Thi nói EILTS về miêu tả người và vật

Nội dung text: Thi nói EILTS về miêu tả người và vật

1. IELTS Speaking – Part 2 1. Describe a job that you or someone you know have done. You should say: - what the job was - what you had to do exactly - if you would do this job in the future and explain what you liked and didn’t like about it. 2. Describe the job that you would most like to do in the future. You should say: - what the job is - what skills and qualifications you would need to get the job - if you think you will ever do this job and explain what appeals to you about this kind of work. 3. Describe a recent restaurant experience. You should say: - where you ate - who you went with - what you ate and explain how you feel about the experience. 4. Describe a memorable meal. You should say: - what you ate - what the occasion was - what happened during the meal and explain why the meal was memorable. 5. Describe a job that you think would be enjoyable. You should say: - what the job is - what tasks the job involves - what qualifications or qualities you would need to do it and explain why you think it would be enjoyable. 6. Describe a job that you think is very important for society. You should say: - what the job is - what the responsibilities of this job are 1
2. - what kind of person would do this job well and explain why you think it is important for society. 7. Describe a meal or dish that people in your country like to eat on a special occasion. You should say: - what it is - how you make it - who you eat it with and explain why you eat it on this occasion. 2
3. 8. Describe your favourite place to eat out. You should say: - what type of place it is - how often you go there - who you usually go with or meet there. And explain why you like going there. 9. Describe an item of technology that you use a lot. You should say: - what it is - why you use it - when you use it and how it might change in the future. 10.Describe your habits for watching TV or listening to the radio. You should say: - how much time you spend doing it - what type of programme you prefer - why you choose those programmes and say whether you think TV/radio is bad for us. 11.Describe a machine you own which is important to you. You should say: - what it is - how you got it - what you use it for and explain why it is important to you. 12.Describe a place you have visited which impressed you. You should say: - where this place is and how you traveled there. - what it is like - why you went there and explain why it made an impression on you. 13.Describe an animal that you find particularly interesting. You should say: - what the animal is - what you know about it - how you know about it and explain why you find this animal particularly interesting. 3
4. 14.Describe your favourite way of relaxing. You should say: - what you do to relax - where you do it - how often you do it and explain why you enjoy this way of relaxing. 15.Describe a public building that you like very much. You should say: - where the building is - what it looks like - what it’s used for and explain why you like the building so much. 16.Describe someone you know who is popular in your neighbourhood. You should say: - who this person is - when you first met this person - what sort of person he/she is and explain why you think this person is popular. 17.Describe a place you know that has a beautiful natural environment. You should say: - where it is located. - what it looks like - when you first went there and explain why you find this place especially beautiful. 18.Describe a newspaper or magazine article you found interesting. You should say: - what it was about - where you read it - how it made you feel and explain why you found the article interesting. 19.Describe the sport or physical activity you would like to be good at. You should say: 4
5. - what the sport or activity is - what skills you would need - where you would do it and explain why you would choose this sport or activity. 20.Describe a transport problem in your town/city. You should say: - what the problem is - what the causes are - how it affects you and explain how you think it might be solved. 21.Describe an occasion when you were pleased that an object was made of plastic. You should say: - what the object was - how you were using it - what happened and explain why you were pleased that the object was made of plastic. 22.Describe an occasion when you couldn’t pay for something you wanted. You should say: - what you wanted to pay for - why you weren’t able to pay - what you did and explain how you feel about the situation. 5
6. 23.Describe a city that you know well. You should say: - how big the city is - what kind of building it has - what transportation is available. and explain what you particularly like or dislike about this city. 24.Describe your first day in a new job or at college. You should say: - what the job or course was - what you had expected before you started - what happened on the first day and explain how you felt at the end of the day. 25.Describe an occasion when you did something for the first time. You should say: - what you did - why you did it - why you hadn’t done it before and explain how you felt about doing it. 26.Describe a special occasion when you had an unforgettable time. You should say: - what the occasion was - what you did - how you felt at the time. And explain what made it unforgettable. 27.Describe an important letter you received. You should say: - Who the letter was from - What it was about - Why it was important. and explain how you felt about it 28.Describe your favourite style of dress. You should say: - What kind of clothes you like to wear - What fabrics and colours you prefer - What (or who) influences you in your choice of clothes 6
7. and explain whether clothes are important to you or not 29.Describe a school you once attended. You should say: - What the school classrooms were like - What the teachers where like - How the subjects were taught and explain whether you feel it was a good school. 30.Describe a skill you learnt successfully. You should say: - What skill you learnt - When and where you learnt it - How you learnt it and explain what helped you to learn successfully? Sample answers for Part 2 1. Ok, let’s see. The job I have at the moment is my first job. I am a waitress in a coffee bar. When I started, I only cleaned the tables. It was a little boring because I did the same thing all the time, but after a short time, I got a promotion. You know, a higher position. Now I make coffee and serve the customers at the cash register. It’s more interesting. Would I do it in the future? I think, yes, why not? If I am a student, it is a good job to earn some money. The hours are very flexible. It’s convenient in that way. What do I like? Hmm Well, my colleagues are very nice and so is my boss. They are very friendly. But what really don’t like is the uniform. It is a little stupid with this hat. 2. Before I came back to my studies, I was a teacher in a primary school. My students were young, perhaps 5 or 6 years old. I taught students many many different subjects, for example, we studied reading and writing and mathematics, err art and music and others, but music was my favourite. I was a little like a mother in some ways. I listened to their problems sometimes. I enjoyed my job very much but now I want to change. I want to do something completely different in the future. But I am not sure what exactly. I liked teaching very much especially because I love children. But I did not like the 7
8. administration. There were a lot of papers to write out everyday and I’m not very good at office work. 3. I used to be a chef in a kitchen in a busy restaurant. The restaurant was in a hotel and sometimes I cooked for 40 people, err, guests in the hotel. I liked my job and would like to do it in the future, but especially if I could have my own restaurant. I liked it because it was creative and you could use your imagination, but the think that I didn’t like was it was very hard work. When I finished my work, I was usually exhausted. I was only able to go home and sleep. 4. Well, the last time I ate at a restaurant was about two weeks ago, when I went to a fast food place in Oxford Street with my girlfriend. It was early in the evening, about six o’clock, and Oxford Street was very busy. It was also very wet because it was raining heavily, and we didn’t have an umbrella. Anyway, I’m a vegetarian, so I had a veggie burger with French fries and a large chocolate milkshake which was SO good and only cost $4. My girlfriend, Tomoko, had a salad and a bottle of mineral water because she doesn’t like the type of food they have there. She didn’t say anything, but I don’t think she liked the salad very much because it was covered with a very oily dressing. She was pretty angry by the end of the meal. 5. Ok, well, I once had an interview for a job assistant teacher. I was still a student and I was studying Education, but I wasn’t qualified at that time, so I was only applying to be an assistant. I thought it would be good to get some teaching experience during the long university winter break. Erm, how did I prepare for it? I looked at all my notes again from lectures at university to remind myself of the important things to do with primary school children. I also went to the school’s website to get as much information as I could about the place before I went. It was quite a modern primary school with good computer rooms, so I planned to talked about my computer knowledge and how I could use that with the children. What else? Erm, I made a few notes to take with me into the interview in case I got nervous and forgot everything. 8
9. So what did they ask me? I can’t remember everything they asked. It was quite a long interview, but I remember they asked me about my qualifications and experience with children. They wanted to know why I was applying for the job, of course. One difficult they asked was about my strengths and weaknesses, which is a very tricky one to answer without saying too many negative things about yourself. 6. I’m going to talk about being a musician, which I think would be enjoyable, even though in reality I wouldn’t want this job personally. There are many attractive aspects to this job, I think. First of all, if you are a rock star or pop artist, you’d get to travel a lot, possibly in a private jet if you were really successful. Fans would go crazy about you everywhere you went, although that could become a disadvantage eventually. On top of that, there would be all the financial advantages: enough money to buy anything you wanted, such as property, cars, clothes or whatever you were interested in as well as free gifts or maybe even contracts with companies in return for advertising or endorsing their product. In my opinion, the biggest attraction is of course that you would be doing something you really enjoyed, making music and performing it which is a dream come true for many amateur musicians. What about qualifications? Well, I don’t think there are any specific requirements as far as qualifications are concerned, but you do need some talent, or luck, or both. And finally, what qualities would you need to do this job? Let me think. I suppose you would need to be an extrovert. It isn’t easy to go out on stage in front of thousands of people or to read negative reviews in magazines about your work, for example. Yes, I think the most important thing is not to be too sensitive. And you should be passionate about the music you write or sing as well. 7. Ok, erm, I’m going to talk bout the meal we usually eat at Christmas in my country. We call it Christmas Dinner and it is eaten either on Christmas Eve or on Christmas Day. It depends on the family. It is a really important family occasion so we generally eat it at home or at the home of a close relation 9
10. such as our grandparents. Some families celebrate it with just the close family but some have the extended family there as well, so there can be many people at the table. I’ll explain the details of the meal to you. It takes many hours to prepare and so everyone helps, for example to prepare vegetables or to lay the table. We decorate the table with Christmas things and maybe some paper hats to wear as well. The main dish usually consists of turkey with stuffing, though I think some families eat other meats such as pork, duck or goose. At my house Mum is in charge of the turkey because she’s so good at it. She roasts the whole turkey in the oven for several hours and the smell is really good. We also have lots of vegetables with the turkey, especially potatoes and then we do carrots and broccoli and lots of gravy to go with it. We carry the whole cooked turkey to the dinner table and someone carves it at the table and then we help ourselves to all the other food. It is a very heavy meal so we always feel very full afterward and need a rest before we have dessert. The traditional dessert is Christmas pudding or plum pudding which is made with dried fruit several weeks before. Then we can’t move for a few hours because we’ve eaten too much, so owe watch TV and chat. I love Christmas dinner. It’s my favourite meal of the whole year. 8. I’d like to tell you about something special we eat in Germany although it isn’t exactly a meal or a dish. We eat these at Easter and they are called ‘ostereiser’ which in English means Easter eggs. First we boil the eggs until they are hard and then leave them to go cold. Then we colour them with food dye and paint them. If you like, you can buy decorations for the eggs at some shops as well. When they are finished, parents hide them in the garden before the children get up. The children go into the garden with a basket and collect the eggs and then the whole family eat them for breakfast. These days, some families buy chocolate eggs to hide but traditionally we use real eggs. Eggs are important at Ester because they symbolize spring and a new life. 10
11. Another thing we do with the eggs at Easter is to make an Easter tree and decorate the tree with painted eggs. To do this, we make to small holes in a fresh egg and blow out the inside. We rinse the eggs and then paint them with all sorts of colorful designs. We hang these eggs on the osterbaum or Easter tree. I love Easter eggs as they remind me of happy times with my family when I was young. 9. I’d like to talk about my memory stick, a small stick that stores electronic files. It’s about 8 centimetres long and one centimetre wide, so it’s very convenient to carry from place to place. It’s better than a floppy disc or CD because it holds so much information for its size, and its really flexible. The other advantage of memory sticks is that they can be used in all computers whereas floppy discs can’t. If you are a university student like me, you need to take information from university to home and back again easily, for example, so I used it every day. I also like to save digital photos and these can be very big files, so again it’s the best way of storing and carrying them. I’m not really sure how memory sticks might change in the future. After all, they have large memories and they’re a convenient size already, but I’m sure that floppy discs will disappear completely in the near future. 10.I’m going to talk about watching television. I used to watch more than I do now, but I don’t really have a lot of time for TV at the moment. That’s because I’m studying full time. But when I was at senior high school, I watched a lot more, probably several hours every day. I really liked drama series and game shows. In my country dramas are really popular and I like them too, as long as the storyline is sad. I don’t know why I like emotional types of programs. I used to watch one series every day because I loved the characters and the story but I think another reason was that everyone used to talk about it at school. I don’t agree that television is bad for you, actually. I think that if people choose carefully, there wouldn’t be a problem. After all you can switch to another channel if you don’t like what you’re watching, can’t you? TV can be educational on the one hand and pure entertainment on the other, but in 11
12. my view, that doesn’t make it a bad thing. Entertainment is an important part of our free time. 11.I would like to talk about a machine, a machine I have. It’s mine. It’s a computer. This computer is very special to me. My parents gave it to me. It is a really good computer, also it looks really cool. It has a slimline tower and I have some really powerful loudspeakers. I kind of wanted a notebook, you say notebook or laptop? But I need a lot of power sometimes and if you want a lot of power in a notebook, that’s very very expensive, so I talked about it with my parents, what we could afford, and I decided a PC, like for my desk, would be better because with this I can do many different things. I like to do many many things with this computer. I like to go online and I spend a lot of my free time online. It’s good because you can go in chat rooms and you can talk to friends. Maybe some of these friends are really friends, you know, like people you know in your studies or in your university, but also other friends who may be I have never met in my life because they live in different parts of the world, like sometimes I play chess with a guy in Russia. I mean, like I’ve never been to Russia, and maybe I’ll never go, but I have a friend there and that’s cool. But you can do a lot of other games on the internet, I mean like online gaming, and that’s really cool, like you can be playing in this environment with different people at the same time and they can be anywhere you know. Sometimes I like to try out new games too like on CDs and I have some friends. We get a lot of these CDs and we swap them, so you can try a lot of good programs and games without you know need to buy them all and you see which one you like. Also I like very much to download music and I have an ipod so I like to use my computer in this way too, and it’s a bit the same with movies. I like to make a video films and I can edit them with my computer. 12.I love Lone Pine. It’s near Brisbane in Australia, actually just outside Brisbane, I think. I visited some friends who live in Brisbane and they suggested I could go there. I got a bus from the city and it took half an hour. It’s a big park or something like that. There are many different kinds of 12
13. animals. They are interesting animals, too. I saw so many different kinds. There were koalas and kangaroos, and I think maybe the other kind – what’s that called? Wall . Wallabies. Also there were snakes and I have a picture of me holding a snake. I liked the lorikeets best. It made an impression on me because there were so many kinds of animal I had never seen anywhere before. 13.Actually, I’d like to talk about my favourite place in England, which is York Minster – that’s the Cathedral in the city of York. I never heard of this work, Minster, before I went there. I thought maybe it was some special kind of minister but I soon found this was wrong. I know about York Minster because I was studying English near there in Harrogate and they told me in the language academy I must visit the Minster in York. So I took the train, which was just half an hour, and then to reach the Minster from the station is easy, only ten minutes on foot. And I can say this Cathedral is really one of the great buildings of Europe. It’s a very special piece of architecture, so beautiful with such fine lines, so tall. I have seen many wonderful buildings, and many of the great Gothic Cathedrals, and this is absolutely my favourite. So I walked around this cathedral and enjoyed the arches, the sculptures and the ceiling especially, until I came to the east end. And here something quite unexpected for me happened. There is a place, just behind the, I can say, the formal part of the cathedral, where you can sit. It’s very impressing, astonishing, not so much because of what it looks like but because of how it makes you fee. There is a space between where you can sit and look at the final, east wall, which is only a few metres from you, perhaps three or four, and most of this east wall is in fact windows, wonderful stained glass windows. So I sat down and looked up at the windows and slowly something unexpected happened to me. There is a kind of quiet, a hush, which slowly comes into you as you sit there. And soon you can feel the peace of the place, and how people have come here for hundreds of years to sit and be silent and peaceful, thousands and thousands of people, for hundreds and hundreds of years. This is something truly special. I have found such a feeling only in a 13
14. few places but this is one of those places, where just to be there can give you this silence inside. 14.I want to talk about my favourite place, it is Whitby, you know this is where I am living now that I am living in the UK, having come here by plane from my country. I cam here have come here for my job, so I am working now in Whitby. Whitby is in Yorkshire and it is very find because you know there we are having the sea of course and at home we are having the sea also, so this is wonderful for me because it is like a little, I mean, like a glimpse of home. I have lived there now for three months. I will tell you now why er it is my favorite place. I like this town because you know it looks very fine, quite romantic. There are many good things you can do and the er habour is so beautiful. Also the hill next to the habour, they are so steep. You can climb up many steps to the top where there is a building, er, you know, church, er, abbey. It’s empty, you know the walls are broken and now nobody lives there but it looks like you know something from a horror movie or something like that. This is something I never saw in my life and I am liking this so much, like I feel this is the real England, also because you know the people, they are so kind, so very kind, almost I feel kike I am in my home in this place and it is exciting because here is beginning a new, er new part of my life and so now this is my most favourite, so if I would have the same choice again you know I will make the same decision. 15.The animal that I want to talk about is the beaver. It’s a mammal and it lives around water. It lives in North America and northern Europe as well. It’s a very attractive little animal. It’s the size of a small dog, but quite fat. It’s got thick, brown fur which keeps it warm, and particularly when it swims around the water, because it spends a lot of time diving. What the beaver does is – it lives in social groups of several families and it builds dams across streams to form lakes and ponds. So to make the dams it cuts down trees. It’s got very sharp front teeth, and so it chops the trees down, braches, drags them down to the stream and block it. And then it makes its house in the dam. The entrance to the house is under water and so they are very safe from any predators that 14
15. might try to attack them. Unfortunately, I’ve only seen beavers on TV but I think they’re very interesting because they’re social, and because they’re good for the environment. 16.I find the wolf very interesting. I know that it has to communicate with others and that they always hunt in packs. And the alpha male normally gets the first bit of what they kill. I’ve seen it in zoos. I find it particularly interesting because of the way it hunts and the way it travels in packs. The way that wolves actually talk to each other. They hunt in a team and each one knows what to do. And I find it very interesting how they do it. I also find the way it looks at you very interesting. The way it just likes to stare at you. There’s a wolf at Paignton Zoo, but I can’t remember what type of wolf it was. It was a reddish color and its name meant something like ‘fox on stilts’. It had very long, thin legs. 17.The animal I find interesting is the elephant. Elephants aren’t found in the wild in this country, in fact they’re only found it two places in Africa and Asia. There are two different kinds of elephant – the African and the Asian. They ‘re now endangered because a lot of them were killed for their tusks to make ivory products. But ivory’s now banned so that has hopefully stopped. Erm, they tend to live to about a hundred years and tend to stay in groups I think. And they enjoy having a mud bath and a swim in the river as well. I know about elephants from books and films. And I saw elephants in my childhood, when we were in Thailand. I’ve actually ridden on the top of one with somebody. I just find them particularly interesting because I think they’re wise and quiet and very majestic creatures, I suppose. 18.My favourite way of relaxing is to go down to a local beach near my house, called Horseshoe Beach. I just sit on the beach, you can get a chair there, and I usually take a book with me to read, one of my favorite books. Or sometimes I might just take some binoculars and look at the ships that go past. And sometimes I take my swimming things with me and have a swim. I usually do this in the summer time, I probably do it once or twice a week. Usually I try to get down there in the early morning when I’m not working to 15
16. get a good position on the beach before everyone else arrives. And I enjoy doing this because I find it helps me to unwind, it helps me to get rid of my stress. And I also enjoy watching the people go by, the children and families who come down to swim. If I go for a swim, it’s very refreshing and I enjoy being in warm water, and if there are any waves, I try body surfing. And that’s my favorite way of relaxing. 19.A public building I really like is the old railway station in Kuala Lumpur. It’s right in the centre of the city. It’s a very striking building. It stands out from the others around it because of its architecture. It looks sort of middle- eastern. It has a lot of pillars and arches. But it’s not a modern building. I think it’s about a hundred years old. And of course, it’s used for trains. It used to be the main station for the whole of Malaysia, and there were trains passing through it to all parts of the country, and to Singapore and Thailand as well. But now there’s new station, so the older station building is just used for local, commuter trains. But it’s still a big tourist attraction too, so we get lots of visitors just coming to have a look at it. And the reason why I like the building so much is well, I just like its appearance, its’ a beautiful building I think. And it’s also nice to have some historic buildings in a modern city. It gives variety. 20.Well, the person I’m going to tell you about is our local doctor. In fact, he’s um, also a friend of mine, quite a good friend, in fact. I met him in the very first week we moved to the area, because we’d been living in the north before and had to move because of our jobs and that’s about six years ago, and well, I went along to register at the health centre, and he happened to be there, so he introduced himself as the doctor and we started chatting and well, we became good friends straight away, really. Um, I think what I liked about him in the first place was his calm. He’s, um, quite a small person, with big brown eyes and he has this wonderfully quiet, gentle way of speaking. I think this is really why he is such a good doctor, and he’s very supportive when you’re ill and things, which is very important of course, but he also has this 16
17. great sense of humor, he can always makes people laugh, even when they’re not feeling well, so they start to fell better right away. So, um, I suppose the reason why I think he is so popular is because he’s a really good doctor, and he’s appreciated for it, in the whole neighbourhood, really. I think everybody knows he’s a very kind, caring person, so they all trust him, and feel lucky to have him as their doctor, like I do really. 21.Well, the place that I’d like to talk about is in Crete – you know, the big island that belongs to Greece. And this is a small village, it’s located in the southwest of the island, and it’s surrounded by mountains the whole landscape is very mountainous. If you stand in the village and look around, you can see the White Mountains in the background and the sea in front, that’s the Libyan Sea, stretching out in front of you. The very first time I went, I loved this place, and what attracted me to it was how beautiful it is. It gets good weather practically all the year round, and the mountains look fantastic, you know changing the colours all the time according to the time of day and the season and so on. The hillsides look quite dry, but they always have lots of wild flowers and herbs for a lot of the yea, and er, it’s one of my favourite places, actually. The first time I went there was when I was a college student a long time ago now, and er, I was with a friend and we were traveling around the island and went there by accident, really. But we just fell in love with it. And the reason why I think this place is especially beautiful is, um, because it is so unspoilt. It must have hardly changed over the last hundred years. I suppose, it’s so wild that it doesn’t attract many tourists, so the natural environment is still very special. 22.Well, I read a very interesting article last week. Basically, it was about how, er, the ways that kids have been affected by all the technology they use. Erm, I read this article in a magazine. It’s quite popular in my country for the general public, not specialists or anything. It was quite short and it was based on some surveys they carried out last year. Anyway, the article actually made me feel a bit worried because it suggested that all of these electronic devices, you know all the computer games and 17
18. mobile phones that kids use all the time are making them much less sociable than they used to be. So I think that’s a quite worrying trend. And the reason I found this article interesting was because it really described the changes I’ve seen in my little brother. He used to play outside all the time, had lots of friends and so on. But now he just sits in front of his computer and doesn’t go out much at all. So it was interesting that the article explained this a quite common trend for teenagers these days. It also gave some advice about how to encourage kids to be more sociable, to spend more time with friends and family, so I found it an interesting read. 23.Well, the sport or activity I’d really like to be good at is mountain climbing. Um, and that would mean I’d have to develop a lot of skills, you know , specialist skills to do with, um, climbing in rocky places and under snowy conditions. I’d also need to develop lots of physical fitness, um. I’d probably have to do a lot of work on my, er, determination, and you know, my sort of , desire to actually achieve an objective. And I’d also have to develop my mad reading skills because that’s something you obviously need in mountain climbing. The places I’d like to do it in are I’d choose those vanishing places in the world, you know, um, like the Himalayas, obviously, but also I’d want to climb in the Andes in South America. And I’d love to be able to climb some of those great peaks in the Alps. Um, and why would I choose this activity? Well, partly because, em, it’s something I’ve always wanted to do, and I’ve got enormous admiration for some of the great climbers in history. But also because in the world, I think in the future we are going to find that isolated beautiful places will become fewer and fewer, and I’d love to be able to visit those places and explore them before they get spoilt really. 24.Well, in my city I think one of the biggest transport problems is the poor bus service, especially during rush hours. I think the reason why the service is so poor is because like everywhere, we have lot of traffic jams, so the buses don’t come on time. And they are really 18
19. overcrowded when they do come. I think the service gets completely overstreched at peak times. I depend on the buses, so it means that I have to leave home early to get to college, but I’m still usually late. In terms of solving these problems, well, I know it’s not easy, but I think we need to invest more in buses, buy bigger and cleaner vehicles, and perhaps we could have extra buses in the rush hours. And the city authorities should make special bus lands, so that buses don’t get stuck in traffic, I think. 25.Right, well, I’d like to tell you about a plastic fork. Once I was sitting in a motorway café, with a friend. We were on our way to see some other friends for the weekend, and it was quite a long drive, so we stopped to have a break. I was eating a cake, which was full of chocolate and cream. It was very tasty, but I was using a plastic fork that was quite small, and not very practical. I was annoyed that the café didn’t supply metal ones. Anyway, we were sitting there chatting and eating, when a group of children and a couple of adults came into the café. The children were aged about seven or eight, and they were running around, chasing each other. The adults weren’t doing anything to stop them, and I commented on this to my friend. Then, as they came past our table, one of the children pushed another one, who fell heavily against me, jerking my right arm across my body, and I was holding the fork in my right hand. The fork hit my left arm, scratched the inside of my elbow, and covered that part of my arm with chocolate and cream. Luckily the scratch wasn’t serious, and when I’d washed my arm I was fine. But I was glad the fork was made of plastic. If it’d been metal, it would probably have broken the skin and made me bleed. 26.Ok, I’m going to talk to you about Venezia, that is to say, Venice, which my mother comes from originally. Her parents still live there but my mom moved away when she met my dad. He’s from Puglia in the south of Italy. We all live in Bari, the main city there. Ok, sorry, now I’m going to describe Venice. What can I say about Venice? It’s . it’s an old city and its infrastructure hasn’t changed very much in hundreds of years. It’s built on 19
20. water, so instead of roads through the centre you hav waterways, canals, and to get around you can either walk or take a boat. In in Venice, there are public ‘vaporetti’, those are the water buses which stop every so often to pick up passengers, and then there are lots of smaller water taxis, private boats and of course the beautiful gondolas which tourists love to take. I feel I feel very sad about Venice because it’s a city that is how can I put it? it’s losing its heart. Year, so so what I dislike about Venice is this: because so many people have moved away, more and more of the real shops have closed down. By real shops I mean bakers and other essential food shops and it’s true every time I go back there, another one has gone. You know, it’s really bad. If you walk through any part of Venice, nearly every shop you come across will be selling souvenirs, most of them rather tacky. I hate that. Well of course all year massive numbers of tourists visit Venice and I think it’s a terrible problem because the city just becomes like like Disneyland, year, it’s true. To put it another way, it’s not a living city any longer. Mm I know tourists bring money to the city but they’re killing it too, in a way. It goes without saying that tourists come to Venice for the history, the buildings, the art. Venice looks so fantastic. Obviously, there are not high- rise buildings and that makes the city unusual, but the canals make it unique. Most of the building in Venice are sinking. Right now, there’s a lot of construction work going on to strengthen the their foundations. There’s terrible subsidence and the whole of Venice is sinking. It’s really a big problem. 27.When I was 14, I got a job delivering newspapers to people’s homes. I had to arrive at the paper shop at six o’clock every morning, take the newspapers for my round, and cycle off and deliver them. And I needed to be at school before nine. I’d applied for the job because I wanted to earn some money. I hadn’t thought much about what was involved, but I was sure there’d be nothing to it. 20
21. But I was wrong. In most homes, the newspaper had to be pushed through the letterbox in front door. And it was sometimes a struggle to find the right front door. A lot of them weren’t numbered, some letterboxes were at ground level, or not in the door at all, and several were so small it took ages to get the newspapers through. And there was another problem: dogs jumping up at the letterbox and trying to bit my fingers. I just about managed to get to school on time, but I was so exhausted that I almost fell asleep during a maths lesson. I decided not to go back the next morning, but then I thought of the money I could earn, so I changed my mind. Luckily it was much easier from then on. 28.Yeah, let me tell you an experience I will never forget. Two years ago, when I went back to see my parents in China, and you know um, in the Chinese culture we shake hands, we say hello, but we never, er, kiss each other, or even hug each other, even between parents and children. But because I have been living in this country for so long, and get used to the way people you know, show their affection and friendliness to each other. And I haven’t seen my mum for a long time, so, um, when I saw my mother, she was greeting me from the door, I went over and gave her a big hug, and she was kind of very nervous and a bit embarrassed, you know, she just she behaved somewhat differently than normal and she didn’t know what to say. But I know at the moment she would feel very warm, you know, from a daughter, a hug from the daughter. And um so that is something that I wouldn’t normally do, or I have never I had never done before then. 21