So Andrew
I just explained that you have just taken the IELTS examination
Yep
So today I just want you to share your
experience about the IELTS examination.
Like, what sort of impression you had
and what you thought about the difficulty of
problems that you came across in reading
listening, writing and speaking
How confident are you that you scored 9/9 in the first place
To start off with I think I'm reasonably confident of
getting a 9/9 just because
the way the the scoring structure works
I think it could potentially work in my favour
and then you know we don't have to get 9s in every single area
it just has to average out to a 9
so I think if I do reasonably well in each area
it should be okay.
Cause your scores are rounded up
so if you get like 8.75 on average
then you will get 9.
So especially if we break it out sort of by section by section
I think speaking I'd be fairly confident in getting a 9
because it's quite conversational
they ask questions about quite complex topics
but it's it's almost like a normal everyday conversation for me
so that part I don't really view as being too challenging
so it was a face-to-face interview, was it?
Yeah correct so it's a face to face interview I think
it was around about you know 4 or 5 questions
One of the questions for example was
Tell me about where you grew up
Another one was
How do you feel about markets
Markets?!
Andrew: Markets being ATSU: As in...
like not stock markets
Andrew: Sunday markets ATSU: Not as complicated as that
Yeah shopping markets to buy food
that aren't that sort of thing
Another one was
Tell me about a time when you wake up early
For that one I think I spoke a little bit quickly
because the examiner told me keep going
but apart from that I think speaking went relatively okay
so I think yeah
ATSU: So you're fairly confident. Andrew: Fairly confident getting a 9 in that one
Wow, that's impressive.
What about the other sections?
The other sections, if we move on to reading
Reading was a little bit trickier in that...
So I'm fairly confident that I did okay on that one
because I actually did it twice
because the first time it only took me about...
You did it twice?!
Andrew: Yes, I did it twice. ATSU: How much time did you have?
So it's an hour long. I spent a half an hour doing it
The questions are quite varied.
but I sort of spent through it at once
in the first half an hour and then
just had half an hour left over. Didn't really know what to do with it.
So basically just did it again
I think, reasonably confident, but it is a little bit tricky
in the sense that some of the questions aren't really language based
it's more of an logic test
so some of the questions
I don't know if I answered them correctly
especially the ones where it's true/false and not enough information
That part is a bit tricky, isn't it?
Yes, the there's not enough information really thrown to you
because it's hard to tell sometimes whether there isn't enough information or
whether it's just a flat out no
so that's a little bit trickier
but again there's a little bit of margin of error
so reasonably confident
I've done okay on that one
As a native speaker, you've read English for how many years?
Many many years I don't want go into too much detail
because that would give away by age
but a fair few years
How was listening?
Listening was fine I think
Again, reasonably confident that that one went okay
It's quite a bit slower than people normally speak
Okay, that's good to know.
It was interesting. What I found interesting was there were
a variety of different accents
I think again they were cut 3 or 4 passages
that they read out
and none of them were in the same accent
It's really I'd say global emphasis and
recognises that English is really a global language
So were they all native speakers?
Yes, native speakers but completely different accents
One was Australian
and there's a British one
and there's an American one
there was a bit in Kiwi accent as well
Oh Kiwi accent as well
So it's a variety of different accents
I think it's important to... I guess have an understanding, awareness of different accents
because English obviously be a global language
I think that's an interesting aspect of the IELTS examination
and I think that makes a difference from the other English exams
because for example TOEFL which I took about five years ago
purely focuses on American English
so I don't remember hearing any other different types of English accents
but I picked that up quite easily
but yeah could potentially be tricky for non-native speakers
The last section is writing
So, you know everyone says that writing section is the hardest part of the examination
when I when I took the IELTS examination for the very first time
I scored only 6.0 in writing
although I got 8.5 in reading, 8 or 8.5 in listening and also
I got 8.5 in speaking
but writing... this stuck out like a sore thumb
when I compared to the other sections it's obviously it's it's weird that I scored only 6.0, right?
So apparently, there is really a high standard set for the writing section
but I'm really curious how you felt about writing
I think as a general concept writing is quite difficult
everything else you can kind of get away with not understanding the language fully
because it's really only testing your understanding of parts of the language
so it's not the entire sentence or the entire paragraph
it's really just your bits and pieces
When you're listening you're just looking for the one keyword
to get you to answer that particular question
so you're not... You don't have to transcribe the entire thing
I think for me, first of all I I almost ran out of time
so I didn't really have time to check over my writing
I think it went reasonably well so I was sort of checking
my writing as as I went through
and I actually went over the word limits slightly but not too much
Yeah that's fine, I think.
But yeah, it definitely took a lot longer than I expected
I expected to maybe take me 40-45 minutes to write up
parts A & B
but basically I ended up taking full 60 minutes
because when I write this type of writing I like to plan for a little bit first
because I think it's counterproductive to just jump straight into it
So it took me a little bit longer than expected I think
Do you normally consider yourself as a good writer?
I would say so. During my year 12 exams, so my exam to get into uni
actually did quite well
So I got 49/50
So for context, 49, it's not really a numerical mark
so it's not a percentage
It's a ranking to put you in a spot in a state
Yep
I think 49 would mean top 0.05 percentile
0.05......Wow....
It's really a bell curve kind of situation
Right there, yeah?
Yeah, it gets harder and harder the more you get towards 50
So yeah, I consider myself a fairly decent writer.
Right. So this time we'll see.
Andrew: We'll see what happens. ATSU: How well you did.
Yeah, I didn't really have time to proofread, so I think that's my main concern.
Hopefully it should be okay.
But no excutes.
No...no excuses....
Thank you very much for sharing your experience. That was quite interesting.
I'm really looking forward to checking your score together.
So am I.
Maybe we can shoot a video when your results come out.
I would love to.
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