IELTS GT Test – Speaking Mock Test # 16
[The examiner asks the candidate about him/herself, his/her home, work or studies and other familiar topics.]
PART 1:
Topic: Daily Routine
Q. What would you like to change in your daily routine?
A. Well, first, I would like to get up before 6.30 in the morning so that I get enough time to get ready for my office. I would also like to dedicate an hour or so to go to a gymnasium and take my dinner before 8.30 pm and finally, go to sleep before 11.30 pm. Those are the obvious changes I would like to have in my daily schedule.
Q. Are all your days the same?
A. Not really. The usual office days are kind of same, but days off and vacations are quite different. On a weekday, I have to spend the whole day at my office while on a weekend, I can spend the day the way I like. Finally, whenever I have a long vacation, I can travel to my hometown to meet my parents.
Q. Tell me about your typical weekday and your typical weekend.
A. On a typical office day, I leave home at 7.30 am and work till 6.30 pm. Then I take a bus to return home and sometimes I do some shopping on my way back home. Once I am home in the evening, I do my laundry and cook my dinner. At around 8.30, I either read for a while or watch my favourite TV shows. Then I eat my dinner and go to bed at around 12.30 am. But before I fall asleep, I read for a few more minutes.
On a weekend, I wake up late and then read the newspaper. I skip my breakfast and do some shopping from a grocery shop. Sometimes I visit friends and hang out with them till the evening. Otherwise, I watch live sports or watch a movie on TV. I stay outside till 9.00 pm and get back home to cook my dinner. If I do not have office works the next day, I remain awake till the late night.
Q. What is the balance of work/study and free time in your normal day?
A. I try to maintain a balanced routine so that I do not have to be stressed out in my office or at home. I try to avoid procrastination as it is one of the leading causes of anxiety, in my experience. I also socialise with my friends and visit my parents whenever I have a long vacation. However, I would like to take up some more social and outdoor activities to have a really good daily routine.
PART 2:
[You will have to talk about the topic for one to two minutes. You have one minute to think about what you are going to say. You can make some notes to help you if you wish.]
Describe something you own which is very important to you.
You should say:
- where you got it from
- how long you have had it
- what you use it for
and explain why it is so important to you.
Cue Card Answer:
Having driven an old and used car for years, I just didn’t know what it really felt like driving a new one until, of course, I bought my first brand new Honda Accord with all of my savings from a local car dealer in my city almost 2 years ago. It was like a gift to myself, for I could do it all by myself. It was also a moment of little “pride” when I was able to embrace the “newly-discovered” freedom of owning a brand new car.
My new car puts me in charge of my own life by taking me wherever I want to go. From home to work, from work to grocery shop, from grocery shop to lake, from the lake to restaurants, wherever I need to go, my 6 cylinder engine Honda accord with its 5-speed automatic transmissions and shiny black exterior is always there for me like a trusted friend. Offering great fuel efficiency as well as meeting the latest emission standards at the same time, my black “road warrior” often takes me to visit my parents and friends whether they live far from me or close by.
Life takes me to places, and having a car has made my life really easier. Besides, living in a city with a few reliable public transportations, a car can prove out to be more than important to a person who has to commute at least a couple of hours a day to and from work. Having many happy memories associated with my car, I just love my “strong 4-wheeler” because it offers me an opportunity to get out of hectic city life whether it is for a pleasure ride on a bright sunny day, or just hitting a nice café in the countryside, away from the city. Finally, my car is really important to me as it protects me on the roads with its airbags, seat belts, back-up cameras, and tons of other safety features that save lives which wouldn’t really be available otherwise.
PART 3
Discussion topics: How values can change
Q. What kinds of possessions show status in your country?
A. Well, in my country an expensive car is often a symbol of status when you are out in public. When most people in my country cannot afford a car, someone who has a BMW or a Mercedes Benz automobile is thought to be a rich man with some sort of social influence. Besides, a large house in a posh area is also a symbol of status as a very few fortunate people have houses in such areas. I believe status symbols are a prevailing phenomenon in every part of the world and disposable income, luxurious furniture, electronic gadgets, political power, education and job are also being considered for status in modern society. A tiny percentage of our population owns their own yacht and private jets. Such ultra-rich are also members of private clubs and own large businesses. These possessions and positions are also considered to add status to their portfolio.
Q. Do you think it was different for your grandparents?
A. As far as I recall, expensive cars, private jets and costly electronic gadgets were not widely available during my grandparent’s era. That kind of consumerism is a fairly modern thing, so this couldn’t have been used as a representation of something valuable, I guess. So basically, money, large houses, cultivable lands, gold and jewellery, social status and political power were the possessions and positions people considered as symbols of status in the past. Many of these things are still considered important for having status in society and they will matter in the coming years, I believe. But I think that we are living in a more competitive and materialistic era and we have a tendency to show off our earthly possessions than that of our ancestor’s time.
Discussion topics: The consumer society
Q. Modern society is often called ‘materialistic’. Why do you think this is?
A. We are living in a time when our ambitions are higher than the sky and we have so many options to choose from. The Industrial Revolution and technological advancement have created a society where we have easy access to abundant of things we need and want. We take pride in our material possessions than our inner values and moralities. Some believe that, with terribly high competition, it is hard to achieve success and own a portion of the resources and money that billions of people are fighting hard to gain. So we feel somewhat special to achieve material gains, and others envy us for our luxurious cars, large houses and a hefty bank balance.
Gone are the days when people valued someone’s quality, kindness and morality more than their possessions. With a declining shift towards early possessions, we no longer are satisfied with a few things. Our necessity and expectation know no bound and no doubt our modern society is largely based on capitalism and materialism.
Q. Do you think consumerism is a positive or a negative development?
A. An obsession with buying material goods or items, which we often do not need, can never be a good trend. We are already living in an era where the lion’s share of the world resources are distributed among the fortunate few and the rest of the population are struggling hard to earn their basic needs. Thus the consumerism habit makes the disparity of resources more acute.
Moreover, consumerism is a plague that lures us to buy things that we scarcely need. Thus with it, we are jeopardising our economic stability and increasing our debts. The throwaway society that we have created for our consumerism habits is actually harming the world and its environment. The unquenchable thrust we feel for buying every new model available in the market is making us more selfish and diverting us from the feeling that our life is more than owning material possessions.
Discussion topics: The consumer market
Q. What is the role of advertising?
A. In general, the advertisements are meant to inform the customers about a product or a service. In this modern era, adverts are basically paid promotions that use different strategies to highlight the benefits of a product or service to influence a target audience’s attitudes and/or behaviours. For instance, all the advertisements from the beauty industry are aimed to sell their products by highlighting how they can make us more elegant.
However, some advertisements aim to enhance the brand reputation of a company or a product. Finally, the government and the non-profit
organisations often use adverts to aware people or inform them about something
Q. How do you think the Internet will affect buying patterns in the future?
A. I believe a large proportion of the consumers will use the Internet and e-commerce platforms to buy products of their choice in the future. With the rapid popularity of e-commerce websites, people would not like to visit a shop to get a product. The convenient means of payments, including credit cards and virtual money, would be more widely used and online merchants would be ready to sell everything online. Companies will get even better at using data to predict consumer needs and make more accurate recommendations.
Moreover, people would sell their used products online besides buying and compare a single product from different vendors from shopping comparison sites. Since many young people would be using the Internet, young consumers would rise in the future and they would often buy products for the elders. Finally, it is often predicted that mobile Internet shopping will dominate the overall shopping trend and online shopping would become more ubiquitous and more simplified in the future.