Practice task transcript

Topic card

Examiner: Thank you. ... In this part, I am going to give you a topic, and I want you to talk about it for one to two minutes. Before you talk you have one minute to think about what you are going to say, and you can make some notes if you wish. Do you understand?
Candidate: Yes.

Examiner: OK.
Candidate: I went through a system of education that was basically ... it was a state education system so I didn't study at any private schools. And I went through a slightly strange education system in that I went to a first school, a middle school and a high school, and most people don't go to a middle school, so that was a little bit different, so I went to three schools. And they were three schools all in the village where I lived, which is a fairly small village. But I think I was very lucky because the quality of education at the time was ... was pretty high in ... in these schools, and the teachers were also pretty good. I think for the type of education that was delivered at that time— I mean, looking back now, it would have been great if the system had been slightly different because it didn't really prepare you for, I think, living in the real world and having to work and know what— it didn't really teach you life skills. It was very much rote learning, it got us through our exams. We all – I think most people at the school – did what you could consider to be extremely well, academically speaking, but I think— and I sort of enjoyed it at the time, I think. I didn't really enjoy or dislike it. It was just something that I did and I was fairly happy at school and I had a very big group of friends. So, it— for me it was more or less fine. But looking back I think it would have been great to have done more project work, it would have been great to have studied things that would have helped us much more to go out into the real world to get jobs, and do more practical things. 

Examiner: Thank you.

Follow-up questions

Examiner: We've been talking about your own experience of education. I'd like to discuss with you one or two more general questions related to this. Let's consider, first of all, successful studying. What are the important factors to successful studying?
Candidate: Successful studying ... I think motivation is key – you have to be very motivated to study. Studying for studying's sake is something which does not motivate people, so, you have to see a reason, a purpose for your studies. So that's very, very important. Also self-discipline is incredibly important, you need to be organised, I think you have to set aside time to study, otherwise it just doesn't happen. You have to be methodical you have to work out what it is you need to cover, you have to set yourself a little bit of a timetable. And I think if you ... if you're motivated and you have— you're organised and self-disciplined, then ... then, I think that is basically the secret to ... to studying successfully.

Examiner: Thank you.

Discussion questions

Examiner: What things would you like to have learnt at school?
Candidate: Well, as I sort of mentioned before, I would have liked to have learnt more life skills-type things. By that I mean very basic things, I think, when you are at school, about how to approach, for example, renting a flat, paying bills, budgeting, general accounts. I think they are things that maybe some people do naturally, but for me, I struggled with those sort of things when I started out. I think, these sort of life skills, you know— tax, what is tax, paying tax, filling in forms, insurance – all these sort of things that you come across and you have to be able to do when you leave school and you get a job, or you work for yourself, they're all things that could be so much easier if you had a little bit of preparation, help and support before you actually had to do them. And I think that that would be so much more useful than some of the things I learnt when I was at school which I have never used and would never really want to use. So that would definitely be one thing that I would recommend – that I would have liked to have learnt when I was at school.

Examiner: How has education in your country changed since your parents studied?
Candidate: Well, one very important thing I think, one very important aspect is, well, I'm a woman and I have been through the education system and gone to university and have not suffered at all from any discrimination of the fact that I am a woman. I could study exactly what I wanted. But when my parents were at school, my mother, she became a secretary because that was what was expected of a woman at that stage, so she went to secretarial college. And I'm sure she would have been capable of doing an awful lot more, but because she was a woman, that is what was expected of a woman. You would get a job and become a secretary or something similar, and then you would probably get married and you would stop working and you would look after the kids.That is obviously no longer the case, and I think that's a very important difference.

Examiner: Does education fit the current needs of the society where you live?
Candidate: To be honest, I don't know very much about education currently in Britain, as in terms of primary and secondary education to know—. My understanding is that it is better than it was when I was at school. It is more practical. I think children are involved a lot more in sort of project work, team-building activities. It's less strictly academic and it's more applied in a lot of schools to the real world, which is very positive. But to be honest, I don't really know much more than that.

Examiner: Do you think that education prepares people for the world of work?
Candidate: Well, as I said, it didn't when I went through the educational system in Britain – it really didn't at all, to be honest. And now I am under the impression that yes, it does more, but I don't know. To be honest, for example, now I live in Spain, and there's— unemployment is incredibly high for young people in Spain, and I don't think the educational system is preparing people for that and the fact that they are probably going to have to look for jobs outside Spain, and move abroad. It's definitely not preparing them for it linguistically. Their— the general level of language learning in Spain is very, very low, and so in that aspect, definitely not.

Examiner: OK. Thank you very much. That's the end of the speaking test.