Band 8.0-8.5
Speaker 1:
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General Comments:
FLUENCY AND COHERENCE
The candidate demonstrates an ability to produce fluent, native-like, and often quite rapid speech, over extended utterances. This is not, however, sustained throughout the test and there are times, particularly in Part 1, when speaking turns, though generally fluent, are consistently short. There is also a response (again in Part 1, answering a question about why the candidate enjoys travel) during which the candidate clearly struggles to produce a coherent reply and long pauses are recorded – but this is an atypical turn in what is overall a very fluent performance.
Connectives are widely and effectively used and indicate a grasp of less common terms (e.g. as opposed to).
LEXICAL RESOURCE
Despite a tendency to produce short responses in Part 1, in the more challenging Part 2 and Part 3, there is ample evidence of an ability to talk on a topic at length.
There is also evidence of an ability to use less common vocabulary, and while the overall performance is not rich in such language, the natural production of words like ponder and torso and of idiomatic collocations like seasonal thing and on top of a trend suggest a deeper reservoir of lexis that the candidate has not fully accessed during the test.
GRAMMATICAL RANGE AND ACCURACY
A range of complex grammatical structures is used accurately and flexibly. This includes complex verb groups with continuous and perfect tenses (sometimes in the passive voice) and a full range of subordinate clauses, sometimes used in combination without a loss of fluency or accuracy.
There are some basic errors, such as the singular woman for women, but the message is always clear and most sentences are error-free.
Occasionally, the candidate produces a string of simple, repetitive structures (e.g. I like to play tennis; I like to play piano, etc. - and at another time - They like to go to the Peak; they like to go to Victoria Harbour …. They like to take the Star Ferry) but the level of complexity elsewhere indicates that this does not result from a limited range of structures.
PRONUNCIATION
Overall, the candidate’s pronunciation is very accurate. The rapidity of the speech sometimes leads to a lack of precision and a few verb endings are omitted.
The delivery is quite matter-of-fact but some responses showcase the candidate’s very native range of pronunciation features as, for example, in the stress and intonation patterns evident in:
Part 1: so called qualified job / From what I can remember - and especially the dismay signaled in: when I’m allowed to.
Part 2: the imagined dialogue with sales staff.
Part 3: really rarely seen – and the question: Do you mean what motivates them to buy designer clothes?
Annotation
- Marked transcripts based on the official marking criteria
* For the explanation of Task1, 2 and 3, please refer to here