IELTS Speaking Test: Everything That You Need to Know Including 9 Study Tips to Maximize Your Score.

 

IELTS Speaking test is the fourth section of IELTS test. The test is the same for both the Academic and the General IELTS tests.

Time	10-15 minutes
Sections	3

IELTS speaking test is a face-to-face interview between the test taker and the examiner, which lasts from 10 to 15 minutes and has 3 sections.

• Section 1: introduction and interview (4–5 minutes). First of all, the examiner will ask you to tell your name and show your passport. After you introduce yourself to the examiner, you will be asked some questions on general topics, such as work, studies, home, family, interests etc.
• Section 2: long turn (3–4 minutes). You will be given a task card about a particular topic. You will have 1 minute to prepare a monologue on the given topic. Then you return the task card to the examiner and talk about the topic for 2 minutes. After your talk, the examiner may ask you a few questions.
• Section 3: discussions (4–5 minutes). The third section involves a discussion between the examiner and the test taker, generally on questions relating to the theme which they have already spoken about in Section 2.

IELTS Speaking test sample

Here you can see a full IELTS Speaking test sample. The examiner's questions are written for each part.

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IELTS Speaking: Part 1

Time: 4-5 minutes

Good morning. My name is John Smith. Could you tell me your full name, please?
Can I see your identification, please? Thank you!

In this first part, I’m going to ask you some questions about yourself. Let’s talk about your family. Do you have a big family?

- How much time do you spend with your family?

- What do you like to do together as a family?

- Are people in your country generally close to their families?

Let’s move on to talk about technology. Do you use any gadgets on a daily basis?

- How often do you use the Internet?

- What is your favourite technological device?

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IELTS Speaking: Part 2

Time: 3-4 minutes

Okay. Now we move on to Part two of the speaking test. Have a look at this card and read it carefully. You have about one minute to think about your answer. Then approximately one to two minutes to talk to me about what's on the slip. You can use a pen and paper to make some notes.

Don't worry if I stop you, I'll let you know when the time is up.

Describe your friend. You should say:

·         Who is he/she

·         When did you meet

·         Why is he/she so close to you

and say what do you like about your friend the most

- Do you have a lot of friends?

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IELTS Speaking: Part 3

Time: 4-5 minutes

- What do you think is the best time to get new friends?

- Do you think friendship is important nowadays?

- Is it important to stay in touch with your friends throughout the years?

- What personal qualities are the most important to be a good friend?

Thank you! Your speaking test is over now. You can enjoy the rest of your weekend!

How to prepare for IELTS Speaking?

The above-written sample is one possible option of how IELTS Speaking test can pass. You may encounter different types of questions on IELTS Speaking, for example, your topics may include work, studies, accommodation, food, weather, health, hobbies, relationships and so on.

The best way to prepare for IELTS Speaking test is to

1. read a lot of speaking questions and try answering them
2. learn a lot of advanced speaking vocabulary
3. practice answering IELTS Speaking questions, using vocabulary that you've learnt
4. read more IELTS Speaking samples with answers, adopt new phrases and vocabulary in your speech

9 TIPS FOR MAXIMIZING YOUR IELTS SPEAKING SCORE

Tip 1: Commit To Speaking English Every Day

The great thing is, you don’t have to have a speaking partner to practise speaking English and for the first of our IELTS Speaking tips, you don’t need anyone else.

The best practice technique is to force yourself to think about everything in English. This is one of the most valuable skills you can develop. It’s a very simple technique and will fit easily into your everyday life.

Learning to think in English will help you to speak faster and with greater accuracy and fluency. You’ll quickly see a massive improvement in your speaking skills and your language will sound far more natural. Start using it today.

Tip 2: Practise Answering IELTS-Style Questions

Plan a timetable with a set number of mock speaking tests each week (See the 30 sets of test questions at the end of this article). You might, for example, do one every other day or on three set days each week. Only you know how much time you have available to focus on the speaking part of the exam and how much more practice you need.

The more you do, the better you’ll be prepared for the test. If you are really pushed for time, make sure that you do it at least once a week. If you are keeping to the timing of the test, it will take less than 15 minutes.

Do allow yourself more thinking time while you’re learning how to develop answers for the different parts of the test.

If you have someone to ask you the questions, and to time your answers, that’s great, but, if you don’t, don`t worry if you haven’t.

If you’re practising alone, it’s important to speak your answers out loud just as you will in the test. I recommend that you record yourself on your phone, whether you’re on your own or with a partner, then you can play it back later to listen out for specific things you need to improve.

Tip 3: Grow Your Vocabulary

Vocabulary makes up 25% of your mark for the Speaking and Writing parts of the IELTS exam. Knowing a broad range of words is also essential for scoring well in the Listening and Reading tests.

Learning topic vocabulary is one key aspect of increasing your word power. 

Tip 4: Know the Exam

It’s vital that you understand the format of the Speaking test. If you know exactly what to expect, you’ll already be a step closer to achieving the result you want. You’ll be well prepared and not facing surprises on the day that will prevent you from doing your best.

You’ll have a great deal more confidence going into the test and will perform better if you know what’s going to happen and what will be expected of you.

Tip 5: Understand What You Will Be Tested On

This is one of the most important of our IELTS Speaking tips. If you don’t know what the examiner is looking for, how can you be sure that you’re giving it to them?

Don’t risk a low grade simply because you fail to understand what the test is really about.

The IELTS Speaking test is designed to assess your ability to:

• Communicate opinions and
  information on everyday topics
  and common experiences

• Speak at length on a given
  topic using appropriate language

• Organise your ideas coherently

• Express and justify your opinions

• Analyse, discuss and speculate
  about issues

So what, specifically, are you tested on? Just these 4 things:

• Fluency and Coherence

• Vocabulary

• Grammar

• Pronunciation

They each hold 25% of the marks.

Equally important is what you are NOT tested on:

• You won’t be assessed on the
  content of what you say.

• You won’t be tested on your
  knowledge or your intelligence.

• You are not expected to be an
  expert on the subjects they
  ask you about.

The examiner just wants to hear your opinions and how well you communicate them. That’s it.

Tip 6: Know Your Strengths & Weaknesses

One of the challenges of being a language learner is that you can’t always recognise your own mistakes. However, you will be aware of what you are good at and what aspects of your language skills you really need to work on. 

Be totally honest with yourself. Which of the four areas of assessment is your weakest – fluency and coherence, vocabulary, grammar or pronunciation? Maybe it's particular aspects of several of these.

Identify where you need to make the most improvement and plan your timetable accordingly. If you give equal emphasis to the things you have already mastered and those you are not so good at, then you’re wasting valuable preparation time.

Earlier I suggested recording yourself speaking English. When you do this, you will notice things that need improvement that you might not otherwise be aware of.

Here are some of the sorts of things you might notice:

• You repeat the same words and
  expressions frequently rather
  than varying your vocabulary.

• You pause and hesitate a lot.

• Your voice is monotone with
  little variation in your intonation.

• You focus too much on
  grammatical accurately
  at the expense of fluency.

Don’t be worried about your errors as they are part of the learning process. Recognise them and use them to improve.

Tip 7: Practise Identifying Grammatical Structures

Using the correct tense is obviously an important aspect of grammatical accuracy. However, it’s very common for candidates to use the wrong tense when answering questions despite it being a pretty basic error.

The result is that they don’t actually answer the question. This sort of mistake occurs all too frequently in the Speaking test and it’s one of the main reasons why people score poorly for grammar. 

There’s a simple way to avoid this problem. Identify the tense the examiner uses in their question and use the same one in your answer.

Let me show you what I mean with a poor answer and a good one.

Question: Have you ever been abroad?

Sarai: I’m going to the USA in September?

The question is asked in the past tense but the answer is given in the future tense. Because of this, Sarai hasn’t answered the question.

Here’s a better answer.    

Sarai: No, I’ve never visited a foreign country but I’m going to the USA in September?

Not only does Sarai correctly use the past tense in the first part of her answer, but she also adds a second clause in the future tense. This will earn her good marks.

So, here are the two rules for using the right tense for the main clause of your answer:

• Answer the question.

• Answer using the same
  tense as in the question.

For practice, get a friend to ask you some simple questions using past, present and future tenses and see if you can quickly identify the verb tense in each one.

Here are three examples:

• What did you have for breakfast
  this morning? (Past tense)

• Do you like Sally’s new hairstyle?
  (Present tense)

• Where do you want to go on holiday
  next year? (Future tense)

Tip 8: Focus on Fluency

For the next tip, we’re going to go a step further with the technique in Tip 1 – learning to think in English.

Poor fluency is often caused by the fear of making mistakes. This leads to the speaker pausing and hesitating far too much or speaking too slowly as they try to get their grammar and vocabulary perfect.

Since fluency carried 25% of the marks, you need to get a good balance between correct language and fluent speech. The only way to do this is to practise.

This method is something for you to do on your own so that you aren’t worried about making mistakes. There are many ways you could do it but here are two.

1) Towards the end of the day, think of one thing that went really well or that you are happy about and something that could have been better.

Talk out loud about them for 1 minute, focusing on fluency.

This will also be great practise for using the past tense, but also conditionals and modals (‘If I had…’ ‘I should have…’) which are more advanced grammar and will impress the examiner if you use them.

2) Choose a photo in a newspaper or magazine and talk out loud about it for at least 1 minute.

Here are a few ideas as to what to say:

• Introduce the subject matter.

• Describe what you can see.

• Talk about any activity that is
  going on in the photo. (present)

• Guess what might have been
  going on before it was taken. 
  (past)

• Suggest what might happen next. (future)

If you vary the type of subject matter you choose for this activity, you will be practising a wide variety of languages. For example, choose a picture of a beautiful room or landscape one day and a topical news item the next.

Record and playback your talks to assess your fluency. It will very quickly begin to improve.

Tip 9: Work on Your Pronunciation

Pronunciation should perhaps have come top of our list of IELTS Speaking tips. Why? Because, if you have poor pronunciation and the examiner can’t understand what you’re saying, they have no way of assessing your English language skills.

You won’t be expected to sound like a native English speaker. Indeed, many nationalities speak English and each has its own accent and slightly different ways of using intonation.

What you will be assessed on is how easily the examiner can understand you and how well you pronounce the key sounds of the English language.

Pronunciation is generally the last skill that English learners master so the requirement for a high band score are actually quite low. Having said that, any small improvements you can make will increase your marks.

Use these 4 methods:

1) Listen to spoken English every day.

Podcasts and radio shows are better than TV and videos because you will only be listening to the language rather than being distracted by the visuals. You’ll find spoken material on almost any subject you can imagine.

2) Focus in

Record short extracts from these sources and replay them over and over again so that you can study and copy the stress and intonation.

3) New Vocabulary

When you learn new words, make sure that you learn and practise their pronunciation as well.

All good online dictionaries have an audio button so that you can hear the word spoken, as well as a phonetic transcription of how each word is pronounced. 

4) Identify Common L1 Errors

It can be really helpful to identify the common pronunciation errors in your L1 language so that you can focus in on them, or at least be aware of where key pronunciation challenges may lie.

Just Google the phrase ‘common pronunciation mistakes in English for _______ speakers’. Insert your own language in the space. You should find several websites that list common errors in your native language.

BELOW ARE 30 EXAMPLES OF QUESTIONS THAT ARE COMMONLY USED IN THE THREE DIFFERENT PARTS.