Well I know that many people feel the same and we've got another mock exam speaking practice video today and in today's session we've got Stephen who is from Australia, our examiner is Maddy and in this video you're probably going to see what it's like to be a little bit and doesn't know much about the test but sitting in front of a camera and having having an examiner ask you these questions can be very confronting and you can be nervous as a result.

So are you ready to watch?

I know I'm ready let's go Okay as usual at the end of this video you have the opportunity to watch the So if you're interested in just watching the video first with no feedback feel free to go to the second part of this video where you can do that.

I'm ready to start watching so let's click play.

Hello and welcome to this practice exam conducted by IELTS Daily.

My name is Maddy and I am your practice IELTS speaking examiner.

The questions in this test are designed to simulate the IELTS speaking test.

Let's start.

What's your first name please?

My first name is Stephen.

Thank you Stephen and now at the beginning of the IELTS test you will need to provide some identification.

This is usually a passport but as this is a practice test there is no need for that today.

Yeah.

Okay are you ready to begin?

Sure I'm ready to begin.

Great let's talk about you.

Do you work or study?

I do work and study.

I study a Bachelor of Commerce at University majoring in the quantitative side of economics and the qualitative side of management.

I also do work outside of university life as well.

I work at a high school as an academic advisor where I provide academic support for students in their final years of high school.

Wow.

Alright well the examiner asked a really short question which was do you work or study and the first thing that you answer probably more than he needs to and this type of question maybe needs a little bit of elaboration, a little bit of an extension but I don't think that it needs to talk about what you enjoy because what happens now is the examiner might have those type of questions later which are maybe questions what do you study or what do you do as a job, do you enjoy what you do, those type of questions.

I remember when I sat the test I actually elaborated more than I should have done and I answered some of the questions before the examiner asked them and so you notice that the examiner was a little bit off guard because she didn't know which questions to ask next and she had to go to jump two or three questions and the same thing happens here with Stephen.

He probably expanded a little bit too much.

You also notice it as well that maybe because he's front of in front of the camera it's a little bit more difficult for him to speak.

You notice he has this kind of we in English we say a frog in your throat and some words are a bit a little bit difficult to come out so a good start though I think he's given some really good answers.

Well done to Stephen and you'll notice that he's a native speaker and and if you're watching this for the first time go and watch our Romy video.

Romy is also an Australian and I explain why Australians or British or Americans why they sometimes need to take this test.

Well you've told me what you study do you enjoy studying this?

I really do enjoy study it is quite challenging the course since economics is no since economics is so broad it is quite challenging to grasp the concepts but once I do I really find it very rewarding and very fulfilling.

Great so you'll notice that Maddy did have to repeat this question which was do you enjoy what you've or what you're studying and Stephen had already answered that.

A couple of points here and you'll notice that he does look a little bit nervous which is normal on the test day you guys are going to be nervous so this is kind of a real-life situation.

Stephen may have a very minor speech impediment in his everyday life and that right that might affect many people who watch this video and lots of you might ask the question what happens if I have a minor speech impediment and the examiner will overlook that they will probably notice that you have it so it's not anything to worry about nothing that you should be stressing about beforehand.

He did make a very very minor pronunciation slip here he said to graps okay rather than to grasp he got the P and the S the wrong way around and believe it or not this is really common for native speakers to make these tiny slips in their speaking.

I understood what he wanted to say the examiner would probably overlook it but if he made any more of those mistakes they probably wouldn't be so lenient and they might mark him down a little bit.

Again nerves it's a little bit of a struggle to get things out at times but so far so good really well supported and extended answers.

And what do you want to do in the future?

In the future I want to become a high school teacher I want to use the knowledge that I gained from my undergraduate degree to someday pursue a Masters of Teaching degree where I can use that knowledge to support young people and give them the chance to fulfill their potential in finding their careers.

This section is an example it great flexibility with pronunciation features.

Remember that in the test it's not an academic test so you are allowed to make these contractions of words and you would might have noticed at the beginning he said I want to and he pronounced I want to and then he moved on and said I wanna and he's showing that he has flexibility in using those different forms of pronunciation there it's really nice feature and then he used language such as to fulfill one's potential I think he said to fulfill their potential and that's an example of collocation words or phrases which naturally fit together I really like that so to fill one to fulfill one's potential.

I'd like to move on to the so I'm just gonna jump in here this is a perfect example of what nerves do to people when you're sitting in front of the examiner you're going to be very nervous and the examiner sees this every single day so and try not to be nervous if you can but if you notice here Stephen actually begins laughing which is quite a common result of nerves it's what the body does to us it's a very do things that we weren't expecting and because Stephen's really nervous here and he doesn't know what to say he just begins laughing in the hope that maybe it will break the barrier between him and the examiner and so that that that might happen to you in the test just don't panic keep going and if you need to move on to the next question that's okay I'd say I am I do like to plan things out I I say that I am less of a spontaneous person and more of an keeping things very organized I like to have my own planner and account item and a calendar on my phone to assign time assign times for a study times to meet up with people and meetings and other other events outside of work in uni okay I like this phrase I'm less of a and more of a it's a good phrase that you could use there so I'm less of a planner and more of a spontaneous person I'm less of a chef in the kitchen and more of a guest at dinner parties so I'm less of a and more of a it shows contrast it's a really good feature there of lexical resource I like that he has really wide range of grammatical and complexity so I'm really happy in all of those sections the area that he probably will need to work on just a little bit is his fluency and coherence he's starting to struggle to get some ideas out and some some of his answers are verging on a bit repetitive and you'll see a little bit later that some of his answers become a little bit repetitive and do you like surprises sometimes I do I really sometimes it depends on what kind of surprises it's if it's like a surprise test I would I would feel a little it'll be a little bit less pleasant for me but I do enjoy like a surprise birthday party or a surprise surprises that I have a joyful connotation to it and less of a negative connotation okay as expected Stephen is struggling a little bit with paraphrasing and changing his vocabulary we heard a lot of repetition of the words surprise or surprises and what the examiner is probably listening for is where you can vary the language in some way rather than just repeating the same thing surprises surprises surprises what we want to do is show that you have a wider range of vocabulary so you could say something like well I don't mind surprises I suppose it depends on the situation I like to plan some things but if my friend threw me an impromptu party impromptu means surprise or not planned so you'll see the word on the screen there impromptu you could also use kind of an idiomatic expression such as out of the blue so if my friend turned up out of the blue I would really like that so out of the blue means unexpectedly or as a surprise so there are different ways you could use language to show up to paraphrase and I think Stephen is just lacking that here and even though he's got a good range of vocabulary and really easy to understand there's a couple of points that I think that if he were to sit the test again in the future he may just want to consider using a little bit more variety in his language and has anyone ever surprised you with something no they haven't because they know how much I dislike surprises especially gifts but I have been to a few surprise birthday parties and contributed to a few surprise gifts for people and it's surprising that I don't like surprises myself but I like giving other people surprises ah Stephen I'm so disappointed because you were going to use some really great language here to mean to contribute so he talked about going to a birthday party or a surprise birthday party where people contributed and if you listen back if you go back and play again you'll notice that he said chip and I know what he was going to say he was actually going to say we chipped in and everybody in the party chipped in to buy a present for the birthday person and this idea of the word a phrasal verb to chip in means to put some money all together and everybody collectively buys the present so recently I chipped in for my friend's birthday and this chip in language is great because it's a phrasal verb it's idiomatic it's less common and he just went down with with he went with the standard word which was to contribute or to put some money in to buy a friend a gift so I'm just a bit disappointed that he didn't use the word chip in because I think that would have been a great learning and tool for you now let's talk about the topic of cycling do you own a bicycle I do not own a bicycle but I do enjoy the leisure of cycling I did own a bike when I was quite young I rode it when I was in my early childhood days but I don't ride I don't cycle anymore do you think you will have a bicycle in the future I do I do hope I will have a bicycle in the future given the topic of climate change I want to make sure that I contribute more to reducing co2 emissions and hopefully choosing a more eco-friendly mode of transport and not only is it more eco-friendly it's also great for exercise and physical activity I don't know about you but I feel like a couple of these answers feel a little bit rehearsed and like he's practiced them a lot and I can assure you I promise you that Stephen had no idea of the questions before coming to this test and the examiner asked a question do you think you will own a bicycle in the future and his answers were almost kind of parroting the examiner yes I do think I will own a bicycle in the future I would say maybe if you can paraphrase your answers just a little bit more he gave great reasons and explains his answers perfectly but I just felt that the the answers felt a little bit rehearsed that was my only piece of feedback there and he also looked a little bit nervous still and he's you know this frog in his throat again was appearing but otherwise doing really well and did you learn to ride a bicycle when you were a child I did learn to ride a bicycle when I was a child obviously I started out with the training wheels because it was quite hard to balance but as time went on I got used to it learned to balance myself on the bicycle and now it's just part of such as training wheels training wheels are the wheels that you have as a child on the sides of your bike that prevent you from falling over and he used the word muscle memory so training wheels and muscle memory are great examples of collocation remember these words which are less common but when you fit them together and they make the the speech much richer and rather than just giving simple language the whole time you do need to include some of these idiomatic phrases expressions and compound nouns all those things that are less common in language in the next part of the test I'm gonna give you a topic and I'd like you to speak for one to two minutes you'll have one minute to think about what you want to say and I will give you a pen and some paper to make some notes yeah is that clear yep very clear here is your paper and here is your pen you have one minute to prepare you thank you now I'd like you to talk about a person who enjoys spending time outside 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 so a person I'd say that likes to in that likes to enjoy spending their time outside is my best friend my best I met my best friend from high school I've known them since grade seven so about 13 14 years old and they're a very outgoing person some of the some of the activities they like to do include exercising outside going out for shopping eating out and also especially during the times of the pandemic they like to go on a lot of picnics and of when going out so I think I think the reason why they really enjoy spending their times outside is because sometimes staying at home can be quite suffocating and it's great to go outside enjoy the sunshine for a little bit and you know take in the take in a bit of the nature especially during picnics they also when it comes to shopping going out and eating out they really enjoy the experience of trying something new trying all sorts of cuisines because sometimes it can be quite limited when they just stay indoors most of the time notice here that Stephen's only been speaking for about one minute and 15 it's very common for the examiner to encourage you to speak a little bit more that's not because they want to be mean to you but they want to help you and to do that they just want you to speak more so they can grade more of your language so it's not a negative thing if the examiner is asking you to speak more they are just trying to get as much language from you as possible in addition to that they really they want to make sure that they live a okay again Stephen has never taken this test before this is a real struggle for many people even native speakers speaking for two minutes without stopping and having enough things to say without repeating yourself or extending your answers enough is really really hard and so this is the point at which Stephen is kind of this may affect his fluency and coherence mark a little bit because he's not really extending his answers as much as he could be doing so this may come back to to haunt him thank you I want to stay on the topic of outdoor activities and why do you think some people do not enjoy doing outdoor activities that's an people like to think that extroverts enjoy outdoor activities more than introverts but it can go both it can go both ways as an introvert myself I do enjoy outdoor activities in moderation like things such as exercising going out for picnics the sort of a sort of activities I genuinely loved I generally enjoy doing and I like to say that why certain people enjoy don't enjoy outdoor activities maybe because it can it takes up a lot of energy for them it takes up a lot more effort for them to perhaps step outside the house step outside their room to you know get themselves out there perhaps it's also it could perhaps be a case of a bit of social anxiety they might be a bit afraid of seeing a lot of people being in crowds but even that it doesn't have to be but being outdoors doesn't have to be limited to just being in crowds it could just be it could just be being alone outdoors in a national park or in a park etc etc yeah one thing that I would say here is that if you're going to be speaking for this length of time and Stevens answer was quite long here I do think that in the IELTS test in part 3 it's very likely that the examiner will come at you with an like an interjection or a question or a follow-up it probably wouldn't be that you were allowed to have that much time or opportunity to expand your answers Stephen starts out off topic actually it's really interesting point why do some people enjoy being outdoors and why do some people not and Stephen went down the route of well then what's the difference between introverts and extra extroverts well that wasn't really what the question was about however he does come back on to the topic a little bit later which is great and it's not a problem if you want to go off topic it's not something that you should worry too much about try to answer the question though where possible because that will affect your the coherence mark that you you get in your fluency and coherence and how does the weather affect outdoor activities I'd say the weather greatly affects and the way we we look at outdoor activities for example on a very sunny day like this we we would feel people tend to tend to feel more motivated to step outdoors since the weather is a lot nicer the breeze feels nice and especially and I'd say the other way around with rainy cloudy weather people might not feel as to step outside since the weather is quite gloomy since they don't feel there isn't much of a positive connotation that's associated with cloudy or sunny or cloudy or rainy weather when stepping when doing outdoor activities again I would expect that the examiner might jump in there and ask a question related to that topic it's quite a long section there of Stephen speaking he did well he again went a little bit off topic but he did answer the question so far so good and why do some people enjoy spending time in the Sun and others do not I'd say people enjoy spending their time in the Sun because of course this Sun exposure is great vitamin D but at the same time I also think there's a bit of a cult there's a there's a bit of a cultural difference between spending time in the Sun versus not spending time in the Sun some cultures think some cultures think that it's okay to spend time in the Sun while in other cultures it's spending time in the Sun means your eight means means your eight your skin's gonna get worse and so forth so I think there's a different that explains a bit of a difference why some people enjoy spending the time in the Sun while others don't especially in a cultural context great I think Stephens area to improve is maybe just slow down a little bit one of the things in the test is that you get your fluency and coherence mark which asks you to be fluent but it feels like Stephens panicking just a little bit and that affects his overall comprehension and ability to fully answer the question like in a really rounded way great well thank you that is the end of the practice IELTS speaking test yep thank you thank you so what score that's the end of the test today what score would I give Stephen well and I think he did a really great job and I'm worried though that he he wouldn't necessarily get the full band nine marks just because he's a native speaker doesn't mean that he's here fluency and coherence section which you'll see on the screen there it actually says that for a band eight speaks fluently with only occasional repetition or self-correction hesitation is usually content related and only rarely to search for language develops topics coherently and appropriately I worry that the first part which is speaks fluently with only occasional repetition he did repeat some words and phrases throughout and some ideas that he had and we're just a little bit repetitive so I think he would maybe score and a band eight here whereas on the other sections lexical resource would be the next one would be I think there's a nine here I don't think that he made any mistakes he had a wide range of different structures and so in different words he had collocations he had idiomatic expressions so I think he deserves a band nine here for his grammatical range and accuracy there were just a couple of very minor slips with grammar I think that he had a really good range of different complex structures and so no major problems there and he probably deserves a band nine for pronunciation this one most of the time Stephen was really clear and I understood everything he wanted to say but there was a couple of moments when he said something like etc etc and it wasn't that clearly enunciated and I had to struggle and strain a little bit but I'm gonna give him the benefit of the doubt and award him I'm gonna order him a nine here so he would score eight nine nine nine which surprisingly is not a band nine when we calculate the individual scores for writing and speaking if you score eight nine nine nine it would actually be a band 8.5 the 8.75 is rounded down which is an interesting one and lots of people say why is it a why is eight nine nine nine not equivalent to nine unfortunately that's what happens in the components when you look at the overall score it's actually rounded up so in the speaking and writing individual components it's rounded down and in the overall component score when you have speaking writing reading listening all of those together would give you maybe eight point and that would be rounded up to a nine don't forget you can use in the descriptions below the links to the chapters of this video and you can jump forward and back but for now I'm Chris from IELTSdaily thank you for joining if you learned something and if you like this video don't forget to give it a like take care and we have lots more of these videos coming up make sure you leave something in the comments below share your ideas if you've got the test very soon we wish you the very best of luck thanks for joining us see you soon you hello and welcome to this practice exam conducted by IELTSdaily my name is Maddy and I am your practice IELTS speaking examiner the questions in these tests are designed to simulate the IELTS speaking test let's start what's your first name please my first name is Steven thank you Steven and now at the beginning of the IELTS test you will need to provide some identification this is usually a passport but as this is a practice of test there is no need for that today yeah okay are you ready to begin sure I'm ready to begin great let's talk about you do you work or study I do work and study I study a Bachelor of Commerce at university majoring in economics and management I really enjoy what I study I enjoy the quantitative side of economics and the qualitative side of management I also do work outside of university life as well I work at a high school as an academic advisor whereas provide academic support for students in their final years of high school well well you've told me what you study do you enjoy studying this I really do enjoy study it is quite challenging the course since economics is no since economics is so broad it is quite challenging to grasp the concepts but once I do I really find it very rewarding and very fulfilling and what do you want to do in the future in the future I want to become a high school teacher I want to use the knowledge that I gained from my undergraduate degree to someday pursue a Masters of Teaching degree where I can use that knowledge to support young people and give them the chance to fulfill their potential in finding their I'd like to move on to the topic of plans do you like to plan things I do like to plan things out I so I'd say I am I do like to plan things out I I say that I am less of a spontaneous person and more of an organized person I like keeping things very organized I like to have my own planner and account item and calendar on my phone to assign time assign times for study times to meet up with people and meetings and other other events outside of work in uni and do you like surprises sometimes I do I really sometimes it depends on what kind of surprises it's if it's like a surprise test I would I would feel a little bit less pleasant for me but I do enjoy like a surprise birthday party or a surprise gift or a surprise outing though the fun I like surprise surprise surprises that I have a joyful connotation to it and less of a negative connotation and has anyone ever surprised you with something no they haven't because I because they know how much I dislike surprises especially gifts but I have been to a few surprise birthday parties and chip and contribute to a few surprise gifts for people and and it's surprising that I don't like surprises myself but I like giving other people surprises now let's talk about the topic of cycling do you own a bicycle I do not own a bicycle but I do enjoy the leisure of cycling I used I did own a bike when I was quite young I don't know for it when I was in my early childhood days but I don't ride I don't cycle anymore okay do you think you will have a bicycle in the future I do I do you hope I will have a bicycle in the future given the topic of climate change I want to make sure that I contribute more to reducing co2 emissions and hopefully choosing a more eco-friendly mode of transport and not only is it more eco-friendly it's also great for exercise and physical activity and did you learn to ride a bicycle when you were a child I did learn to ride a bicycle when I was a child obviously I started out with the training wheels because it was quite hard to balance but as time went on I got used to it learn to balance myself on the bicycle and now it's just part of a muscle memory in the next part of the test I'm gonna give you a topic and I'd like you to speak for one to two minutes you'll have one minute to think about what you want to say and I will give you a pen and some paper to make some notes yep is that clear yep very clear here is your paper and here is your pen you have one minute to prepare thank you now I'd like you to talk about a person who enjoys spending time outside 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 so a person I'd say that likes to enjoy spending their time outside is my best friend my best I met my best friend from high school I've known them since grade seven so about 13-14 years old and they're a very outgoing person some of the activities they like to do include exercising outside going out for shopping eating out and also especially during the times of the pandemic they like to go on a lot of picnics and of course I like to spend out spend time with them as well when going out so I think I think the reason why they really enjoy spending their times outside is because sometimes staying at home can be quite suffocating and it's great to go outside enjoy the sunshine for a little bit and you know take in a bit of take during picnics they also when it comes to shopping going out and eating out they really enjoy the experience of trying something new trying all sorts of cuisines because sometimes it can be quite limited when they just stay indoors most of the time yeah in addition to that they really they want to make sure that they live a fulfilling life when spending their times out outdoors because we have...