please grade my speaking - important person

[allen_zhang]

please assess my speaking.

download/file.php?mode=view&id=55

[Ryan]

Hi Allen,

I'm sorry to have kept you waiting. I'm not sure I will have time to go through each of your submissions in detail tonight, but I hope the following comments on this one are helpful to you. By the way, I'm also an admirer of several of Xi Jin Ping's policies, particularly the bold stance he is taking against corruption. Peng Li Yuan's presence in the limelight is also interesting. Do you think the spouses of future Chairmen will be prominent in this way or do you think the public nature of Peng Li Yuan is unique?

Assuming you were not reading a pre-prepared response, the speaking sample is very good. Your grammar is perfect almost 100% of the time. I think you use a variety of fitting vocabulary, and I feel you speak with a confidence and a fluency not seen below a band 7 level. Your pace is healthy and the pauses you take sound natural. Well done.

Here is some constructive feedback:

1) Your pronunciation of words ending in /t/ and /d/ sounds needs training. Having lived in China for 5 years, I know this is a challenge common amongst Chinese learners of English. Chines people tend to make a slight "ah" sound after these kinds of words. For example:

"communist-ah party"

"most-ah powerful man"

"next-ah leader of our country"

The key to ending these words effectively is to cut off the air coming out of your throat as you make the /t/ sound. The /t/ sound is made entirely with the tongue. If you try making the /t/ sound by itself, you will notice that no air is required from your throat. This is the same way you end words like "communist".

Another challenge for Chinese people in particular is words that end in "-ous". In your response, you say "famerse" and "obverous" instead of "famous" and "obvious". You allow a rogue /r/ sound to appear in these words. The sound you are looking for is a simple "us". Please actively train yourself to drop the /r/ habit.

2) On the whole, grammar was quite good. I did notice, however, that grammatical strength wanes as the response goes on. To fix this, you should be including exercises in your training that force you to speak for longer than the required two minutes.

Let's address a couple of specific grammar items in the response. Firstly, at one point you refer to Xi Jin Ping's rise to fame. You say "he become famous" when I believe you mean "he became famous".

At another point, you mention that the leader of China will typically "play low profile" before ascending to power. I'm not quite sure if I'm hearing this part right. Do you mean something like these leaders typically exercise low profiles?

Finally, drop "the" before "power" when you say "before they reach the center of the power", as you are talking generally about power here. Use "the" if you talk about the specific power pool in China, i.e. "before they reach the center of the power circles that operate in China".

I think those are the two areas I would concentrate on. As I mentioned, this was a very strong response. You are exhibiting many traits of both a band 7 and band 8 student, so I'd guess as far as monologues are concerned you are somewhere around 7.5. I feel confident that with further accent polishing, you could be a solid band 8+ candidate.

[saqibali]

Also sound bit more peaceful.I mean a "rush" reply sounds bit confusing.

[allen_zhang]

Hi Ryan,
Please let me express my great great appreciation for your elaborate comments and advices! you are the nicest teacher I have ever met!

I want to mention that last Saturday, right before I entered into the Ielts test room for my speaking test of my second apperance in Ielts exam, I read your comments on my mobile phone! Your comments gave me great confidence and I felt pretty good during the interview with the examiner! I am not sure whether will I get 7 or not, but you encouraged me immensely!!

Regarding the sample I posted, I didn't read it but I wrote it done and tried to memorize it during the monologue. I found that the topics in Ielts speaking test are so predictable( writing is totally another story, much more difficult to predict!). I wrote a lot of stories for all topics I found on the Internet and I always try to use a real story in my life and try to use some "hitting" vocabulary. However, since there are so many topics that I need to practice, some of these stories I wrote are quite simple. For example, this time I got the "special meal" topic and my prepared version was not as good as the "important person" one.

For the questions you asked about Peng Liyuan. As you know, we do not vote for our leades. So, I really have no idea what kind of next first lady we will have . but, so far, Since the founding of People's Republic of China, we have got several first ladies and Peng is the only glowing one!

Many many many thanks for your kind help!!!

Yours faithfully,
Allen

[Ryan]

I want to mention that last Saturday, right before I entered into the Ielts test room for my speaking test of my second apperance in Ielts exam, I read your comments on my mobile phone! Your comments gave me great confidence and I felt pretty good during the interview with the examiner! I am not sure whether will I get 7 or not, but you encouraged me immensely!!

What great timing! I'm happy to hear the feedback was motivating. I really hope you get that 7+. What can you remember from the exam? Do you remember your writing questions?

[allen_zhang]

Below is something I can recall about the exam:
for speaking:
Part 1:
......
do you like singing?
who is your favoriate singer?
photograph questions.
"Do you like to have your photegraph taken?" this was the last question and the weird one, he already asked me about photograph question eariler and I confrimed the question with him and told him that I already said I like to take photographs.

Part 2:
a special meal you would like to have.

part 3:
do you often have special meal?
price and quality of food, which one is more important ?
what do your think about the variety of the food in your country.
do you think the qulity of food should be regulated?
small scale farm and large scale farm....

Writing:
Task 1:
Your friend ask you to teach his son English. You need to borrow some English books from a teacher.
give more detail about the child.
what type of books you need;
when and where you are going to teach this child.

Task 2:
many peole nowadays have health problems due to the way they choose to live.
Give the reasons and solution

I am so lucky that I read a simlar essay written by a teacher!

[Ryan]

Cheers, Allen. Can you remind me where you took the exam? Shenzhen?

[allen_zhang]

Yes, Shenzhen.