Oh hello, it's Chris from IELTS daily. Welcome to this video. We've got another one of our amazing
mock exam videos. In today's video we've got Lucy from china, and I was thinking about titling this
video the mock exam video that everybody should see, because it's a bit of a disaster.
Sorry Lucy. Lucy um comes into this and she has experience with the IELTS, and if you
want to know how she does keep watching. Do you think that the IELTS speaking test is difficult?
Well I agree with you. The great news is that we've made some fantastic
mock exam videos with a real practice exam, with real students, and a real practice examiner.
During these videos, I'm going to be looking at what the students do well, how they can improve,
and also how you guys can use some of their tips techniques and ideas in your speaking test.
Okay, so I'm just putting in my headphones so that we can watch Lucy's video. Now, as I mentioned, there
were a couple of problems in this mock exam. Some of them, one of them is to do with Lucy and the
other one is to do with the practice examiner Mai. Now you'll see and I'll talk about why it was a
problem later. And one thing that you should always remember is that in a test you need to be prepared,
and being prepared is going to help you so much when you're sitting in front of the examiner.
You're going to feel calm and you're going to feel ready to take the test. Are you ready to
watch Lucy? I am. Let's click play. Hello and welcome to this practice exam conducted by IELTS daily. My
name is Mai and I'm your practice IELTS speaking examiner. Let's start. What's your first name please?
Lucy. At the beginning of the IELTS test, you need to provide some identification, but as
this is a practice test there's no need for this today. Are you ready to begin? Yes.
I want to begin by talking about you. Do you work or study? Work. What do you do for work? Photographer.
Do you enjoy what you do? Yes. What do you hope to do in the future? I hope to become a designer.
I'd like to move on to the topic of pets.
Before you move on to the topic of pets mate, I'm gonna jump in there, and let me tell you some a
secret. I was in the room at the time of this. I was sitting in the corner of the room and I was
watching all of this unfold, and I thought, oh my goodness this is going to be such a useful
video for students, because what we see, Lucy's response is almost the opposite of what we should
be doing, and what we should encourage you to do. The examiner asks short questions, that's fine.
What did you notice about Lucy's answers? Well, they were just one word all the time. Do you
like this? Yes. What do you think about this? And it would be a short answer. In fact, what
we tell all students is that you have to be able to elaborate and give some details on your answer.
I promise promise promise I didn't tell Mai, and I didn't tell Lucy what to say, or how to
say it today. This was simply because Lucy was a little bit unprepared for her IELTS speaking test
on the day. Let's see if she changes or does something different. Have you ever had a pet?
Yes. What pet did you have? Two cats. Do you have any friends who have pets? Yes.
Now let's think about the topic of musical instruments.
Do you play any musical instruments? Yes, I play piano. Do you ever play for your friends
or family? Only families. What is your favorite musical instrument to listen to? Alec classical.
Lucy hasn't changed, her approach, everything is the same. It's short answers and even in the last
question that we just had, which is what is your favorite musical instrument? Unfortunately Lucy
doesn't answer that correctly. She says classical and classical is a type of music. It's a genre
of music, and the examiner was asking about musical instruments. Now on the screen very
shortly you should see the band descriptors, and I want to talk about how important those band
descriptors are, because we're going to be actually looking at the bottom of the band descriptors.
You'll see that for a band 3 it says speaks with long pauses, has limited ability to link
simple sentences, and gives only simple responses, and is frequently unable to convey basic message.
Oh dear, Lucy definitely only gave simple responses, and couldn't give an answer, she couldn't explain
what her favorite musical instrument was, she was confused by the question, so at this point for me,
this is around a band 3 or a band 4 for the fluency and coherence section. We don't have a lot
of language or grammar to work with so we don't have too much that we can answer, or give responses
on there. She did say families, which was for my family, and she thinks she said for my families, so
there was a minor grammar mistake there. All in all, Lucy for her next test should be more prepared.
Let's see how she does in part two. I'm very concerned or at least I was very concerned
when I watch this from the room. 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 pencil and some paper to make notes if you want. Is that clear? Yes. Here
is your paper and pencil. Thank you. I'm just going to jump in there. I don't know if anybody noticed
there that that Lucy said thank you and not thank you. It's really important that we work on our
thurs, and if you've watched our previous mock exam videos with Tony or with Kevin, this is a really
common problem for people from china, because in mandarin there is no first sound th, th, th,
and in many countries and cultures there really isn't this sound ths. So, if you are from a
country, which doesn't have the third sound, I want you to focus on it, because the examiner is going
to be picking that up. She says thank you and not thank you, and this is a big difference because the
sink verb, the titanic sank, sank, not thank, so please pay attention to that the examiner will
be listening for that within the pronunciation features. You have one minute to prepare.
Thank you. Now I'd like you to talk about a time when you got lost.
Remember you have one to two minutes for this, so don't worry if I stop you. I'll tell you when
the time is up. Can you start speaking now please? Okay, I want to talk about a time when I got lost.
The time is two years ago, and I was in shanghai in china, and
I was with my grandpa, and this happened a very dramatic way in just an accident, so the
ambulance didn't come to the right place and the right time, so the everything was got messed, and
I found my way, It's very hard to believe and after six months later I realized what things happened.
Should I still talking? Oh my god, sorry, wait a second. No. I need to prepare for...
All right, I'm just gonna jump in here. I don't know about you but I was a bit confused. She kind
of started on the right track, I understood that she was talking about something, she was with her
grandma grandfather sorry, and then suddenly it was six months later, and I didn't really
understand where she was going. From here it all starts to go a little bit downhill,
and the examiner actually makes a mistake. So you know the IELTS daily we don't have
official examiners, because if you work for IELTS as an examiner you can't make
yourself known as an examiner. So we use practice examiners, and Mai actually makes a mistake here.
A little bit awkward. So what what happened when you got lost? Um
the last means someone passed away a little bit okay understand misunderstanding I think.
Sorry about that. This crevice time where you got lost.
Just, oh, lost it away, I saw some someone... Thank you. Sorry about that.
At this point Mai asks what happened when you got lost, it wouldn't be the case that an examiner
would be asking you these additional questions at this point. They may be giving you signals to
continue, and Mai is clearly feeling sorry for Lucy. Lucy is having a terrible time, she doesn't know
what to say and as a human Mai wants to help this person, but in the real test the examiners have to
maintain kind of this standardized format of the test. We need to give everybody the same level of
support, and so the examiner in the test wouldn't normally give you these additional questions. You
may have one question at the end just to to ask, but at this point Mai, Lucy has only spoken for
45 seconds etcetera. So it's very very very unlikely that she would be getting additional questions
here. Well done to me for trying, but that's not exactly how the test would would work.
Lucy is clearly finding this really tricky, and also she said things like um I was wiz my grandma
or grandfather. Wiz, the wizzz. Remember we talked about the with, the with. She said I want
talk about, I want to talk about, I want to talk about, I want to talk about should be with the
two, and she said it was this time is two years ago. This time is two years ago clearly it should
be in the past that this time was two years ago. So there were grammatical mistakes throughout as well.
Struggle, a big struggle for Lucy. I want to stay on the topic of directions and maps.
Do you think people are becoming too dependent on digital maps on their computer or smartphone?
Yes. Can you tell me more? Sorry could you pardon? Do you think people are
becoming too dependent on digital maps on their computer or smartphone? Yes, it's too
dependent. This is an example of misunderstanding miscommunication, and lack of
comprehension. You notice that Lucy simply repeated the question, yes, it's dependent. That would be
noticed by the examiner, there's no extension or elaboration on the the answer, and so unfortunately,
still performing quite low in the fluency and coherence mark. Should we teach children how
to read maps at school? Yes, absolutely. Why do you think so? Because it's a kind of skill to survive
in the not only in the city, but in the rural place. Yeah. This is the first example where Lucy
has shown some ability to extend answers. She says not only in buttons somewhere else which is great.
She has an idea of the question and she's able to articulate herself, but I think she's too lost here.
We're too far through the test and um even though this is this is a great piece of language here,
I'm just not sure what what the examiner would be thinking at this point. Why do people enjoy
spending time in mazes? Because maybe it's fun for someone, but I'm not fine of the fan of the messes.
Thank you, this is the end of this practice IELTS speaking test.
Wow, what a short test that was today, but I hope it was a valuable test for some of you guys to learn
about how we should apply those band descriptors. If I were to be marking this and to be giving um
Lucy a score, we should turn to the band descriptors and think
what or which points did did she meet. Overall, if we look at them on the screen now we can see that
I'd probably still keep her around a band 3 or a band 4 for the fluency coherence,
as for lexical resource I didn't hear much lexical resource or different language
that she used, um there wasn't very much probably a band four or a band five.
Grammatical range and accuracy, there were times when she made the mistakes with the tenses.
She didn't really have a range of of subordinate clauses. She didn't have much complexity in her
language, so again somewhere between a four and a five, and finally the pronunciation. The
the features of pronunciation, she she was fairly understandable, but she had a lot of
of influence from her native language so probably about a band five for pronunciation.
Overall for me, this would be sitting at a band 4.5, maximum five. I don't think she would be
able to score any higher, but a strict examiner might even mark her down to a band four, so the
range would be somewhere between a band four and a band five, probably hovering about around 4.5. I do
hope that was useful. I know that for many of you taking the test the first time is nerve-wracking,
you need to be prepared well. The the great thing is that Lucy does come back and she takes
on board the advice that we give her, and she takes a second test. So if you're interested to see how
Lucy improves, or how she does things differently, please come along and watch the next Lucy video.
Remember I'm Chris from IELTS daily, and we do these videos for free to help you guys, so if you
are grateful and if you do support the stuff that we do, the easiest thing, the most simple
thing that you can do is to give this video a like. If you have any IELTS groups that you're part of,
please share these videos, so that other people can benefit from them too. Thank you to for watching.
Good luck to anybody who has their test coming up soon. Next see you in the next video