Shadowing practice: IELTS Speaking test band score 9 with feedback

This clip is the opening of a real IELTS speaking test, later scored band 9, with feedback attached, which makes it useful english speaking practice for anyone preparing for the real exam. The examiner, Samson, asks his questions in a British accent, and the recording moves at 171 words per minute, the pace measured for this catalogue, so you can follow the question and answer rhythm of the actual test without it running away from you.

The material sits at B1, and the whole scene is a two person interview: one voice asks, one voice answers, the same shape as the real speaking test. Mehnu Shafi is asked about her leisure time, her weekly schedule, and who she spends her free time with, ordinary subjects that come up again on band 9 answers, so the vocabulary you pick up here is the kind you can reuse when you sit your own ielts speaking topics section.

Three lines from the opening show what to listen for before you shadow this line yourself.

• "Would you please tell me your full name?" is the examiner's full question, and the rising politeness on "please" is exactly the register IELTS examiners use, so drilling it is real british english pronunciation practice for formal requests.
• "from 9 in the morning to ungodly hours at night" mixes a plain time phrase with the colloquial word "ungodly", and matching its casual stress is what separates a fluent answer from a memorised one.
• "we just sit and watch our favorite drama series in the evenings" runs several ideas into one breath, so the challenge here is keeping pace with Mehnu's timing rather than the individual words.

Work through the opening in order, since each question sets up the next.

• Start with the examiner's own opener, "Okay, I think we can start.", then read the formal context in the next line aloud once before shadowing it, so the test's own register is set from the first line.
• Shadow "Would you please tell me your full name?" on its own a few times to get the polite question intonation right, since it is the line every real test opens with.
• Move to Mehnu's answer that begins "Well, actually I have quite a hectic schedule in the week" and take it clause by clause rather than as one block, it runs on for several lines before reaching "from 9 in the morning to ungodly hours at night".
• Finish on "we just sit and watch our favorite drama series in the evenings, which is called This Is Us" and repeat it until your pacing matches hers at 171 words per minute, this is where everyday english conversation practice turns into exam ready fluency.