Today, I'm helping out a  little bit here at IELTS Daily.

So, today we have Marin from Japan and she's doing a full practice IELTS

speaking test. So, let's say you're not fully familiar with the format of the

speaking test, or the types of questions that you will get in parts one, two, and

three, as well as that. I'm going to give you a little bit more insight into how

the examiner thinks. So, I will be analyzing Marin's answers for fluency

and coherence, vocab, grammar and pronunciation, and giving you a better

idea of what the IELTS examiner is looking for.

Hello. Hello. Welcome to this practice exam conducted by IELTS Daily. My name is

David and I'm 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 name is Marin.

At the beginning of the IELTS test, you need to provide some ID usually your

passport but as this is a practice test there's no need for this today. Are you

ready to begin? Yep, I'm ready. Great. Well, let's talk about birthdays.

Do you usually celebrate your birthdays? Yes, I do but, um, I usually have

two birthday parties for my birthday. Uh, one for my family and one for my

friends. And I

actually enjoy my birthday party with my friends because they prepare me a lot of

presents and they usually  do like surprise events so

it really makes me happy.

But also I really enjoy having  birthday party with my family because

you know, it's my family, so yeah. So far I'm very impressed with Marin's approach.

She's very confident, she's very relaxed, she's got a nice level of fluency, and a

lot of accuracy. Jst a few small mistakes with vocabulary so far and

those in particular were when she said, 'I actually enjoy my birthday party with

my friends.' Now, what that means is she has two birthday parties and she

actually enjoys one of them, but that of course is not what she was trying to say

because later on you might remember that she said she also enjoys the party with

her family. So what she actually meant to say

was, 'I actually prefer the party with my

friends.' So of course that means she enjoys both of them but the one with her

friends is the one she enjoys most. Nice and what did you do to celebrate

your last birthday? For last birth, for my last birthday, uh,

it was my 17th birthday and I actually got COVID

on my birthday so I wasn't able to celebrate my birthday but

I think after my, uh, quarantine

I, my dad bought me a cake and we

did, um,

just, just with my family, I did a birthday party.

And yeah it was great. Okay. What stands out to me after this

answer is that Marin has a  lovely level of pronunciation.

So we don't have what we would call 'flat pronunciation' because she is pronouncing

the stressed, the correct  stresses in the sentence.

So she said, 'I wasn't able to celebrate my birthday', and for a band seven and

higher we're looking for  this sentence stress. So not,

'I wasn't able to celebrate my birthday.' 'But I wasn't able to celebrate my

birthday.' And that's the type of thing that will

separate a student from getting a band six

or a band seven and higher for pronunciation.

And what are the most important  birthdays in your country?

Most important birthdays, um,

like

most important... Like what age or what occasion? Oh.

Okay. Maybe I think

it's, um,

20th birthdays. I guess we

celebrate you know, Japanese  people celebrate their

20th birthday because, um, it's like officially saying that you're, you have

became an adult. And,

uh, they wear traditional Japanese clothes, kimono, and they, uh,

have a big ceremony as a huge group, and they take pictures in front of the,

uh, the party hall and,

yeah. I think that's the most important

birthday. So this time we saw Marin struggle a little bit with the question

and she didn't actually understand what it means. And really that's not a big

problem but you cannot depend on the examiner to

explain it to you as David did. In the real IELTS test, so what should

you do? Well, instead of just saying 'most important birthdays', 'most important

birthdays', you have to ask the examiner directly. So you will say something like,

'what does most important birthdays mean?'  And if you ask, that's no problem. The

examiner will explain and it doesn't reduce your score. But it's really

important that you ask and don't wait for the examiner to help you.

And should children celebrate their birthdays every year with a party?

Yeah, I mean, uh, for me I guess I really enjoy having birthday parties not only

mine but for my, uh, I really enjoy having birthday parties, uh,

with my friends, so, uh,

I guess like when you become

an adult you don't really get to  meet your family or your friends,

um, often so I think the birth, I think birthdays are the best time to gather

around and spend some time with your families or friends. So I think it's

really, yeah. So this time we saw that Marin needed to

pause a little bit and think about what to say. And really that's not a problem

at all. This is what naturally happens when we speak in any language. So if you

need to pause to think of an idea, don't start to panic, don't worry that your

score is coming down really quickly. The truth is that you're thinking of what to

say next, that's normal, and as soon as Marin had her idea, you could see that

her fluency was back to perfect again. So she did really well not to panic, just

give herself a moment to think about what she wanted to say, and then continue.

Now, this is a little bit different when you're pausing to think of vocabulary. So,

if you're pausing to think of a word, that does reduce your score more than if

you're pausing to think of an idea. Now, I'm going to ask you some questions

about going out. Where do you like to go out on the

weekend? I usually hang

around with my friends near my house because I really, uh, I live

in the central part of Tokyo, and

many, many people

come to the central part of Tokyo and they hang

around and, and

yeah. I also go there a lot, yeah.

And what do you like to do when you go out?

We, um, we don't actually do much but I, we just

go to cafe and we just talk  about our daily stuff, and,

um, and then we go to restaurants and we

just have, we just have dinner.

And just

you know, we just talk and talk forever.

Yeah. Okay. So this is kind of the start of

where we see Marin's fluency is starting to go down a little bit. And the problem

really is that she can't think of what to say. Now, you don't need to have very

complicated answers but when you can't think of what to say, just go into a

little bit more detail about the thing you've already said. So she said that she

goes and hangs out in cafes and restaurants with her friends, and

basically all they do is talk. Now, that's fine. You don't need to have more things

you do, but perhaps Marin could have given a bit more information about the

types of things that they talk about, or even the people that she goes with.

And where do you most young people like to go out in your country?

Um, I guess in Tokyo area many  people, many young people go to

Harajuku, Shibuya, Shinjuku, I  guess. And I live in Shinjuku

so, yeah I get to

go to the famous place, uh,

you know, maybe three times a week. Um,

yeah and not only Japanese people but many tourists visit those, um, big, big, um,

you know, popular cities in Tokyo area, yeah. Now, in relation to grammar, Marin

has been doing great so far in that she's using lots of complex structures

and she's using them with accuracy. But now it's starting to become apparent

that she does have an issue with plurals. Now, in this answer, she said, 'I get to go

to the famous place', instead  of the 'famous places.'

And earlier she said, 'we go to cafe' instead of 'cafes.' So it's starting to

become a little bit obvious that she does have a problem with plurals. However,

this does not necessarily mean that she's going to get a low score. It just

means that it might prevent her from getting a very high score for grammar.

Now, I'm going to ask you  some questions about shopping.

Do you like shopping? Yes, I do.

But I don't, uh, I don't do,

I don't go shopping often but I, I  do online shopping a lot these days

because of COVID, I guess. Many,  uh, many of my favorite stores,

um, closed and, uh,

so yeah, I usually do online shopping.

Now I'm getting a real feel for Marin's fluency and we can see that she's

actually got a really good level. When she uses phrases like 'I guess', what she's

trying to think, or she says, 'yeah' to confirm that she's finished speaking. She

does it in a very natural way, in the way that a native English speaker would. So

that shows that she's got a really high level of fluency and coherence because

she's using these discourse markers to communicate extra information to the

listener, who is the examiner in this case.

What's your favorite shop? I don't have a specific brand that I

like but I usually just go through the website

and just choose what I want, and yeah. Do you prefer shopping alone or with

someone else? Uh,

probably alone because as I said, I

usually do online shopping. Yeah but sometimes I go out with my

friends and I do shopping together, and yeah that's also fun. The final

question, you kind of answered that but have you ever bought anything online?

Yeah, like 90% of the time I buy stuff online because you know all the,

I think these days online shopping malls are really, um, convenient and

it's I think it's faster, and,

and it's nothing, um, I think it's,

I think it's better than actual like you actually going to the store because

you can see

many brands and you know, at the same time. So,

I think it's really time-saving,  and yeah I think it's...

So what happened here is something that happens actually pretty regularly in the

IELTS test. And it makes it look like the  examiner isn't listening because David

had to ask a question that Marin  had already answered, but the

thing is the examiner has a set list of questions. They're not inventing them as

they ask them. They're taking them from a special booklet produced by Cambridge.

So whether the information has already been given or not, the examiner is still

going to ask the next question. So if you think that's a little bit weird, well, it

is but you still just have to answer and

say something like, 'well as I said', and as Marin did, try to add some extra

information to this answer. Okay. Well, 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 will give you

a pen and some paper to make notes if you want. Is that clear?

Great. So here you are, pen and paper. So you have one minute to prepare.

Thank you. Now, I would like to you to  talk about parents. Remember, you have one

to two minutes for this so don't worry if I stop you. They'll tell you when

your time is up. Can you start speaking now? Okay.

So since the question was about,

uh, describing someone outside your family

who's a good parent, so I would like to talk about my sister-in-law and also my

brother. Um,

so, yesterday I came to Fukuoka and we were

on the plane together, and the baby was, um, keep crying on the plane for the

for the whole time so, uh, I think it was really,

um, distracting for other people but my sister-in-law was really calm with the

baby and she never got mad at the baby,  even though she was you know whining and

she was keep crying and screaming.

But I

I really thought she was, she was a really,

um, calm person and I really, uh,

respect her anyway because if I,  if that was, if I was the mother, I

would get mad at the baby once, uh,

it gets too long, the crying is too long, so yeah.

I think

yeah, that's all.

Okay. If you were in that situation it, how

long do you think it would be  before you were frustrated?

Um, probably 30 minutes because,

uh, I don't know because I, I'm still a

teenager. I'm still not fully developed, so

I'm like, uh,

but still I think she was really, um,

she was so patient. I was so surprised because she was so patient with the baby.