{"id":1807,"date":"2022-04-08T16:16:51","date_gmt":"2022-04-08T16:16:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ielts.englishprotips.com\/?p=1807"},"modified":"2022-04-10T07:54:59","modified_gmt":"2022-04-10T07:54:59","slug":"band-7-vietnam-ielts-speaking-test","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ielts.englishprotips.com\/band-7-vietnam-ielts-speaking-test\/","title":{"rendered":"Band 7 Vietnam | IELTS Speaking Test"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\n
\n
\n

Mai Duy\u00ean - powered by Happy Scribe<\/a><\/h2>\n

Good afternoon.My name is Eli.<\/p>

Can you please tell me your name?<\/p>

Good afternoon.<\/p>

My name is Mai Duy\u00ean.<\/p>

Okay. And what should I call you?<\/p>

You can call me Duy\u00ean.<\/p>

Duy\u00ean?Yeah.<\/p>

Okay.Duy\u00ean in this<\/p>

first part, I'm going to ask yousome questions about yourself.<\/p>

Let's first of all talk about<\/p>

what you do.Do you work or study?<\/p>

Currently, I am the last year university studentin a foreign trade university in Vietnam.<\/p>

What subject are you studying?<\/p>

I'm majoring in international business.<\/p>

Have you been studying thissubject for a long time?<\/p>

I've been studying this for four years.<\/p>

At first, I was quite torn betweenEnglish language and international<\/p>

business but I just wanted to trysomething new apart from English,<\/p>

which is something I have spent a lot oftime learning when I was in high school.<\/p>

But actually right now I realisedit was not really a right fit for me.<\/p>

Why not?<\/p>

Because right now, I put much more effort<\/p>

on learning English and practise speakingand writing English much more than<\/p>

my major.<\/p>

And I know I just feel like Ihave a soft spot for languages.<\/p>

And what do you like most aboutthe subject you are studying.<\/p>

In terms of theoretical aspect,<\/p>

actually I didn't focus much on my studiesat university because<\/p>

maybe because of the old fashionedteaching methods of my teachers.<\/p>

But actually I learneda lot from my friends.<\/p>

They were very dynamic and I learned<\/p>

from the way they speak and they talk infront of people and all the soft skills.<\/p>

Let's move on.Let's talk about shopping centres.<\/p>

Do you often go to shopping centres?<\/p>

Right now I tend to do shopping onlinebecause of the COVID 19 definitely.<\/p>

But normally I don't go to shoppingmalls or shopping centre because<\/p>

it's too expensive for students like me.<\/p>

When did you last go to a shopping centre?<\/p>

Well, it's really hard to say because<\/p>

actually we're not right now.<\/p>

We were on lockdown for several monthsand we were forced- encouraged -to stay indoors.<\/p>

So the last time may be when I visited<\/p>

a local street market near my apartmentlike to buy some fruit and vegetables.<\/p>

Do you prefer large orsmall shopping centres?<\/p>

Well, it depends on my purpose.<\/p>

If I just want to go window shopping<\/p>

with my friends or meeting up with them,maybe I prefer to go to big shopping malls.<\/p>

I just want to see all the luxuriousitems or fashionable shoes.<\/p>

But if I<\/p>

tend to save up money for for a rainy day.<\/p>

So I tend to buy in some local markets or some small shopping centres.<\/p>

Why do you think some people don'tlike going to shopping centres?<\/p>

Personally I think there are some people<\/p>

who like to bargain-like in some street markets you can talk<\/p>

to the shop owners and you canbargain and you do the talking.<\/p>

But there's maybe some people<\/p>

they tend to be quite sceptical aboutthe products on some big<\/p>

shopping centres because they don'tknow exactly where they come from.<\/p>

Let's talk about mornings. Do you find iteasy to get up out of bed in the morning?<\/p>

To be perfectly honest with you,<\/p>

I'm a night owl, so I find it reallychallenging to grab myself out of bed<\/p>

in the morning, early in the morning.<\/p>

So I tend to have a lie inuntil the noon or afternoon.<\/p>

Then I spend a lot of time workingand studying till the early hours.<\/p>

Okay.Now in this next part I'm going to give<\/p>

you a topic and I'd like you to talkabout it for one to two minutes.<\/p>

Before you talk,you'll have 1 minute to think about what<\/p>

you're going to say and you canmake some notes if you wish.<\/p>

Do you understand?<\/p>

Yes, I understand.<\/p>

Okay, so here's yourtopic. Can you see that?<\/p>

Yes, I see that.Great.<\/p>

Okay, so you'll have 1 minute to prepare.<\/p>

All right.<\/p>

Remember, you have one to two minutesfor this, so don't worry if I stop you.<\/p>

I'll tell you when the time is up.<\/p>

Can you start speaking now, please?<\/p>

Let me take you back to when I wasin the sophomore year in university.<\/p>

Actually it was at the end of the final<\/p>

exam in my university and actuallyI'm a chronic procrastinator,<\/p>

so I tend to delay everythinguntil the deadlines are looming.<\/p>

And at that time, it's also the time of thebirthday of one of my closest friends.<\/p>

And because<\/p>

I was too busy with our deadlines,<\/p>

I stayed up really lateand I'm too tired with all my work.<\/p>

And then her birthday slipped my mind.<\/p>

And I remember on that day when I wasbrushing my teeth in the bathroom and I<\/p>

saw the calendar and realisedit was her birthday.<\/p>

And I just feel like at that timeI lost track of time<\/p>

and right at the momentI called...<\/p>

She didn't receive the call.<\/p>

And I suppose that she tried to ignore me<\/p>

because of my mistake and I triedto find something to make up for her.<\/p>

And<\/p>

on the next day, I decided to invite her<\/p>

to one of my favourite cafe, which waslike a stones throw from my university.<\/p>

And<\/p>

actually I pretended that Ididn't remember her birthday.<\/p>

But then when she went there,<\/p>

I just gave her a surprise party and my<\/p>

apology and fortunately she forgave me.<\/p>

Thank you. And did she forgive you?<\/p>

Yes, of course.<\/p>

Okay, wonderful.<\/p>

Now we'll move on to part three.<\/p>

And in this part, I'm going to ask you some<\/p>

more general questionsrelated to your topic.<\/p>

So let's first of alldiscuss arriving on time.<\/p>

So you're living in Vietnam.<\/p>

In Vietnam, is it importantto arrive on time?<\/p>

Yes, in some special cases,punctuality is very important, like some<\/p>

interviews or some important exams because<\/p>

I think you want to come across asa profession and confident and punctual<\/p>

person, and for some importantexams, you have to be on time or<\/p>

otherwise you will receive a zero score.<\/p>

And so what can people do to makesure that they arrive on time?<\/p>

I think as a general rule, they tend<\/p>

to take notes on computers, on phones.Like myself, I use both of them<\/p>

and I think time is also something<\/p>

that they really should focus on,like they should set the alarm for,<\/p>

especially in times when theywere too busy or too tired.<\/p>

Why do you think somepeople always arrive late?<\/p>

I suppose it's just one of the habits,<\/p>

like it comes from small things in yourlife when you don't achieve all the small<\/p>

tasks and it has a ripple effecton everything you do in your life.<\/p>

Let's move on.Let's talk about the fear of missing out.<\/p>

So some people call this FOMO.<\/p>

Have you heard of that?<\/p>

Some people think that social media can<\/p>

make our fear of missing outmore acute, so we feel it more.<\/p>

Do you think that's true?<\/p>

I think it's true nowadays,especially for youngsters,<\/p>

because every day we are bombardedwith a lot of information<\/p>

and I think this is one of the mainreasons why it pushes us to reach for our<\/p>

phone every time when we are free,we don't do everything and all the instant<\/p>

gratification, justattracts you to social media.<\/p>

And when you want to focus on something, but there's a lot of<\/p>

popping up of the notifications on your screensand you tend to check and check it.<\/p>

And after 1 hour, even when there are no<\/p>

notifications, like your brain can createa habit and you try to interrupt you<\/p>

by actively check your phoneand scroll through your social media.<\/p>

And do you think the things that we seeon social media increase our fear<\/p>

of missing out on special eventsor holidays- for example?<\/p>

Can you repeat the question?<\/p>

Yeah, of course.<\/p>

Do you think that the things that we see<\/p>

on social media can increaseour fear of missing out?<\/p>

So for example,<\/p>

sometimes when I go on Instagram I seephotos of my friends on holiday<\/p>

and that makes me feel like Ishould go on holiday as well.<\/p>

Do you think that the things that we see<\/p>

on social media canincrease our fear of missing out?<\/p>

I think one of the disadvantages of using<\/p>

social media is you can compare yourselvesto others so you want to copy<\/p>

the lifestyles, you wantto have what they have.<\/p>

If you have a friend,they go on a holiday, they post some<\/p>

fascinating pictures and things like that.<\/p>

You can think that you shoulddo that or you are left behind.<\/p>

So what can we do to reducethat fear of missing out?<\/p>

I think that we should decidewhich is our priority,<\/p>

why we use social media to catch up<\/p>

with our friends, to knowwhat they've been up to.<\/p>

Not in a way like you judge theirlives and judge our lives also.<\/p>

And I think deciding what is importantto you and your focus right now is very<\/p>

important even much more important todecide what's not important to you not<\/p>

right now is more important than decidingwhat is important to you right now.<\/p>

Thank you very much.That is the end of the speaking test.<\/p>

So, how did you feel?<\/p>

I feel nervous.<\/p>

You didn't seem very nervous.<\/p>

No, actually, my heartbeats so fast right now.<\/p>

Right? Oh, interesting.Yeah.<\/p>

But fortunately I don't stutterduring this speaking test because<\/p>

I stutter whenever I feel too nervous.<\/p>

But actually, practisingspeaking IELTS helps me a lot.<\/p>

It has improved a lotfor the last two years.<\/p>

Right.<\/p>

So it's kind of like, when you find<\/p>

yourself getting very nervous youstart to repeat the words very quickly.<\/p>

Is that what happens?Yes.<\/p>

But right now, I think because I put<\/p>

myself in stressful situations a lot.<\/p>

So I think I guess we are more familiarwith it and I control it more.<\/p>

Yeah.People often say \"practise makes perfect\".<\/p>

So because you're constantly in these<\/p>

difficult stressful situations, you becomebetter able to deal with the stress.<\/p>

Yes, absolutely.<\/p>

I think the real IELTS testis much more stressful<\/p>

because the examiner and I don'thave time to break the ice.<\/p>

We just addressed goneright into the test.<\/p>

Yeah.It was quite nice that we got to speak<\/p>

a little bit before westarted recording this test.<\/p>

Great.So you did very well.<\/p>

It was a really nice test.<\/p>

And I'm incredibly impressedwith your vocabulary, especially<\/p>

lots of very impressive idiomaticvocabulary, which is great.<\/p>

And what we'll do is, in a second, we'llgo through a lot of that vocabulary.<\/p>

You spoke very naturally.<\/p>

You did very well to answer a lot<\/p>

of the questions, includingthe tricky questions in part three.<\/p>

And your vocabulary was wonderful.<\/p>

Sometimes<\/p>

when you're speaking and this is probablythe lowest of your scores,<\/p>

it would be for pronunciationand particularly sentence stress.<\/p>

And I think this sometimes happens when<\/p>

you're trying to focus on usingparticular vocabulary.<\/p>

So you were talking about your- in parttwo- you're talking about your friend's<\/p>

birthday, and you wanted to say howthe birthday slipped your mind.<\/p>

And because you were kind of so focusedon using that phrase- \"it slipped my mind\"-<\/p>

you didn't put<\/p>

the right amount of emphasison the fact that it slipped your mind.<\/p>

Instead, you put emphasis on the factthat you wanted to use that vocabulary.<\/p>

So if I was telling a story, for example,<\/p>

where I forgot my friend's birthday,I would want some sort of pause or<\/p>

element to emphasise that that was the important part of the story.<\/p>

But instead, what you did is you kind ofwent through it in roughly the same tone.<\/p>

So if I was talking aboutmissing my friend's birthday,<\/p>

I would say something like,\"and then I looked at my calendar,<\/p>

and that's when I realised I hadforgotten my friend's birthday\".<\/p>

And you lean in a little bit,whereas what you did is more like: \"and then<\/p>

I looked at the calendar and I realisedit had totally slipped my mind\".<\/p>

And so there was like a slight kind<\/p>

of distortion, because what youwere saying was very dramatic.<\/p>

But the way you were sayingit was quite kind of flat.<\/p>

I think that would be somethingto work on in the future<\/p>

is being quite expressive<\/p>

and understanding that when you usedramatic vocabulary, or when you're saying<\/p>

something dramatic like you've missed your friend's birthday<\/p>

then try and emphasise it with your voice.<\/p>

Does that make sense?<\/p>

Yes.<\/p>

I think it's still one of the things<\/p>

that I need to improve: the intonation,the way I stress the sentence,<\/p>

because actually I realised I will be morecomfortable when I use common words.<\/p>

But when I try to use more complexlexical resource, I tend to be too jumpy<\/p>

And I forgot the tone and the emotionsrelated to the sentence.<\/p>

Yeah, that's quite common when people are<\/p>

focusing on using specific wordsrather than conveying their idea.<\/p>

Now, you use so much idiomatic vocabulary.<\/p>

Like it's like<\/p>

you use more idioms and more idiomatic<\/p>

vocabulary than I would expecta native speaker to use<\/p>

with the same questions.<\/p>

And that's a good thing and a bad thing.<\/p>

The good thing is it's amazingthat you know all of this vocabulary.<\/p>

Like when you were talking about the deadline-you were talking about your work-<\/p>

so I think a native speaker would probablyjust say: \"and I had this huge deadline<\/p>

that I had to work towards\" and you wereable to use this idiomatic vocabulary:<\/p>

\"and I knew that the deadline was looming\",<\/p>

\"a looming deadline\",which is very impressive,<\/p>

but sometimes maybe it doesn't fullycommunicate what your message is.<\/p>

So I would focus a bit more on<\/p>

communication and a little less ontrying to use idiomatic vocabulary because<\/p>

you already have an absolutelyamazing variety of vocabulary.<\/p>

And let's actually go through some of that.<\/p>

So in part one,I love the phrases \"torn between\".<\/p>

You said you were \"torn betweenEnglish and business management\".<\/p>

Lovely to say \"I was torn between thesetwo subjects\"- very nice.<\/p>

Again, you said that \"you're notthe right fit for the subject you study\".<\/p>

So \"to be or not to be the right fit\",- very nice.<\/p>

\"To put effort\", you had a \"soft spot for English\".<\/p>

You mentioned \"old fashionedteaching methods\".<\/p>

I liked it when I asked you about<\/p>

the shopping centres and youparaphrase that to \"shopping malls\".<\/p>

Sorry, you use a synonym,so that shows high level vocabulary.<\/p>

I really like this sentence where you said<\/p>

\"forced\" and then you corrected yourselfto \"encouraged to stay indoors\".<\/p>

That was a really<\/p>

impressive use of English,because what you did there is you took<\/p>

a passive sentence and using both the word\"forced\" and \"encouraged\" is correct<\/p>

in that sentence, you can say \"forced tostay indoors\", \"encouraged to stay indoors\".<\/p>

And what you did is you self corrected sothat you could convey your idea better.<\/p>

So you started by saying \"wewere forced to stay indoors\".<\/p>

And then you thought, okay, wait a second,we weren't \"forced\" to stay indoors.<\/p>

We were \"encouraged\" to stay indoors.<\/p>

And just noticing,<\/p>

the slight distinction betweenbeing \"forced to do something\"<\/p>

and \"encouraged to dosomething\" is very impressive.<\/p>

So as soon as I heard that, I thought,<\/p>

wow, this is a veryimpressive speaking test.<\/p>

I really like things like\"it depends on the purpose\".<\/p>

So I was asking you about<\/p>

shopping centres, and I like that yousaid \"it depends on the purpose\".<\/p>

Sometimes I like to go shopping,<\/p>

especially to shoppingmalls for \"window shopping\".<\/p>

And again,<\/p>

very impressive vocabulary,but it almost felt like you were<\/p>

guiding your answer to usethe phrase \"window shopping\".<\/p>

Does that make sense?<\/p>

Is that true?A little bit.<\/p>

A little bit.I think so.<\/p>

Right.Okay.<\/p>

Yeah, that was just likemy kind of feeling.<\/p>

But, like, at some point,<\/p>

I was kind of aware that I felt that youhad phrases that you wanted to use.<\/p>

So, okay, if I talk about shoppingcentres, I'm going to use \"window shopping\"<\/p>

rather than really conveyingyour experience of shopping centres.<\/p>

That would be a little bit of advice<\/p>

for you is try not to focus too muchon using particular words and focus a bit<\/p>

more on trying to communicatehow you really feel.<\/p>

And then the big words will come<\/p>

naturally, and as a result,you'll use them in the context<\/p>

that's right for you.<\/p>

I think I'm too focused on like,this is a test; not a conversation.<\/p>

So I feel like I... try to...<\/p>

I don't know almost createan alter ego or something.<\/p>

Right.<\/p>

Yeah.<\/p>

I mean, sometimes kind of creatingan alter ego can be a good thing.<\/p>

Like, for example,<\/p>

the way that you can relax if you saythat sometimes you feel nervous,<\/p>

if you create an alter ego,then sometimes that alter ego is more<\/p>

relaxed than you are,and you can kind of go like, okay,<\/p>

my alter ego, you go and do this test,and I'll just sit back and watch.<\/p>

Yeah.But I think<\/p>

actually, from what you have said,<\/p>

I realised that the exact problemthat I need to improve right now.<\/p>

for my speaking<\/p>

I'm too focused on, like,I have to use big words.<\/p>

And if I come up with a big voice and thenI feel like I feel really happy<\/p>

and I can't convey the exactmeaning of what I said.<\/p>

I think that's the problem.<\/p>

So what you just did there was perfect.<\/p>

That short speech therewas really really nice...<\/p>

Because that was very real.<\/p>

Did you see that?<\/p>

And you used all of this lovely vocabulary<\/p>

used \"convey\", \"come up with\",and the examiners will notice that.<\/p>

But what the difference wasis that was \"real speech\".<\/p>

You were doing your best to communicate<\/p>

that idea, and I could feel that,and the examiner will feel that as well.<\/p>

So that was wonderful.<\/p>

I think what you just did there,that's the alter ego that you need.<\/p>

Yeah.<\/p>

I'm here, and I wantto communicate to you.<\/p>

I want to tell you my thoughts,my beliefs, my experiences,<\/p>

and that's what you just did perfectlyin that little speech.<\/p>

Yeah.I think so.<\/p>

I think I take maybe a little bitfalse approach to my speaking.<\/p>

Like I need to boost- of course-<\/p>

my vocabulary but I need to improvemy feelings and my emotions what I really<\/p>

feel with that sentenceand speak from my heart.<\/p>

And when you do that for you,that's what's going to help you get into<\/p>

the 7.5, the 8 and the 8.5 and maybeeven band 9 as well because you've got<\/p>

a very high level of grammar,you speak very accurately,<\/p>

you've got a very high levelof vocabulary and the next step is to use<\/p>

all of that to convey yourideas and your beliefs.<\/p>

So how do you feel after havingdone this speaking test?<\/p>

Actually I always feel after<\/p>

some speaking test- even mock test I<\/p>

always feel that I just wonder why I wasso stressed out to to pressure myself<\/p>

to think of all the big wordsand everything like fancy big words.<\/p>

But actually I think that I have a lotto say from my heart about the questions<\/p>

so I think I need time topractise more about<\/p>

learn to speaking fromwhat I truly think rather than<\/p>

too much emphasis on vocabularyand grammar and things like that.<\/p>

One thing I'd like to ask you is about how<\/p>

you deal with being nervous because I knowa lot of people also feel very nervous<\/p>

when they're doing the speaking testand you said that you used to stutter<\/p>

and you used to get incredibly nervousand now you're getting better at that.<\/p>

What advice or what kind of tips wouldyou give to people on how to improve<\/p>

their nervousness and their condition?<\/p>

I think<\/p>

if it's something that you really want<\/p>

to, then you find a way, even when youare so afraid of making a mistake.<\/p>

But I think you just need to face it<\/p>

when you lack something you need to fight<\/p>

more like to put yourselfin that situation to get familiar<\/p>

with and as you just said before,\"practise makes perfect\".<\/p>

Okay, great.<\/p>

Well, thank you very much for comingand doing the speaking test.<\/p>

Yeah, thank you for your feedback.<\/p>

I think it's very useful for me to improve<\/p>

myself, not just in English, but in the wayI communicate by the language.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n