Hi everyone! I'm Jay from IELTS daily.
I'm a teacher here and today, we're going to be looking at a few questions from the IELTS speaking test.
So let's get this party started!
So, more specifically,
we're going to be looking at part two of the IELTS speaking exam,
and I'm here with my colleague, Chris.
Hey, Jay!
Hey, how are you going?
I'm well, do you know what we're going to do today?
No.
I'm going to send you a picture from the IELTS speaking test.
This is a recent question.
And I'm going to send the question to your iPad, which you have,
and you're going to try and answer this question just like the test.
So you will have one minute to prepare your answer,
and then I want you to speak for over one minute.
In the test, lots of students get really nervous.
Are you nervous?
Oh yeah, and I'm a native speaker.
So, I'm going to send the picture to your iPod... iPad right now.
If you want to have a look at that question, and we'll look at that question
together with students.
So on the screen, you will see the question, which is:
Describe an interesting animal that you saw.
You should say which animal you saw,
where you saw this animal,
and why this animal was interesting.
Finally, I'd like you to explain how you felt when you saw this animal.
What I'd really like from you, Jay, if possible, when you're making your notes,
could you maybe talk to the students about what you're planning to say?
And then in the test you can, you can speak fluently.
So just talk about your ideas and share your ideas while you're writing your notes.
Okay. Sounds good.
So your one-minute preparation time is about to begin.
You can start now.
Okay. So the question is:
Describe an interesting animal.
So I have the animal in my head, and I've written...
I'm writing that down right now.
And then the next part of the question is:
Where did I see this animal?
So, I'm just trying to go through the prompts of the question
to make sure that I'm covering all of those aspects of the question.
So I'm going to write that down right now as well.
What particular animal are you thinking of talking about?
I'm talking about a manta ray.
Where did you see this animal?
I saw this animal in the Northwest of Australia, in a place called Ningaloo Reef.
How did you feel when you saw it?
Oh, amazing, exhilarated. Very happy, but also scared at the beginning.
Okay.
So it's important to tell a story in the test.
So when you're talking to the examiner,
trying to tell a story wherever possible.
Okay.
So you've got about five seconds left, and if you can stop writing now.
So, in the test, you will have to speak for over one minute.
Try to talk as much as possible. You don't have to cover all those parts.
If you don't want, just try to tell a story.
Are you ready, Jay?
Yes.
I'm going to be writing down some of the things that you say,
which are really great. So your one minute to two minutes starts now.
So, the animal that I'm going to be talking about,
or the animal that I really remember seeing,
it's called a manta ray.
And a manta ray is a large pelagic seagoing
creature that's related to the shark.
And the reason it's related to the shark is because it has...
mostly cartilage on its skeleton.
So we humans,
we have bones, and,
sharks and rays have cartilage.
So anyway,
that was a little bit of a background on the animal...
Where did...
where I saw this animal was in the Northwest of Australia at a place called Ningaloo Reef.
And this is a really beautiful location. I was...
I saw the animal when I went scuba diving, and it was probably in about
three, no... probably about 10 meters of water.
And when I first saw the animal,
I was really, really scared because it's very big.
It's about four and a half meters across.
And it's just a lot, which is a lot bigger than myself.
And it was swimming towards me, and I saw it.
And it was coming towards me. And at the last minute,
it kind of banked away from me kind of like an airplane would.
And I say this because in the water, these animals look like they're flying.
They're very graceful.
And so immediately, my... my
fear left me and I had this feeling of exhilaration and it was just
amazing.
And it kind of flew away from me and swam off into the, into the sea.
And I never saw it again,
but the few seconds that I had really stands out in my memory,
and it was just a really awesome experience.
Fantastic.
That was one minute and 32 seconds.
So you spoke for between one and two minutes, which is wonderful.
Let's talk about some of the things that you, that you spoke about.
So, you said that this animal is related to the
shark and how would you express that in a different way?
I could use a very high or...
I guess a more formal vocabulary word. And I could say it's akin to a shark,
which has the same meaning, it's similar to, yes.
In the same family of, would you say maybe...
Yeah.
I guess you could say that it's in the same family.
Yeah.
You talked about bones and cartilage.
These are anatomical words from the body.
Would you say that the
the nose is made of cartilage?
Yes. In fact, we have, I believe two locations in our body that has,
that still have cartilage: our nose, the tips of our noses anyway.
And also our ears are made of cartilage as well.
That was good, good vocabulary.
And I liked the way that you were telling a story to the students.
You gave details about your time in the reef, which was really nice.
Could you think about another few ways to say that you were scared?
Just a few different pieces of vocabulary?
Yeah, it was frightened.
Seeing the animal...
Terrified?
Yeah, I was terrified. It caused me to have some fear.
Good, excellent.
Yeah.
You talked about this animal being four and a half meters across,
which is great language, and you're describing the size of it.
You told the story of how it was swimming towards you and I could picture it.
I could see you in the reef and picturing this situation,
and that's exactly what I want you to do during the test.
You said it's "kind of like".
"kind of like", is a way to say it's similar to again, right.
It's more colloquial or spoken English, which is great.
And finally, you said two new pieces of vocabulary,
which were: "graceful" and "exhilarating".
"Graceful" and "Exhilarating".
Could you explain what the word graceful means?
Well, in my mind graceful means I guess,
a very similar or very basic word to describe brace will be smooth or,
or let me think... How else can I,
can you help me out here?
Sure, sure, sure.
So, it's not awkward.
Yeah.
Not awkward, not clumsy.
Exactly.
Sure of itself.
Yeah.
You said exhilarating. You know,
the idiom, "to take your breath away"
Yeah. Yes, I do.
So, it took your breath away. You felt really, really, really...
like it was a magical experience.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely.
And a great way to describe it would be to say that it took my breath away.
Yeah. I really enjoyed your speech today, Jay. Thanks very much.
Thank you, Chris.
What advice would you give to students during the test?
It's... it's... look, I'm going to just try to speak freely here.
I'm a native speaker and doing this is not easy. Just...
you have to try to relax and just try to, as Chris mentioned earlier,
tell a story, pretend that you just have little kids around you,
and you want to entertain them.
And by telling them this story,
it kind of puts some of that pressure away from you, or take some of the pressure off of you.
So I really hope you enjoyed watching this today, and I hope you really learned something.
Thank you. We'll see you next time.