雅思口语-近期考试参考答案

Female Voice: [Chinese text 00:00:02.23] English exam podcast. INTRODUCTION

Ben: IELTS Speaking: Recent questions with model answers or model answers for recent questions is probably a better more congruent way of saying it. Anyway, in this tutorial, we are going to look at recent cue cards that students have seen on the exam recently. So, we're talking August, September. August and September. What they've done is they contacted us and they said hey, I had this cue card. I had this cue card and obviously, I don't want you to memorize these answers, but I do want you to have a listen. I'm going to break down my answer and I'll also share some tips and some vocabulary regarding what's going on in this answer.

CUE CARD # 1

So, let's jump straight into it. So, this is a cue card seen recently by a student and it said: "Describe a time you enjoyed. You must include: - where you were - who was with you - why you enjoyed it, and - what you were doing". Now, obviously, we do need to make this a little bit more formal. It's not a good idea even though you did enjoy it.

CUE CARD # 1 ANSWER

Yes, last Saturday I was drinking with my friends. It was really good fun… because I very much doubt that you can pull a very big story out of that. Maybe you could. It did cross my mind about thinking-- about explaining an event like that. I was going to talk about a curry I had with my friends then I thought there's not that much I could really talk about. So, I searched my memory and I went further back and I was like actually yes. What I'm going to do is talk about a family event because there are lots of characters there and I do have quite a few funny memories and also what I did here is I kind of cheated a little bit because I took one funny memory I had from a different family event and I put it in this one because it kind of fitted. Anyway, let's have a look. Just to review the cue card again, I'm going to talk about a time that I enjoyed, where I was, who was with me, why I enjoyed it, and what we were doing-- what I was doing. So, let's start. I would like to talk about a time I went with my family to do some canoeing and cycling near Portsmouth in the south of England. There was quite a lot of the family there at the time: my mum, my uncles, my grandma, my brother, and my cousins. Almost everyone. If my memory serves me well, I think it was around early 2000 we went down. I think I enjoyed it because there are a lot of funny memories. We played a lot of pranks on each other. For example, I clearly remember pushing my uncle off his bike. I remember it because it was the first time I'd ever gotten one over my uncle. I was cycling very close to him so much so he ended up without any space on the track and eventually came off the track and slipped down the banking. It made everyone laugh so much because he usually bullied everyone else. Anyway, before cycling, we went canoeing, but for me the water was insanely cold. I think it was because I had just flown in from Spain where it's much warmer. Apart from the shivers I got, it was thoroughly enjoyable. It was a thoroughly enjoyable day especially the fish and chips in the pub in the evening. And that's my talk about an enjoyable day.

LET'S ANALYSE ANSWER # 1

Okay. So, there were a few things there. One, there was the anecdote about something with my uncle with a bike ride and I can't remember exactly. I think it was a totally separate holiday, but I just wanted to put that story in there because it was quite funny I thought at the time, but also I've got the anecdote. I can go into details and talk about bike track. I even used the expression I got one over my uncle and this means to take advantage of them or to win them, to beat them or to like win in a certain sort of like activity. It was good because this is true. He was the one who was usually a bully with all of us especially because he was the biggest and I remember it clearly. We were just cycling there and there was a steep banking on one side and I just slowly kept on nudging him to the side until it was too late and he didn't realize it. Anyway, this is the kind of activities we get up to in our family. We just do lots of nasty, but funny things to each other. Anyway, that was another phrase that I use. Anyway, just to pull the talk back on track, I also used some useful phrase that I have used before and I'm using it again because I really think it's universal. I heard a student use it and I thought that's a really useful phrase because it's a collocation and it's quite practical. You could put it in pretty much any talk. So, this is what I'm trying to do now. I'm trying to incorporate it into most talks and the phrase, I hope you remember it, is if my memory serves me well. If my memory serves me well, I think it was around early 2000 we went down. Here, just for the detail-oriented people, because we are from the north, my family-- we always say to go down. However, I think the politically correct term is to say up because we're going up to London. I don't know. There's a bit of a farce, but-- So, we always say go down to London, but it was kind of a contradiction because later I said I flew in from Spain but anyway, I don't think the examiner will be so fixated on the use of that kind of language. So, I also used some other phrases like insanely cold. I didn't say it was very cold. I said it was insanely cold and just really does emphasize it and I used shivers. I got the shivers; when your body is shaking. Another expression I used is so much so. "I was cycling very close to him so much so he ended up without any space on the track". So, this phrase indicates that the previous statement was true to a very great extent and therefore it has the result I mentioned. So, I was very close to him so much so… I was so close to him he ended up without any space. Then, as I normally finish-- as I normally do, I finished with "and that's my talk about an enjoyable day". If you were paying attention, which you probably were, you could see-- you could hear that I methodically went through where I was, who I was with, why I enjoyed it, and what we were doing. I mentioned sort of like most of the points maybe once or twice and I put in an anecdote there. It's just a case of planning and working through these bullet points. I think there's also a little bit in skill-- a little bit of skill in choosing like the right memory to share in this instance. As I explained before, I wasn't going to talk about the curry night I had a few days ago. Right then, let's talk about-- by the way, and with that specific cue card, the student said that the follow-on question was about how people spend their time which is quite interesting. So, if I had the question, you could talk about different hobbies. Some people like to read books, some people like to do sports. Some people like to play games. I think it really is quite open. Of course, I didn't get the whole brunt of the follow-on questions.

CUE CARD # 2

Let's move on to cue card number two. "Describe any physical skill you learned. You must include: - where you learned it - why you learned it and - how long it took to learn. "