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