This is the speaking test of the International English Language Testing System taking place on the 11th of February.

Centre number DDC125 and the candidate is Mehrnoosh Haafi.

The candidate number is 01313458.

The examiner is Samson Sees.

Examiner number 443533.

Good afternoon, my name is Samson.

Would you please tell me your full name?

Sure, my name is Mehrnoosh Haafi.

Wonderful.

Can I see your identification, please?

Yes, sure.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

Wonderful.

Thank you very much.

OK, in the first part of the exam, I will ask you some personal questions.

Let's talk about your leisure time.

When and how much leisure time do you generally have in the week?

Well, actually, I have a quite hectic schedule in the week and I'm almost working 24-7 from 9 in the morning to ungodly hours at night because I have a full-time job with a very heavy workload which I have to manage.

So, to answer your question, I can say that I don't really have much free time during the week these days.

Right.

And who do you generally spend your leisure time with?

If I get the chance to have some free time for myself, I prefer to spend it with my family since on the other occasions or the other days, we don't really have much time and we are so busy with our grueling schedule.

So, when we have this opportunity, we have to take it to be together.

And if I want to tell you about the activities we do when we're together, I can say that we just sit and watch our favourite drama series in the evenings which is called This Is Us.

And we have some junk food and snacks to enjoy this quality time together.

Wonderful.

And what are some activities you enjoy in your leisure time?

Just go through them briefly.

As I mentioned earlier, I have a very, very busy schedule and I don't have much free time for myself.

So, sometimes I just prefer to sit and relax because I feel exhausted at times.

I need to get some sleep and free up some time just to maybe be with my family.

That's also something else I would like to do in my free time.

We can talk with each other about the plans we have for the future.

It actually helps me figure out what I want to do about my life and it motivates me and encourages me to keep on trying as I am.

These are the things I normally do in my free time.

Wonderful.

And what do you like about these activities altogether?

I really enjoy spending time with my family, especially my mother and my sister, because it really gives me more energy after I'm done with my work or with my studies.

So, it really helps me emotionally.

And I do need to hang out with my friends on the weekends, especially, because we usually go hiking and it is a very good chance to be away from the hectic pace of Tehran.

And I can just look at the snow-covered peaks in the mountains and enjoy the fresh air.

So, these are the things I really love about the activities, these activities I do in my free time.

Right.

Okay, let's move on to talk about animals.

Do you like animals?

It depends on what kind of animal we're talking about, but I can say that I like farm animals because I encounter them from time to time when I go to the countryside to have a walk.

And I can say that lamping is an extraordinary time of the year.

And I enjoy looking at the lambs suckling up to their mothers.

I think it's adorable.

And I think that's the reason why I sometimes go to my uncle's farm in the northern part of Iran to just see these animals and enjoy the nature.

Right.

And what sort of animal would you like to have as a pet?

I would say I would like to have a dog as a pet.

But to be honest, I used to be afraid of dogs until I saw Coco, which was my student's pet, actually.

And Coco made a big change in me and made me consider taking a puppy from an animal shelter, which I haven't done yet, but I have plans to.

And I would say dogs are good animals as a pet because they're compatible.

They can be house trained and they obey commands, which I love.

Oh, that's wonderful.

OK.

Thank you very much.

You're welcome.

Right.

Now, in part two, I will give you a card with a topic and you will talk about this topic for two minutes.

You have one minute to think about what you're going to say and you can make some notes to help you if you wish.

Do you understand?

OK.

So I want you to describe an interesting animal you have seen.

Here's a piece of paper.

Thank you.

Pencil.

And here is your topic.

OK.

So you have one minute to make notes.

Please go ahead.

Thank you.

OK, that's the one minute up.

You now have two minutes to talk.

You can go ahead.

OK.

So you asked me to talk about an exciting animal that I have seen.

To be honest, in my country, we usually see cats, but we rarely see dogs roaming the streets, which are not really the people's favorite.

But I mean, in some other countries like Canada, people have the chance to see some other animals like goose, beavers, skunks or even birds every day.

So what I want to say is that if I had the chance to live in a country like Canada, I could name a number of animals right now to answer your question.

However, I remember that I went to a zoo in Africa with my sister back in 2018, where I saw an African wild cat.

It actually looked similar to a huge tabby cat, but it had a thicker tail with a very blunt tip with some black stripes.

I can say that it was nothing like the other wild cats I had seen before on TV.

And from what I heard, these wild cats are fairly shy and they have been on the brink of extinction for a while, which is sad.

And what happened was that we were allowed to feed the wild cats.

So I tried to do it, but the cat approached me like it wanted to attack me.

And I was terrified.

So my sister told me that I should have been more careful because these animals, these wild cats, cannot be tamed under any circumstances.

So in my opinion, that was a really interesting animal because it was different.

And I had never seen something like that before.

So I can say that's the reason I just explained about this animal.

It was something extraordinary to me.

And to talk more about that, I can say that...

Thank you very much.

Okay, that's the two minutes up.

I can take your papers back now.

Yes, sure.

Thank you very much.

All right.

In part two, you talked about an interesting animal that you saw.

Now in this part, I want to ask you some questions related to this topic.

Now, how can animals cause problems for humans?

To answer this question, I can say that they can only pose a problem when they pose a threat to our safety or when they haunt the animals that we herd.

What I mean is that maybe some kinds of wild animals may bite us.

And that can result in some injuries and infections, which in some cases are considered as irreparable harm to our health.

And on the other hand, in my opinion, maybe they can cause emotional problems.

Like when we have a pet and they die due to some reasons, which can contribute to some... to a very deep sorrow and sadness.

I would say, yeah, that's a problem actually.

Right.

And what kind of animals do people keep as pets in your country mostly?

I don't really have much information to answer that question because I'm not an animal lover and I don't know many people who have pets.

But from what I have heard, many Iranians keep some birds like parrots and budgies, I can say.

However, they are allowed to fly free within the apartment.

But their owners just make sure to keep all the doors and windows closed or they may escape.

And on the other hand, in the past few years, Iranians have been showing some interest to take care of some stray puppies, which I consider a really nice job.

Wonderful.

And do you think animals will still be important in the future?

What I predict is that, yes, they will absolutely have the same significance in the future or even more because they are actually essential for maintaining a balanced ecosystem and for the production of livestock, which influences the water, air or soil.

And as I mentioned earlier, due to the reason that many people, not only in Iran, but also in other countries, have been showing an interest to take care of puppies or pets generally, and they have been supporting animal rights, yes, in the future we can have even more of these animals or we can bring some of them back with the cloning technology maybe.

And how do you think we can stop animals going extinct, the ones that are critically endangered now, in this day and age?

I think it's something that both the government and the people have to do.

First of all, the government has to take some steps to just take care of some animals or establish some rules to forbid some acts which can harm the animals or their lives.

And on the other hand, we have to just improve our own culture, like the culture we have among us, not to harm the animals.

I'm not just talking about harming the animal.

If we just teach ourselves to take care of the animals or just do nothing to them, that would also work.

We don't need to just do something to improve the situation.

Thank you very much.

OK, that's the end of the test.

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Now we can quickly just go to your band score and then we can look at the other situation.

So all I can say is the very beginning is wow.

Thank you very much.

It was brilliant.

That wow had a lot of meaning to it, actually, because, you know, we're looking at we're clearly looking at a nine here because you're very much in control of not only the techniques that are required for the IELTS speaking test.

So let's go through them one by one and you can hear me out here.

I mean, fluency and coherence.

We'll look at that first.

I mean, your linking words, they were wonderful.

They were all in the correct spots as we were looking at answering.

The way you were answering the questions, referring to the questions, even that you didn't know what the questions were, you made some reference towards the question.

You gave the answer and then you went on to your off topic, particularly with the discussion side of things, which is absolutely fine.

As long as there's a reference towards the actual answer, then you're good to go, basically.

Then you'll get your marks for the speed and also connecting your ideas together, which was also fantastic.

You had your ideas, you had your sub ideas.

I would say you had a very great speed of the way you were talking.

Normally, we would tell candidates to speak a little bit slower.

But in your case, obviously, you had no problem with being able to produce your idea and keep your idea going.

So speed didn't get in the way of anything, as we could clearly see there.

And your intonation, it sounded very natural.

Again, adding to all this fluency and coherence business, just having a general conversation and being able to express the language the best you can.

And then, OK, let's look at vocabulary now.

You had a wide range of vocabulary.

I could see you could just easily paraphrase any word and have the same meaning and use different words just to connect all those different vocabulary together.

And it was a wide range and you used them all in the correct places, depending on the topic and depending on the question that was asked.

So, again, I didn't really see any difficulty or any struggle with your vocabulary.

Wonderful stuff.

OK, now to grammar and accuracy.

Again, grammar, I didn't even see you have any grammatical errors at all, actually, to be honest with you.

That's wonderful.

It would be great if everyone could do that.

Structure, again, I mean, your simple sentences, no problem at all.

Complex structures, you didn't have any problem with that.

And you didn't even stutter.

OK, there were a few ums here and there, and maybe just a very tiny bit.

That would happen with any native speaker, any English speaker being asked a question they didn't know about.

So, there will always be pauses.

In fact, pauses are good in the IELTS speaking test.

That gives you a few seconds to pull yourself together and give out your answer.

So, great grammar and accuracy.

It was wonderful.

Pronunciation, again, with the simple pronunciations and complex, harder words to pronounce.

I think you were spot on and you were very clear.

And I don't think you would have any problem at all with that.

So, you know, we're clearly looking at a nine here.

This is a typical nine in the IELTS speaking test.

I mean, are there any questions you'd like to ask me regarding the whole situation?