Sunday, October 25, 2015

IELTS Speaking Part 2: What to do with questions that you can't answer?

(TESOL Worksheets--IELTS Speaking, Part 2)
Google: Drive, Docs, Pub
So, since I collected a list of 30 IELTS Speaking Part 2 questions last December, I've been getting good use out them.  I've been using one a day as a warmer in several of my IELTS classes over the past year.
One difficulty I frequently run into is that students will often just give up and refuse to answer any question that is outside of their experience.  While I am very sympathetic to the complaint that a lot of these IELTS questions are poorly designed, I'm always trying to emphasize to my students that they can't give up just because they get a question they don't like.
Out of the 30 questions, the one that students seem to balk at the most is:

Describe a city or town that you do not like
You should say:
Where the city or town is
When you first visited the city or town
What the city or town is like
And explain why you do not like the city or town

So, I used that as my base question when designing this worksheet.  
First, I gave this question to the students, and had them practice it with a partner.  Then we did class feedback, where some students invariable complained that the question was impossible to answer because they didn't have any cities or towns they disliked.  Then I gave them the worksheet and asked them to compare the different strategies that the two different speakers used to answer this question.  (One speaker uses their time to fully explain why they can't answer the question, another student invents a fictional story.)

In my classroom, I used this activity as a lead-in to another activity. In the IELTS Resource Pack by Jon Marks (A), there's a game called Truth or Fiction in which students are given part 2-esque speaking questions, and give an answer, and their group has to guess whether they are telling the truth or making something up.  I used this activity as a way to introduce to my students the idea of making up fictional answers for IELTS speaking part 2 before doing the game from the IELTS Resource Pack. But I think it can still stand on it's own as an independent activity. 

Describe a city or town that you do not like
You should say:
Where the city or town is
When you first visited the city or town
What the city or town is like
And explain why you do not like the city or town


Read the two speakers below.  What different strategies do they adopt to deal with this difficult, and rather bizarre Speaking Part 2 question.

Speaker 1
Well, with all due respect, I don’t really agree with the basic premise of the question.  I know some people will say that they don’t like such-and-such a city, or such-and-such a town, but I’ve never really believed them.  I mean, I can understand if someone says they don’t like a particular restaurant, or a particular night club.  That’s fair enough.  But how could you dislike a whole city?
I believe that if someone comes away from a city, and they say they don’t like it, then that’s their fault.  It’s their negative attitude.  It’s not the fault of the city.  If you have the right attitude, every place you go to can be a positive experience.
Think of how big a city is.  Think of how many different places there are in it.  Think of how many people there are in it.  Are you telling me that you can’t find one nice place in the whole city?  That you couldn’t find one nice person?  No, I don’t believe that for a second.
What I do believe is that some people have a negative attitude, and they just go around hating everything they come across.  And those people definitely exist—okay, I admit that.  But that’s not me.
You know what?  I’ve been travelling my whole life.  I’ve been to I don’t know how many hundreds of cities and towns.  Some of them have been big, and some of them have been small.  But I’ve never once come across a city I didn’t like.  That’s the truth.  And I’ll tell you something else: I usually try to get to know the people in every city I visit.  I talk to the waitress at the restaurant.  I make small talk with the gas attendent.  And people are good and friendly everywhere you go.  And you know what else...


Speaker 2
                The worst city I ever went to was called Bazumbambum.  Have you ever heard of it?  No?  Well, I’m not surprised.  Most people haven’t.  It’s in a country called, uh, Cazambabub.   It’s, uh, somewhere in Eastern Europe.
                Anyway, a few years back I was touring Europe with my rock and roll band.  We were just driving through in our tour bus, when our tires blew out right in the middle of Bazumbambum. 
                Have you ever been in a town  which you could tell  was awful right from the moment you stepped foot in it?  That’s what this place was like for me.  I mean, you could just tell.  Right from the moment you stepped off the bus.
                The first thing that hit you was the smell.  Bazumbambum is famous for its rotten cabbage.  This is because their main crop is cabbage, but some years they produce more cabbage then they can possible sell on the market, so the extra cabbage just rots in the streets.  The minute you get off the bus, you just get hit by this wave of rotten cabbage smell.
                The smell was so bad that the drummer in my band actually got knocked down.  Have you ever seen someone knocked to the ground by a smell?  He just stepped off the bus and BOOM!  It was like someone hit him in the face.
                To tell you the truth, he was never quite the same after that.  I don’t know.  The smell just did something to him.  It was a smell so strong it could drive a man insane.
                I didn’t actually fall down myself, but I vomited right into my hat.  I’m not sure why I didn’t just vomit on the streets.  I guess it was just an automatic reaction to try to catch the vomit in something.  Anyway, that hat was never quite the same after that.
                Now, that’s just the smell.  But I haven’t even gotten to describing how awful the place LOOKED.  The streets were...




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