IELTS exam in Brunei - May 2009 (Academic Module)

IELTS exam in Brunei – May 2009 (Academic Module)

This report is about a recent IELTS exam in Brunei – thanks to A for letting us know. Pay attention to the cue card in Speaking – apparently some questions can come as a complete surprise!

Listening test

Section 1: reservation through telephone regarding moving home.
Section 2: a talk about Fire training
Section 3: a discussion about a Horse Shoe crab

The 1st and 2nd were okay for me, but the 3rd was very confusing. The way the presenter spoke was very fast and it sounded like “bla..bla.. bla” to me.

Writing test

Writing task 1 (report)
We had a bar chart of population of six countries in percentages for 2000 and prediction of 2050.

Writing task 2 (essay)
Reading books can develop our imagination better than watching TV, do you agree or disagree?

Speaking test

Cue card

I did the speaking fluently but was a bit shocked at the 2nd stage, where I was asked to talk about
“WHO WOULD BE THE FAMOUS PERSON YOU WOULD LIKE TO MEET IN YOUR LIFE”.

Honestly, in my whole life I never thought about any famous person I’d like to meet. This question made me waste my time just to think of who the person would be. I panicked and lost a chance to write down some points to talk about. I still managed to say something but not as good as I could if the question was a different one.

Discussion

The follow-up questions were:
- Would you like to be famous?
- What is the most important thing the famous person you mentioned before should do, to make them a good role model?
- What is the difference between actors/actresses nowadays and in the past in you country?
- How and why your parents liked them back then, compared to the actors nowadays?
- When was your last holiday and what did you do?