Welcome back to this special video.
I'm Chris from IELTS Daily.
And, as I said, this is a special IELTS practice video because today you guys are going to be the examiner.
The difference between this video and previous videos that we've done is that during the previous videos I have kind of given my input.
Well, in today's video, you guys are going to be the examiner.
And I'm going to explain how to do that when the video starts.
So if you're ready, I'm ready.
Let's go.
All right welcome to this video we're back with Ami from Japan.
In the last video, Ami scored about a band four, so let's see if she makes any improvement or any differences to her speaking in today's video.
As I mentioned, today is going to be a little bit different, because you are going to watch the full unedited version first and you're going to write down and you're going to make some notes and give some ideas on what the person does well and how Ami could improve.
In order to do that you're going to need two things.
The first thing is you're going to need the band of descriptors.
Remember the band descriptors are what the examiner uses to mark your speaking.
There are four components which are fluency and coherence which is 25%, lexical resource 25%, grammatical range and accuracy 25% and pronunciation yes you guessed it 25%.
The second thing that you're going to need to do in this video is leave comments to show the time stamp of when the person does something good or when they can improve.
Now.
You'll see a little video on the screen now which shows that if you wanted to indicate that the time stamp was 22 seconds, for example, you would just write 00, colon 22, and then leave your comment.
It's as easy as that.
I'll give you another example, which was if you wanted to do one minute and 45, you would say zero, one colon 45 and then leave your comment so you could talk about whether the person has some good language, whether they make a mistake, whether they have complex grammar, all of those things you need to be thinking about and sharing those ideas so that other students like you can have a look in the comments and get some feedback on what's good and what could be improved.
Right, so do you have a pen and a piece of paper, because you'll need to make some notes.
Pause the video if you don't go and grab some pen and paper and it's time to start watching.
I'll catch up with you at the end of this video.
See you soon.
Hello, hello and welcome to the practice test conducted by ielts daily.
My name is David and I'm your practice IELTS speaking examiner.
The questions in this test are designed to simulate the IELTS speaking test.
So let's begin.
What's your first name, please?
My name is Ami.
At the beginning of the IELTS test, you usually need to provide some identification, like a passport.
But as this is a practice test, there's no need for that today.
Are you ready to begin?
Yes, I'm ready.
Great.
So firstly, let's talk about bikes.
Do you have a bike?
Yes, I have a bike.
I have the sports bike.
Great.
Does it get used a lot?
Yes, I use the bike once a week.
How old were you when you learned to ride a bike?
Maybe Maybe eight years old or something, yeah.
Okay.
And are bicycles popular in your country?
Yes.
In Japan, the bicycle is popular to go school or to go work.
Yes.
Nice.
Now I'm going to ask you some questions about food.
What's your favorite food?
My favourite food is curry rice, especially spiced curry.
Do you eat different things during the week?
Yes, I eat, I ate different things during the week.
Is there any food you don't like?
I don't like the fruits of mango.
I cannot eat.
It's too sweet for me.
What is a typical meal in your country?
Typical meal in my country is, typical meal, typical meal, tempura.
Tempura, yeah.
Most people eat with soba or teishoku, tempura teishoku, with rice and miso soup, yes.
Nice, okay.
And what do you think of fast food?
I think fast food is very easy to take lunch or dinner.
But fast food is not good for my physical. my body, so I don't want to let my son to eat it.
Gotcha.
Okay, well now I'm going to ask you some questions about gifts.
When do people in your country give gifts or presents?
When?
On my birthday or Christmas present, Valentine's Day.
What was the last gift that you received?
What I received?
My last gift?
Oh, mountain goods from my husband.
Okay.
Mountain goods?
Yes, mountain goods.
Right.
Do you enjoy looking for gifts for people?
Yes, I love because I like to choose the gifts for my friends.
However, yeah, I like it, yes.
Okay, so 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'll give you a pen and some paper to make notes if you want.
Is that clear?
Yeah.
Great.
So here's your pen and your paper.
Thank you.
You have one minute to prepare.
Mm-hmm.
All right, thank you.
Now I would like you to talk about devices.
Remember, you have one to two minutes for this, so don't worry if I stop you.
I'll tell you when your time is up.
Can you start speaking now, please?
Now I describe a useful electronics.
What I want to buy is AI vacuum called Roomba.
Roomba will help me to clean up my whole room in my home, for which every time I'm not in my home, Roomba will clean up for me.
It's very useful.
I don't need to spend time to clean up my home.
But i haven't already bought one because it's too expensive, almost around 7 million yen.
Yeah, so i need to, but i need, i have to.
And what colour would you choose?
Maybe black colour suits my house.
Okay, nice.
And do you have somewhere to store it?
Somewhere to store?
To put it.
Put it.
I want to put the living room like next to garbage.
Great.
Alright, thank you.
So I want to stay on the topic of devices.
Do you think people spend too much money on electronic devices?
Yes, I think so.
Most of people have the smartphone, laptop, TV.
It's useful, but maybe too much money to spend it.
How would life be better if there were no smartphones?
Maybe no stress to contact every day, to send a message online or email and i don't need to pick up the phone too much.
So maybe you can use more useful time to read, book or spend time with family.
Yes.
Do you think children should have computers in the classroom?
I think children need to have computer in the classroom because now everyone use the computer in working or learning something.
Everyone can search for information in computer, so children have to learn how to use that.
Why do older people find it difficult to use modern electronic devices?
Can you ask here?
Sure.
Why do older people find it difficult to use modern electronic gadgets?
Older people not used to use the electronics.
They don't know how to use the smartphone for maybe difficult, too difficult to use it.
Okay.
And what devices do you think will become obsolete in the future?
What device?
AI car is more popular in the future, maybe.
Okay.
And are there any devices you think people won't use?
Won't use.
Won't.
Won't.
Won't.
Won't use, maybe tv.
Okay, why is that?
Because uh, now also, now the smartphone also can, can search what you want to watch, or in a lab computer also, you can search it.
So maybe tv is we don't need to use, we don't need too much information of that, what people make it for every people, every Japanese people, so maybe people can choose what you want to watch it or what you want to no about no no, so maybe tv is not popular in the future.
Great, all right.
Well, thank you.
That is the end of the practice.
Ielts speaking test.
Wonderful, we're back and you've watched the whole video.
It's time to start talking about what Ami did well and what she could improve, and maybe share your final score with us.
Remember that you have to give four individual scores.
They work out as an average and remember this is really important.
If the average ends in 075, so for example 475, that would be rounded down to 45.
And if it ends in 4.25, then it should be rounded down to the zero.
So if 5.25 would be rounded down to 5.
Yeah, that's how the speaking marking works.
A lot of people complain, they say, Chris, you've calculated the average incorrectly.
Well no, it's just how the speaking works.
Within the writing and the speaking components, the overall score is rounded up in each kind of quarter mark.
Okay, so what did you think about Ami's speaking?
I thought she is so brave.
I don't know about you, but putting yourself in front of a camera it's a really tricky thing, and big thumbs up to Ami for taking the time and effort to come in front of the camera.
My overall score.
I'll tell you that at the end, but I'd love you to share your final score in the comments below and see if your final score agrees with what mine is.
Okay, I'm going to start watching now.
I'm going to put my headphones in and we'll talk about Ami speaking.
Hello.
Hello.
Welcome to the practice test conducted by IELTS Daily.
My name is David, and I'm your practice IELTS speaking examiner.
The questions in this test are designed to simulate the IELTS speaking test.
So let's begin.
What's your first name, please?
My name is Ami.
At the beginning of the IELTS test, you usually need to provide some identification, like a passport.
But as this is a practice test, there's no need for that today.
Are you ready to begin?
Yes, I'm ready.
Great.
So firstly, let's talk about bikes.
Okay, what's the first thing that I noticed?
Well, I noticed that Ami has this great big infectious smile.
She looks really positive.
She's got nice body language.
None of those are going to be counted in the test.
They're not counted.
But they do give the examiner an overall impression of somebody who really is focused on the test.
I love to see somebody smiling.
I love to have kind of this natural relaxed body language.
So if you can in the test, I know you're going to be nervous.
If you can, please try.
Do you have a bike?
Yes, I have a bike.
I have the sports bike.
Okay yes, I have a bike.
Now I talk a lot about expanding your answers and some people in the comments on YouTube they will say how can people expand an answer?
That's a natural answer that a native speaker would give.
It's a short answer.
Native speakers wouldn't give long answers.
Yes, that's probably true.
There are times when short answers would be totally normal for native speakers.
What i try to teach you guys is, wherever possible, try and expand just a little bit to show the examiner the language you are using because remember, this is a language test, so if there's no language, there's nothing to mark and therefore it becomes really difficult for the examiner.
What could Ami have said here?
Yes, I have a bike.
I got it as a present about 10 years ago.
My partner at the time thought that we could go on some bike rides to the hills, and they gifted that to me.
There you go.
It's a bit different, isn't it?
It's a little bit of a longer answer.
Just try wherever possible to expand.
Yes.
Great.
Does it get used a lot?
Yes, I use the bikes once a week.
And how old were you when you learned to ride a bike?
Maybe uh, maybe this is an example of idea related hesitation.
So she's not looking for words, she's actually trying to remember when she received the bike.
So this is, this is okay.
Some of her answers just a little bit short.
Let's see what she says here.
Maybe eight years old or something.
Yeah, okay.
And are bicycles popular in your country?
Yes, in Japan the bicycle is popular to go to school or to go to work.
Yes.
The bicycle is popular to go school or to go work.
This is the first example of a significant grammar mistake.
She's missed the preposition, which would be to go to school or go to work.
She's dropped the preposition there and the examiner would have noticed that.
She also said in an earlier question eight years old.
All she's missing the sound.
It's usually a soft sound old, and sometimes it's a little bit like a sound eight years old.
Can you hear that and just make sure that you focus on not dropping words if letters or sounds, if possible, nice.
Now i'm going to ask you some questions about food.
What's your favorite food?
My favourite food is curry rice, especially spiced curry.
Do you eat different things during the week?
Yes, I eat, I ate different things during the week.
This is an example where Ami you'll see this quite a lot.
She tends to repeat the question back to the examiner because she's trying to buy herself some time or she's trying to think about what she's going to say.
I would tend not to do that if possible.
It shows that you're not understanding the question the first time.
So where possible, just try not to repeat the question back.
Is there any food you don't like?
I don't like the fruits of mango.
I cannot eat.
It's too sweet for me.
What's noticeable for me is a distinct lack of paraphrase.
So when the examiner asks a question, she tends to parrot the response and give exactly the same words.
Are there any foods you don't like?
And she says, yes, I don't like the fruit mango.
What about using different types of language there?
I'm not really keen on mangoes.
They're a bit sweet for me.
I'm not a fan of mangoes.
They're a bit sweet for me.
You notice how I'm using different words or synonyms or phrases which mean the same thing but aren't a repeat of what the examiner asked me, and that's called paraphrase.
Now, what is a typical meal in your country?
Typical meal in my country is typical meal, typical meal.
Tempura?
Tempura, yeah.
Most people eat with soba or teishoku, tempura teishoku with rice and miso soup.
Yes.
This is great that she's given some answers and explained kind of a few different things.
My problem here is that if the examiner doesn't know the word tempura teishoku, tempura teishoku, don't know what that means, and so therefore, because it's in Japanese, because it's in a native language, it's always a really good idea to explain to the examiner what that is.
So I know that the word tempura is fried, so it could be fried prawns or fried with some kind of batter on the outside.
It's like a coating.
So you could say deep fried vegetables with a batter on the outside.
I know that's really kind of a higher level type vocabulary, but you have to work towards this.
I don't know what Teishoku is.
If there are any Japanese people watching today, explain to us what Teishoku is.
Nice.
Okay.
And what do you think of fast food?
I think the fast food is very easy to take lunch or dinner.
But the fast food is not good for my physical, my body, so I don't want to let my son to eat it.
Really nice and positive, well done to Ami for this.
A couple of mistakes, but actually she corrected herself.
She said it's not good for my physical.
Physical is actually an adjective and we couldn't say it's not good for my physical.
You could say it's not good for my physique, physique.
But then she corrected herself and said it's not good for my body and she doesn't want her son to eat it.
Nice.
Okay, well now I'm going to ask you some questions about gifts.
When do people in your country give gifts or presents?
When?
On my birthday or Christmas present, Valentine's Day, so on.
What was the last gift that you received?
What I received?
My last gift, last gift...
Mountain goods from my husband.
Okay.
Mountain goods.
Yes, mountain goods.
One thing which is very typical for Japanese speakers is the problem with le and re.
We've spoken about it in previous videos.
Ami still struggles a little bit with the receive and not lesive.
It's worth checking.
It's worth going to a pronunciation class asking somebody to pick up the specific points that are difficult for you, and so you can work on them.
Then she talked about mountain goods, and I think even the examiner didn't quite understand what mountain goods are.
This would be a perfect opportunity to explain.
You know, by mountain goods I mean X, Y and Z.
I don't know what they are.
The examiner didn't know what they were.
So it's a good idea for you to just explain, explain, explain.
Right.
Do you enjoy looking for gifts for people?
Yes, I love because I like to... choose the gifts for my friends.
However, yeah, I like it, yes.
At the end of this question, This is an example where I didn't get much language.
There was nothing much which came to me which made me go, wow.
And so she's really limited in the vocabulary range that she has.
Her ability to expand answers is a little bit kind of stunted and thwarted.
So I would just say, if you can, try to push yourself a little bit more.
Great.
Okay, so 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'll give you a pen and some paper to make notes if you want.
Is that clear?
Yeah.
Great.
So here's your pen and your paper.
Thank you.
You have one minute to prepare.
Mm-hmm.
All right, thank you.
Now I would like you to talk about devices.
Remember, you have one to two minutes for this, so don't worry if I stop you.
I'll tell you when your time is up.
Can you start speaking now, please?
Now I describe a useful electronics.
What I want to buy is AI vacuum called Roomba.
Roomba will help me to clean up my whole room in my home, for which every time I'm not in my home, Roomba will.
The first part of speaking, part two, has demonstrated that Ami struggles a little bit with making her sentences flow.
She's struggling to expand and extend her answers.
That's normal when we're speaking about a new topic, so make sure that you're prepared as much as possible.
She again makes the same problem of le and re.
She says, clean up instead of clean up.
It's worth practicing.
Ami, if you're watching this, good job.
Just work on your le's and your re's.
It's very useful.
I don't need to spend time to clean up my home, but I haven't already bought one because it's too expensive almost around 7 million yen, yeah.
So I need to buy, I need, I have to.
So Amir's got kind of one minute to 30 into her speech and this is becoming really difficult for her, which is very common problem.
If you're going to be sitting the test soon, it may be that the case for you, that you struggle.
At this point, my typical advice would be, if you can't think of anything more, to say, start going a little bit off topic, okay.
So you could talk about a different device that you want to use.
Talk about whether you know anybody else that has this device As we've talked about.
You can invent stories, and you should invent stories if you can't think of anything.
But it's always better to start with things which are real.
Picture people in your head who might use this device.
Picture where you've seen it and what are the reasons why you want to buy this particular device.
And what colour would you choose?
Maybe black colour suits my house.
Okay, nice.
And do you have somewhere to store it?
Somewhere to store.
To put it?
Put it.
I want to put the living room like next to garbage.
Great.
All right.
Thank you.
So I want to stay on the topic of devices.
Do you think people spend too much money on electronic devices?
Yes, I think so.
Most of people have a smartphone, laptop, TV.
It's useful, but maybe too much money to spend it.
How would life be better if there were no smartphones?
Maybe no stress to contact every day to send a message or line or email.
And I don't need to pick up the phone too much.
So maybe you can use more useful time to read book or spend time with family.
Yes, this was a good answer and she expanded a lot.
She explained why smartphones, you know, or what life would be like if there were no smartphones.
You could spend more time with family.
You could pick up a book.
This was a pretty good answer, still not wowing me with any language.
I think this is the thing which is most significant here there's no demonstration of higher level vocabulary.
If anybody's picked up any high level words, please leave them in the comments, but for me there's nothing really which is jumping out at me.
Do you think children should have computers in the classroom?
I think children need to have computer in the classroom because now everyone use the computer in working or learning something.
Everyone can search for information. in computer, so children have to learn how to use that.
Why do older people find it difficult to use modern electronic devices?
Can you ask here?
Sure.
Why do older people find it difficult to use modern electronic gadgets?
Older people not used to use the electronics.
They don't know how to use the smartphone for Wow, Ami is really struggling here.
She's not finding very much language to share with us or many ideas.
And this will impede.
This will impact her fluency and coherence mark, but also her lexical resource mark.
Because I think she's really struggling to find words.
Maybe difficult, too difficult to use it.
Right.
What devices do you think will become obsolete in the future?
What device?
AI car is more popular in the future maybe.
This is an example where the examiners asked a very difficult question.
They've used the word obsolete.
Obsolete, which will mean kind of redundant or will not be used in the future.
And I think Ami misunderstood the question and started to talk about technology which will be used, because she said AI.
So if there is a word which you don't understand in part two or part three, you can say to the examiner would you mind rephrasing that please?
Could you explain that in a different way?
Okay.
And are there any devices you think people won't use?
Won't use.
Won't.
Won't.
Won't.
Won't use.
So the examiners helped out Ami here by rephrasing the question and said that they which devices will they not use or won't use?
Maybe TV.
Okay.
Why is that?
Because now also now the smartphone also can search what you want to watch, or in a lab computer also you can search it.
So maybe tv is we don't need to use, we don't need too much information of that, what people make it for every people, every japanese people, so maybe people can choose what you want to watch it or what you want to know about.
No no, so maybe tv is not popular in the future.
Amy really tried to answer this question as much as possible but again struggled a lot with finding words vocabulary, ideas to talk about.
Well, that brings us to the end of ami's speaking practice.
What did you think?
I know what i think, but what did you think?
I am going to have a look at some of your comments in the comment section below.
Make sure you put your time stamp so that we know which part of the video And, as other students read your comments, try to give some feedback on the things that the other students say.
Remember that we should always try to be positive and encouraging.
I was so impressed by the fact that Ami came in front of the camera, gave it her real best shot.
Struggled at times, but there were times where I was thinking yes, she's on the right track.
So what we will need to do now is talk about the score that we think we might be able to give Ami and talk about why.
You will need the band descriptors on the screen now, which you should see on the screen, and I would like to say that Ami made a slight improvement based on her last score.
Last time she scored four in I think all the sections and scored a band four overall.
I think in this case she would probably score either a 45 or maybe a four if the examiner was really strict looking at the marking criteria.
Why is that?
Well, the first reason is I would give Ami band five for her fluency and coherence.
She usually maintains flow of speech, but did use repetition.
She self corrected, but she was slow to keep going.
She used certain connectives too often and again with discourse markers, there was a lot of repetition.
She did create simple speech fluently, but when she wanted to do something more complex, it was more difficult.
So I'm going to give her five there.
Lexical resource.
In this case this would be kind of the borderline for me, because I'm not quite sure whether she would score a band five here.
Manages to talk about familiar and unfamiliar topics, but uses vocabulary with limited flexibility.
Attempts to paraphrase, but with mixed success.
I think here that she will be limited to a band four, because if you look at band four it says rarely attempts paraphrase, and for me this is an example where unfortunately, Ami didn't make enough of an effort to paraphrase.
So I'm going to give her band four.
Band five probably for grammar produces basic sentence forms with reasonable accuracy, pretty reasonable uses a limited range of more complex structures.
She did use a couple of complex structures throughout the test.
I think she said something like, Children have to learn how to use that.
So she's used a how sentence within there.
There were times where these complex sentences did appear.
So I'm going to be kind and give her five here.
Now, pronunciation, there were kind of a lot of slips throughout.
Lapses, this is the thing that was most noticeable for me.
Lapses are frequent.
She did struggle a lot with pronunciation.
So that would mean she scores 5454, which would be an overall score of band 45, which is an improvement on her last attempt.
Big thumbs up to Ami.
Did you score her something similar?
Were you close to what I gave?
Remember that the IELTS speaking test is a subjective test, which means that it relies on human interpretation.
We have to look at the band descriptors and we have to use our own judgment to apply a score.
So we don't always get it right and one human will be different to another human.
Therefore, you always have to remember the level of subjectivity when applying these scores.
I do hope that you enjoyed this video.
I can't wait to look at some of your comments in the section below.
For now, if you have the test coming up soon, very best wishes to you.
Thanks for watching and I'll see you in a future video.
