#13 - IELTS Speaking test in Iran – April 2016

Test # 13

- What is your full name?

My name is (name)_(surname).

- Where are you from?

I'm from (city's name). It is the (biggest/metro/industrial….) city of the state of (State’s name), situated in the (northern/western) part of my country.

- Do you like working in a group?

Yes I do! I definitely feel that more ideas can come out if people work together and the potential of the project can be increased.

- Did you work in a group when you were a child?

Yes! I used to participate in group recitations, and group dances, and we were always taught to be co-ordinated and adjust with others. So I feel comfortable even now to work along with many people.

- What are some advantages of group work?

As I said more viewpoints can be approached, and delegation of jobs can be done so that there is no stress of work on a single individual and quality of work can be maintained.

- Are there any disadvantages in group work?

Yes in fact there are! As we say ‘too many cooks spoil the broth’ similarly a lot of people on a single project might have conflicting opinions, and it is hard to please everybody in the group.

- Do you like photos? Why?

I love photos!....it is a great pastime looking at photograph sand reminiscing on the good time we’ve had. Also nowadays I put a lot of photographs on social media. So I love taking pictures at different places for uploading them.

- What advantages does taking a photo have?

There are many! It is easy nowadays to click photos with smartphones and all, so whenever we feel like capturing something, we can instantly do that. Also many personalized gift ideas are based on photographs, like collages or hand-made frames which people love to receive. What I’m trying to say is it is ver satisfying to take photographs nowadays.

- Tell me about a family photo you remember well.

There is this one photo that was taken at someone’s birthday party. I, my father and mother were standing in a part of the lawn talking to each other when a photographer there offered to click a picture. We posed without thinking, and that photo turned out to be the best one till now. Our smiles and expressions were very natural and the background and the light were also somehow perfect at the time. We’ve gotten it framed in the living room of our house.

- Would you like to take a course in photography in the future?

Ummm yeah sure! I mean it’s an additional skill, that’s definitely not gonna go to waste. Given a chance, I’d like to take it up in the future.

- What advantages does living in the countryside have?

The serenity, fresh environment without as much noise and dust as that in the cities, open breezy fields are some things that cannot be experienced in big cities. The country life is calmer and not very demanding and stressful, so one might say it is better than the life in polluted, cramped cities.

Cue Card

Talk about a time when you had to wait for something for a while. Please say

- What you waited for

- How long you had to wait for it

- Whether or not it was a good idea to wait for it

- How you felt while waiting

The time that I had to wait for something was a train. I was going from my hometown Ahmedabad to Mumbai. The journey was of 8 hours and I intended on sleeping the journey off. Therefore I took a ticket of the night train departing my station at 10 ‘o’ clock. However 10 minutes after I reached the station, there was an announcement stating that the train was running late by half an hour, so I was prepared to wait for 30 more minutes till my train arrived. But it so happened that the train did not come till 11 ‘o’ clock; all us passengers were waiting getting really frustrated. One of the gentlemen from a family sitting on a bench beside me went to inquire about this in the reservation office because there were no further announcements being made. We came to know that the train had halted unexplainably at some station for some maintenance work in the engine so even the officials were not sure of the time when the train would arrive. We were all very disgruntled but still had no choice but to wait for the train. I called my parents and informed them that I was still at the station and had not left yet; even they became worried. We were waiting till half past 1 which was really very very late….it was almost around 3 and half hours later than the original time. Relieved, we climbed on to the train and eventually it got late for us in the morning to reach Mumbai as well. It was really maddening while waiting as it was a hot summer night and the place wasn’t very breezy. There was a slight consolation that there was a lot of the passengers like me who were waiting on the station. Overall, it was a very very irritating and very tiresome experience for me.

Discussion

- What things do people have to wait for in your country?

People in my country wait for public transportation, for food at a restaurant, in line to pay bills or at a supermarket billing counter, and such similar everyday things.

- Some people say being patient is not always the right thing to do. Do you agree?

No I don’t. I see many impatient people getting their way using hostility and all like honking on the streets continuously so the car in front of you has to irritatingly let you pass. However, I feel a little patience and civic sense works more in our favour. For example, in the same situation, if the second car can just wait for a couple of minutes after honking once, the first car would obviously give him a way to pass through.

- Do you think technology has made people less patient?

Yes I do! Everybody now wants instant gratification thanks to technology for speeding up all our tasks. For instance, if your smartphones hangs for a few seconds, you would immediately turn it off and on again, instead of waiting that same amount of time waiting for the phone to get okay. Besides being impatient, I feel people also lose their common sense along with that.