IELTS Speaking Test – Perfect Band 9

Let's start off by talking about your job. Do you work or do you study? >> No, I work. I work as an auditor. So, I studied accounting and I started as a bookkeeper and now I work as an auditor. >> Do you like your job? >> Uh I do like it, but it has its uh challenges. It's uh a very demanding job in my opinion. So, uh it's fun because uh you get to learn a lot about the company you're working with and you get exposed to a lot of businesses, especially if you work in uh an accounting firm. Uh so, I would say that's my favorite thing about my job. And my least favorite could be that it's uh very demanding. So, you work long hours. Busy season is not easy. You need to remember why you started to be able to continue. Uh other than that, uh you meet a lot of people, you make friends, uh you have a lot of different clients. So, it's pretty good. >> Did you always want to be an auditor? >> To be honest, no. I usually look at people who know what they want to do from day one as lucky. I wasn't one of these people. Uh it only happened by chance, I would say. I went uh into uh university. Uh I took an accounting class, uh financial uh accounting. I did really well. I got the highest grade. So, when they called me out to see like who that person was, I was really happy about it and proud and I decided to switch to accounting. I didn't know what that is or what it meant to be completely honest in details, like what would my day-to-day job or work look like. I did not know unless I until I started working. >> If you could do any other career, what would it be? >> So, there's a lot of things that I enjoy doing. Two main things. The first one is uh I love kids. So, I love working with kids. And the second one would be something related to coaching and helping people around me. >> Now, let's talk about where you live. Can you tell me about the kind of accommodation you live in? >> So, I currently live in an in an apartment. Uh three bedroom. It's has a big windows. That was my most important point when I chose the place. I have light furniture. I like everything to be light and uh you know, just open. I like to wake up and see light furniture and sun and you know, that's what makes me happy. >> Does your place have any amenities around it? >> Uh it does have, yes. It has everything. So, we have a swimming pool, we have a gym, uh we have a park right in front of our building. Um that's what I can remember and that's what I usually use. >> Is there anything you would like to change about the place where you live? >> Yes. So, I know I said we have a gym, but it's not exactly the type of gym I would like. So, maybe some people would think it's something minimal, but I cannot work out without a big mirror in front of me. I need to see how my form is. I feel more comfortable. So, there's no mirror. It's a bit small. So, I would change these two things, definitely. >> And do you plan to live there for a long time? >> No, our plan is to stay there for until the end of the year and then we'll move to a different place. >> Now, let's talk about animals. Do you like animals? >> I love animals. I love dogs. I like cats because I'm allergic to them. So, since day one, I always had a problem when um near a cat or I see one. Uh I love all types of animals. I love elephants, um giraffes, cows, monkeys, all of them. >> [laughter] >> But, my favorite I love dogs. They're my number one. >> Did you have a pet when you were a child? Just jumping in to give you our free gift. We analyzed hundreds of band 789 speaking performances and we analyzed the vocabulary. [music] We've put all the best words, phrases, idioms into one PDF for you. If you would like that, go to the description, click on the link. It's our gift to you. You can download it 100% for free. >> No, I only Yes, I had What was it called? It's a type of bird. I forgot the exact name of the type of the bird of bird, but yes, I had a bird and I had fish at some point. They're not really You can't really play with them, but I had two at some point. >> Now, let's talk about friends. Can you describe your best friend? >> Uh my best friend. Yes, of course. So, uh we've been friends for I don't know how many years now, so maybe 15 years or more. Uh She's a She's a very loyal friend. She's a loyal uh very nice, kind, thoughtful. She's always been there for me. Whenever I needed her with the honest opinion, whether it's good or bad. Loyal, number one. >> What type of people do you most commonly make friends with? What are their their traits, their character traits? >> So, for me, I I really look for kindness in people. Uh they have to be kind, loyal, uh they don't lie. Um Real friends, they're there when you need them. They're there in good times and in bad times before good times. Uh and you only uh you only discover this with time. And with the events and, you know, so that's how I decide that this person is a person that I want to be close to. So, I'm going to talk about an app called TikTok, which most of people know now. Uh and I decided to stop using it. First time I used it was uh a few years ago when it came out. At the beginning, everyone was really uh happy with it. Uh I started using it because uh I remember I used to look for recipes, for inspirations, if I have a a dinner with my friends, if I have a whatever, a party, I see what I can wear, I take inspirations, where to go buy my clothes, outfits. Even if I'm hosting, let's say I'm having friends over for brunch, lunch, dinner. I just see how I can decorate the the table or ideas of what I can cook and stuff like that. Um it honestly helped me with a lot of things like preparing for an interview, let's say, or even how to act in a certain situation. Sometimes a lot of people go through situations that you go through and you'll be surprised how much advice you can find on TikTok. I'm not saying it's the best, but you can find some good advice. The reason I stopped using it was because at some point uh I realized that my attention span a span was getting so bad, I couldn't focus, I couldn't watch a a full movie, let's say, or a full video without pressing times two. I couldn't just wait. I wanted everything very quickly and I read about it. I realized that one of the reasons could be me using social media, especially TikTok, because of the short videos, quick videos that we see. I scroll all all day and more than that uh I realized that the second I open the app when I close it, I see that two, three hours have passed. So, I realized it's just a waste of time. >> We've been talking about technology and we're going to continue to talk about computer games and technology in education. Are computer games popular in your country? >> I believe they are because I hear a lot of people talking about them, but I'm not related to any type of like I'm not interested or I don't play any computer games. I don't know anything about them. >> Let's talk about technology in the classroom. Can technology be helpful in the classroom? >> I graduated a few years ago. So, I we didn't have that much technology uh like these days, but maybe I can tell you about how I use technology in my own job. So, for example, it does really help. I'm going to give you an example. If I have a meeting, let's say, and I need to take notes with AI or just a certain app, I can record the meeting, it summarizes it to me, it gives me the main points, the important points, what we focused on. Anything I ask it to do, it does. So, that instead of taking me like 7 hours to do it or not going to maybe 2 hours to do, would take me 15 minutes. >> Do you think that students know more about AI than most teachers? >> Of course. Of course, 100%. The younger generation grew up with AI being normal, so they know so much about it. For maybe older generation, they have to acquire the knowledge or learn about it or put more effort. It's not something that they're used to, unlike younger generation where it's no normal. So, I think in my opinion, yeah, they do know more than their teachers. >> Do you think that AI will ever replace teachers in the classroom? >> I think so, yes. For now, I see it's doing a lot of things. It's just surprising. It's it's scary, too. Yeah, I believe it it can replace 70% of the jobs, if not more. >> Can you think of a specific application or a specific thing that AI could do to help students in the classroom? >> A specific app? >> Or a specific app application, not app as in a app in the App Store, but a specific methodology or something it could do to help students. So, for example, you talked about uh in your job the application is note-taking for meetings. What could AI do in the classroom? >> Exactly same thing. They also need to take a lot of notes. So, for example, for me, I used to like listening to the teacher more than just taking notes and being in a rush and you know, because I like to focus and just understand what the teacher is saying. So, if I had this before, this would have helped me a lot because I focus with the teacher and then I go back home, I reread what he said or she said. I understand it more. I have it written clearly. So, I would have used it that way. Maybe there's more and I don't know about like what they use it for, but this would be something important to me and useful. >> So, what I'm going to do is go through each part, give you some feedback, and then we'll talk about your scores. If you would like your speaking assessed one-on-one, we do offer that as part of our VIP package. To thank you for watching the video, I'll offer you 10% off. All you have to do is just go to the description, click the link, and you can get 10% off today. Part one was excellent. Um you The only thing was you forgot the name of the bird. And [laughter] but you dealt with that really well because you talked through it. So, you didn't just say like, "Mhm, what is the name of the" Like some people will be like, "Mhm, uh uh uh" and they'll think about it for a very long time. You just were like, "I can't think of it" and then you moved on. So, it felt like a conversation. It didn't feel like a test. It didn't feel like I was interrogating you and trying to pull the English out of you. It was just like a normal conversation. So, it was it was really good. Your development was good. I wouldn't change anything. I wouldn't give you any advice about part one because you did really well. Part two, you did something that I would be a little bit worried about. What you did was you listed nearly everything that's ever on TikTok. You were like, "You could try it. You could do this and you could do this and you could do this. You stop that after a while, and then you moved on to why you decided to um stop doing it. The question was about why you decided to stop doing it. So, if you just kept listing lots of things, this is a very common thing that we see is students will get on to one topic, and they'll just list everything. So, for example, you ask them about food, "What's your favorite food?" "I like Thai. I like Italian. I like Lebanese. I like uh Arabic food. I like pizza. I like And they don't they don't realize they're doing it. You did it a little bit, but then you switched. I think it's like a a little bit of a safety blanket where people it's easy to list stuff, and but listing a bunch of things doesn't allow you to really show the examiner the range of grammar, the range of vocabulary that you have because you're not really speaking in complete sentences. You're just creating a a little shopping list of of words. So, it's fine to do that a little bit, but be careful about that. I don't think it's a huge problem for you, and but I just want to bring it up out of an abundance of caution. Um you but you once you moved on to that, you did really, really well. Part three, there were a couple of of topics where you didn't know about them, and I really like that you said that you didn't know anything about it. So, computer games um is not a universal thing. Not everyone is into computer games. Not everybody plays computer games. But you you're aware of what they are, and you just started talking about it, and then said like, "To be honest, I'm not I don't really know anything about them. I'm not really into computer games." You have demonstrated to the examiner that A, you don't know anything about computer games, but B, you can talk about why you don't know anything about them. And a good examiner will not keep asking you about that topic if you've made it clear that you don't have a lot of knowledge about it. So, they want to give give best opportunity to show how great your English is. Peppering you with question after question about a topic you don't really know much about is not going to help you do that. So, you notice that after you said that, I switched to a different topic and we started talking about technology in the classroom. One thing that you did as well, I asked you about technology in the classroom and then you switched it to "Well, I don't know about that, but this is how I use it in my job." I think that is absolutely fine, but make sure that you bring it back to the question. So, you said, "In my job, we use AI for meetings." You could have then took it back to and said, "And that's how teachers could use it with their students." So, instead of them writing notes furiously, they could listen to the the teacher, let the AI record, and then look back at the notes after class and they can learn from them. So, always bring it back to the question because part of your mark is did you answer the question? Did you remain talking about that topic or answering the question throughout your answer? You also, I was asking you about like, will um AI replace teachers? Like, that's not certain right now. It's a quite a difficult question, but you did speculate about it like it they might use it for this. And then you related it to something you know about, which was really really good. If possible, I would try and add a little bit more detail in part three. A little bit um you could use examples, explanations. Why do some people think this? Why do other people think that? Or it could be a personal story like you did using AI in meetings and things like that. It it is not a problem here. Again, I'm trying to think of if you did you haven't done the real test in a long time. Um if you were to do it again, is there anything that when you're under pressure, you might do too much of you might make a mistake because of you're just stressed. Um you might give very short answers and not give more detail, not give examples. You could talk about irrelevant things. So, I'm just helping you. What you did was fine, but I'm just trying to help you out as much as much as possible. >> think it's amazing. And I really I'm I am going to use this feedback even for my life. When someone asks me a question, it's always good to think about the question when you're answering, you know, because sometimes you take the question, you start answering, you change directions. So, it's even good for me to >> So, good way to think about it is think about the question, directly answer it right away. So, here's what I think or here's what other people think because not you don't agree with every viewpoint. Something like should AI be used in the classroom? Some people think yeah, it should be used way more than it is. Another people are like no, it can't replace humans. So, you could but try and say like I think this. Here's why I think this. Here's an example So, I think that AI should be used for note-taking. I think it's really useful because students can review their notes after and they can focus on the lesson instead of taking notes during that. An example of this is the app Otter AI or something. Whatever whatever app you can you can think of. I've used it before and I >> about me. I have like I don't remember. >> [laughter] >> So, for the app yesterday I used it for my job and I forgot the name of the of the website I used for a meeting actually. >> use the exact name. It's not a knowledge of AI apps test. Don't worry about that. Um you can say but other people think that you know, AI has no place in the classroom and you know, it it's really important for students to develop the the skill of note-taking themselves because that's something that they will have to do in the future. Personally, I don't think that they will use a have to make notes in the future because AI will take that over completely. So, my opinion is you know, that that we should use more of it for that purpose. Something like that. Let's talk about your scores. You will get 25% for fluency and coherence. That means did you speak at an appropriate speed without unnatural pausing and did you answer the question? Pronunciation, can I understand you? Grammar, vocabulary. Your fluency and coherence is excellent. Um, you don't speak too fast or you don't speak too slow. Fluency isn't really about speed, it's more about how smoothly you you you speak. It's the smoothness of your speech. Um, so without unnatural pausing and and you do that sometimes, but it's all only just to think of the next idea. You do it very infrequently, which is excellent. You always answer the question. Sometimes you do start talking about something a little bit irrelevant, um, but it is rare. You do develop all your answers. Sometimes it could be a little bit more developed, but again, it's not a huge problem. Um, so you would be at the very top for level, which is about nine for fluency and coherence. Pronunciation, I can understand every single word you say. You are not a native English speaker, and uh, you grew up speaking Arabic, so it is amazing that your pronunciation is as clear and as easy to understand as it is. Not only that, you have very good use of intonation. Um, so your your voice is going up and down to convey meaning very accurately and very natural, um, word stress and sentence stress. You're stressing certain words to convey meaning, and you do that like a native speaker would do that, which is very difficult for Arabic speakers because the rhythm of Arabic is very different from the rhythm of English. So you're doing very very well there. Vocabulary is very accurate. You're never using words that just have the wrong meaning, or you're never trying to use words that, um, are inappropriate. You're very very accurate. For example, when you're talking about Tik Tok and not using it, you're talk using words like attention span and I couldn't focus and I was, um pressing uh 2x and I scrolled all day and two two or three hours have passed. It's just a complete waste of time. So, none of these words are particularly advanced. None of these phrases are like the most advanced English in the world, but they are very topic specific. So, you don't talk about attention span when you're talking about wearing hats or baking cakes or the weather. You talk about attention span and losing focus and scrolling and hours have passed and a waste of time when you're talking about TikTok and Instagram and things like that. So, any topic that I threw at you, you have very appropriate and accurate vocabulary to talk about that. It doesn't matter what topic I give you. Some people might say that you need to expand your vocabulary a little bit. I don't think that you do. I think if you try to start inserting really advanced vocabulary for the sake of it, then it you [clears throat] will it'll lead to you making more mistakes. I think it's absolutely fine. And grammar, there's tiny little slips from time to time. For example, you said which most of people know instead of which most people know. If you say which most of people know, I know exactly what that means. It doesn't stop me understanding what you're saying and it wasn't like you had um that error over and over and over again. You don't like it's not like every preposition or article usage is has has an issue. It's extremely rare for you to make a a mistake and it's just a little slip and that's how native English speakers speak. When you're speaking Arabic, I'm sure you make little slips from time to time. Everybody does. When I'm speaking English, I make little slips to get a band nine. You don't need to be perfect and maybe you made more mistakes. I don't know. I didn't pick up on them. Um but that was the only one I picked up on. So, you would get a perfect band nine for everything. So, you are at an extremely high level and that is extremely rare for someone who didn't grow up in a native English-speaking country. So, you should be very proud of your English-speaking ability and and uh yeah, well done.