Nice to see you all and today we have Saskia's practice mock test. Now, you've just finished your test, Saskia. How did it go? I think it went pretty well, yes. I'm pretty confident.

Good. If you guys want to watch and see what Saskia did well and how you could improve, then 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.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back. It is Chris from IELTS Daily and I'm here to help you pass your IELTS speaking test. We have another mock exam video for you today with a practice examiner and a practice student. If you haven't already seen this student, she is one of our channel's very favourite students. Her name is Saskia and you can see her other video by clicking the link in the description below. You'll see it on the screen now. It is a wonderful video on how you can improve and score really highly during the test. Saskia is back for another video.

We're very happy to see her again and she has some different questions and I want to talk about confidence today. One of the most important things when you're sitting the test is to feel confident about the way you're speaking. IELTS is about speaking naturally. You don't have to show off or try to speak with really high level words. Your language, and this is from the band descriptors, needs to be natural with some less common words, idiomatic words. But for the most part, you just have to give reasons for your answers, speak fluently without stopping and try to vary your language as much as possible. So we have Saskia for her second mock test today. Let's see how she does. Hello and welcome to this practice exam conducted by IELTS Daily. My name is Maddie 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? Saskia. Thanks Saskia. At the beginning of the IELTS test you'll be required to provide an ID, but as this is a practice test we don't need to do that today. I want to begin by talking about you. Do you have a large family? I don't actually, it's just myself and my brother so it's very tight-knit. And how often do you speak to your family? Every day I make sure to call my parents, both my mum and my dad at least once a day and my brother and I are very close so I'm actually going over to see him after this. Because of the distance, I make it a point to, you know, call them every day so we don't feel such a large gap.

What do you think about the language tight-knit? Great high-level idiomatic language there.

Saskia uses it naturally during her speech. She says we're a tight-knit family. It's a description which says that they are very close. You'll see it in the description below. A tight-knit family.

Okay, let's move on to the topic of water. Do you drink a lot of water? I try to, I know you're supposed to have like six litres a day, that does not happen, but I try to keep a bottle on me as much as possible. Do you ever drink bottled water? I do, yes, because in Sri Lanka where I grew up you don't actually drink water from the tap, you can't, you will get sick. But yeah, so I do drink quite a bit of bottled water. Now I want to talk about the sky. Do you like to look at the sky? I do, it's very peaceful and just calming to look at the sky. Do you prefer to look at the sky during the day or the night? If you're not in the city, I think the night sky is stunning because you don't have the light pollution, so you just see a lot of stars and it's just beautiful. But if you are in the city, I can see why the sky during the day is a lot more pleasing. Okay, so we're talking about confidence today. Saskia comes across as a very confident person, she answers the questions very naturally. However, and this is an area where Saskia could maybe improve, occasionally some of the questions she answers are a little bit short. When she gives the answer, she probably could elaborate a little bit more. So we talked about drinking bottled water and she just said, yes I do, and then she kind of felt the need afterwards to explain a little bit more.

She didn't push herself quite as much, but then she spoke at length about the next topic.

So just make sure that for every question that you answer, try to speak as much as possible.

And do you enjoy learning about the stars and planets? I do. I think it's very interesting how the stars and the planets really influence how people perceive their lives. I'm not saying that they actually influence your life, but I'm saying how, you know, I feel like people always want something to blame when things go wrong and the stars have been a very good scapegoat for them.

The stars have been a very good scapegoat for them. To be a scapegoat for something.

Lovely, lovely language. She speaks really naturally. She's talking as though she's talking to a friend. She's sitting back in her chair. She's looking directly at the examiner.

Great body language. It won't help you in your test, but it might make you feel a little bit more relaxed and confident in yourself. Good job. Great. 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 and you can make notes if you wish. Here is a paper and pencil for making notes. Thank you. And here is your topic. I would like you to describe an older person who has inspired you. Okay. So 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?

So an older person who has inspired me would be my mother. She is, well, I know her because she is my mother. And I don't see her very often because we live so far apart, but I make it a point to call her every day, communicate. And literally if I'm doing something, she'll be on the phone there with me and I'm just talking. I'm just wasting time, but I am just talking.

And the reason I find her so inspiring would be because she didn't finish, like she didn't go to university. She started, she got dragged into, like she got a modeling job, started that. And from that point on, she has gone on to, she is a director of finance at my parents' companies.

And she built buildings for, like she built the office buildings herself. She built a house herself. And she didn't have the educational background that so many people think is necessary for you to do so many things with your life, but she has done everything. And she's one of the most intelligent people that you would ever meet. Like you can have a conversation with her and you'd think that she was the most learned scholar, but really she just has an opinion and she just goes with it and she'll make sure she knows. She makes sure that she knows, you know, that her opinion exists and is valid. And yeah, so that's why I find her so inspiring. It's just that she never let anything stop her. When she grew up, she grew up in the height of the war back home in Sri Lanka, and she still didn't let that inhibit her getting an education or getting places in life. She always made sure that regardless of what happened, she and her family were well looked after. She was a working mom, but she always made sure that by the time three o'clock came and my brother and I were out of school, she was hands on. She would drive us to classes, take us back, swimming practice, drama classes, this, that and the other. She was very, very involved, which with a working mom, you don't always expect. Great. Thank you.

Wow. Saskia spoke at length for the whole of part two. Great. She elaborated on her answers.

She gave her opinions, her thoughts, explained about who the person was who inspired her, gave details. She did look down at the card a couple of times, but that's normal.

She looked for some prompts from the card. No major mistakes. Great features of language.

Fantastic pronunciation. Really top quality job.

Now, let's talk about older people. Generally, who normally looks after older people in your country? Well, the family back home, as much as possible, you wouldn't put anybody older into a home. You look after them yourself. You look after your parents yourself, because we have the idea that my mother looked after me. It's my turn to look after her. That's the sort of mentality.

But I think now with migration becoming so big, you have a lot more people who put their parents in homes and then just migrate to other countries like Australia, the UK, wherever else. But for the most part, we look after our parents and our older people.

Does the government provide good social care for elderly people where you live?

Not really, because we are a developing country. And because of that, I feel they don't actually they don't actually take the time to make the space. I don't know how best to explain this, because it's such a complicated and dynamic thing, because there's so much political involvement with the social lives of people, but somehow it's not always for the best.

I'm just going to pause there. And I just want you to notice this is a feature of all our language.

She started talking about one topic, and I think she was trying to buy herself a little bit more time, and then completely changed the way that she was going and expanded on her answer then.

So this would be a completely normal thing to do. Start talking a little bit about something, and she's looking for ideas. This is content-related hesitation, and we've spoken about that in a previous video. And then she realises she has her answer and starts talking more.

Totally normal to do that. And when it comes to having a good social programme for older people, it's hard to say that it exists. Not for a lack of trying, but it's just a lack of follow-through,

I think. Now, if I listen to the substance of Saskia's answer, she didn't actually explain too much about her thoughts, but she did give an answer. I think this was a tricky question.

Remember that part three questions are always quite difficult. She didn't really give a reason for whether the government really supports elderly people. She kind of skirted around the topic, but did give somewhat of a vague answer. And that's okay. There's no right or wrong answer in IELTS. You just have to be able to speak fluently, which she did.

How can society ensure that older people are not neglected?

I think it comes with teaching the younger generations to respect their elders, because neglect, it's something that, you know, if you see your parents neglect their parents, you're more likely to neglect your own. Does that make sense? And if you teach young kids that this is how you are supposed to care for somebody, regardless of how old they are or how valuable they are to you and your society, I think then you'd make sure that, you know, there's less neglect going on of older people. Great. Thank you very much. That is the end of the speaking test.

Wow. A little bit shorter today. Normally, a speaking test would be about 10 minutes long.

This was a little bit shorter. It was a mock test, a practice test. What did you think of Saskia in her speech? I was really thoroughly impressed. She speaks so well, so confidently. And remember, we talked about confidence today. She answers really naturally. Sometimes you'll find her looking up, looking for ideas, but that's completely normal. Remember on the test day, you're going to be nervous and you're going to be facing the examiner that maybe doesn't give you any emotions back. So don't be put off by that. Try to just speak as naturally and as honestly as possible. I was really impressed and I think a typical examiner in this particular case would score nine for fluency and coherence. She spoke at length. Nine for lexical resource, nine for grammatical range and accuracy, and nine for pronunciation. This was an example of an excellent band nine speaking answer. So well done to Saskia. If you watched her previous video, she did make a small pronunciation mistake and lots of people said, how can the examiner be so strict in pronunciation? Well, that's just how the test works, I'm afraid. So be prepared for a really strict examiner. Today, Saskia did fantastically well. So good job to her. If you like these videos, please share them with your friends. Come back and watch more. We have lots of vocabulary and ideas generation videos that you can watch on our YouTube channel.

We'll see you in the next video. Take care of yourselves. Bye for now.