IELTS, IELTS [Sequel]
10 working days later, today I can finally check my score. Heart pounding, I opened the Ministry of Education’s IELTS website. When the result appeared, I was stunned…
My first thought: the scores must be wrong. During the listening test, I was distracted by the bespectacled girl taking off layers (see previous post), lost track of the map section, missed 4 fill-in blanks and just guessed, all wrong. I estimated listening at 6. How could I get 8.5? Only one possibility: that girl was the grader. Reading? I estimated 8.5, some traps, about right. Writing, no complaints. Got a report type question, all my preparation went to waste, extemporaneous writing — that’s about the level for a Chinese person. Speaking was too tragic. After the exam, I felt pretty good, thought I’d get at least 7. But, sigh. Thinking about it, maybe they thought I was reciting from memory. After the exam, I realized New Oriental’s training was total crap, useless for everything except speaking. The examiner’s questions in parts 1, 2, and 3 were all topics covered in New Oriental class. I answered fluently, even used some set phrases. I bet the foreign examiner really thought I was reciting.
Listening 8.5? I searched online and found many people with 8.5 in listening writing promotional articles. Things like “it’s all about attitude” and “the teacher helped me overcome my fear,” etc. If a school really asked me to write a promo piece, what would I write? The truth: New Oriental listening class was totally useless. The female teacher just told us tall tales about her experiences in Britain (true or false who knows). Choice B for “Bra,” not being able to write a thesis so claiming to be gay for an extension, girls pronouncing “interesting” as “in-te-res-ting” to sound cute, guys pronouncing “often” as “of-ten” to sound manly. Besides that, I don’t remember her teaching anything. My listening isn’t bad to begin with — back in high school I won a provincial English competition listening award. But that was 10 years ago.
Now that the scores are out, looking back, I’d have been better off not taking that course. Without it, I could’ve bought books for listening and reading practice and still scored well. At least I wouldn’t have been suspected of reciting for speaking. Those sentence patterns everyone uses are so worn out they scream “memorized.” Thinking about it myself, it sounds fake. Screw your “I guess I could start off by answering the first question.” Screw your “If I still have enough time, I’d like to comment.” Screw your “Convincing arguments can be made that…” Screw your “I’ve never thought about it, but personally I believe…” Screw your “Well, I think it really depends…”
I really wonder how this company got listed on NASDAQ. Probably by scamming在校 students.