10月27日加拿大雅思考试超详细回忆

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(Bizarre enough, but it was the first item tested, making me feel good as it is one of my relatively stronger item. And that change cost me an extra $90 to change my return flight to Montreal):

City you live, I told her Montreal, one of the largest cities in Canada.

Like it? Sure, because of its diversity in language and cultures and nationalities, and I am starting to like Halifax after spending one day here, as the people are friendly and the city seems to be peaceful. She then asked me if I was willing to move and live in Halifax. I told her “of course, but I would like to spend half a year here in Halifax and six months in Montreal”.

Do you read newspapers? I do everyday, as I subscribe to The Gazette, an English daily in Montreal.

She said she knew about the Gazette, but why I did not subscribe Globe and Mail and National Post. “Because the Gazette covers more local news”.

Do you think the newspapers will disappear? Not really, but the Internet is gaining more and more grounds, and people are starting to get info from the Internet now.

Was newspaper important in your home country?

Cue Card – The meal you like best, wit whom do you eat,

Dumpling – how they are made, dough, filling, wrapping, boiling, different tastes.

Further talk, difference in Western and Eastern food;

Chinese have more fibre-rich vegetables, and that is why there are less cases of intestine cancers;

What would you suggest in terms of eating? To have more vegetables that contain lots of fibres.

What is the difference in the markets you buy your food? The Western one, Loblaws or the Atlantic Superstore, and the Oriental ones in Chinatown to buy food imported from China, some fresh and some canned, etc.

Listening:

1 – 10 Renting a car, cost, features included (taxes, insurance?, mileage), discount as the renter is working for a particular company, when and how to return the car (before Sunday night) and the keys (put in an envelope then insert in a slot), three additional items - a road map, flash light, first-aid  kit;

11 – 20 employment center for vocational training students, when they are open (throughout the year except the New Year’s Day), it is up to you to give registration.

21 – 30 Selecting science programs at university – 5 altogether, biology, forensics?, how they are offered, full-time, part-time or off the campus to people out of the city;

            All the required courses,  scholarship, amount, book allowance, etc.

31 – 40 fossil collection, the definition of fossils, types of fossils, formation of fossils – buried right away, where to buy fossils – at shops or fossil exhibitions, tools needed for fossil collection – tape measure; plaster to protect delicate fossils.

Reading:

Passage I – how Bats function at night,  how significant the studies are in bats,

Passage II – Interpreters and translators in the business field, qualities of interpreters, etc.

Passage III – Pesticides, their side effects, bio-control technologies

(General impression – not as difficult as the 3 passages in the sample booklet).

Writing:

Task I. Three graphs – one bar chart, one line chart and one pie chart. The bar chart shows the change of number of university students in UK between 1991 and 2001 (?), and the line chart shows the government spending per student during the same period. The pie chart shows the percentage of students of 3 different family backgrounds, namely middle income class (62%), high income family class (30%) and low income family class ( 8%).

My essay went like the following:

The three graphs show the changes of number of students and government spending on each student in UK between 1991 and 2001, and proportions of classes of family income from which the students were from in the year 2001. There was an increase to the number of students from 1 million (1991) to 6 million (2001), whereas there was a decrease in government spending per student from 6000 pounds (1991) to a little  more than 2000 pounds (2001).

There was a steady increase of number of students from 1991 till 1999 (?), when the number levelled off at around 6 million. The government spending, on the other hand experienced a steady fall within this ten year period from.

It is also (important connector to me, added before submission) interesting to see the different sources of students whose household revenues are different. The majority (62%)  of students were from middle class income families, while about one third (30%) came from high income families and 8% of students account for the low income families.

Task II

Many  products, including some daily commodities are produced at low cost in other countries and transported into this country.

Do the advantages outweigh the disadvantages?

My essay was like the following:

“No garden is without weeds”. (Intentionally quoted for better first impression.) Without exception, the discussion as to whether factories and plants ought to be established to produce or manufacture products or equipments, including daily necessities,  in other countries is a heated one in Canada. As far as I am concerned, I hold the opinion that these factories or plants ought to be built. And I present my reasons as follows.

The main reason is the price or cost. People tend to be swayed by prices of products. Never will you see a customer who is willing to pay a higher price for a product when he/she can get a practically identical product at a lower price. Never will you find a client who retains a professional, for instance, a printer, to print his/her business cards when he/she can have them done the say way at another printer's for less. (intentionally written here after reading the examiner’s comments on a band 8 composition in the specimen booklet for the purpose of gaining extras from the hands of the examiner.) Moreover, people tend to compare prices before they decide to purchase anything. And that is the best illustration of the phrase of “shopping around”. In other words, low cost creates the need of building factories in the developing or under-developed countries, such as China, Viet Nam, Thailand and so on so forth.

Another reason is that by introducing technologies to the developing or underdeveloped countries, Canada is helping boost the local economies. To look at it from another perspective, Canada is fulfilling its international commitment of helping relatively poor countries.

Last but not the least, setting up factories or plants in these countries promotes the world exchange, first at the commercial level, then at the cultural level, and no on. People are brought closer because of these exchanges. And that helps to understand the meaning of “global village”.

To sum up, the pros of establishing factories in the less developed countries to produce many of our products at low prices and then to have them transported back to Canada far outweigh the cons such as high transportation expenses, negative influence on the same and similar industries in Canada, and the difficulty in quality control. (“pros” and “cons” are deliberately used here to show a paraphrase of the original “advantages and disadvantages”) Hence the above opinion of mine. (The bold word and phrase in this paragraph are the ones I did not have the time to put in, for which I am still repenting now.)

Concluding comments of the writer:

(A man with grey hair finds it sort of pressing in terms of the time limit in Reading and Writing portions. God bless me that I can get 7 or more for all the four portions so that their requirements are met. Life is just this tough, eh?)

(Would you like to bring the two essays to your teacher for a possible evaluation?)