Hi, Chris!

Kevin, where are you from?

I'm from Shanghai, China.

Fantastic! And today we have a practice IELTS mock exam with Maddy. Kevin, are you nervous about your test?

I'm speechless! Too nervous to speak!

In today's video, Kevin is going to do a full test and I am going to give some feedback on how he can improve. So, if you want to learn how you can improve, 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.

Hello IELTSdaily friends! It's Chris and we're back with Kevin. Now, my question for you guys, did you watch the last video of Kevin which you can see in the corner now? Because if you haven't done, I strongly recommend that you watch that video before you watch this video because you may see some improvement in Kevin's speech. We gave him some feedback, he took the feedback on board and hopefully he's improved. So, Kevin, he is from China and in our previous video, we talked about Kevin's difficulty with the sound he used to say um whiz. I wonder if he continues making that mistake in this video or whether he has fixed any of his other previous mistakes. Shall we begin watching? It's a full speaking test today. I hope you find it useful. If you do find it useful, please write something in the comments. Talk about what you liked and what you thought he did well. Let's go.

Hello and welcome to this practice exam conducted by IELTSdaily. My name is Maddy and I'm your practice examiner. The questions in this test are designed to simulate the IELTS speaking test.

Let's start. What's your first name, please? Honglin, but you can call me Kevin.

Thanks, Kevin. At the beginning of the IELTS test, you will be required to provide some ID, but as this is a practice test, we don't need to do that today. I want to begin by talking about you. Just before we continue, I want to talk a little bit about body language. Now, body language will not earn you any marks in the test, but it may allow you to feel a little bit more confident.

So, body language, that's quite important. If you notice, Kevin, he's sitting upright. He's not slouching. He's not slouching. He's sitting quite confidently with his hands on the table.

He's looking quite rested and he's looking the examiner in the eye. If you find it difficult to sit looking at somebody in the eye, just like I'm looking at you guys in the eye now, practice. Find a friend to sit with, ask them to ask you questions, sit across the table, try to replicate the test. What do you do in your free time?

I enjoy playing volleyball in my free time if I can find enough friends. We usually go to uni, rent a volleyball court and then play some volleyball. I do play a bit competitively, but usually I just prefer to play a friendly, non-competitive game with friends.

Did you hear that? So, Kevin again repeated the sound with rather than the sound with.

So, he is still repeating some of his old mistakes, but he did say the word uni. He plays volleyball in uni. You know that the word uni is the short form for university. So, this is great contraction, excellent natural language. If I'm alone, I do enjoy cooking, finding some recipes on YouTube or online and then make some delicious food.

And when is your free time?

During the semester, during university times in the semester, I find times in between my study hours when I have done, finished my schoolwork or finished my assignments. Then I have my own free time to sort of take it easy and do whatever I enjoy so that I can give my brain a rest before diving into more university life stuff. Wow! Listen to that sentence again.

Give my brain a rest before diving into. This is an example of really high-level language.

Give my brain a rest is a collocation before diving into something. Really, really wonderful, wonderful language. Well done, Kevin.

What do you not enjoy doing when you have free time?

I guess I'm not too much of a party person. So, sometimes after a day of hard work and study, I prefer to spend some quiet time alone or at least just not amongst people drinking or talking very loudly. I prefer to spend some of my own quality times just making sure that my brain is well rested. Just stop there for a second and spend some of my quality times. Is it natural to say quality times as a plural?

Time is usually uncountable. So, I would say that as a very minor mistake there.

OK, let's move on to the topic of baking. Do you ever bake cakes?

As much as I want to, I don't actually bake that much cake. I think I've always been saying this,

I do enjoy cooking, but baking seems a bit too hard for me because it's strange. For most people, it's the easier part because all you have to do is follow the ingredients, measure everything precisely and voila, the cake will come out. But because when I cook,

I do enjoy to go a bit spontaneous, put different ingredients in my own sort of favour.

So, when it comes to baking, I sort of go off rail and sometimes the cake comes out as a disaster.

Which cakes are popular in your country?

I don't think people have a consensus on the best flavour, but personally, I do enjoy cheesecake a lot, even though it can get a bit too sweet after too much of cheesecake. But every now and then, if it's my birthday or if it's a special occasion,

I'd prefer to have a cheesecake that I can share with my friends.

After too much of cheesecake. The of in this phrase, after too much of cheesecake, the of is redundant, you don't need to say too much of, you would just say after too much cheesecake. I heard him say with again, I think he said birthday rather than birthday. So, this little sound is slipping in again. He's speaking really fluently, lots of great ideas, no hesitation, really. He's not looking for words. Great job.

Do you like to eat cakes?

As much as I want to, I know it's quite sweet and healthy, but yeah, I enjoy, I think everyone will agree that people enjoy a good old carbohydrate meal with a lot of sugar in it. It makes people happy, I guess. Now, I want to talk about the cinema. Do you ever visit the cinema?

Quite often before lockdown. I do enjoy watching movies a lot. Maybe I've been going less and less to the cinema because of the development of things, online streaming, such as Netflix and everything is accessible at home. And sometimes I just don't see the need to go out and pay $15 for film tickets when I can just access it from my home on my tablet.

Hmm. And what films do you like to watch in the cinema?

The ones that have just come out, the ones that everyone is talking about. I used to enjoy a lot of superhero movies, but I think after years of tens of even hundreds of superhero movies, it has gotten a bit tedious and I prefer something else, like a good old film where everything is concealed until the end where the big revelation comes out and it surprises the audience. I think that's the success of filmmaking. I really love the way that Kevin expands on his answers. He has no problem speaking fluently. It's a really great feature.

I know some of you will be really jealous of Kevin's speech here. It just comes with time.

Practice, practice, practice. Think of ideas. Try to just tell a story to the examiner.

Do you prefer films at home or at the cinema?

If I go out with friends, then sure, I'd prefer to go to the cinema, have a share of popcorn, get some drinks, because that's the kind of big screen and a very good sound effect that you can't really get at home. But otherwise, if I'm just alone and I want to watch something by myself, then staying at home is my go-to choice.

I'm going to give you a topic and I'd like you to talk about it for one to two minutes.

Before you talk, you'll have one minute to think about what you're going to say.

You can make notes if you wish. Here is a paper and pencil for making notes.

And here is your topic. I would like you to describe a time when you were disturbed by noise.

Your one minute starts now.

All right, that's one minute.

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?

Yep. The noise I was disturbed by was actually a few days ago on Christmas Day at 4am in St Hilda's, which is where I live at the moment. I think it happened because there was some false alarm in some building where it set the fire alarm off. So we all had to evacuate because of the noise was alerting us. It was in the middle of the night and the noise was very loud and it was telling us to evacuate. So we all did and we had to stand in the cold wind at 4am waiting for the firefighters to come and turn it off. I was at the moment very frustrated and a bit tired from all the Christmas Eve partying that I was doing the night before. But I felt like looking back to it, it's quite a unique experience that you wouldn't usually get.

So there might be a silver lining after all. We saw the fire engines came with decorations of

Christmas things on it and it was quite interesting. And the firefighters were really nice and they weren't too angry about us making them have to come down there this early in the morning on Christmas Day. And they soon resolved the issue and everything went back to normal.

And yeah, that was pretty much the end of the noise and we all sort of resolved it in a peaceful and calming way. Did it take you long to get back to sleep?

No, I was so tired that I basically went back to bed and fell asleep right immediately after.

And I woke up in the morning thinking, oh, was that just a dream or was it actually the reality of what happened? Let's talk about part two. He expanded his answers, which is wonderful. He spoke for about a minute and 30. Now, some of you will say, well, he didn't speak for two minutes. Why did he not speak for two minutes? The question card says that you must speak for between one and two minutes. You may find that some examiners ask you to continue, but if you have really finished and you have nothing more to say, you are welcome to say,

I'm finished. Thank you. Okay. I did it in my test. The examiner wanted to make me speak more and I still scored a band nine. So if you are confident you finished, you don't want to speak any more on that topic. That's okay. But what else did Kevin talk about? I had some really good features here. And he used good language collocations, such as false alarm. If you have a look on the screen there, false alarm. To set it off. That's a good collocation. Looking back to it. I would say that he should say looking back on it. So that would be a little slip in the preposition there. There might be a silver lining after all. There might be a silver lining after all. Silver lining, excellent idiomatic language. When he was telling the story, he did say I have woke up in the morning. I have woke up in the morning. It should be

I woke up in the morning and not I have woke up in the morning. Overall, really, really, really nice.

Why is noise pollution considered an issue for people?

Personally, I think a lot of people, if they come back from a day of work and some tiring business, they want to go to bed, they want to have some quiet times. And if people next door were partying and doing things that might create noise, it might influence other people's daily routine and routine and their businesses. I think one of the main reasons it's getting more and more serious is because of the increase of population and which also means the density of city increases.

So people are living closer to each other. And we used to all be able to live in a house and the nearest neighbor would be a few meters away. And even if we make some noises, they wouldn't be able to hear us. But because especially in our country, for example, there's a huge population and people usually live in an apartment, which is very close, which is at very close proximity to each other. So I think if you make a noise, everyone can hear it and you're influencing other people. And that's why it's a major issue in a society because everyone is affected by it, more or less, and people might not enjoy it very much.

This next thing that I want to speak about is something that I commonly speak about.

So if you've seen many of my videos, you will notice that I talk about this topic a lot. And the phrase below is one of. And Kevin said, one of the main reason is. You should know that when you say one of, it must always be in the plural afterwards. One of the main reasons is. One of the windows is broken. One of the students came to see me. He also said the increase of population, the increase of population, and that should be the increase in population, increase in something.

How can noise affect people negatively?

Like I said, if you really need some rest and all you hear is noises, it will be hard for you to go to sleep or get any rest. So it might mess up your daily, your sleep time and your rest time where you actually need the energy reserved for the work or for tomorrow, especially important occupations such as doctors or nurses where they have to wake up early. They have to look after patients and they need to bring their A game. If noises disrupt their daily life, it means they will get less rest. It means it will be harder for them to fulfill their duty during the day.

And it's really a lose-lose for everyone since they're trying to save lives.

Wow, Kevin's language in this question was wonderful. I am really impressed by some of his language here. Let's have a look. He started with as I said or like I said. In fact, he said like I said and he's just referring back to something that he talked about previously.

Like I said. Then he said it might mess up. It might mess up your sleep time.

This was a very minor mistake here. He probably should have said it might mess up your sleep pattern. Sleep pattern is probably a better collocation for those two words. So I have a good sleep pattern. I go to bed early and wake up at 7am. Good sleep pattern. Then he said people have to bring their A game. So people like doctors, they have to bring their A game because they have to treat patients. To bring their A game means they have to be the best every day.

Great, great, great idiomatic language. Super impressed with this. And finally, he said it's a lose-lose. It's a lose-lose situation. So everybody is a loser. Lose-lose. You could also say win-win. It's a win-win situation or it's a lose-lose situation. If it's a lose-lose situation, everybody loses. If it's a win-win situation, it means that everybody benefits from it. Wonderful, wonderful language. Well done, Kevin. Are there any times when loud noises are good? Oh yeah, for sure. I mean, when I was talking about the fire alarm, sure, it was a false alarm. But if there were a real fire, then the alarm would be the saviour that woke us all up and told us to go outside so we didn't have to risk getting, I guess, buried alive in flame.

So, if it's an emergency alarm or a loud noise to prevent us from dangerous situations, I think that might be a very crucial noise for us to realise the situations we're in.

Thank you very much. That is the end of your speaking test.

Oh, wow. What did you think of Kevin's speech today? I was thoroughly, thoroughly, impressed. In the last video, which you can see in the corner if you haven't already watched it,

Kevin scored a band 8. Do you remember? Did you watch it? What do you think he scored in this video? Please feel free to leave your comments in the section below. I'm going to give you some of my feedback and this was a really tricky, really difficult one because he had so many good features but he was kind of let down just occasionally. And remember that IELTS examiners have a very high bar. They have really high expectations of you when you are speaking. So, what would I give?

Well, fluency and coherence. I would give a band 9 and the reason for that is if we look at the band descriptors on the screen now, it says, speaks fluently with only rare repetition.

Correct. Any hesitation is content related. Correct. Speaks coherently with fully appropriate cohesive features. Wonderful. Develops topics fully and appropriately. I would agree that he covers all of those points. Lexical resource. Here, you have to accept that he spoke with great language. So many good features and I think a really reasonable examiner would score him a 9 here. I'm going to score him a 9 here. He uses vocabulary with lots of flexibility. He uses variety of words. He uses idiomatic language naturally and accurately. So, he used words such your A game. Excellent, excellent language. There were occasional slips. Very, very, very occasional slips but I was super impressed with his language. So, two 9s at the moment which means that he could score a 9 or he could score an 8.5. Grammatical range and accuracy and pronunciation.

In both of these, I would say that he would score probably a band 8 in each. He's still struggling a little bit in the pronunciation with the first sound whiz and throughout and with grammatical range and accuracy, he slipped up a couple of times and if you look at a band 8 for grammar, band 8 for grammar, it says occasional inappropriacies or basic non-systematic errors.

So, mostly error-free sentences with only very occasional inappropriacies. Pronunciation, easy to understand, sustains flexible use of features with only occasional lapses. Please notice that only occasional lapses. Do you remember that he had this problem with the first sound? Overall, I'm going to score him 9, 9, 8, 8 which is an improvement on his last test where he scored 8. Today, he is scoring 8.5. Do you think you could do something similar?

Were you impressed by his speech? Do you agree with my score or would you give him something higher or lower? Please leave your answers in the comments and come back for another video.

We're always really happy to see you. We have lots of mock exam videos. Make sure you study them all. Watch them all. But not only that, we have lots of free content on the YouTube page.