 You're continually improving. What we want to do with you is to make sure that next time you do the test, you absolutely 100% are going to get at least the score that you need. Take those steps. I think you'll get at least a band seven, if not repeat the band eight that you got. So let's start off by talking about your work. Do you work or do you study? Well, I'm currently working. I finished my studies two years ago, so I'm currently working as a pharmacist. And where do you currently work? I currently work in Dublin. I came in Dublin a few months ago. I worked previously in Romania from where I am. And why did you choose that career? Well, I think my mother has some influences on me, so she's an assistant. And she always thought that pharmacy will suit me, and it's an easy job and a respected job. So she kind of pushed me to do pharmacy, so I chose pharmacy in the end. And do you enjoy your job? I do now. When I was in Romania, I didn't like it that much, but now in Ireland, the system is different, and I feel more appreciated for my work, so it starts to grow on me. Good. So now let's talk about your home time. So where are you from? I am from a small town in Romania, so I grew up in a really small town, and then I moved to a larger city near to my town, and it's called Negresht. So it's difficult for foreigners to pronounce it. And do you like your home time? I didn't like it when I was a child. I like it now because it's a small town, a small community, where you can raise your children with no problems, with no bad influences. So it's a good place where you can grow up and be a decent person. How often do you visit your home time? Now that I'm living in Ireland, probably I will visit it once or twice a year. But when I lived in the other city in Yash, I went to Negresht maybe twice a month. And how do you think your home time could be improved? Well, because it's a small community, maybe just improve the job offers, try to raise the local economy. Most of the people that are living there are farmers or they are working in construction. So maybe just improve that part and they can live better. Now let's talk about your childhood. Did you have a nice childhood? Yes, I did. Like I said, it was a small community, so my parents knew every neighbors that we had. They weren't afraid to leave me with kids on the street just to play or let me out in the night going with my friends to have some fun. So it was nice. What is your first memory? My first memory is a funny one. I was two years and a half and I ran from my grandparents' house to go to kindergarten where my aunt was going. So I missed her so much that I ran out of the house and come back with her a few hours later. And when you were a child, what did you want to be when you grew up? I always loved medicine, pharmacy, science in general. So I knew I would be a biology teacher, doctor or pharmacy, something related with the science part. And what hobbies did you have when you were a child? Well, I tried a lot of hobbies. I tried singing. I tried sports. I did actually karate. I did a lot of them, but I never found one that suits me 100%. So I don't think I have a hobby. I hope you're enjoying the video so far. To thank you for watching this video, I want to give you a free course that has helped thousands of students improve their IELTS speaking score. It's called the IELTS speaking challenge and what it's going to do is take you through every single part of the test and give you strategies for part one, part two and part three and also allow you to practice at home for free and get feedback. It is 100% free. All you have to do is just look in the description below this video, click on it, enter your email and we'll sign you up and send you all the information. Thanks very much and let's get back to the video. All right, that's the end of part one. We're going to move on to part two now. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to show you a cue card with a topic on it. You should read that cue card and you will have one minute to prepare an answer. After that one minute, I'll let you know when the one minute is up and you should speak about the topic on the cue card for up to two minutes. Is that okay? All right, there's the cue card. I'll start the stopwatch. Please speak for up to two minutes. Okay, so I'm going to talk about my first computer that I got when I was like eight or 10 years old. Back then, we didn't have an internet connection so it was pretty easy to use it, especially for a kid that did some computer science in school. So basically I used it only for basic games that I already had pre-installed on my system, listened to music, movies that I borrowed from my friends. It wasn't hard for me to learn computer science on that one because with the development of the technology, we got also internet connection in our house. So practically I started to grow up on the same time with the technology. So now the main benefits that I'm getting from that are me knowing to use and discover more utilities of the computer, new programs. I can manage to solve my own problems with the computer hardware or software. I also don't have any difficulties when it comes to work, to solve a problem with my system at work. Also, I think because we, as a generation, grew up with the computer in our houses, we got a lot of advantages of this because nowadays everyone is depending on a smart device or a computer, so that helped a lot. That's the end of part two and we're going to move on to part three. All right, so we've been talking about technology and we're going to continue to talk about technology for a little bit and we're going to talk about technology as it relates to education. So the first question is, do you think someone can learn a language using an online course? Yeah, I just did that. It's not like I've learned a language, a new language, but an online course can help as much as a face-to-face teacher can help you if it's a good course and it has enough explanation on it. They can help you a lot to get the information that you're missing. So for example, if we are speaking about a vocabulary course for a beginner, a good course will provide the learner the basic words, the basic grammar and everything that they have to know in the beginning of learning that language. And should schools use more technology in the classroom? Well, I think so because children nowadays use their smart mobiles and smart devices all the time. So they are very familiar with technology and schools should really improve their classrooms. I don't know about Ireland in general, but in Romania we didn't have computers in our classrooms. We had only one room with computers and the rest were all old books. So every new information that we got, it came from books and not an actual technology piece or, I don't know, let's say we are studying biology. It's easier to study something that you can see 3D, like with holograms than seeing a book. And do you think one day AI, artificial intelligence will replace teachers in the classroom? No, I don't think that because a teacher can come with some experience in the back, can come with more than artificial intelligence can bring. Like it's a personal experience that a student can correlate with the lesson and remember that particular story from the teacher's experience and correlate it with what he learned. So I don't think a computer could do that even though it's programmed to be like artificial intelligence, I don't think it will accomplish that. Now let's talk about technology and society. So has technology improved how we communicate with each other? It has, if we are speaking about smartphones, for example, now we can not only can call each other, we can text in a few seconds, we can video call, we can use the internet connection to see each other from big distances, like I am with my family, the smart device that I'm using is helped me a lot to keeping in touch with them. And why are some people now reducing the amount of time they spend on electronic devices? I think at some point we got overwhelmed by the technology around us and now people are trying to realize that the social connection that are between people are starting to fade, so they are trying to restart real connection between people and give up a little bit of social internet and actually doing some socialization. Okay, good, well done, that's it over, you can breathe now, you can relax and you ended up with socialization at the end, so. This video is sponsored by us, IELTS Advantage and the IELTS VIP course. The IELTS VIP course is the most successful IELTS course in the world. That is a fact because we have more than seven, eight and nine success stories than any other IELTS course in the entire world. We do that by simplifying the whole IELTS process, supporting you with some of the best IELTS teachers in the world and being with you every step of the way until you get the score that you need. So thank you for making it this far in the video, I want to give you 10% off our VIP course. All you have to do is just look down in the description, you will see our special link that you need to get 10% off, just click that and you can sign up. If you have any questions about the VIP course, always feel free to get in touch with us. Chris at IELTSAdvantage.com is my email address. We answer 100% of the questions that we get. Hope that you will become a VIP. If not, enjoy the rest of this free video. So now I'm going to give you some advice and I'm basing this advice on the fact that you've done the test three times now. You got about six the first time in speaking, then you got seven and then you got eight and speaking before. Okay, so you're continually improving and what we want to do with you is to make sure that next time you do the test that you absolutely 100% are going to get at least the score that you need. Cause as a pharmacist, you need a band seven, what you're struggling a little bit with writing at the minute, but sometimes students will focus so much on writing. And let's say they're at a band seven for speaking and they'll focus so much on writing that they forget or they just are a little bit complacent when it comes to speaking. So the advice I'm going to give you now is to make sure that you would never fall below a seven and to make sure that you get there. Okay, so first of all, I'm going to go through each part and then I'm going to go through the four marking criteria. So you did something in part one which is very, very common where you were a little bit nervous in the beginning. So when we're talking about work, you were a little bit more hesitant, shorter answers and that is totally normal and the most examiners will expect that because part one is important but it is designed to let you ease into the test and to let you warm up. So that's why they ask you questions about work, about your hometown, about your home, which are quite easy questions to try and get you warmed up. And as you went through, when you were talking about your hometown and more when you're talking about your childhood, you were talking far more fluently, you were developing your answers, it was more relaxed. So when you're talking about work, it was like not robotic but when you're talking about hometown and childhood it is like talking to a friend about it. So if you and I were in a coffee shop and I was saying, did you have a nice childhood? You're like, yeah, I did and just talking naturally and that was great to see. So part one was really good. The examiners would never listen to your first few answers that were a little bit, let's say they were a little bit short, fluency a little bit hesitant, they would never base their score on those first few answers. So some people watching now would be like, oh, she gave one short answer, she gets a band six. That's not how the examiners think or how the marking criteria thinks. The examiner will base their score on the totality that your total performance, not on one short answer or one answer where you hesitated, for example. So for part one, the length was good, you really eased into it, your fluency was excellent, some nice vocabulary in there, some grammatical errors, but we'll talk about that when we talk about the four marking criteria. Part two, I think part two was the area that you struggled with a little bit compared to the other parts, because there's a lot of pausing, a lot of hesitation. So your fluency wasn't as good in part two as it was in part one and part three. I'll tell you why I think, but it's always good to hear from the student, why did you think that you were struggling or you didn't do a bad job, by the way, is this in comparison to the other parts, you were, there was more audible pauses. Yeah, I've noticed that myself. Maybe because I tried to, I forgot about some ideas that I had in my head and I tried to see if I got all those dots on the card. I know I don't have to speak about all of them, they are just guidelines, but I don't know, I didn't, at some point I felt stuck and didn't know what to say, so maybe that's why with the long pauses. So the audible pauses are normally caused by one of two things. One is linguistic or related to grammar, related to vocabulary. So you're trying to think of the correct word, for example. The other one is related to ideas, people trying to think of content, basically, things to say. Was it linguistic where you're trying to think of the correct vocabulary and grammar or was it just ideas? Ideas, yeah. So the examiner will also notice that because if you are constantly stopping because you're trying to think of the correct verb tense or trying to think of the correct vocabulary, that's a signal to the examiner that you have a problem with the English language. If you're pausing because you're just trying to think of the next thing to say, that's not really a problem with the English language, it's more of a problem with the subject. So the examiner should take that into account. But one of the things that I noticed that you did, which normally causes a drop in fluency related to content, is you listed a lot of things. So you're like, so for example, it could be, I went to the shop and I got bananas and apple and cheese and cereal and they're trying to think of the next thing and the next thing and the next thing. It's much easier just to pick one of those things. So you're talking about software versus hardware and go a little bit deeper into that and tell a story related to that or example related to that. Because I think a lot of people go through part two and they're just like, okay, I need to talk about this. Let's list a lot of things about that. Then this, list a lot of things, this. And then you run out of time or run out of things to say. So I think when you're doing the real test, don't be afraid to go very deep into one thing and especially pick one thing that you're comfortable talking about. Like for example, I got, when I was a little girl, I got windows 2000 or something like that and how the changes that it made were blah, blah, blah, blah. And I really learned a lot about programming through that. So that's much better than we had windows and we had Adobe and we had this and we had this and we had this. You see what I mean? That just makes it easier for you to be more fluent. So I think that's the only, in terms of fluency and coherence, that's the only area of concern that I would have. You weren't like, your fluency wasn't terrible but we're just making sure that you would never go below a seven. And if you, that topic sounds like something you know a lot about, but if you got another topic that you don't like, that could turn into a problem for you. And part two is such a big part of the test that if you get a topic you aren't comfortable with plus you're trying to think of content that can really drag down your fluency scores. So that would be my main bit of advice to go deep on a few things you feel comfortable talking about rather than trying to list everything. And examples and stories are great. Like the story you told about when you're a little girl running after your auntie, you are very, very, very fluent because you're just talking naturally. It's much easier to talk about something you know about than to try and think of something completely abstract and to list lots of things. But overall, I thought it was good because you got to the two minutes and most people don't get to the two minutes. And speaking in a foreign language for two minutes is not easy. For part three, I think you did really, really well. For part three, you had no problems with any of the questions. And a lot of the questions like for example, will AI replace teachers? Why are some people reducing their time on their electronic? Those are difficult questions. And the examiners will, if they think that you are seven or a band eight or a band nine, they'll ask you more and more difficult questions to see if they can stretch you and really test you. So if you get difficult questions, that's a good thing, be happy. If they ask you really simple questions, like you know, then you might have a problem. But you coped very, very well with those questions. I liked the way that you answered the questions, gave an explanation, gave an example to help you fully answer, fully develop the question. So part three, you finished very, very strongly. And in the test, don't be afraid to keep going in part three or you should keep going in part three because people often feel tired and they just want it to be over. So they get very short answers for part three. Often people do that subconsciously as well because they're just like, oh, I'm sick of this. But you did a really good job on development. Development is the most important thing, I think. Apart from the foreign market criteria, development in part three is the most important thing and you did a good job with that. So, well done. Let's talk about foreign market criteria. Your strongest area is pronunciation. Like many Romanian students, the clarity of what you're saying is very, very good. I can understand 100% of what you're saying. Any IELTS examiner would be able to understand 100% of what you're saying. So that means that you would be getting at least a band seven for pronunciation plus you have very good use of intonation, sentence stress, word stress, connected speech, all these higher level pronunciation features. You have a very good command of those which means you would get more than a seven for pronunciation. So when you combine, the examiner can understand everything plus you're using those higher level pronunciation features. So that's probably why you got a band eight the last time because you can't get a band eight without using a higher level pronunciation features. For fluency and coherence, your coherence is very good because you answered every question properly. You stuck to answering the question rather than going off topic and you fully developed your question. So for part one, you don't need to give very, very long answers. You gave a few answers that were quite short at the beginning, but the rest were fine. Part two, you talked for two minutes, so that was fine. And part three, you fully developed your answers by answering the question, explaining, giving examples. So that was good to see. Fluency was very good in part one, quite good in part three. Dropped a little bit in part two, but we've already talked about that, that how to get around that. And I would encourage you to don't be complacent about speaking and maybe practice part two, because part two seems to be the area that you need to, that the only area that you really need to worry about. It depends on the subject. Yeah. It depends on the subject. So maybe I should do more subjects with various teams and have an answer about. And some ideas. It's a pint of sweat is better than a drop of tears. You wanna do the hard work during your preparation, make it as difficult as possible. So the test day is a breeze, and it's no big deal for you. So that would be my only concern. Your fluency is very good. It's at least a bond seven level, but as I said before, if you got a topic that you know nothing about, and they're gonna ask you about the same topic in general in part three. So it's like, you said before you got, they're asking about history and you don't know anything about, or you don't know very little about history. So that could cause fluency problems because you don't have a problem with the language, but you might have a problem with the content. You're trying to think of those things. But in general, it's rare. I don't think you would ever get a topic that you know nothing about. Like history is something that you know a little bit about. You know that what the First World War was or the Second World War. So they're not testing your knowledge of the Second World War or the First World War. They're talking about whether you can talk about a range of topics. Your vocabulary is quite good. You have a really nice range of vocabulary. I asked you about many different topics. You have no problem talking about all of those topics. So that, because I was asking about a range of topics and you have topic-specific vocabulary related to all of those, you have, that would indicate that you have a very wide-ranging vocabulary. Because if you ask someone about five or six different topics and they have topic-specific vocabulary but all of those, that means that you could talk about pretty much any general topic. So that was very, very good. Collocations are something that I would work on for you. When you're listening to English and reading English, notice collocations, underline them, put them in a book, work, try and practice them, review them and use them. Collocations is one of the areas that tells an examiner the difference between somebody at a band six, band seven level and a band eight, band nine level. Because if you listen to native English speakers, they will use collocations just intuitively without even thinking about it. Whereas someone at a band six, band seven level will know the words. They might have a very wide-ranging vocabulary but they might not be able to put those words together which would make little mistakes with that. I'm not too worried about your vocabulary though. I'd just be careful with collocations but in the test, don't be thinking collocations, collocations, because that will affect your fluency. Because there's a balance between fluency and vocabulary and grammar. The more you think about vocabulary and grammar, normally the lower your fluency but just be confident that I think your vocabulary is good enough to get a band seven at least. The one area that I would be concerned about is small grammatical errors. You seem to have two things. One would be, you seem to be translating sometimes. So that's probably because of the way I would guess that you learned English through translation rather than learning it through communication. The other problem is little fossilized errors. Fossilized errors are errors that you make and you've no idea that you're making them. So common fossilized errors are things like articles and prepositions. They don't affect, you didn't make article mistakes by the way but you made some preposition mistakes. They don't affect communication. So if you're in Dublin and you're in a bar and you're talking to your boyfriend, he won't correct you if you say of instead of in. You know if it's a preposition because he understands exactly what you're saying. So that means that you never pick up on the mistake that you're making and you make it again and again and again and again and it becomes hardwired natural into your brain. A good way of getting around that is to record yourself and listen to you. So I think the best advice that I could give you would be get part two questions. Look at them, prepare them for one minute, record on your phone and then listen back because that's going to help your fluency, it's going to help part two, but it will also help you pick up on these little grammatical errors that you're making. You're not making any serious grammatical errors and you're not making them like every single sentence because if you were, there's no way that you would have got a band seven and a band eight the last two times that you did it and I'm not really concerned that you'll get a band six or a band six point five, but we want to make absolutely 100% sure. These little errors that you're making with grammar are also present in your writing. So I think working on them is going to help both your speaking and your writing. So we want to make your preparation as efficient as possible. So I think doing that in combination with the reading and the listening and the writing that we suggested for you is going to really help you out. Any questions about the speaking test or any questions with the advice that I gave you? Not now, not I was thinking about it. No, I think you should be really confident and if you take those steps, I think you'll get at least a band seven, if not repeat the band eight that you got last time. So well done. That's good to hear. All right, good.