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please asses my speaking.
Posted: Sat Feb 22, 2014 2:29 pm
by Mohammed
Hello everyone and Ryan,
Please listen to my record and grade it.I need at least a 7.0 score band.
Re: please asses my speaking.
Posted: Thu Apr 03, 2014 7:27 pm
by lmoore
First, I wanted to thank you, Mohammed, for posting your speaking sample. You were quite fluent as you spoke, and, overall your pronunciation was easy to understand. You addressed the points for your topic, and moved swiftly through each one. Still, you provided enough details to keep your speech interesting and within the required time limits.
Some areas you might consider focusing on to improve your speaking are:
Grammar – Several times you used the incorrect verb tense. For example, when you said, “When I was at school, I was also wearing. . .“ This should have been just the simple past tense instead of the past progressive tense, so just “I wore. . .” You also said, “I am stand out from the crowd.” This should have all been in the past tense: “I stood out from the crowd.”
In addition, some of your phrases were a bit awkward. For instance, you said, “I’m going to talk about the way how our people dress,” and, “This is the way how I wear at home.” You also said, “I felt like that. . ” This could be just “I felt that. . .”
Furthermore, you had a few problems with subject/verb agreement. You said, “There is some school uniforms for school children.” This sentence should have used “are.” When you were talking about whether you liked to wear uniforms, you said, “I like it pretty much.” This was a problem with pronoun usage. The pronoun should have been “them” instead of “it” since you had just said “uniforms.” There was another pronoun error when you said something about “hat on their head.” This would mean several people with one head wearing one hat. You should have used “heads” and “hats.”
Finally, you said “at the yard” in the section on uniforms at school instead of “in the yard.” Be careful with prepositions at and in. You use “at” for “at the park,” “at school,” “store.” “In” is used for more localized areas and within buildings: “in the garden,” “in the school building,” “in the room.”
Pronunciation – You said cloth-es instead of clothes. This word is one syllable. The “e” is silent, but it makes the “o” a long vowel sound, even though we don’t say it out loud. Also, we wear suits, not suites (a set of rooms in a hotel). The pronunciation for a suit of clothing is /soots/.
Vocabulary – I like how you said “stand out from the crowd” because it is a more idiomatic phrase. However, you said costume a lot throughout your speech. This is used mainly in reference to clothes we don’t wear very often. So, for a national costume, it is appropriate. Perhaps try “outfit” or “ensemble” next time. “Prehistoric” means before history was recorded, so we’re talking about the time of the dinosaurs. A prehistoric costume that has been around since Medieval Times does not quite make sense. Also, in the beginning, you talked about a “smoking” with a tie. I think you meant a suit.
Organization – I like your lead-in to the speech. However, you did not use any transition words, like, first, next, after that, in addition, furthermore, finally, etc. You just jumped from point to point without any preface, which can make it difficult for the listener to follow.