It’s madness to go into any English-speaking test expecting to do well. The IELTS Speaking test is demanding, so you should use any knowledge you can glean to your advantage. Every little bit helps to build your score!
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IELTS Speaking Test Format:
| Format | The Speaking test contains three parts |
| Timing | 11 – 14 minutes |
| Number of Parts | 3 |
| Interaction Pattern | One candidate and one examiner |
| Task Types | Short exchanges with the examiner; a 1 to 2-minute ‘long turn’; a discussion. |
| What does it test? | Talk at length on a given topic, using appropriate language. Communicate opinions on everyday topics and discuss common experiences. Express and justify opinions. Organise your ideas coherently. Analyse, discuss and speculate about issues. |
| Marks | Candidates are assessed on their performance throughout. |
Preparation for IELTS Speaking
To prepare for the IELTS Speaking test, it best to know EXACTLY what you are supposed to do and what you can do to get a better score.
To find out exactly what is expected of you in the test, watch online videos of other people taking their tests. Most of these videos are adverts for teachers or schools, but they can be extremely useful for someone who is unfamiliar with the test.
One of the main problems about watching these videos, is they don’t give you any idea of how much pressure you will feel in the test.
IELTS can change people’s lives by helping them to study abroad or work in another country. It is really common for speaking test takers to be extremely nervous, which often affects what they say, and hence, their speaking score. Some people are so nervous they can’t speak at all!
To combat this, it is essential that you practice with different native speaking teachers or friends so you are confident that you can actually understand the questions they ask. English speakers have a vast range of accents, so practicing is recommended.
These two points will make you more confident when taking your test. If you have the money, thinking about your IELTS test as the first one of several, will make it much less stressful, and allow you to find out your biggest problems before you take the next one. The only problem is, they are not cheap.
8 Great Hacks for IELTS Speaking Success
1) Watch as many online IELTS speaking videos as you can. Pause the video after the question and answer it yourself, then press play and compare your answer. Ask yourself what the video test taker does better than you.
2) Once you understand the format of the speaking test, get an English-speaking friend to ask you questions and assess your answers for hesitation, fluency, vocabulary and so on. Ask them only to assess you for one point each time. For example, the first time, they could assess you for fluency, the second time for grammar and so on.
3) When you start to feel more confident, take some mock tests with native English-speaking teachers online. This will give you a much better idea of your level and what you should improve. Don’t feel bad if they mostly talk about your mistakes, eliminating them will improve your score!
4) Thinking of talking about topics in chunks rather than just specific vocabulary. This way, you should know these phrases or sentences are correct before you use them.
5) Grammar and pronunciation usually take a long time to change, so if they are a problem, aim to reduce your errors rather than eliminate them completely.
As far as grammar is concerned, many people think that if you attempt to use more advanced grammar, then the examiner will see it as a positive. However, if you try more advanced grammar structures and get them wrong, it will change your meaning, create confusion and the examiner will see it as a negative. Also, if you make a slight error with basic grammar, that shouldn’t affect your score, but if you make the same mistake repeatedly, it will lower your grammar and accuracy score.
As for pronunciation, the best way to improve your pronunciation before your test is to use intonation and stress to show how you feel about the topic. Smile and sound happy when you talk about something you like (call centre workers are told to smile when they are speaking on the phone because it makes them sound happier). Sound annoyed or angry when you are talking about something negative and so on. This will really help your pronunciation score rather than you sounding worried, nervous or afraid.
6) Be prepared if you don’t know anything about the topic of the question. Have a plan. Rather than panicking if you don’t know anything about the question topic, know what you are going to say if it happens and stay calm. You can’t know the answer to every question, and it is an English test, not an intelligence test. In some other tests, such as C1 Advanced part of your speaking score is how you talk about unfamiliar topics. It’s just another skill, practice it!
7) Try and balance speaking clearly and speaking naturally. Speaking naturally means your speech should flow rather than pronouncing each word perfectly. This is difficult for many learners, but doing something like this can balance some of the other errors you make.
8) Do not pause for too long before you begin speaking. A short pause to gather your thoughts is acceptable, but anything longer than this will give you less time to produce a suitable sample of language. Being able to paraphrase if you do not know or cannot remember a word and extending your responses rather than giving a one-word answer, will help you more.
Conclusion
I hope that has helped to give you a better understanding of what is required for the IELTS Speaking test, and that you will look into each part in more detail. There is a full list of pages on the IELTS Speaking test here. Good luck with your test!