My IETLS Speaking Part 1 Practice
Greeting
Afternoon,
Nice to meet you
My full name is Leung Shek Lun, you can call me Alan.
Passport: Sure, here you are.
At the moment, are you a student or working?
Well, during this period, I am now self-employed as an online tutor teaching physics and mathematics in IB, GCSE, and I am also an online student on online platforms, like Coursera, edx.org. Besides, I participate in various IBM Quantum computing events, as I am fascinated by this advanced technology and implication to the world in the near future.
Part 1 – General topic
4-5 minutes
Introduce yourself
Interview
Show the examiner the ranger of language
About familiar topics
All the question are about you and your life experiences
Answer the questions with details, examples, and reasons, stating preferences
Say how much you like it, give an example of what I like about it, give a reason why I love it
Your hometown, work/study
What do you like/ dislike about your hometown?
Topic-food, free time, movies, music, holidays, festival, sport, hobbies
What kind of food do you like? Do you enjoy cooking?
A. These verbs all mean "like" or "dislikes" and are usually followed by the "–ing" (gerund):
I dislike eating ice-cream on the beach.
I don't like eating ice-cream on the beach.
I enjoy eating ice-cream on the beach.
I don't mind eating ice-cream on the beach.
B. After the verbs "hate, "love", "like" or "can't bear" we can usually use both the "–ing" or "to + verb" pattern.
I love eating ice-cream on the beach. OR I love to eat ice-cream on the beach.
I like eating ice-cream on the beach. OR I like to eat ice-cream on the beach.
I hate eating ice-cream on the beach. OR I hate to eat ice-cream on the beach.
I can't bear eating ice-cream on the beach. OR I can't bear to eat ice-cream on the beach.
I can't stand eating ice-cream on the beach. OR I can't stand to eat ice-cream on the beach.
C .
Do you like cooking?
Oh, I like cooking, but I’m not quite keen on it. I enjoy cooking with friends when we have house parties, it is so warm that we share our enjoyment in delicacy. I will try new recipes searched from the web. However, I seldom cook for myself and my family, as I am too busy for work. It just takes too long to prepare a nice meal.
Do you prefer home cook or restaurant meals?
I would prefer a restaurant meal. I can have a variety of choices every meal while I do not need to think about what I should eat and utilize my time to other more valuable things like working, online learning or tutoring, building projects, hanging out with friends.
What kind of food do you like most?
Oh, this is a very hard question. I love food very much. I have tried a diversity of cuisine, like Japanese, Korean, Western, Chinese, Thai, Vietnamese, Indian, Indonesian, Malaysian, Portuguese, Turkish, etc. Ummm. In particular, I like Mediterranean food most, like kebabs. Not only is it delicious, but it also provides the most balanced proportion of nutrients among others.
Are there any types of food that you dislike?
Well, I’m not very keen on eating food with pork. That's not a matter of taste, just because I love piglets very much. They are very adorable and very friendly to humans. Though it may be difficult to find a dish without pork nowadays, it is worth having a meal without one kind of animal that raises our awareness of animal rights and environmental issues.
Do you like playing any sport?
Yes, I enjoy playing a variety of sports, from running, playing football to playing karate. In particular, I am fond of playing karate. Not only will it be a sport in the coming Olympiad Game Japan, but also a type of martial arts that can strengthen your awareness and self-defense, concentration, and focus. What’s more, through repetitive training, I can learn my own physical limitations and even self-control my emotions. I learn to realize my stability in my breath, temper, spirituality, reaction to the surrounding here and now. So, I feel refreshed after practicing karate.
https://www.wadokaikarate.com/why.htm
Do you enjoy watching sports?
Ummm, I don't have a very strong preference for watching sports, but I watch Olympic games annually for sure. Actually, I like playing sports alone or with my friends, but I don't like watching sport on the course or via television. Most of the time, I already have enough sedentary lifestyle thanks to my work nature, I would rather prefer having physical activities as mentioned.
What do you like living in your hometown?
I like the countryside of Hong Kong, especially in Long Kai, Sai Kung. It is one of the most beautiful beaches in Hong Kong that I visit there to chill with friends nearly every year.
About home where I grew up and now
I lived in Ma On Shan from when I was a child till now. As I recall, there were not many restaurants and entertainment sports facilities. The place was crowded. I would travel to another region to enjoy these services. This decade, there have been more and more private housing due to the advent of transportation, renovation of the MOSTown, establishment of a sports stadium and library. It becomes so convenient that more and more people prefer to live there.
What do you like about your current accommodation?
I now live in Ma On Shan, which is located in Shatin, New Territories. I like the natural, beautiful scenery here, and I can breathe breezing fresh air. Although it is the countryside, there are several plazas connecting together form a very convenient network of supermarkets. Also, there are multiple choices of transportation to anywhere in Hong Kong.
Is there anything you don’t enjoy about living there?
Although there are various forms of transportation, it’s time-consuming to distancing to other districts in Hong Kong. For example, it takes me an hour to Mong Kok via MTR. Therefore, I need to have very effective time management for outings.
Are there any things about the place where you live that you do not enjoy?
Hong Kong is an international city offering free-market competition with the lowest taxation in the world. However, thanks to capitalism and neoliberalism, few enterprises monopolize markets, which leads to a gradual decrease in diversity of choice to customers over decades. The prices of housing and inflation have been surging over the years, while there is only a subtle increase in monthly, which constitute the phenomenon of the highest Gini Coefficient in the world. However, the most unpleasant feeling to me is politics here. Our freedom of speech, human rights are being censored and deprived by the functioning states. People will not be able to express themselves freely in the near future.
I dislike the old-fashioned working style here, as most employers demand their employees to work overtime without a proper proportion of incentives. Hardly can we strike a balance between work and life here, and we are bound to sacrifice our spare time with family and friends. Even worse, we are demanded to take learning-course to well-equipped to familiarize with cutting-edge technology and management skills, leisure time is squeezed tremendously. Considering all these drawbacks in working at the office, I would prefer to shift my working paradigm to online business, so I can still manage my time freely and keep myself healthy while I can earn a living online.
Are there any types of films that you do not enjoy?
I’m not really into the new year film that is released every Chinese New Year holiday, to give the audience hope for the year to come and live. However, the plots of these genres are getting less well-developed and the jokes are not hilarious anymore. For me, this kind of film is inferior and tasteless.
What do you like most about your work?
I am an academic tutor in Physics and Mathematics. I pursue the vocation because I love to explore the nature of the universe and like to find patterns from the surroundings. Being an academic tutor allows me to share the passion with the next generations in the aspects of scientific investigation and its implication to our daily life. Take wave as an example, WIFI signal can store and transmit binary encoded information in reflection, diffraction, interference. However, the signal can be multicasted to the various routers by taking advantage of Doppler's Effect. So we can learn that physical science can provide convenient solutions to our life, but it also arise privacy issues. What’s more, students' questions sometimes are inspiring and philosophical, these encourage me to dive deeper into the discipline.
Do you enjoy visiting museums?
I definitely love visiting museums, even if I travel abroad. Museums provide a brief introduction of the subject matter that we’re fond of in a more vivid way. To recall, I have been visiting Hong Kong Science Museums several times, it includes telecommunication, geometry, climate change, the mechanics of different vehicles, etc. I can explore them via hands-on activities and acquire extraordinary experiential learning experiences like Virtual Reality to conduct experiments, showcasing the exhibition with augmented reality. These are very interesting and impressive.
Well, I’m not very fond of the national costume. And actually, there are various national costumes in different provinces and tribes in China. However, most people would recognize the Tang Dynasty costume in Northern China as the national one. The color is plain and the shirt is with a long sleeve that is not suitable for us to wear in Hong Kong, especially in summer. Nevertheless, it’s a traditional part of our culture that I think we should keep.
Would you like to have a pet?
Oh, I would like to have a pet, but sadly I may not because I have an allergy to my nose. I cannot bear the hair, smell, or insects derived from pets. A few months ago, I went to my friend's home and she has 6 dogs in total. After that, I got ill and have taken 5 treatments including antibiotics. The experience was very terrible.
What kind of weather do you like?
I really like weather that is warm and sunny because in my free time I enjoy spending time outdoors.
Now let’s talk about your study. What do you enjoy about the course you are taking?
Well, I’m studying quantum computation. The idea of the discipline is very beyond our wildest imagination that the processing power is far more efficient than nowadays supercomputers, especially we can send anything messages instantly via teleportation, that the world would be much more prosperous ever. Besides, the quantum computation can provide security in online communication and banking, as the quantum state of the system can not be observed or measured or it would collapse then the users would know there are ears droppers. There is so much more to discover, like quantum internet, simulation on drug delivery, that I am looking forward to discovering them.
What kinds of things do you enjoy doing with your friends?
I like watching movies with my friends.
How do you spend your Leisure time? What do you like to do with your free time? (nearly 5 minutes)
I like spending my leisure time watching online courses from Coursera, edx, or YouTube as learning platforms or from Facebook, Instagram as social media. It is due to my personality that I love learning new things and these platforms provide me numerous opportunities to explore the world in different aspects. Besides, engaging social media can keep me updated on the news, trends, and my friends’ recent lives, etc. Apart from that, I enjoy hanging out with my friends.
Do you prefer spending your free time alone or with friends?
It depends on what activities to be spent on. For learning, it is hard to find a friend that we both have common interests on the same topic or both want to learn at the learning platform at the same time. Instead, I can interact with other users on the learning platform without borders. I enjoy spending time with my friends when we are watching a movie. We can share extraordinary visual experiences and even after the movie we express our feelings and thoughts about it. It is valuable to know how we reflect our personal growth, philosophy, society, thoughts by the means of watching. In addition, I like to play football with my friends as they always have these activities during our studies. It is a very treasurable memory.
Which statement do you agree with: I work to live or I live to work?
Oh, that’s an interesting question. I would prefer I work to live. I am so fortunate that I live in a family without much economic burden, so I can chase my dream and desired work ( as a teacher/ academic tutor, actor, singer, researcher). We should joy in duty, that’s to say we should be dedicated to our time and effort on something we are the most passionate about. So we can self-actualize and be the person we want to be. Why some people prefer work to live is that they may need to earn money for their living or have a desire to purchase something they are not able to have right now due to class. That’s why some people are even willing to work overtime without complaints to the employers or to the institution of society, and eventually, we lose the original taste of life and we may be alienated to chase materialistic life. Given that we have been provided adequate living costs and have a firm intrinsic motivation, I believe that everyone will work on something they love.
Why do you think free time is important?
I agree that free time is very important, especially in the context of a citizen living in an urban city. People keep working 24/7 without any rest. People need to recharge after work by doing something relaxing or just doing nothing.
How much free time do people have in your country?
To some extent, the amount of leisure depends on how much asset and property you have. I live in Hong Kong, which is an international city, but also a region with a wide gap between the rich and the poor. The working environment here is very competitive. people strive their best to become an intellectual and squeeze their leisure time for investment as hard as possible. People normally work 5 days a week, but some may even bring their work back home, just becoming a home office. So people seldom have leisure time to relax and achieve what they want to be. However, some people with higher socioeconomic status have plenty of time to spend alone or with friends since they do not need to work.