Hello, I'm back.
Do you want to watch another speaking mock exam video?
Well, let's do one today, because today we've got Tomoko from Japan, who's going to do the IELTS speaking practice test.
If you don't know me, I'm Chris from IELTS Daily.
If it's your first time here, welcome to you.
And if you're coming back for another video, then very warm welcome to you.
In today's video, we're going to watch Tomoko from Japan who takes the test.
Now, there are a few things that we can learn from Tomoko speaking today.
Number one is that Giving expansion, or giving reasons thoughts ideas, after the examiner asks you a question is much better than just giving short answers.
Number two you have to pay attention to your grammatical control, because Tomoko makes the same mistakes throughout.
Are you ready to watch?
I'm going to put my headphones on and I'll see you very soon.
Hello and welcome to this practice exam conducted by IELTS Daily.
My name is David and I'm your practice IELTS 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 Tomoko.
Lovely.
And 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.
Okay, so let's talk about clothes.
What kind of clothes do you usually wear?
I usually wear something simple and not too much trendy.
I'm trying to wear that kind of thing.
Okay, not a bad start from Tomoko here.
I like to wear something simple, but then she makes a mistake.
She says, and not too much trendy.
A better way to say that would be, and not too trendy.
Something simple and not too trendy.
Also, I think she could have expanded a little bit more, just a tiny bit, but overall not a bad start.
What's your favourite colour to wear?
Black.
In a previous video, we watched Lucy who gave us really short answers.
You may have seen that video.
If you haven't watched that video, go and watch Lucy's answer.
In this example, what's your favourite colour to wear?
Black.
We know that if you're taking the IELTS test, giving short answers like this is not going to help your score.
What about an answer like this?
Black is probably my favourite colour, but I suppose it depends on the day.
There are some days where, you know, if it's cold outside, I tend to wear something dark.
But if I go to, you know, on holiday or if I go to the mountains, I might wear a brighter colour.
Do you notice the difference between those two?
Make sure that you have the ability to expand on your answers.
Where do you usually buy your clothes?
I go to Uniqlo or many places, but actually my grandmother was a tailor so Okay, this is a much better attempt.
Tomoko has answered the question and expanded and supported her answer.
And she's used language such as my grandma is a tailor.
A tailor is somewhere towards the B2 level of language.
So she's showing that she has a wider range of less common vocabulary.
Remember that for a band seven or higher, you need to use some less common lexical items.
Bear that in mind.
Remember that.
My grandmother and my mother made me clothes still now and this clothes.
My grandmother made this.
Wow.
Is it common for people in your country to wear bright clothes?
Yes, i see many people wearing black clothes, bright clothes, right?
Um okay, in this question, tomoko has misunderstood the difference between bright and dark.
She heard the word dark or black and answered in that way.
It's not so much of a big deal if she got the answer the wrong kind of, interpreted it the wrong way, but an examiner would notice it.
Yeah yeah, it depends on people.
Okay, so she's tried the phrase here, which is it depend?
Obviously, it should be it depends, and then she said it depend on people.
A better phrase would be it depends on the person.
So when we're using a sentence like that, we would focus on just one it depends on the person.
Now I'm going to ask you some questions about hobbies.
What's your favorite hobby?
I like practicing yoga, especially aerial yoga.
The first time I watched this video, I did not understand what she said at this point.
Later in the video I do understand what she said, but she wanted to pronounce the word aerial, aerial yoga, and she said something like aerial and it i didn't understand and this caused me something called strain.
I did not understand what she wanted to say and therefore i didn't understand.
Only later did i understand so the pronunciation of this word it's very difficult to pronounce actually aerial okay, aerial yoga.
And do you need any special equipment?
Yes, the hammock, special hammock for aerial yoga.
One of the features of pronunciation is word stress, and that's the student or candidate's ability to stress syllables in the word.
The example that we want to look at here is a higher level word, and the word is hammock.
A hammock is a net bed that people use.
You often see them at the beach.
Between two trees, you'll see somebody sleeping in a hammock.
Now, Tomoko pronounces it as , and she stresses both syllables in the word, and that was not a natural way to pronounce it.
Normally, we just say , with the first syllable stressed, and an examiner would probably pick up on this as a slightly incorrect feature of pronunciation.
How much time does your hobby need each week?
I go yoga studio about two, three times a week to practice.
Again, a very short answer and she makes slight grammatical mistakes here.
She says, I go yoga studio.
She misses the preposition, which is to.
I go to and it might be better to say I go to my yoga studio, but I did like the fact that she said two, three times a week.
Rather than saying two or three times a week, she used a higher level kind of pronunciation feature where she extended the word and she said two, three times a week.
And this two, three times a week, because she's extended the word two, it is replacing the word or.
I really like that feature.
Is it a popular hobby in your country?
Yoga is very popular but aerial yoga is not so much.
It's getting popular now.
Now, here the word aerial is mispronounced again.
She says aerial.
She actually pronounced it correctly the very first time.
She said it, and then went back and mispronounced it the second time, which was really interesting.
An examiner would be noticing these type of mistakes throughout the pronunciation and awarding her slightly lower scores depending on the number of mistakes she makes going through.
Again, it comes down to the examiner's ability to hear the words correctly and not have strain where you're kind of straining to hear what the person is saying.
Now I'm going to ask you some questions about the weather.
Which type of weather do you prefer?
I like sunny day.
Which type of weather do you prefer?
I like sunny day.
First of all it should be.
I like sunny days because remember, when we're talking generally, it's usually better to use the plural, okay.
But having these really short answers is not going to help her fluency and coherence mark.
And is there any type of weather that you don't like?
I don't like rainy seasons this time.
Okay.
The examiner asks, is there any weather that you don't like?
And her response is almost like a parrot.
I don't like rainy season.
What I always say to candidates is you have to be able to paraphrase your responses, and that means using different words or phrases that are not repeating the question.
So what could she say here?
She could say something like you know, i'm not really a fan of the rainy season.
Okay, rather than just repeating the same word i don't like, i don't like.
Try to vary the language that you use and this will improve your lexical resource mark, because you have to be able to paraphrase.
Is the weather the same everywhere in your country?
I don't think so, because in Hokkaido there are so many, so much snows, but here in Kyushu we don't have much snow.
One thing that's quite obvious to me is Tomoko's kind of inconsistency in grammatical accuracy.
So in this question, she said, in Hokkaido, there are so much snows.
First of all, snow is uncountable, so we have to say snow.
So it's better to say there is so much snow.
Even better, you'd say there's so much, there's so much snow.
That would be much more natural when you connect those words together.
So that was an incorrect sentence.
But then she goes and she says, here in my region, there isn't much snow.
And that was a perfect way to say it.
So there's a lot of inconsistency.
And I noticed that a little bit later.
With the use of articles and the ability to talk in the future, the past and the present tense very often are confused.
You'll see that very soon.
And how does the weather affect transportation in your country?
Sometimes train delayed yesterday.
When I took train, the train was one hour delayed, so it was a bit trouble for me.
The word delay.
It's a noun where you can say a delay.
There was a delay to my train.
It can be a verb.
So to delay somebody.
So he delayed me when he started talking to me.
And it can also be an adjective where you say my train was delayed.
OK, it was late.
It's like an adjective.
She said something like, delayed.
She really mixed up that phrase.
So, it can be a really complicated word, the word delay.
So, make sure you know how to use it.
Okay.
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?
Yes.
Great.
So, here's a pen and paper.
Please turn it over and you have one minute to prepare.
All right, thank you.
Now, I would like you to talk about a journey.
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?
Yes.
When I was a university student, I went to Egypt to visit my friend and we tried to go to desert for camping.
So we took a bus.
That was our plan to go into some good Oasis, to have a travel not agency, but to give us a chance to do a desert camping.
I'm just going to jump in here.
I'm actually quite impressed by Tomoko's ability to extend her answers.
She's telling a story, which is really nice.
I did notice at the very beginning, she mispronounced the word Egypt.
Now in English, j sound is quite hard so egypt i think she said something like egypt or egypt um go back and listen and you'll notice it wasn't the hard sound that it should be but i do like the fact she started to tell a story about going camping and so far pretty good but the bus On the way to the ORCS, the bus has broken.
So we didn't know where we are, but we had to wait for long.
And luckily, my friend was studying Arabic.
So she could speak to the people in ORCS, but they don't know what is happening.
So we just wait, wait, wait.
But luckily she spoke Arabic.
I really like that phrase.
I'm impressed that she's telling a great story.
She did say the bus has broken.
When a car or a machine breaks, we normally say break down.
So you would have to say the bus broke down.
I don't know why she used the present perfect, has broken.
That was a bit strange for me.
She said, we didn't know where we are.
Think about it.
We didn't know in the past.
Why would you say are?
So we didn't know where we were, were not are because it's talking about a story from the past.
We didn't know where we were.
Overall, I am impressed with her fluency.
There's just this constant grammatical kind of problem that seems to be filtering through the whole speech.
And somebody came with a jeep and they asked me, do you want to go for camping?
So we said, oh yeah, maybe that was we are planning.
Let's go.
And we went to camping with them.
I love this pronunciation feature where she said, do you want to go?
Do you want to go?
That's a chunked piece of language there.
Really nice.
Then she said, we went to camping with them.
Should be, we went camping.
And I've noticed that Tomoko has a few issues with the difference between the gerund and the infinitive.
If you're one of those people that struggles with the gerund form, which is the ING form, camping or to camp, make sure you go and do some practice exercises.
But that wasn't what we were actually planning, but that happened, but it was good experience.
Okay.
I love the fact that she's having a joke with the examiner.
She's telling a story and she's laughing.
And she did use a really great grammatical feature.
That wasn't what we were actually planning.
She's used a what sentence to create subordination.
Really nice.
Did you feel safe then going with the people with the jeep?
That time, world was much more peaceful, so we could trust people maybe, so nothing dangerous things happened yeah, great.
And have you ever been glamping since?
Not glamping, but i like to go camping, so i do camping sometimes great okay well, thank you.
I want to stay on the topic of of traveling.
How has traveling in your country changed over the years?
Because of COVID last few years, couple years we cannot go to abroad and not many people can travel.
So it's very limited.
I like traveling, but I can't go for travel.
So yes, it's changing for many ways.
In this sentence, she said something like we cannot go to abroad.
We probably should say we haven't been able to go abroad, to go abroad.
We couldn't go abroad.
I think she really does struggle with the infinitive and the gerund, the ing form and the to form.
She needs to do a little bit of practice.
And is it common for older people in your country to travel abroad?
Yes, I don't want to send my parents for old people, but they love traveling.
They love to travel overseas, but because of this situation, they can't go now.
Oh, this part is so frustrating for me because Tomoko starts with the correct sentence.
She said they love traveling, which is perfect.
And then she corrects herself and said they love travel, which is grammatically incorrect.
It's not the right sentence.
She does struggle a lot with the gerund and the infinitive and the bare infinitive, the ing form or the to play.
So playing or to play.
She needs to do a few more exercises in this.
And do people in your country prefer to travel alone or in groups?
It depends on, but I feel more people like to travel with group.
Why is that?
Maybe, maybe.
Not many people can speak English or language other than Japanese, so maybe they feel safer to travel with somebody.
Not many people can speak English or another language other than Japanese.
I like the fact that she said other than Japanese she did make a mistake or other language.
It should be another language because remember, that language is countable, so you need to have this another, maybe because I prefer traveling by myself, so I don't know how other people thinking.
Wow, I love this sentence.
I prefer travelling by myself so I don't know how other people.
So she's used I prefer travelling with the correct gerund form, and then she's used a grammatically complex sentence, which is wonderful.
I still think that in spite of these, you know really great features.
An examiner is probably going to be listening to the number of mistakes that are throughout the exam or the practice test and will probably limit Tomoko to a band five or a band six in grammar.
Even though she has a range of different, complex sentences.
The frequency of mistakes is probably going to be the area which limits her from getting any higher.
But maybe yes okay, and why are most people unconcerned that traveling by plane is bad for the environment?
Because nobody say that traveling by plane is bad for environment.
Nobody knows, I don't know, I didn't know.
So Again, first thing she says nobody say
She didn't say normally says, nobody and I don't know or nobody knows.
Sometimes she gets it right and sometimes she doesn't get it right.
There's a lot of inconsistency in her grammatical control.
We should know more about this topic, but nobody knows in Japan.
Right.
Has your knowledge changed about this topic?
A little bit, but still I don't know how travelling by plane affects the environment.
I still don't know well, so I have to know more now.
I don't know how traveling by plane affects.
So she's again forgetting the third person singular.
It affects.
But she did redeem herself with a grammatically complex sentence with the how.
I don't know how traveling affects.
That was nice, but again, limited because of the mistake that was sneaking in there.
Okay.
And how can travel be more environmentally sustainable?
Hmm.
Hmm.
This is a long pause and she's clearly thinking of ideas, what you know what she wants to say, rather than looking for words.
So it is possible for you to have sustained periods of pausing.
But if you're looking for ideas, try not to make them too long.
But I did notice that throughout the speech, a lot of her sentences are quite broken.
So she'll say a sentence and sentence, and then there'll be a little pause.
So the fluency is not quite there yet.
Transportation is something we cannot do, we cannot change, so i want engineers to change it.
But while staying the other countries or somewhere, we can change how we stay there.
Maybe don't how you stay in the hotel.
Don't use too much electricity.
Many people feel more open when you're traveling, so maybe they use more energy than the people are using daily life.
I feel so.
If people change their mind each people change your mind, their mind it can change the environment.
Is it a question?
Yeah yeah, how can travel be more environmentally sustainable?
Okay, so changing the mind everybody.
Do you notice that many of her sentences are broken, with spaces between them?
This shows that she doesn't have quite the fluency to bring all her ideas together into one particular flowing sentence or paragraph.
Whatever you want to say.
But it's really important that you guys try to work on fluency.
That brings us to the end of this test.
What did you think of Tomoko?
I actually found this really difficult one to mark because there were lots of great features.
So well done to you, Tomoko.
However, It's always important to remember that we can't just use our own feelings.
I feel that she deserves a band 6.5.
I feel she deserves a band 5.5.
It's always really important that we refer back to the band of descriptors.
So let's get them on the screen now.
Okie doke.
On the screen you will see that for fluency and coherence.
I feel that an examiner would be looking at the sustained pauses.
So band six is willing to speak at length, though may lose coherence due to occasional repetition.
Uses a range of connectives and discourse markers, but not always appropriately.
I think she meets this.
What worries me is that a band five, it says, usually maintains flow of speech but uses repetition, self-correction and or slow speech to keep going.
I'm concerned that a strict examiner would be looking at the idea of slow speech to keep going.
She did it quite noticeably in that last question.
Maybe if you go back and watch that, you'll see the slow speech.
Now, today I'm going to be kind.
I'm going to give Tomoko a band six in fluency and coherence.
Let's move on to the topic of lexical resource.
And for me, this is a band six.
It says has wide enough vocabulary to discuss topics at length.
Okay.
And makes meaning clear in spite of inappropriacies.
Generally paraphrases successfully, generally okay, but you notice that during the speech i did raise to kind of show you that she didn't paraphrase all the time.
So for lexical resource i'm going to award her band six Grammatical range and accuracy.
Band 6 uses a mix of simple and complex structures, but with limited flexibility.
May make frequent mistakes with complex structures, though these rarely cause comprehension problems.
Band 5 produces basic sentence forms with reasonable accuracy, uses a limited range of more complex structures, but these usually contain errors and may cause some comprehension problems.
I think she meets a band six here.
I think there were complex structures and the mistakes were there.
There were frequent mistakes.
That's the important word.
But they didn't cause problems with understanding.
So I'm going to give her band six here.
And band six for pronunciation uses a range of pronunciation features with mixed control shows some effective use of features, but this is not sustained.
Can generally be understood throughout, though mispronunciation of individual words or sounds reduces clarity at times.
Remember the word aerial?
That word did reduce clarity, but it was only occasionally.
I believe that she deserves a band six here.
Okay.
Well done to Tomoko.
I sense that a strict examiner may award her a band 5.5.
It could be that one of those components is brought down to a band 5, which would mean the overall average would be 575, which is rounded down to 55.
But today I'm awarding Tomoko a band six.
I think she did so many things well, but these continual errors in grammar pronunciation issues at times good range of vocabulary.
But again, paraphrasing was maybe the thing that she could improve.
And finally, fluency and coherence.
Sometimes sentences were too slow.
Okay.
Wow, I hope you enjoyed this session today.
I did.
Come back for more.
And remember, if you learned something in this video, please give this video a like.
We will continue to make these videos until you get bored of them.
My name's Chris from IELTS Daily.
See you very soon.
Hello and welcome to this practice exam conducted by IELTS Daily.
My name is David and I'm your practice IELTS 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 Tomoko.
Lovely.
And 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.
Okay, so let's talk about clothes.
What kind of clothes do you usually wear?
I usually wear something simple and not too much trendy.
I'm trying to wear that kind of thing.
What's your favorite color to wear?
Black.
Where do you usually buy your clothes?
Go to Uniqlo or many places, but actually my grandmother was a tailor, so my grandmother and my mother made me clothes still now, and this clothes my grandmother made this.
Wow.
Is it common for people in your country to wear bright clothes?
Yes, I see many people wearing black clothes.
Ah, bright clothes.
Bright.
Yeah.
Yeah, it depends on people.
Now I'm going to ask you some questions about hobbies.
What's your favorite hobby?
I like practicing yoga, especially aerial yoga.
And do you need any special equipment?
Yes.
The hammock, special hammock for aerial yoga and yoga mat.
How much time does your hobby need each week?
I go yoga studio about two, three times a week to practice.
Is it a popular hobby in your country?
Yoga is very popular, but aerial yoga is not so much.
It's getting popular now.
Now I'm going to ask you some questions about the weather.
Which type of weather do you prefer?
I like sunny day.
And is there any type of weather that you don't like?
I don't like rainy seasons this time.
Okay.
Is the weather the same everywhere in your country?
I don't think so.
Because in Hokkaido, there is so much snow.
But here in Kyushu, we don't have much snow.
How does the weather affect transportation in your country?
Sometimes trains are delayed.
Yesterday, when I took the train, the train was one hour delayed.
So it was a bit of trouble for me.
Okay.
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?
Yes.
Great.
So here's a pen and paper.
Please turn it over and you have one minute to prepare.
All right, thank you.
Now, I would like you to talk about a journey.
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?
Yes.
When I was a university student, I went to Egypt to visit my friend and we tried to go to desert for camping.
So we took a bus.
That was our plan to go into some good Oasis, to have a travel not agency, but to give us a chance to do a desert camping.
But the bus, on the way to the Oasis, the bus has broken.
So we...
We didn't know where we are, but we had to wait for long.
And luckily, my friend was studying Arabic.
So she could speak to the people in Oasis, but they don't know what is happening.
So we just wait, wait, wait.
And somebody came with a jeep.
And they asked me, do you want to go for camping?
So we said, oh, yeah, maybe that was we are planning.
Let's go.
And we went to camping with them.
But that wasn't what we were actually planning.
But that happened.
But it was good experience.
Okay.
Did you feel safe then going with the people with the Jeep?
That time, world was much more peaceful.
So we could trust people, maybe.
So nothing dangerous things happened yeah, great.
And have you ever been glamping since?
Not glamping, but i like to go camping, so i do camping sometimes.
Great okay well, thank you.
I want to stay on the topic of of traveling.
How has traveling in your country changed over the years?
Because of COVID last few years, couple years, we cannot go to abroad and not many people can travel.
So it's very limited.
I like traveling, but I can't go for travel.
So yes, it's changing for many ways.
And is it common for older people in your country to travel abroad?
Yes.
I don't want to say my parents or old people, but they love traveling.
They love travel overseas, but because of this situation, they can't go now.
And do people in your country prefer to travel alone or in groups?
It depends on, but I feel more people like to travel with group.
Why is that?
Maybe.
Maybe.
Not many people can speak English or language other than Japanese.
So maybe they feel safer to travel with somebody.
Maybe.
Because I prefer traveling by myself, so I don't know. how other people thinking, but maybe.
Yes.
Okay.
And why are most people unconcerned that traveling by plane is bad for the environment?
Because nobody say that traveling by plane is bad for environment.
Nobody knows.
I don't know.
I didn't know.
So we should know more about this topic, but nobody knows in Japan.
Right.
Has your knowledge changed about this topic?
A little bit, but still I don't know how travelling by plane affects the environment.
I still don't know well, so I have to no more now, okay.
And how can travel be more environmentally sustainable?
Transportation is something we cannot do.
We cannot change, so i want engineers to change it.
But while staying the other countries or somewhere, we can change how we stay there.
Maybe don't how you stay in the hotel, don't use too much electricity, or many people feel more open when you're traveling, so maybe they use more energy than the people are using daily life.
I feel so if people change their mind each people change your mind, their mind it can change the environment.
Is it question?
Yeah yeah, how can travel be more environmentally sustainable?
Okay, so changing the mind everybody?
Great okay well, thank you.
That's the end of the practice.
Ielts speaking test.
