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March 2009

IELTS exam in Vietnam – March 2009 (General Training)

A.T from Vietnam is reporting about his General IELTS exam:

Listening test

Section1: A conversation about booking tickets at a theater. We had to fill date, time, type of credit card, number of card (too long: over ten digits), name, address and other information to make a booking.

Section 2: A talk about school with gaps-filling.

Section 3: A conversation about people finding jobs, young people, women who stopped working to bring children up. Who do companies avoid recruiting? Who companies are afraid of hiring because of employment retrenching?

Section 4: A talk about company doing survey before launching a new product. There were 6 multiple choice questions and 4 gaps-filling questions.

Reading test

Section1: Questions about accommodation rent advertisements and library information about books, book lending, operating times.

Section 2: Questions about some kinds of school in England such as: dependent school, local school, etc.

Section 3: A passage about farming origination of human. Half of questions were matching information. The rest were True/False/Not Given.

Writing test

Writing Task 1 (letter)
Write a letter to a company about one-month temporary jobs. Letter should include skills and experience of the candidate, which department the candidate would like to work at, what can be learned from this job.

Writing Task 2 (essay)
Young people spent so much time for watching television. Why do you think this is? What can be done to encourage young people have more active lifestyles?

Speaking test

Interview
The examiner asked me about my work, why did I like my job; join a party, what kind of people (young or old) go to a party.

Cue card
Talk about a cook you know. Where did he/she learn to cook? Explain why you think he/she is a good cook.

Discussion
The examiner asked about family party, whether I think that people will be less cooking at home in the future, whether schools are responsible for nutrition problems of their pupils.

IELTS exam in Japan – March 2009 (General Training)

This update came from Japan where Y recently took her General Training IELTS exam.

I think that Japanese students should really pay attention to it, because Y had a problem during the exam and it could happen to anybody, who uses the materials from British Council Japan to prepare for IELTS. Here it is:

I don`t remember the topics in the Listening and the Reading, but the questions were 100 times more difficult that when I was practicing. I bought a book from British Council in Japan, so I was practicing in reading and listening doing exercises from that book. It was really easy and I felt comfortable, but in the exam the questions were nothing like the book. I got so stressed on the day of exam, because suddenly questions weren’t familiar at all!

Writing test

Writing task 1 (letter)
An international company is offering a temporary job for work experience, write a letter to apply for that job. You need to explain
-where did you find this information
-why you want to apply this job
-what qualification you have
-what position you want to apply

Writing task 2 (essay)
Young people are spending too much time watching TV. What do you think of it and how do you think this problem could be solved.

Speaking test

Interview
The examiner started with ordinary questions like
– What is your full name?
– What do you do? Study or working?

I said I was working so the examiner asked
– What kind of job do you do?
– Is it an easy job or a hard job for you?
– If a visitor is visiting your house what do you prepare for them?

Then there were questions about gifts
– When do you usually give someone gifts?
– Do you like choosing gifts?

Cue card
The 2-minute topic was about weather and seasons.
What is your favorite season? Why?

I was taking well but lost the idea what to say, so examiner asked couple of questions. He probably knew I can speak well but got confused, so he asked “What do you think about a seasonable job or about weather”. I felt he gave me another chance to speak.

Thank you Y for this update and we all hope you get a good score.