Interview Feedback
Level 5 G 3
27/02/12
1.) Maryam Yousefi
Maryam understood my questions without difficulty and was able to provide fairly detailed answers. Her hotel-specific vocabulary is good and she used some nice examples of why she felt violence in films was bad for children. Despite her ability, Maryam seemed quite nervous during the interview, she should try to practise both her listening and speaking as often as she can, with a native speaker, if possible as this would make her feel more relaxed in future assessments. Grammatically, she needs to remember to use plurals when talking in generalities, for example: ‘I like drama movies’.
2.) Elnaz Ali Beigi
Elnaz is confident in both her listening and speaking and, as a result, was able to provide natural and quite detailed answers to my questions. She included some good examples of the past simple, an affirmative and negative modal for advice on tourists visiting Iran and included a very useful phrase to give herself more time to answer (‘let me think...’), which worked well. When talking about hobbies and habits, Elnaz needs to be careful not to incorrectly include auxiliary verbs e.g ‘I do watch tv’ and make sure she uses the present simple, not the continuous after a modal e.g. ‘You should wearing a scarf’.
3.) Armin Naseri
Armin’s listening skills are excellent and he is clearly very relaxed in his speaking and has good general pronunciation. He used a good range of modals when giving me advice, provided a number of accurate past simple forms and used contractions whenever possible which made his speech sound very natural. In future, Armin could further improve his marks by showing the assessor he is able to use both the affirmative and the negative form of a verb and modals for advice are a perfect opportunity for this. He must also remember that plurals are usually used when speaking in general terms, for example, ‘I like movies’.
4.) Saharnaz Sepehr
Saharnaz’s pronunciation is good and she answered my questions well. She used some adverbs of frequency, a useful phrase to allow herself more time to think of an answer (‘let me see’) and expressed her opinion of violence in films in a very nice manner. Unfortunately, Saharnaz forgot a couple of articles which affected the fluency of her speech and she made some mistakes with her subject verb agreements. Both of these are fairly basic level mistakes so she will have to pay attention to correcting them for future speaking assessments. Also, Saharnaz used ‘you had better...’ to give me advice which is usually used as a threat or an aggressive warning so she should try using something like ‘You must...’ or ‘You have to...’ in the future.
5.) Bahareh Masoudi
Bahareh’s pronunciation is fine and she understood my questions without difficulty but seemed a little nervous. She gave a good example of the present perfect and used the contracted form of ‘I have..’ which sounded really natural. She had also remembered some very useful sentences and responses to standard questions but needs to make sure she doesn’t rely on these too often. Unfortunately, Bahareh failed to use any modals when I asked for advice on visiting Iran which is one of the main things an examiner is looking for with a question like this. She must also remember that nouns are usually used in their plural form when speaking in generalities, such as ‘I don’t like violent movies’.
6.) Hosein Zeyari
Hosein asked for a couple of repetitions of my questions but generally listened and understood them well. His range of vocabulary is good, particularly the hotel-based pieces and he used some slightly more interesting adjectives including ‘unforgettable’; a nice change from ‘interesting’ and ‘exciting’ which are too commonly used by most students. He also included some modals for advice and a good phrase ‘Children imitate everything’. Although Hosein’s pronunciation is generally ok, he mispronounced a couple of words during the interview, which, in English, can sometimes change the meaning of the word completely, for example ‘Island’ and ‘Iceland’. He must also remember that the word ‘people’ is already a plural.
7.) Mohamad Malekniya
Mohamad spoke carefully and thoughtfully throughout his interview which resulted in a fantastic level of accuracy, particularly grammatically. He gave reasons and examples for each of his responses and used some interesting vocabulary. His advice to visitors was particularly good. In order to develop further, Mohamad should now look to take on some more complex grammatical structures, such as conditional or future forms and continue to obtain more sophisticated vocabulary. Generally speaking though, he should be very proud of the grasp he has on the English language.
8.) Omid Zare
On the whole, Omid understood my questions well and only slightly mis-answered when I asked him what was important to him in a hotel and he recommended hotel’s in Shiraz to me. He took time over his answers and responded carefully and thoughtfully which created a fairly high level of accuracy. He included modal verbs when advising me on visiting Iran and has a nicely-developed bank of vocabulary which he used to provide more interesting answers. Going forward, Omid should look towards making sure his prepositions are correct which is difficult and complex but would make a big difference to the fluency of his speech. He must also remember that when talking about general activities he enjoys doing, he must make the nouns plurals and remove articles, for example; ‘I read the books’.
9.) Elham Gholami
Elham tried hard in the interview and attempted to develop her answers as much as possible. She provided some good answers, including one in a conditional form, and self-corrected a subject verb agreement mistake which is good to see. Unfortunately she did mis-understand a number of the questions which meant she was not able to provide a fully accurate answer. One way for her to overcome this would be to learn some phrases she could use to clarify what is being asked rather than relying solely on picking up on key words. Lots of listening practise in her free time would also help her with this.
10.) Zeynab Jorfzadeh
Zeynab spoke well during her interview and there was no need for me to repeat questions. She gave both an affirmative and a negative modal when giving me advice on visiting Iran, which is an excellent thing to do as it shows the examiner you are aware of how to use the verb in different ways. She also has some good language when it comes to discussing what is important to her in a hotel. As a priority, Zeynab needs to spend time working on her present simple, including how to describe herself and what she likes to do in her free time. At present, she has a habit of including an unnecessary verb when using the verb ‘to be’, e.g, ‘I’m get married’. She would also benefit from obtaining some more useful adjectives other than ‘interesting’ and ‘exciting’ for describing hobbies and actions.
11.) Poran Mosalanezhad
Poran was very nervous during the interview and seemed to find it quite difficult throughout. Although her listening was good and she understood what I was asking, she didn’t have the confidence to complete sentences she was unsure of. She provided some good examples of what is important in a hotel and the effects of violent movie. In order to improve her speaking, Poran should try and focus on two areas: primarily, to obtain more vocabulary which will her more of a chance of being able to explain what she wants to say, and secondly, to spend some time trying to become more comfortable with sentence structure in English. Learning some key phrases and standard answers would also help her a lot at this point.
12.) Ali Jafari
Ali gave some good answers to my questions and included a range of language structures including an affirmative and a negative modal for advice. The past simple was used to introduce something dangerous he had done two years ago but he did not then remain in the past simple for the remainder of the story which is essential. He also provided detailed answers to my questions about the kind of hotel he likes but continued to talk about good service and cleanliness when I was pushing him to talk about the actual facilities. Going forward, Ali should make sure he is remaining in the same tense when referring to the past and be careful with is pronunciation of some words in English that are not pronounced how they look, for example, ‘cleanliness’.
13.) Nasrin Reaisi
Nasrin seemed a little nervous during the interview but thought carefully about her answers and gave some good examples of what she wants from a hotel, when encouraged. Her advice for tourists visiting Iran included two very good modal verbs, one affirmative and one negative which is great. She also found a synonym for a word she was struggling to remember which is difficult to do under pressure. In the future, Nasrin needs to try and practise her speaking whenever possible in order to try and increase her confidence and expand her answer without having to be pushed. It would also benefit her fluency if she could find the time to work on sentence structure which would allow her to confidently construct her answers.
14.) Pezhman Ghani
Pezhman understood my questions well and it wasn’t necessary to repeat anything for him to be able to understand. His answers were detailed, he used a good mixture of vocabulary and he self-corrected a mistake in the present simple into the past simple without hesitation. He also provided a conditional form when providing advice for tourists visiting although he would have got extra marks for including a modal verb here too. Pezhman made a couple of mistakes with prepositions, including ‘It depends of (on)...’. This area of English is quite difficult to perfect but he should make sure he knows which prepositions are used with commonly used phrases like this. He must also be careful not to assume the pronunciation of the noun form of a word is the same as the adjective, e.g. ‘clean’ (adjective) and ‘cleanliness’ (noun).