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IELTS Speaking
SPEAKING Models
Please
read carefully the following Speaking questions, so as to understand exactly
how it is done.
The
Speaking Section
The
speaking section is divided into 3 sections. It lasts between 11 and 14
minutes, with individual
candidates
being interviewed by one oral examiner.
Part One
is a general conversation on familiar topics, while Part Two requires the
candidate to talk on
a
particular subject which they have been given time to prepare. The candidate
speaks for one or two minutes
and the
examiner will ask two or three questions at the end of the talk. Part Three
is a discussion on more
abstract
topics which are connected to the subject matter of the student’s talk in
Part Two.
This section of the examination lasts between 4 and 5 minutes.
In the Speaking component, the candidate is assessed on their skills in
communicating in English and is
graded
according to their abilities in fluency, vocabulary, grammatical range,
accuracy and pronunciation.
Two
samples of the Speaking test are given below. Please read them carefully.
Sample
Test 1
Note: Teachers questions in blue colour.
Sample answers in black colour.
I’d like you to tell me something about your
family.
Is your family large or small?
We are
quite a small family. Myself and two sisters.
What do other
members of your family do?
Maria, my eldest
sister, has a weekend job working in a paper shop but Anastasia doesn’t work
She’s too
young. My father works, of course — he is a manager in a cotton factory in
Lamia.
My mother
doesn’t work now, although she used to be a teacher.
When was the last time all your family were together?
We were
together at Easter. We did what we Greeks usually do at Easter, which is to
roast a whole
lamb on a
spit on Easter Day. Then we shared it with all our friends in the village.
It was lovely. We really enjoyed it.
What do you do as a family on special occasions like weddings or feasts?
Easter is
the main feast where we do something special For weddings we dress in our
best formal clothes for t
he wedding
ceremony. There’s a tradition I don’t think you have in Britain where after
the priest declares
the couple
married he leads them around the altar 3 times and everybody throws rice and
rose petals over
the
couple. It’s very good fun. Then we go to a reception and have a meal.
Is there a member
of your family you are especially close to?
I’m very close to
my sister Maria.
Why?
We grew up together.
We’ve always gone to school together and done everything together.
If I do go
to study in Britain, I’ll miss her dreadfully.
I’m going to give you a subject to talk about. You have to talk about it for
about two minutes.
Before you start talking I’ll give you about one minute to think and to
write down some notes.
Do you understand what you are going to do?
Yes,
that’s fine.
Here’s a pen and
some paper to write on.
This is your subject. I’d like you to speak about a trip or holiday which
you have taken recently.
You only have a short time to speak, so I will stop you after a while. Don’t
worry about that. You can start talking now.
Well, I’d
like to talk about the holiday I took last summer with my sister Maria, when
we went to the island of Corfu.
We had
never been allowed to go away on holiday without our family before, so it
was very exciting.
We had a
room in a hotel in a resort called Ipsos. It was very busy and full of other
young people on their-holidays
There were
lots of bars and restaurants to visit there, and we met a lot of people from
Britain and Germany.
At first
we didn’t like it because it was so noisy — the discos are so loud and they
continue all night! And it was
all so
strange and different, not having Mum and Dad with us. But then we made some
friends and took a bus into Corfu
town
itself and that was lovely. The buildings are all Italian in style and quite
different from Athens, where everything is 1960s concrete.
It was so
pretty. And we visited the church of Saint Spiridon and were allowed to see
the body of Saint Spiridon himself.
His body
is preserved in a special casket and you can see his face and at special
times they uncover his feet,
which have
special slippers on, and you can kiss them and say a special prayer for
help. The church was full of small silver
gifts from
people Saint Spiridon has helped
Thank you.
Had you been on a
trip like this before?
We’ve been
on holiday to the islands before. We’ve been to Santorini and to Kos. But,
as I said, we’d never been alone before.
It was
very different being by ourselves like that.
You’ve been telling me about a trip you’ve made. I would like to talk to you
about some questions related to travel.
Do you think
travel broadens the mind?
Oh, yes, I
think so. I mean, I know that the world is getting smaller and we all watch
the same films and TV programmers,
but you
still meet people who do different things, like different things and speak
in different languages from you.
And when
you meet them and get to like them, you like some of the new things you
meet. I think it makes you more tolerant Y
ou know
more, so you can understand and accept more variety.
Describe how the
tourist industry has grown in your country.
It’s grown
enormously in Greece in the last twenty years. An island like Corfu which
had very little industry only 20 years ago
is now
quite rich. Whole new resorts and villages have grown up on the coast to
cater for tourists and they only work during
the
summer. In a town like Corfu itself the tourists mean that there is good
business for restaurants and bars and so on.
Describe what things your area offers tourists.
In Greece
we offer tourists guaranteed sun, beautiful beaches and a very relaxed
lifestyle.
We love
children in Greece, so for families there is always a lot for them to do and
there is no problem taking them
to
restaurants and so on. Also, Greece has a long history, so there are many
different historical sites to visit if that’s
what you
want.
Evaluate what type of tourists it brings to your area.
I think it probably brings two main types. Firstly, there are the young
people who come for the sun, the sea, and the bars.
Then there
are the families. They will also like the sun and the sea, but will also
want the fully-catered holidays that
modern
hotels can provide.
Evaluate how tourism is good for the economy.
Tourism
brings in money. We are an agricultural country, so we don’t have industrial
products to trade.
Tourism
must be the most important foreign currency earner in the economy. Hotels
and bar owners
obviously
benefit, but so do a lot of other people. The people who work in the hotels,
those who run
the
tourist shops, the restaurant owners — they all make a good living out of
tourism.
Speculate on what
other benefits might tourism bring to a country.
We think
that the tourist trade has brought us closer to the heart of Europe and made
us more European.
For a
country that is on the edge of Europe this is very important
How has tourism
changed your area/country for the better?
So many
people were very poor a generation ago and tourism has changed so many
peoples’ lives with
the money
it brings. Larger houses, running water, electricity and cars.
— there are so many ways we have all benefited.
How has tourism changed your area/country for the worse?
I believe
it has damaged the ecology a great deal Near my village, we used to have
seals which would
share the
beach with the villagers in summer. We had one end and the seals had the
other. Now the seals have gone and
I guess
they will never come back There are too many people, too much noise, too
much rubbish for them to tolerate. It’s a great pity.
Discuss whether
the tourist trade is a good thing or a bad thing.
There is no simple answer to this question because it is both good and bad,
of course. The wealth which tourism brings
doesn’t
just make us personally richer but also provides us with hospitals, better
education and so many good things.
But there
is a price to pay for all this. The lifestyle is changing and so is the
environment I would think that, on balance, tourism is a good thing.
But we can do more to make
sure that tourism doesn’t take away all the things that we love about
Greece.
Thank
you. The Speaking Test is now finished.
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