hello good morning good morning my name is therese and welcome to your ielts exam uh can i have your
full name please my name is eli hardy howells great thank you do you have identification with
you uh not currently that's okay let's just get right down to it so i'm just going to record the
exam just to know that the exam is starting now um okay so part one i'm going to ask you a series of
questions and just do the best of your ability to to answer them okay so let's talk about the
town or city where you live now so where are you living today i currently live in dublin i'm in the
south side of dublin in an area called dundrum so this is eli hardy house he's an ielts specialist
and obviously a native speaker in english you'll notice right from the very beginning that eli
is completely relaxed it's very natural to have a conversation or a test with him because he
obviously really enjoys communication with other people so i think what we can learn from this is
that before you go into your ielts speaking test just try to relax try to be as natural as possible
and remember that this is a dialogue with another human being with another person so just try to
be yourself and have you always lived in the same town or city right no i haven't i've moved around
extensively throughout my life um i was born in london spent most of my childhood in scotland
and then i've worked in spain and china but as i mentioned currently i'm in dublin right okay
great what i've noticed at this point already in the test is that eli has already used three tenses
he's used the present tense the present perfect and also the past form so it's good to remember to
try to vary your use of tense so that you're not just staying with the present form all the time
what do you like about the city that you currently live in interesting um so i mean there's a lot of
things that i like um and i think there's a lot of things that i'm about to like even more because um
i moved to dublin in november 2019 and um only two months into living in dublin we went into lockdown
so um actually the majority of the time that i've been living in dublin has been
a kind of slightly distorted dublin it's a dublin in lockdown as a result of kovit
so what i like um from my experience of lockdown dublin is um i like that there's a lot of green
areas so um having come from shanghai which is obviously a very vast metropolitan city it's
a very nice experience to be able to walk out of my out of the door and be surrounded by lush green
areas yes and then as i i think that one thing i'm going to especially like in that kind of
post-lockdown dublin is the ability to go out and explore some of the bars that are so famous
in dublin yes a lot of good bars in dublin have you noticed all the great vocabulary that eli uses
during the test he uses words like explore lush surrounded this really shows a great variety of
vocabulary so if you want to hit band score 8 and 9 aim to use new language new words that really
show a good knowledge of the english language and would you like to always live in this city
interesting i'm not sure i'd like to live here from my entire life so previously i lived in
spain in barcelona and the city really resonated with me particularly because i'm a very keen rock
climber wow and it's actually an intention of mine to eventually um return to living in
barcelona especially so that i can go rock climbing at the weekends and explore the
different um cliff faces of catalunya that sounds lovely um so let's talk about going to restaurants
um do you often go to restaurants um i would say i go to restaurants fairly often um certainly when
i was living in shanghai i ate out regularly um there's a real culture of eating out in shanghai
um there's a lot of really good inexpensive food and chinese food is absolutely delicious
having lived in dublin um like i mentioned the majority of the time that i've been here has been
a slightly distorted dublin under lockdown yes um so i haven't been able to go to restaurants
but now that things are beginning to open up my girlfriend and i went to a restaurant last
weekend it was very exciting oh that's great and i intend to go to more as well but outside of course
exactly the restaurant and which do you prefer eating at home or eating in a restaurant i
prefer eating at home yeah i like being able to cook something quickly and um watching a series
while eating or just chatting to my girlfriend and eating the food that i prepared and that i like to
eat not stuff that's interesting have the kinds of restaurants you like changed over the years
um well certainly my experience living in asia changed the kind of restaurants
i like to eat in i would just i would say that previously i ate um a lot more italian food
i really enjoyed eating pizza and pasta and then after living in china i got much more into asian
food a lot of japanese food thai food vietnamese food and a lot of chinese food as well chinese
food too so instead of saying i really like asian food eli says i really got into asian food
that just means that he really got involved he really got interested in that type of food you
could also say well i'm really keen on asian food that's another great expression to use
instead of just saying i like every time and how do you choose which restaurants to go to um
so it's usually a combination of what's on the menu and the price that it's at
yes often my girlfriend and i will check out different restaurants on instagram oh
yeah and if there's like particularly nice looking dishes then we'll choose to go to that restaurant
yeah 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 um to take a look at the question and you can use the paper
here and the pencil uh to do some preparation thank you is that okay that's fine thank you
very much okay so okay so whenever you're ready you can begin okay so i'm going to tell you
about um a holiday that i had in 2018. um so at the time i was living in shanghai in china
and i was a long-distance relationship with my with my girlfriend my current girlfriend and
so the way that we would see each other would be to typically go on holiday somewhere so she was
in ireland i was in china and we would look at the map and we'd choose a different place to go
to and that's where we would meet up yeah um so on this particular occasion um we went to italy
um to go rock climbing and what we did is we rented a van from a company called indie campers
and they give you um basically a camper van or rather it's a converted um transportation van
and they've put a bed in the background and a little kitchen in the back of the van and
a little kitchen and um and and what it was very exciting so we arrived in milan airport
they come pick you up and then they show you how to kind of drive this large vehicle
and um we set off straight from milan airport into switzerland um where we spent five days climbing
together and um living in this van which was a very exciting experience something new for us
and then um we also managed to coincide the the holiday and this is one of the reasons why it's
so special with a friend's wedding so um from switzerland we drove back into italy and then
drove to florence where an old school friend was getting married so we had to drive i think around
six or seven hours the day before the wedding and obviously because we had this van with the bed in
the back um we were able to arrive at the wedding venue um late at night we fell asleep in the van
and then woke up and then went straight into this wedding so we changed out of our climbing clothes
and straight into the suit that i had and the dress that my girlfriend had which was a totally
um unusual experience um and and it's one of the reasons why the holiday was so special for us
um the wedding itself was really really exciting it was um a chinese girl getting married to a
scottish guy and what they had done is they had a kind of fusion between italian food scottish food
and chinese food and also the wedding had that kind of a theme so there was a scottish caylee
which is a very exciting dance that typically happens at scottish weddings and then um
and then the day after the wedding we had to drive from florence back to drop off the van
and then get on our fights in my case to go back to china and my girlfriend's case to go back to
ireland so it was a totally uh special and unusual holiday that's fine you'll notice in this part of
the test that eli goes into a lot of description about this holiday he explains where he went
who he went with why and when and then he gives information about the content of the trip
he describes the events so that's what you really need to do in this part two is try to elaborate
on the events and the details this is the moment for you to tell a story so we've been
talking about a special holiday you had and i'd like to discuss with you one of the more
one or two related questions to holiday and to travel um other cultures what advice would you
give to someone coming to your country on how to fit in with the local culture
right interesting um so so i'll talk about england which is where i was born yes so um
certainly a good idea for anyone arriving in england is to um to
have a good level of english before you before you arrive ultimately yes um
yeah i know from my own experience having moved to spain having moved to china that it's it's
quite difficult if you arrive with quite a low level of a language to fit into the culture but
if you can get to that kind of pre-intermediate or intermediate level then suddenly the world
opens up and you can you can have meaningful conversations with people from those countries
and that actually allows you to um to improve your language level considerably and get to know the
culture better so my top tip would be um try and get to that pre-intermediate or intermediate level
of english before arriving in the uk or in england it's very very good advice i would say do you
think that living in a foreign country is the best way to know the culture of that country i mean i
think so i think there's a lot of subtleties about a culture that you don't necessarily
understand from say watching films or reading books about a country um
whereas when you're living there um whether consciously or unconsciously you're noticing
you're picking up or noticing um a lot of aspects of a culture yes yeah whether for
example whether it's the food or the way that people treat each other or um or even the kind
of conversations that people have together would you recommend a specific amount of time in order
to get to that level you know six months or one year how much time do you need to really
learn about a new culture yeah interesting question i think it really depends on
on the person and also how open the culture is as well and and like i said the language and the
ability to immediately integrate into that culture so um i mean certainly the longer the better
in part three of the ielts test eli's ability to use structure opinion and argument is pushed
a little bit further this is the more abstract part of the exam and what i've really noticed is
that eli uses the conditional forms very well and he also uses complex sentences very well
with the use of the term whereas if somebody were to have a high level of language ability in for
the country that they're going to and immediately be able to find friends then they would require
less time to get to know the culture whereas someone arriving without the language ability
without the friendship would certainly take a lot longer but as a minimum i'd say yes as um probably
around one month so one one month and for someone who arrives in the country with a low level of
english for example how long will it take then to become an intermediate speaker in english
interesting question um i mean typically moving from elementary to to pre-intermediate and then
to intermediate um in a in a classroom setting would take three years um yeah if you imagine well
a part-time student one year of elementary one year pre-intermediate one year of
intermediate studies um yes someone integrated the culture um if they're being active and
they're making an effort to really get themselves out there and speak to people i think they can
reduce that time to say maybe six months um if they're an extroverted person who enjoys
getting to know people and they're actively communicating in the language and doing their
best to study the language in their free time yes of course and would you also recommend that the
student or that person lives with a host family or in an international environment or to stay
with their own group or their own culture i mean living with a host family is a great idea yeah
especially if they're interested in more than just a language if they're interested in in
understanding the culture then it's it's a phenomenal way to to really get to grips
with different aspects of the culture this expression get to grips is a very very good
expression that you can use in english it means to get used to or to get adapted to doing something
um i mean typically what happens and i know this from my own experience having lived abroad is
it's very easy to move to find people that you feel instantly comfortable with and that's often
because you can speak the same language and and staying within that bubble and that will
certainly impede your ability to integrate into the culture and improve your language
skills thank you so much eli for your support and participation today thank you thank you thank you
just to summarize here on the feedback of my experience in speaking with eli i found that
overall he has a great range of language and vocabulary that's what really stands
out when he speaks but also he's extremely coherent he speaks at a very natural pace
but very clearly so no matter where you're from in the world whatever your accent you can speak
slowly and clearly take your time so that any speaker from any country can understand you well
vary your use of tense when you're speaking in the ielts exam try to use the past narrative forms
present and of course the future and conditional as much as you can i hope by the way make sure
you check out eli's website englishprotips.com where you'll find lots of great ielts preparation
courses and on eli's youtube channel you'll find lots of fantastic videos
on every aspect of the ielts exam so go check it out i hope this was useful for
your ielts speaking test good luck at your preparation and see you in our next video
bye