i love wrapping up warm in freezing cold weather i love it wonderful let's listen to the next student which is coming up now do you prefer sunny or cloudy days well i usually prefer sunny days because on crowded is it's sometimes become difficult to turn into some work but as when we get suns it is usually it is necessary for to get vitamin thousand vitamin d as well as sometimes getting sound bath is good for us now then keith um this person clearly probably isn't as strong as the first person and it's quite noticeable here that this person is struggling a little bit um and in terms of the the speaking test this person would really benefit from listening to audio books following the text and really focusing on pronunciation do you agree yeah the first thing that popped out for me um was pronunciation there were not just words but phrases that were difficult to pick up because the intonation wasn't right the word stress wasn't wasn't correct um and the the ending and starting of chunks was just not not correct and it was very difficult for me to follow that pronunciation and i think that was the first thing that i noticed yeah yeah i think in an exam situation it makes it a little bit easier sitting in front of someone so we're having this audio recording today so it's a bit harder for us when we have this person-to-person interaction it does make it easier to see lips and and see how people are pronouncing things but it was really difficult to hear i you know there were parts of the text in the speech that i heard he he spoke about vitamin d and i heard the word sun bathing but it should have been sun bathing um he used phrases like it is necessary but overall there were quite a number of times that i really strained and this is an important idea what does strain mean keith well when you're straining means that you're trying really hard to do something but it's very difficult to do because the situation is is difficult so if you're straining to understand you're trying to understand but you can't would you agree that you were straining in this case i was definitely straining with the pronunciation and i i would just add you know the reason at the start of ielts speaking you have a couple of warm-up questions is for the examiner to get used to your voice and and that does help but once you're into the whole test if this pronunciation issue and straining continues then yes it's going to mark down your your score for pronunciation thanks for that let's go back to the first student and listen to some of their part two and i remember in this this student this person was outside when they were recording this and this is a lesson to anybody if you're going to do any recording on your phone make sure that you're in a place that represents and is similar to the test setup so that you have a quiet place that you are able to listen to your own speech back let's listen to this person and see what we think part two talk about a time when the weather changed your plans you should say what happened what type of plans you had why you decided to change your plans and explain what you did instead so we had a plan for a little weekend outing two weeks back where we were supposed to visit a resort to spend two days with my family and friends and at resort there is so many adventurous things which we were supposed to do and we all cousins and friends were excited about but two days before it it really rained really heavily in this city and city was flooding which was totally not expected actually the cyclone hit the city and things were not good later by that time so we decided to be at our own home we we tried to figure out how to be in touch with each other those who were not together we uh decided to get on a zoom video and then i'm just going to pause the the person there and it gives us an opportunity to talk about how she's doing so far and i think she's about one minute into her speech maybe just a little bit more and at this point the examiner has a really good idea of how fluent you are how much time you're taking to think of new ideas what would you say about this person's fluency overall i think it's it's good i think she has a good level of fluency i think she's able to um keep talking without real noticeable effort you know i think it's band seven that says you can speak without noticeable effort um and she's she's doing that there there are one or two hesitations as she's sometimes rephrasing what she wants to say and change her mind about it or thinking of a better way to say it but by and large she is able to to keep going um with very little repetition so she's not she's doing quite well on her fluency i feel like she can probably speak just a little bit faster what do you think she could do yeah perhaps yes and and that would help slightly um and maybe even i think to demonstrate longer phrases i mean you talked about speaking for a long period of time in part two one of the key things is being able to make a longer phrase and keep going over a longer phrase she is breaking up her phrases quite a bit which is fine but i think to get even better she could be doing longer phrases yeah she's telling a story which i like and i think every time you take the test you have to be able to prepare yourself to tell a story even if it's a fictional story i know there are many questions in the test which i probably wouldn't be able to think of a real scenario for so therefore you have to become almost like an actor would you say well it's definitely better to to make up a story than to say nothing at all it's absolutely fine to make something up you do not have to tell the truth nobody knows nobody cares the important thing is you're showing your your english so yes i mean if you're if you can do that if you can make up stories and keep it going absolutely i know some students who are fantastic at doing that yeah now the the specifics of her her speech here she said um a little weekend outing that's a good phrasing a little weekend outing is nice language that um probably above like a b2 level maybe even a c1 level that putting these words together a little weekend outing which is nice she said at resort and she's forgotten her article very common mistake in ielts for people to forget at the resort or at the resort that i was staying at and she said it rained really heavily and she said the city was flooding it felt a little bit unnatural here because she's telling this story she probably should should have said the city flooded um the process of flooding do we normally say the city was flooding you can but it didn't feel as natural as i if i were telling the story i would have said and the city flooded would you agree i would or you or you might say the river was flooding um and the city flooded i think it's it's one of those things that she's she's got the vocabulary she understands it but to use it just at that slightly higher level she's missing just a bit the kind of difference between as a native speaker or a proficient speaker um so she she missed a bit there i thought yeah she came out with a group of nice expressions with some good grammar she was she said a few times i we were supposed to or i was supposed to do this and then we couldn't figure out what to do um it rained heavily i mean some consistent use of the past tense correctly but you're right there were one or two little bits where um the the higher level of grammar was just missing a little bit yeah the complexity of you know she had some good complexity but then also ielts examiners are listening for this range and we often um like you said we were supposed to or um in the in the test you might want to think about when sentences or if sentences we have to have this idea of subordination and if you don't know what subordination is today's class is not for us to tell you what subordination is you can do the hard work go to your search engine and have a look at some examples for subordination because i actually think that you need to have subordination and a band four in ielts but at a band seven you need to have this range of different sentences that's right isn't it keith it is i i think that complex grammar is is all about building blocks and it's building clauses upon clauses subordinate clauses embedded clauses relative clauses and being able to use those quite um flexibly it's essential really to get your band seven and above so yes go and look up subordinate clauses um i've got a video would you believe it a video on complex grammar go and check it out it will tell you a little bit about it we'll post the link to that in the description below let's have one more um sample and then we'll call it a day so here we go how is climate change affecting the planet well yeah well this this climate change man affected the earth because some types of certain types of climatic scenes can only occur in on this earth so this can affect it by affecting the planet by creating such type of networks into just starts i ask landslide solutions sometimes now we're back with the same student who we listened to before and not much has changed here and this will be something that probably affects many people who go into the test they start with part one and throughout and it becomes harder and harder as they get into part three this question is more abstract we're talking about a more difficult topic of climate change and it's really noticeable that this student is struggling quite a lot pronunciation there's no real um kind of range of vocabulary or range of grammar it's a lot of maybe memorized phrases i can hear phrases that maybe the student has learned on the internet and that's not a great way to prepare for ielts is that right it's i i agree entirely i think the problem here is yes the student has a low level of english right maybe it's a a2 or a b1 but they are trying to learn language at a much higher level in order to take ielts so they're trying to learn expressions like global warming climate change that you would not be learning at his level is a much lower level i i think i would suggest to this student to to actually to stop preparing for ielts and focus on on learning their english at the level they're at whether it's a2 or b1 with a focus on pronunciation on on chunks because i can't hear clearly the chunks i mean if you're learning vocabulary learn the chunk of vocabulary that's fine um but working on pronunciation and i think also i mean general advice you know without being unkind is some students do mumble and they don't speak clearly they don't enunciate is to speak really clearly open your mouth and loud enough so the examiner can hear you and i think you know this student was guilty a little bit of mumbling and i just think just speaking clearly will help a little bit but focus on the level that you're at i think some people try to run before they can walk and that's something that that we we experience as teachers and and keith's keith's idea of stopping preparing for ielts and focus on the fundamentals the foundations of language is so important i have a little tip for students if you are struggling with pronunciation one of the things that you could do is to take your phone and install one of the um kind of text voice to text apps that you can buy and try doing some reading from books and see how much of the text versus the book is the same if there's a really high level of accuracy then you're doing really well but if you're finding that most of the words that are appearing are not the same as the book that usually shows that you need to do a little bit of work on your pronunciation i know that many of you don't have access to teachers like keith or myself who can give you real feedback and if you're looking for a cheap way to do it that's one kind of starting starting method that you could like download onto your phone and start doing that immediately and that's one little tip for you if you if you want to improve pronunciation that's a nice tip chris i would add on top of that i think a lot of students also focus on books and they're learning language from a book and they're reading aloud the words as they're learning them if possible i would encourage students to learn from audio so to be listening to the words to the sounds and repeating them rather than reading from a book because reading from a book i mean english is one of those languages that from the letters you've got no idea how to pronounce a word unless you've seen it before so learning from audio or audio and tape script is fine but having that sound to work from i think for this student i would definitely recommend that what great advice thanks so much keith and thanks you guys to for watching i hope you found this useful and if you want to have a really great place to have new language a really experienced teacher go over to english speaking success with keith you can find it on youtube and on on his website it's a wonderful resource for you guys to to have at your fingertips download some videos watch them while you are on the train walking to work wherever you are it's little steps every day then you'll be your um you'll be able to do the race so small steps will take you far i i agree thank you very very much chris i think it is it's daily habits somebody said we are that's the sum of our habits so if you have a habit of practicing every day that will make you a much better speaker um thanks very much chris it's been an absolute pleasure making these videos with you really enjoyed it and i hope it can help the students on their way to their goals thanks so much let's let's hope that these students pass as quickly as possible take care of yourself take care of you guys and we'll see you soon all the best bye [Music]

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Id: jrRfmcFhmTo

Length: 22min 55sec (1375 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 23 2021