Speaking - Tips to Improve your Speaking Score

Candidates often make the same kinds of mistakes; try to make sure you get the best score possible by improving your score in the IELTS test. Candidates need to be aware of and should focus on the following: 

1. Understand how the speaking test is graded (look at my overview of the speaking test); or a quick description is given below - your speaking is graded based on:

• Fluency and coherence – speak freely at a normal speed and be easy to understand.
• Vocabulary - use higher level words and show ability to paraphrase and use some idiomatic language
• Grammar - Use a variety of sentence types (simple, compound, complex) and also avoid grammatical errors
• Pronunciation – does your pronunciation make your speech hard to understand? Can you use language features that a native speaker might use such as intonation, stress, and rhythm.

2. Prepare for and practice common questions that are asked (Look at my Blog post on general speaking topics) 

3. Learn ways to structure your  answer, especially for the second part of the speaking test (the long turn). This part should have an introduction, body and conclusion in the one to two minutes that is allowed. Practice speaking for one to two minutes with your friends and Look at my Blog post on general speaking topics. I will add a specific Blog post on Part 2 of the speaking test soon!

4. When you’re asked a question, try to answer it without repeating the whole question in your answer. 

For example:

Examiner:  ‘What's the most interesting thing about your hometown?’

Candidate: ‘The most interesting thing about my hometown is…’ = BAD ANSWER

A better answer would be:
Candidate:  “My hometown’s Bangkok”  and then you can expand on your answer, if possible, by adding something like: “Most people find it an interesting place because…’

5. Improve your accent – make sure you can make all sounds correctly (th, l, r,sh/ch and especially the ends of words) and also practice sounding natural with word stress, intonation, and connected speech.  Record yourself and listen to how you sound. Are you speaking too slowly? Are you speaking too quickly? Let a native speaker give you some feedback on the way you speak. 

6. Improve your spoken grammar – correct any frequent errors.  Get a native speaker give you some feedback on your grammar; use of tenses and subject/verb agreement, use of articles etc

7. Broaden your vocabulary – learn and use the more difficult vocabulary to improve your score such as the more idiomatic vocabulary that is shown in some of my other Blog posts. 

8. Be able to paraphrase so that you can communicate the same idea using different words or sentence structures.

9. Speak until the examiner stops you, don’t just answer the question and stop. Make sure  you demonstrate your best English. Do not give the examiner the opportunity to ask “why?” Make sure that you give the detail so that the examiner does not have to keep on prompting you. Do not give one word answers!

10. Don’t memorise or rote learn whole speeches. It is so obvious when a candidate learns a script and then just starts to recite it. The examiner will just change the topic to something else if a candidate does this (believe me, it is so obvious when candidate recite a script of rote learned English