Interview Feedback
Level 6 G1
24/02/12
1.) Ali Tirmoemenin
Ali possesses excellent listening skills and understood everything that was asked, without difficulty. He used some really interesting expressions including ‘I am awkward at first but then I open up’, has a wide range of vocabulary and a firm grasp on the use of prepositions. He repeatedly used the term ‘all people’ instead of ‘everyone’ which is a common mistake amongst English language learners but has an effect on the fluency of his speech and shouldn’t be too difficult for him to correct.
2.) Mohamad Tahriri
Mohamad clearly feels very confident in his speaking and was therefore relaxed throughout the interview. This allowed him to be very natural in his responses to my questions which created a high level of fluency. He has a good range of vocabulary and used some good, informal expressions such as ‘I am the family clown’. Mohamad lost a few marks on some grammatical mistakes including the common mistakes of confusing ‘say’ with ‘tell’ and not using the gerund form when necessary, e.g., ‘I enjoy being alone’. These are two areas he could look to focus on going forward.
3.) Fatemeh Naseri
Fatemeh’s pronunciation is fine and she uses some really good, informal sentence starters such as ‘as a matter of fact’ and ‘you know’ but she does need to be careful not to overuse them in the same conversation. She understood my questions well and provided interesting and detailed answers. Unfortunately Fatemeh made quite a few grammatical mistakes, namely; incorrectly including the verb ‘to be’ as in ‘I’m try to’, subject verb agreements and the necessity of ensuring she continue to use the past simple when talking about life in the past. These are three areas on which I recommend Fatemeh focus in the immediate future. Correcting these mistakes will increase her marks dramatically.
4.) Zahra Moayedi Neya
Zahra understood my questions very well and provided some really interesting and well thought out answers. Her vocabulary range is vast and her use of the past simple was accurate throughout. She also included some good phrases which are commonly used by English speakers in informal conversations such as ‘never, ever’ and ‘more and more’. Zahra made a couple of grammatical errors including occasionally forgetting her articles and her prepositions which are fairly simple to correct but, at present, are affecting her fluency.
5.) Zeynab Dehghani
Zeynab had a good understanding of my questions and only needed one repetition. She also spoke with confidence and included some good verbs in response to my question of how she cheers her friends up, such as ‘I try...’ and ‘I suggest...’. She slightly confused a couple of expressions including ‘family clown’ and ‘heart of gold’ but used some of her fixed phrases well. Going forward, Zeynab should try and focus on her grammar a little more as she made some mistakes with prepositions of location and main verb + infinitive/gerund.
6.) Shahnaz Zare
Shahnaz understood my questions well and provided detailed and thoughtful answers in response. Her explanation of the role of art in her life included a couple of useful phrases including ‘without art, life is meaningless’ and included a basic conditional structure to inform me when she paints. Although her listening and speaking skills are very good, she needs to work on her grammar in order to bring it up to the same level as her other skills. A couple more specific things to focus on are to revise the difference between the use of the verb ‘give’ and the verb ‘take’ and the ensure she uses ‘everyone’ instead of ‘every person’. Both of these are very common mistakes in English but are not difficult to correct.
7.) Fatemeh Koshesh
Fatemeh is clearly very relaxed with both listening and speaking in English and possesses excellent pronunciation and a wide range of vocabulary and grammatical skill. I spoke fairly quickly using some less formal question structures and she understood without any problems. Unfortunately, because she is obviously so relaxed in her speaking she didn’t make as much effort as some of the other students to expand her answers and had to be pushed to provide further detail. For this reason she lost a couple of marks and needs to make sure she is seen to really try and develop her answers in future speaking assessments.
8.) Parisa Foroghi Neya
Parisa both listened to and understood my questions well during the interview. She provided detailed answers, without encouragement and included some nice, informal expressions such as ‘feeling a little blue’. Although Parisa’s pronunciation is generally fine, she needs to pay attention to her pronunciation of certain words including ‘extrovert’ and ‘introvert’ and ensure she has chosen the correct pronunciation of the word ‘live’ in the sentence ‘I can’t live without it’ remembering that by mispronouncing words in English you can sometimes change the meaning completely.
9.) Leila Mojab ABSENT
10.) Zhila Manochechri ABSENT
11.) Hosein Hajizadeh
Hosein spoke well throughout his interview and did not find it necessary to ask for any repetitions. He included some really good sentences and a wide range of vocabulary, particularly health and personality-based. Hosein has a habit of occasionally forgetting to include the main verb in his sentence such as in his answer, ‘In the past, people used to (eat) lots of vegetables’ and ‘I (am) 33 years old’. There is nothing specific he can do to ensure this doesn’t continue to happen other than to be aware of it and try to pay more attention to it in future. This is not easy but it will make a big difference to his accuracy.
12.) Raziye Rozitalab
Raziye’s general understanding of my questions was good and it was only necessary to rephrase one of my questions during the interview. Her vocabulary range is wide and she self-corrected subject verb agreement mistake which shows a good attention to detail. Raziye’s mistakes included two very common ones, both of which are quite simple to correct for future assessments. The first is the confusion between the meaning and use of the verbs ‘give’ and ‘take’ and the second is the use of ‘all of the people’ instead of ‘everyone’. Other than this she should spend some time on general grammar in order to improve overall accuracy.
13.) Najmeh Rezaie
Najmeh understood my questions well and provided expanded answers with examples. She used some useful language to compare the past to the present by starting with ‘In the past...’ and ‘These days...’ which worked very well and sounded natural. She also included the very informal expression ‘down in the dumps’ which added to the naturalness of her speech. Najmeh’s main mistakes were made with her prepositions, using ‘similar with’ instead of ‘similar to’ and ‘in the other hand’ rather than ‘on’. Although they are a difficult area of the language to master, Najmeh needs to spend some time ensuring she knows the correct prepositions for some of the more common uses, such as these.
14.) Sameyeh Zahed
Sameyeh provided detailed answers to my questions and self-corrected her mistake with he/she which shows her attention to detail. Her health-related vocabulary was good and she gave some interesting explanations of why she felt she was a slight introvert. Unfortunately Sameyeh didn’t understand my question on nature/nurture and asked me to move on rather than asking for me to rephrase. She would also benefit from learning some more adjectives of feeling as she relies heavily on ‘funny’ to describe her opinions of things.
15.) Reza Zeynalizadeh
Reza was very confident and both listened and answered in an extremely relaxed way. He has a wide range of vocabulary, particularly health-related and self-corrected on occasion which shows his attention to detail. He expanded his answers without encouragement and used some interesting expression such as ‘to be in shape’. Reza made a couple of mistakes with his grammar, in particular using ‘tell to them’ rather than ‘tell them’ and ‘another people’ rather than ‘other people’ which is a commonly made mistake but is easy to correct. In order to bring his grammar up to the same level as his other skills it might be worth Reza taking some time out to go over the rules and try and remember to include them in his speech.
16.) Sara Ebrahimi
Sara understood my questions well and gave detailed and interesting answers in return. Her vocabulary is good and she provided a good mixture of adjectives when describing both her personality and why people like fast food. She also self-corrected more than once and included the phrasal verb ‘to open up’ which sounded good. Sara lost a number of marks for repeatedly confusing nouns and adjectives which has a negative effect on the fluency of her speech and should not really happen so often at this level. There are quite a few rules to help recognise if a word is a noun or an adjective. Taking the time to find and learn these rules will help Sara with this problem.
17.) Sadegh Borzo
Sadegh answered my questions very well throughout the interview and paid attention to the structure of each of his responses. His answers were thoughtful and expanded without encouragement. Grammatically, Sadegh is generally very accurate and has a very good understanding of main verb + gerund/infinitive structure and use and included some great phrases including ‘it depends on my pocket’ and ‘I don’t interact unnecessarily with people’. The flow of the conversation was very natural and Sadegh should be very happy with the firm grip he has on the English language. My only suggestion would be to try and bring his pronunciation up to the same high standard as his other skills.
18.) Mohamad Gholami
Mohamad gave some really interesting and carefully constructed answers to my questions which he didn’t struggle to understand, even when I increase my speed of speech slightly. His vocabulary bank is well developed and his explanation of ‘I think when someone is feeling sad or blue they want a good listener’ was fantastic. Unfortunately, Mohamad made a couple of mistakes during the interview, in particular a confusion of prepositions ‘it depends of on’ and ‘popular in with young people’ and between nouns and adjectives. Although prepositions are quite difficult to master, there are some helpful rules to help you recognise a noun from an adjective by looking at how the word ends. Finding and learning these rules would be very helpful for Mohamad.
19.) Mehrdad Sheybani
Mehrdad seemed to be a little nervous during the interview and really had to concentrate hard to understand what I was asking. He gave some really good examples of the effects of obesity and the reasons why fast-food has become so popular but generally his answers were quite short. Going forward, Mehrdad should try to expand his answers wherever possible which may become easier for him if he worked towards obtaining some more general vocabulary. He sometimes forgets the subject or the main verb in a sentence which has a significant effect on the fluency of his speech. In his free time I would recommend he try to become more familiar with listening to English, perhaps through finding an English speaking radio station or TV show he likes.