Band 6.0-6.5

A range of vocabulary allows the candidate to respond, often at some length, on both familiar and unfamiliar topics. There is also some evidence of an ability to paraphrase but virtually none of an ability to collocate or use idiomatic/less common words or expressions.   

There are a number of inappropriate word choices, especially in Part 3. Some of these require some effort to follow the message: 

Part 1: Temple Street is last for very, very night 

Part 2: some clothes is more neatly or seems a teacher 

Part 3: the rationales of their companies 

Generally, however, the meaning is clear. 

An area for the candidate to target for an immediate impact on range would be the use of a wider selection of adverbs to modify adjectives, rather than the present reliance on very/so. 

There is a range of subordinate clauses, with adverbial clauses well represented (beginning with, for example, since / because / when / as / if) and evidence of an ability to use relative clauses. There are also a number of noun clauses, mainly due to the abundance of responses commencing with I think, as noted above. 

Errors are frequent and error-free sentences rare. Some errors could cause confusion (e.g. my hobbies is not too much; I’m not love travel; after we washing them; they enjoy others people how to look at them). 

Interestingly, the overuse of and (noted under FLUENCY) sometimes leads to a disconnection between clauses, as in (Part 3):  … if their employee … wears is not fashionable [dresses unfashionably], AND it is not the same with [as] … the rationales [beliefs or expectations] of their company. 

Despite a number of errors with consonant sounds, notably an imprecision with both the hard and soft th, the candidate’s pronunciation is generally quite clear and the message easy to follow.  

There are, however, problems relating to stress patterns. In terms of sentence stress, the tendency is to emphasize too many words, and often every word in a sentence. Articles (both definite and indefinite) are also frequently stressed and while the strong form is also widely employed in some native-speaker variants, its frequent application here adds to the overall pattern of over-stressing. The result of this is (a) the speaker loses the ability to differentiate between stressed and unstressed words and (b) it is difficult to achieve the blending of words typical of native speech. There is also an impact on chunking with sometimes a significant separation of the stressed word from the preceding/following word(s): refer, for example, to the separation of teacher in Part 2 -  … it is because you is [are] a teacher.    

There are also a few syllable stress errors, chiefly with incorrect stressing of the y endings of some words – e.g. funny, actually, money, & sometimes very.