TEST 1 SPEAKING CAMBRIDGE ENGLISH IELTS 4

CAMBRIDGE ENGLISH IELTS 4

TEST 1

SPEAKING

PART 1 The examiner asks the candidate about him/herself, him/her home, work or studies and other familiar topics Example Friends → Are your friends mostly your age or different ages? [Why?] → Do you usually see your friends during the week or at weekends? [Why?] → The last time you saw your friends, what did you do together? → In what ways are your friends important to you? PART 2 Describe an interesting historic place. You should say what it is where it is located what you can see there now and explain why this place is interesting You will have to talk about the topic for 1 to 2 minutes. You have one minute to think about what you’re going to say. You can make some notes to help you if you wish. PART 3 Discussion topics Looking after historic places Example questions How do people in your country feel about protecting historic buildings? Do you think an area can benefit from having an interesting historic place locally? In what way? What do you think will happen to historic places or buildings in the future? Why? The teaching of history at school Example questions: How were you taught history when you were at school? Are there other ways people can learn about history, apart from at school? How? Do you think history will still be a school subject in the future? Why?

ANSWER KEY

Model Answer PART 1 Q.  Are your friends mostly your age or different ages? Why? A. Most of my friends are contemporary to me in terms of their age. But yes, I have few friends who are senior to me and I can remember having 2-3 friends who are younger than I am. Basically, most of my friends are from my college and that’s why naturally they are mostly my age. I have few friends from my locality and they became my friends because we played together and shared many common interests. Somehow in my locality, young people prefer playmates of their age. This is one of the main reasons they belong to my age group. Q. Do you usually see your friends during the week or at weekends? Why? A. That depends on the circumstances. However, I see my college friends almost every single day during the weekdays as we have classes together. Sometimes, I meet them during the weekend as well since we plan our weekends and holidays together. The friends who have some sort of part-time jobs, mostly meet me on their weekends. Q. The last time you saw your friends, what did you do together? A. A couple of days ago I went to watch a movie at a nearby cineplex with my friends. The cineplex was showing a recently-released Hollywood movie and we planned to watch it together. On that day, we ate our lunch together in a restaurant and we talked about the European Football league final. We had much fun together and that was a great hangout with my friends. Q. In what ways are your friends important to you? A.  My friends are important to me in many ways. Firstly, they share many common interests that I have, and that’s why I enjoy talking to them and spending time with them. I never feel bored or get out of topics while I am with them. We often have lively conversations among us about our studies, future plans and personal interests. They are indeed very good friends of mine as they have often extended their helping hands in my crisis time. My friends often plan activities that I find exciting and thrilling. They share their class notes and study materials with me and that’s quite helpful for my studies. In fact, friends are the persons with whom we can share everything and my friends listen to my thoughts very attentively. I play for weekends with them, study with them, share my thoughts and opinion and that’s why they have a special place in my life. PART 2 Historical places always intrigue me, as they almost always carry some kinds of special memories and messages in order to help us understand and respect the people of different eras, which significantly shape up our world one way or another. Today, I would like to talk about one such historical place which probably holds more significance in our part of the world called “India” than any other places because of its devastating political, economic and geographical effects. The name of this historical place is called “Palashi”, anglicised as Plassey, which is located in Nadia district in the Indian state of “West Bengal”. It is particularly well known due to the Battle of Plassey which was fought in June 1757, between the private army of the British East India Company and the army of the last independent king of the then undivided Bengal called Nawab Siraj Ud Daulah. By the way, the name “Palashi”, the name of a village on the bank of a river called “Hooghly”, is derived from the Bengali word for a red-flowered tree named “Pôlash” (but “Butea” in English”).  Anyway, this is the place which witnessed the monumental betrayal of a Bengali army general called “Mir Jafar Ali Khan”, working under king Siraj Ud Daulah, which eventually led to the defeat of a 50000 strong army men of the kingdom of Bengal against an army of only 3000 soldiers, led by an English Lieutenant-general called Robert Clive. By visiting this great historical place, one can see the monument, commonly known as “Palashi” Monument, which is marked with shrines, obelisks and memorials to the fallen generals and soldiers of Siraj Ud-Daulah, who fought to their deaths to save their last independent king.  Anyway, this is a very significant and interesting historical place, mainly because it was from the war victory of this place that the British were able to establish their reign all over the Indian subcontinent slowly but surely. Besides, this place also provides a glimpse of a very glorious and rich past of a nation which still hasn’t fully recovered from the setback of a devastating defeat more than 250 years ago. PART 3 Q. How do people in your country feel about protecting historic buildings? A. Most of the people in my country would advocate protecting any significant historic building. The historic buildings in my country are the icons of our heritage and we feel very proud to have them. It is not unlikely for people to protest against any plans or activities that might negatively affect our tradition and historical significance, including those building. I can recall an event from my college days when our teachers asked us to leave the classroom and take part in a rally that would march towards the local administrative complex to protest a decision taken by the local authority to diminish an old building to establish a hospital there. This old building was more than 90 years old and it was once a part of the early ‘independence movement’ in our country against the invaders of a foreign power. The protest took a great shape and people stayed there until the local authority assured that they will talk to the higher authority about it. The protest continued to grow and eventually, after a few weeks, it won its victory when an alternative landscape was chosen to build the hospital. In fact, these types of events in my country are not rare and that shows our feelings about the historic buildings. Q. Do you think an area can benefit from having an interesting historic place locally? In what way? A. An impressive historic place encourages national and international tourists to travel to this area, and this, in terms of tourism and economic development, is very important. Local people get many benefits from a renowned tourist spot including employment opportunity, better exposure of their culture and custom to the world, and finally, they get many development-works in their area since the government invests in promoting the area. Apart from that, having a historic place is an area is a matter of pride and people of such area can easily describe their hometown or locality to the people of other parts of the country. Q. What do you think will happen to historic places or buildings in the future? Why? A. I think the prominent and popular historic places and buildings which are famous among national and international tourists would survive and the government would try to preserve them because of their historic and economic significance. Besides, many other historic places which are the part of the national pride would also continue to exist as they are known throughout the country and government would take care of such places. However, there are many historic buildings and places that are less popular. Such buildings and places might face catastrophic destiny in a distant future. As the population of our country is increasing rapidly, the necessity would appear to diminish such buildings and to establish new multi-storey buildings. I guess such less important historic buildings and places would cease to exist after a few decades when the generation of that time would give less priority to their past heritage than their present necessity. Discussion topics: The teaching of history at school. Q. How were you taught history when you were at school? A. I mostly learned about history from our academic books besides a few journals and TV programmes that I read and watched. Our teachers emphasized on the history that was part of our academic curriculum and some of the teachers were really good at explaining significant national and international historic events in details. Sometimes the school arranged day-long trips to different historical places as part of our class activities and the local tour guides told us a lot about the historical significance of such places. We also learned from the stories we heard from our relatives and teachers about many historical events, especially about our struggles for achieving a sovereign country, and about the First and Second World Wars. Sometimes the teachers inspired us to read history books and gave us assignments on particular historical events and we had to complete our assignments as part of our academic exams. This was an excellent way to learn more about history. Q. Are there other ways people can learn about history, apart from at school? How? A. Definitely, there are many other ways people can learn about history, and that varies from reading books, watching history channel to travelling to historically important places. Books offer us an excellent opportunity to learn about the history of the world. If someone is interested in learning history, he has countless options to read famous and resourceful books. Apart from that, many television channels, like History Channel, National Geographic Channel, Discovery Channel etc. offer excellent documentaries on history that can be very helpful for learning about world history. Besides, when people travel to different places, they can also learn more about history. In fact, there are many different ways of learning about history than to be taught history in the classroom by teachers and an inquisitive person has many options to learn about history. Q. Do you think history will still be a school subject in the future? Why? A.  I most certainly believe that history shall always be a part of school syllabus in the near and far future. The fundamentals of history and its importance are learned from the school and that has a lasting impact on students. The inquisitiveness about history is formed among students when the teachers explain some great historic events in the classroom. The significance of history can never be denied as it teaches us our past, our ancestors and the world our grandparents used to live in. Those lessons create our impression and concept about the world we live in. We can’t build a glorious future without knowing our past and the school plays an important role in forming our curiosity in history. That’s why I believe that history will always be a major subject in schools in the future.