Almost every English language learner’s goal is to learn to speak fluently. This is because the most practical use of a language happens with speaking. Undoubtedly, even the IELTS puts you through a rigorous speaking test. The simple reason being that studying or working overseas will require you to interact with a number of native speakers- peers, teachers, landlords or taxi drivers.
The ultimate aim of IELTS is to make natural English speaking achievable for foreign test-takers. There are several ways to brush up your existing skills. But wouldn’t it be better to get a firm idea of the speaking test requirements before we begin. So, let’s begin by understanding the Speaking test pattern
IELTS Speaking Test Overview
The speaking test is 12- 14 minutes long and has 3 sections in total.
Section 1: Answer casual questions about yourself, family, work or any familiar topic of interest.
Section 2: Speak about a given topic from a card. One minute is allotted for preparation and the following two minutes for speaking. Later the examiner may also ask questions related to the spoken topic.
Section 3: A conversation promoting further discussions on the topic from the second session.
Now that you have a fair idea of the types of questions, you need to see through all that you can do to improve your IELTS Speaking skills. Here you go, take your first step:
1. Know The Assessment Criteria
How do you boost your band score without knowing what your examiners expect from you? Before starting the preparation know that you will be marked concerning your English grammar, fluency, coherence, lexical resource, pronunciation and vocabulary. When you know the specific assessment criteria, you can narrow down to focus on these aspects, ignoring the rest.
2. Build An English Environment
The first step to getting your speaking right is by becoming comfortable with the English language. But how do you do this? Well, the only answer is exposure. The greater you familiarise with English sounds by receiving and producing them, the greater are chances of improvement.
- To hear the best of the English language speech, you can resort to watching English movies. Movies use conversational English with dialogues making sentences easier to grasp and use in IELTS speaking test. English TV series, short films, Ted Talks and Youtube Videos are also great sources to learn speech.
- Listening to podcasts made specifically for IELTS coaching in Ahmedabad test-takers can also help. Some podcasts offer a transcript of the entire audio making it easier for you to follow them as you read.
- Read general English books or articles either online or offline. You may be surprised to see the result that good reading can bring to your speaking skills.
- Lack of vocabulary can considerably affect speaking. So, learn new phrasal verbs and words to incorporate in your speech.
- Also, you could try exposing yourself to only English in all forms-writing, reading, listening or speaking from a day before the exams.
3. Practice Continuously
Let me get it straight, there are no shortcuts to learning English speaking without actually speaking it. Put in all your zeal to practice speaking in English. It can be the most demanding thing to do but it will work wonders for you during IELTS Speaking. There are two ways to do this:
- If you have people around you willing to speak in English, grab every opportunity to converse with them. Do not hesitate due to the fear of making mistakes. Tell yourself that the mistakes you make are part of the learning process.
- Now, what do you do if there’s no partner to have a conversation with? Become your own partner! Talk to yourself looking at a mirror. You can judge your own capacity and at the same time take note of your gestures while speaking. Recording yourself and identifying mistakes is another helpful way to work on weak areas in English speech.
- Practice with IELTS sample papers or get expert IELTS Training in Abu Dhabi.
4. Take Care To Avoid Common Mistakes
All your hard work and preparation will go in vain if you make minute mistakes during your Speaking test. Here take a look at a list of things you need to say NO to:
- Prepared speech is something that examiners easily make out. Trying to speak in the written language is a sign that tells your examiner that you have memorised something beforehand.
- Remaining silent for more than 5 seconds when the question is asked is intolerable.
- Filler words to cover your speech like hmm, ahh, like etc.
- Repeating parts of the question in the answer. Find a different way to answer a given question.
- Overuse of connection works like moreover, in addition etc. They make your conversation sound formal.
- Faking accents to sound like a native speaker. All you need to ensure that you pronounce correctly.
Finally, to achieve success, your English speaking needs to go from being good to great. Such a transition is possible only by listening genuinely and speaking consistently. Start today! Take a closer look at all the above-mentioned steps to guide you. Get a band score above 7 in your IELTS speaking.