Shadowing Practice: IELTS Speaking Test - Perfect Band 9 - Learn English Speaking with Video

Let's start off by talking about drinks.

In your country, what do people normally offer guests when they come to their house?

In my country, they usually offer maybe a lemonade or tea, coffee, that's the usual norms.

And what do people normally drink in the summertime?

Again, a lemonade because it's more refreshing or maybe like a fruit juice, a cocktail, something that's more chilled.

And do people drink anything special at weddings?

We do have something called kheer, which is like a sweet dessert drink.

And people usually have it after their meal.

And the tea is usually served after the meal as well.

And it's super sweet.

Now let's talk about food.

What's your favourite food?

So if you're going by cuisines, I really like Italian.

But if we're going to pick something mundane and normal, I like avocado on toast or oatmeal, something healthy.

And if I were to visit your country, what dish would you recommend?

I really like something called dosa.

It's like a savoury crepe and it's had with something called chutney.

It's really nice, light and I think everyone likes it.

What do you normally have for breakfast?

Again, dosa.

It's a breakfast dish, but people also have it throughout the day.

There's something called idli, which is also had with chutney.

and we have a variety of other dishes which is also very carb based.

And when you were a kid what was your favourite breakfast?

I was a very boring child.

I liked oatmeal.

I had oatmeal almost every day.

And do you ever have anything special to eat for breakfast on the weekend?

I really like waffles but I'm aware it's like more on the unhealthier side so I keep it as a treat.

But yeah, I would say waffles.

Now let's talk about hobbies.

What is your hobby?

I really love watching movies.

I watch a lot of movies.

I watch different kinds of movies, different languages.

Doesn't matter to me if it's a different genre.

I love movies.

Have you always loved movies?

I think I got more into movies when I joined university.

Before that it was books for me, but then after joining university it became more of movies.

Now let's talk about your university studies.

What did you study at university?

So I did my undergraduate in Doctor of Dental Medicine

and it was five years and then I did a year of internship in the university as well.

And do you think you will continue with those studies or are you done with studying?

So I am planning on doing a master's program but it's in healthcare management, not a specialization within dentistry,

because I do want to venture into the leadership side of healthcare.

And how useful will your university studies be to you in the future?

I mean, university is such an important part of everyone's life.

Without that, how are we supposed to, I don't know, perform as a working individual within the society?

And I think it just lets you be more and do more with yourself.

Now let's talk about museums.

Did you enjoy going to museums when you were a kid?

I don't think I have been to a lot of museums

but I have been to a few and I really enjoyed it.

I like how calm, I like the art, it's really a calming space.

Are there any interesting museums in your country?

There's plenty but I don't think I've been to any.

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Do you prefer to go to museums by yourself or with your family and friends?

I think it's enjoyed either ways.

By myself, it's like a therapeutic experience because you're by yourself, you're taking it all in, but it's also enjoyable when you go with someone else.

When you visit a different country or city, do you think it's important to visit a museum or not?

I think that differs from each person.

It's very personal to each person.

Everyone has a different taste.

Some people might like going to concerts and others might like going to museums, but I do enjoy going to museums.

And I think it talks a lot about the culture and the traditions of the place that you're visiting.

So I think it's an important part.

So recently I attended a seminar on dental aesthetics.

It was very interesting to me because prior to wanting to be a dentist, I wanted to become plastic surgeon.

So aesthetics has always been such an interesting topic for me.

And it's also something that's changed so much over time.

We as humans have evolved so much into including aesthetics as part of our daily regimen

and it's become such an important part of our lives.

And over time, it has changed so much.

There's so much a person can do to enhance their features, their appearance.

And I think we've come to a stage where everyone is beautiful

because there's just so much enhancement a person can do to improve their appearance.

And modern medicine has taken this such a long way.

And it's always

so interesting to me to see how much of a difference a person can make to their natural appearance using these enhancements.

And recent years, a lot of these facial enhancements have become like an everyday thing.

It's become very normal, very mundane almost.

people go get their face done as like a thing on the weekend.

It's not really like a big procedure.

It's not something that they're scared of anymore.

It's something that comes to them naturally.

And I love that people get to make that choice and they don't have to settle for what they have.

And it's very interesting to me from a medical point of view, how people can achieve facial harmony and like how they can correct their disharmony.

It's very interesting to me and it's also a confidence building thing for a lot of people.

I know a lot of people struggle with their image and body dysmorphia.

There's just so much they can do to correct that now.

So we talked about a piece of work you did for your job.

We're going to move on to part three now and we're going to discuss life satisfaction and job satisfaction.

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What are some aspects of people's lives that they sometimes feel dissatisfied with?

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The first thing that comes to my mind is obviously work.

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Most people are dissatisfied with how much they make

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or how their work makes them feel or how less time they get to spend with their families.

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So the first thing that always comes to my mind is work.

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and then people fight their own battles with family, family affairs, maybe body dysmorphia.

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A lot of things, I think, but work obviously comes to my mind first.

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Would you say someone who is ambitious is always a positive person?

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I mean, it can be like two sides of a coin.

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Someone who's always ambitious doesn't necessarily always have to take it in a positive manner.

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Sometimes you can overwork yourself.

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while working towards those ambitions.

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And that's not always a good thing.

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But having an ambition is obviously very important.

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It's what drives you forward.

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And that's definitely a positive thing.

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What do you think is the most important thing to have a satisfactory life?

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I think doing things for others, something good, something that makes you feel good.

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And while you can also observe someone else being happy about something that you've done for them.

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for me personally that would bring a lot of satisfaction

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and just trying to find happiness in whatever you're doing I

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think that's the general goal for most people I think

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that would make someone happy now let's talk about job satisfaction

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which do you think is more important having a high salary

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or working with a great team that's like a double-edged sword

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because you can have a great team but you could be making nothing and that could make you unhappy

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but you could also be making a lot of money

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and have a horrible team working with you that could also make you unhappy.

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So I don't know.

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It's like you can pick your battle.

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It could go either ways.

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And all jobs have their own downsides.

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So you can never have a perfect job.

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Do you think there are certain careers that lead to higher satisfaction than others?

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I'm sure if someone loves what they do so much, then obviously they'll be really satisfied with their work.

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Whereas someone who's just working to make money it can be tedious

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and quite hectic and can lead to long-term dissatisfaction

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so yeah do you think changing jobs regularly is a good strategy for job satisfaction it depends

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because sometimes you have to keep changing your jobs

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because you're not in the position that you would like to be in

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so i understand the whole changing job situation

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but in the long term i I always think how would it look on your CV?

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It wouldn't like people would question you.

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Why have you changed your job so much?

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But I guess you can explain it to them why you did what you did, but it depends on each person.

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That's the end of the speaking test.

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You did very, very well.

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There's one big problem I'd like to discuss with you.

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If you would like your speaking assessed one on one, we do offer that as part of our VIP package.

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watching the video I'll offer you 10% off all you have

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to do is just go to the description click the link

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and you can get 10% off today

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so part one excellent some answers were a little bit short

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but fine overall and the answers that you gave

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that were a little bit short were normal

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because you it was just natural for you to give a

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short answer it wasn't like you were trying to give short answers

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because you didn't want to speak or you felt you weren't capable of speaking.

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So it was absolutely fine.

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Part two, let's do part three and then we'll do part two.

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Part three, nothing bad, but a few strategies or tactics to give you that could improve.

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One thing that could help you develop your answers a little bit more would be examples.

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So you often discuss the ideas.

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You often said like, oh, there's two sides to that.

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And you talked about both sides but you very rarely gave concrete examples

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so you could give concrete examples from your own life or

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or something else like you want to go into dentistry

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or like are people in the medical profession

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and more satisfied than the legal profession for example

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or an uber driver are they you know less satisfied than

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somebody who is a dentist all day I don't know I'm not a dentist

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but I don't know how satisfied they are

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and sometimes you also tend to just list lots of things

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and your first answer you listed quite a lot that's not

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a huge for you that's not a huge problem my worry would be in the real test

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if you go in and you're just like well it could be this

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and it could be this

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and it could be this you're not really developing your answers you're not going deep on your answers

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so instead of going wide which is what you tend to do

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which is like well there's this idea and this idea and this idea it would be better to go deeper,

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which is let's pick this one and really think about it and really discuss it and think of an example for that.

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And then maybe, okay, but there's this other side to it and really go deep on that one.

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As I say, it's not a huge problem.

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That wasn't the big issue that I'm talking about.

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I think you did quite well in part three.

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I just think these would be additional strategies because on test day, you can feel quite nervous and subconsciously a lot of students,

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even at a very high level like you just want the test to be over.

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And they tend to just give very short answers because even subconsciously like, I don't want to keep talking.

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Just stop asking me questions.

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I want to go home.

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So I want to give you the best chance of getting a very high score.

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Part two was where I'm a little bit concerned.

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Okay.

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You had no problem talking about that.

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You had no problem developing that.

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I'm just a little bit concerned that the question said, Describe a piece of work.

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So a piece of work is like something you produce.

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That's because I haven't done anything recently so I had to like make something.

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But would it be better to make something up that is a piece of work rather than a seminar?

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The thing is I can talk a lot about this.

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Like if I were to make up a piece of work, I don't know how much I could talk about it.

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This comes to me naturally.

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Right?

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Yeah.

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That's one of the things I think you did very well.

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High I would say it was, I attended a seminar and I had to produce a report about it, or I had to write an email about it,

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or I had to do something with the information that I got.

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You could argue that attending a seminar is technically a piece of work.

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It is a part of my work.

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Yeah, it is.

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But I think the way that it's structured.

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Yeah the question is kind of unrelated to my answer.

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So because it was saying what this piece of work was, okay a seminar is you could say who you did this piece of work for,

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who helped you so somebody did somebody help you go to a seminar

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and explain why you felt so satisfied with this piece of work.

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That's indicating that you produced something, at the end you produced something.

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I think that you could get away with it

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and people would say okay I attended a seminar

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that kind of is a piece of work that's why I'm not too concerned

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but I wanted to get your feedback I wanted you why did you decide on

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that did you think about it or like I thought about it

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because I haven't done anything that's of significance recently

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so I was like this is something I could go on talking about

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and I did attend the seminar so I was like maybe I could develop on that.

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That is an excellent strategy to steer the conversation towards things you feel comfortable talking about.

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You did very well in that respect and it meant that you spoke perfectly about that but not about that specific thing.

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Yeah that specific topic.

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Now most examiners would probably let you away with that because it's ambiguous whether that is a piece of work or not.

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The fact that we're even talking about it and the fact that in the comments people are

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arguing about it probably and shows

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that most people would most examiners would give you the benefit

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of the doubt especially considering the rest of your answers were great

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and so I think that you would be fine

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but what I would be concerned about is what

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if on test day you do that for part two

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and then you do

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that for a few questions in part three as well they ask you something that's a little bit ambiguous

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and you decide to talk about something that's not really about that and you keep doing that.

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I don't think you would, but it's just as a teacher, I want to warn you about that.

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For this test, I think you're fine, but I have to give you some kind of warning on that because I wouldn't want you to just keep doing that.

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Let's talk about your scores for pronunciation.

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Excellent.

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Every single word that comes out of your mouth, I understand.

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Very clear, very easy to understand.

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You also have amazing higher level pronunciation features like your intonation.

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It sounds very natural, like a native English speaker.

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And your word stress and sentence stress, again, is very, very natural.

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An easy bound nine for pronunciation.

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The other thing that is amazing is your vocabulary and your grammar.

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I didn't hear a single grammatical error.

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I didn't hear a single vocabulary error.

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You also have amazing vocabulary.

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I love the way that you did steer it towards your area of expertise.

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So you're saying things like daily regimen, facial harmony, and they can correct their disharmony.

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It was excellent all the way through.

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You have no problem discussing any of those topics.

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And it wasn't as if when you're talking about food or drinks that you don't know how to talk about those.

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You're still using very high level vocabulary.

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You're using a lot of idioms that are accurate and appropriate.

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It can be like two sides of a coin.

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That's like a double-edged sword.

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You didn't just insert them to try and use them for the sake of it.

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It was appropriate because you were saying, oh, there's actually two sides to the story.

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It's a double edged sword.

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So vocabulary and grammar are excellent.

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Your fluency is also excellent.

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Fluency also for the purposes of the IELTS speaking test also includes, did you answer the question?

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So your fluency is a band nine, like everything. but

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if you continue to just not answer the question the examiner

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despite you speaking at a band line level is forced to give you a lower score

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so just be very very careful with that

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but for the purposes of this video and because we discussed

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that it's kind of a piece of work you would get

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a band line well done any questions anything thank you

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so much if you would like to see more speaking tests, click here.

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Or if you would like a full speaking course, click here.

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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

This video has 275 sentences and 3106 words to shadow. The speech runs for 17:42. The speaker talks at a natural 175 words per minute, close to everyday conversation. 86% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.

Key vocabulary in this video

15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
seminar noun	/ˈsɛmɪnɑɹ/	A class held for advanced studies in which students meet regularly to discuss original research, under the guidance of a professor.
satisfaction noun	/sætɪsˈfækʃən/	A fulfilment of a need or desire.
vocabulary noun	/vəˈkæb.jə.lə.ɹi/	A usually alphabetized and explained collection of words e.g. of a particular field, or prepared for a specific purpose, often for learning.
satisfy verb	/ˈsætɪsfaɪ/	To be enough (for)
topic noun	/ˈtɑpɪk/	A subject; a theme; a category or general area of interest.
sword noun	/soɹd/	A long bladed weapon with a grip and typically a pommel and crossguard (together forming a hilt), which is designed to cut, stab, slash and/or hack.
dish noun	/dɪʃ/	A vessel such as a plate for holding or serving food, often flat with a depressed region in the middle.
facial adjective	/ˈfeɪ.ʃəl/	Of or affecting the face.
dentist noun	/ˈdɛntɪst/	A medical doctor who specializes in teeth.
enhancement noun	/ɪnˈhæns.mənt/	An improvement or supplement that tends to increase a sense of esteem.
aesthetics noun	/ɛsˈθɛt.ɪks/	The study or philosophy of beauty.
examiner noun	/əɡˈzæmɪnɚ/	A person who investigates someone or something.
pronunciation noun	/pɹəˌnʌn.siˈeɪ.ʃən/	The formal or informal way in which a word is made to sound when spoken.
meal noun	/ˈmiːl/	Food that is prepared and eaten, usually at a specific time, and usually in a comparatively large quantity.
naturally adverb	/ˈnæt͡ʃ.(ə.)ɹə.li/	In a natural manner.

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
get away with verb		To get away, or escape, taking (something) with one.
get off verb		To move from being on top of (something) to not being on top of it.
make up verb	/ˌmeɪk ˈʌp/	To constitute, to compose.
start off verb		To begin.

Grammar in this video

The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:

Structure	In the video
Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now	have been · I've been · We've put
Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it	is usually served · are dissatisfied · be really satisfied
Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing	kheer, which is · idli, which is · dishes which is

Pronunciation to watch

The speaker uses 59 contractions and reduced forms, such as you're, don't, I'm. Say them the short way, as you hear them.

The “th” sounds: aesthetics /ɛsˈθɛt.ɪks/, therapeutic /ˌθɛɹ.əˈpjuː.tɪk/, unhealthy /ʌnˈhɛl.θi/
The “sh” and “zh” sounds: satisfaction /sætɪsˈfækʃən/, dish /dɪʃ/, facial /ˈfeɪ.ʃəl/, pronunciation /pɹəˌnʌn.siˈeɪ.ʃən/, profession /pɹəˈfɛʃ.ən/
Long words — get the stress right: satisfaction /sætɪsˈfækʃən/, vocabulary /vəˈkæb.jə.lə.ɹi/, examiner /əɡˈzæmɪnɚ/, pronunciation /pɹəˌnʌn.siˈeɪ.ʃən/, naturally /ˈnæt͡ʃ.(ə.)ɹə.li/

How to practise with this video

Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like seminar, satisfaction, vocabulary.

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.

Shadowing technique: read the full step-by-step guide →

Shadowing Practice: IELTS Speaking Test - Perfect Band 9 - Learn English Speaking with Video

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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

Key vocabulary in this video

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Grammar in this video

Pronunciation to watch

How to practise with this video

What is the Shadowing Technique?