Strategies for the IELTS 1 – Test 3

Tutor: Now, Stefan and Lauren. You worked together on the assignment for your Urban Geography course, didn’t you? l know you made a plan of what you were going to do before you went on the field trip. Did you stick to it?

Stefan: More or less!

Tutor: OK. So where did you start?

Stefan: Well, first of all we selected one area of the city to work in – we decided on the center – and we looked in detail at how it has been developed by doing a survey.

Lauren: (Q21) Yeah …We did that by walking round and dividing the area into different categories such as residential, commercIal and Industrial so we could record land use. (Vâng …Chúng tôi đã làm điều đó bằng cách đi vòng quanh và chia khu vực thành các loại khác nhau như dân cư, thương mại và Công nghiệp để chúng tôi có thể ghi lại việc sử dụng đất.) 

Lauren: We’re going to find some maps from 50 years ago and from 100 years ago so we can look at what has changed.

Tutor: Good! So that gives you a foundation. Then what did you do?

Stefan: Um, I was interested in looking at how polluted the city was.

Lauren: I thought that was too general a topic and would be difficult to check. But Stefan persuaded me and actually it was quite interesting because before we started, we assumed that a lot of the pollution problems would be caused by industry.

Stefan: In fact, most of the industrial development has been on the outskirts and most pollution is caused by the traffic which passes through the city center every day. (Q22) There are five major road junctions (=five key locations) around the edge of the city so we set up equipment to check the air quality on each of those three times in one day. (Có năm ngã ba đường chính xung quanh rìa thành phố, vì vậy chúng tôi đã lắp đặt thiết bị để kiểm tra chất lượng không khí tại mỗi nút giao thông đó ba lần trong một ngày.)

Lauren: In the morning and evening, which is when most journeys are made in and out of the city, and at 2.30 in the afternoon.

Stefan: (Q23) On the same day. We went to the two busiest junctions in the morning and evening (=twice a day) to calculate the traffic flow into the city. (Cùng ngày. Chúng tôi đến hai nút giao thông đông đúc nhất vào buổi sáng và chiều tối để tính toán lưu lượng phương tiện vào thành phố.)

Tutor: Right.

Stefan: We’ll be able to produce some graphs from the figures we collected.

Lauren: Yeah.

Tutor: Presumably you then looked at where all these cars ended up?

Lauren: l thought we should look at why people were coming into the city – um, whether it was for employment or education or leisure activities but Stefan thought that would be too difficult.

Stefan: (Q24) Because most people were in cars it would be hard to ask them. So we decided to spend an afternoon examining the parking facilities available instead. (Bởi vì hầu hết mọi người đều ở trong ô tô nên sẽ rất khó để hỏi họ. Vì vậy, chúng tôi quyết định dành một buổi chiều để kiểm tra các bãi đậu xe có sẵn)

Stefan:We established the capacity of each car park and we spent an afternoon counting cars in and out so we have an idea of how long people spend in the city center.

Tutor: So do you have evidence that most journeys are made by car within the city center?

Stefan: We checked local government statistics to see if that was true but they were inconclusive.

Lauren: Everything is quite close together in the city center and there are wide pavements so you would expect people to walk from one place to another.

Stefan: (Q25) So we chose a number of (=several) locations and we noted how many pedestrians passed a particular spot. (Vì vậy, chúng tôi đã chọn một số địa điểm và chúng tôi ghi nhận có bao nhiêu người đi bộ đi qua một địa điểm cụ thể)

Tutor: Um, how did you choose where to do that?

Stefan: Oh, we stood at two places in the business district, one in the shopping area and the other was in an area where there are more tourists.

Tutor: Right.

Lauren: (Q26) I thought it was really important to talk to people so we carried out a survey on how people usually traveled into the city. We asked them about their usual means of transport. (Tôi nghĩ việc nói chuyện với mọi người là rất quan trọng nên chúng tôi đã tiến hành một cuộc khảo sát về cách mọi người thường di chuyển vào thành phố. Chúng tôi hỏi họ về phương tiện vận chuyển thông thường của họ)

Stefan: We found out that it varied according to why people were traveling -if they were employed in the city they wanted to get there quickly but if they were coming in for their leisure time they didn’t mind using the bus.

Lauren: That’s all we had time for while we were there.

Tutor: OK. So shall we talk about what you’re going to do next and how you’re going to divide the tasks up? How are you going to present the data you’ve got?

Stefan: Well, some of the information can be presented as graphs or maps.

Lauren: I’m quite good at software.

Stefan: You’d better do that then, Lauren. (Vậy bạn nên làm phần việc đó, Lauren) I’ll help you check all the statistics before you start.

Lauren: OK.

Tutor: Um, it’s good to present as much as you can visually. Is there anything else you can use as visuals?

Stefan: Mm … we’ve got a lot of photographs which we can go through.

Tutor: Aha.

Lauren: Er, we both took them so some will be duplicated. It’s going to take ages to go through them all. Maybe one of us should just choose some.

Tutor: It’s better if you collaborate. That way you’ll end up with the best of what you’ve got. (Sẽ tốt hơn nếu bạn hợp tác. Bằng cách đó bạn sẽ có thành quả với những gì tốt nhất mà bạn có).

Lauren: That’s fine. we’ll do that.

Tutor: And, er,when the graphs and maps are done, you’ll need to write a report, an analysis of the data. Will you do that together?

Stefan: I think that should be my responsibility if we’re going to share the work out evenly. (Tôi nghĩ đó phải là trách nhiệm của tôi nếu chúng ta chia sẻ công việc một cách đồng đều). I can use some of Lauren’s notes as well as my own.

Tutor: OK. And finally, you’ll be presenting your project to the rest of the group in a couple of weeks’ time.

Lauren: We thought it’d be better for Stefan to do that as he’s got more experience at that kind of thing.

Tutor: I would prefer to have input from both of you as I have to do an assessment. (Tôi muốn có ý kiến đóng góp từ cả hai bạn vì tôi phải thực hiện đánh giá.)

Stefan: We’ll take turns then. We’ll divide it into sections and talk about a few things each.

Tutor: Good. You’ll find it easier, Lauren, than doing a presentation on your own. Well, if you need to ask me any more questions while you’re working on this, email me. I look forward to seeing what you produce.

Lauren: Thanks!

Stefan: Thanks!