aubrey can you hear any extra noise from my side i'm kind of sad that i can't you told me
it's pouring rain there and i love the sound of rain so i'm sad i can't hear it it is yes
it is pouring rain and there's some hail mixed in and i love it i can hear it like splashing
and hitting all my windows and stuff um i love it anyway so today guys we are answering a youtube
subscriber question and if you don't follow ielts energy on youtube you should because all
of our podcast episodes now are on youtube with video so you can watch us and listen to us but
we have a great question from a student who found us on youtube he watched the uh very popular video
seven plus vocabulary for talking about a house or apartment that is a classic ielts energy youtube
video guys so check that out um aubry can you read his question please yes it says honestly i love
your accent guys oh well thank you cool and you are helping people develop their english i have a
question what is pronunciation and what is fluency and which one is more important than the other
i'm so grateful for your videos and i hope my question will be included in your episodes thanks
a lot in advance which was all in caps which i love like you're yelling thanks a lot in advance
i love it um okay so this is a very good question is one more important than the other
aubrey what do you think is pronunciation or fluency more important on ielts speaking no
good question they're not right there are four ques there are four scores on ielts speaking
that are weighted exactly the same so in order to get a seven right you have to average
all of these scores together and then you get this overall score so the same for the
other sections of the exam each of these individual scores is equally important
exactly they're all weighted exactly the same they are worth the same amount according to your score
however i want to add on a thought here because i mean guys if you are not fluent which means
you are not able to keep talking in english you will not get good scores for anything
because it is a speaking test so i would say that no according to your score
nothing is more important than the other but if you are just starting out on your ielts journey
definitely develop fluency first and then fine-tune the other things i would say that's
the priority um but like aubry said if you want a seven or higher you you have to do well on all
on all of the categories yes exactly and what we find is that students often focus too much on you
know grammar vocabulary and don't realize that it wouldn't take a lot of work to improve these two
scores fluency and pronunciation so i love that this student is asking about these scores because
first of all we're seeing that this student recognizes these scores are important and i
recognize it's within my reach to increase them to impr improve my scores it just takes strategies it
takes knowing what the examiner is listening for exactly so as you guys know uh i was an examiner
for 14 years and so aubry knows everything i know and we're going to explain what fluency is and
what pronunciation is according to the scoring system so great question from this subscriber um
let's talk about fluency first so remember it's not just fluency it's fluency and coherence what
is important here aubrey what is the examiner listening for yeah first of all you have to be
able to keep talking you cannot just answer with a few words right aim for three to five sentences
per answer if you feel like in part one right you if you feel like you've given you know of detail
about the question and you don't have anything else to say directly answering share something
related go off on a tangent a little bit share more detail go more in depth you have to keep
talking i totally thought you were gonna say go off queen for a second wait yes not two
i think i think that summarizes a high fluency score if you can go off like a queen okay um
returning to the specific scoring system um we also listen for pauses and hesitations
you can have some pauses like a native speaker guys you're listening to us talk right now it's
not like we continue to fill every second with sound no natives pause but examiners are trained
to know why you're pausing or hesitating i know if you are pausing because you just don't have
ideas you don't have anything to say i know if you are looking for a vocabulary word because
you don't know how to say what you want to i know why you're pausing and that affects your fluency
score right yes um so if you are where you need strategies right because if you feel yourself
about to pause because you're trying to think of a vocab word you don't quite know or you're
lacking ideas you need to know what to do in that moment you need to have filler phrases you need to
know how to paraphrase say it another way sort of cut yourself off and go off saying something else
natives do that all the time right we just all the time change subjects in the middle of something
you can do that right but you have to be planning you have to have practice doing it so you can do
it like a native you have to have the signal words so the listener can follow you it's fine to change
direction or you know get more specific get more general move on to a different example entirely
but you have to have transition words which can also be called signal words so the listener
can follow you speaking is not organized right speak spoken communication is not organized guys
so as long as you are telling us where you're going then it's fine you can go anywhere in
your speaking answer guys um so here's another thing don't repeat yourself um we do a lot of
private lessons with our three key students and this is a common piece of advice we give them
for how to change their score and increase it is don't just repeat yourself over and over again
right don't give the same idea twice yes often students will think well if i say this another way
and i'm not repeating the exact vocabulary that's okay but no right you're still repeating the same
idea maybe you're summarizing or just saying the same idea sort of barely different because
you're trying to fill time this isn't increasing your fluency and coherence score instead you need
to say something new new details add something new and interesting in order to boost that score
and on that note guys what you should be adding specific information this is also well i would
say this is the most common piece of advice that i give to every student right almost everybody that
does mock tests with us you have to get specific examples guys examples in part one and part three
they can be personal they can be about a best friend or your life you have to give examples guys
um and don't forget that coherence is another part of this and that just means
your ideas have to make sense and they have to be put together with linking words transition
phrases like we already talked about these are part of the fluency and coherence score
so basically i just want to summarize guys high scores for fluency and coherence
if it sounds like speaking english is easy for you then you could get a good fluency score right um
okay let's move on to pronunciation aubrey yes so for this score you need to exhibit or show all the
features of native speech right connected speech you can definitely have a slight accent from your
first language that's no problem but the examiner needs to be able to understand what you're saying
yeah as long as your accent does not impede communication that's what it says on the
the rubric guys and that just means that your accent stops me from understanding you as long as
it's not doing that then it's okay now you're not gonna get an eight or a nine if you have a strong
first language accent um but you can still get a seven right if you have some first language accent
as long as you are exhibiting features from native pronunciation so like aubrey said connected speech
there's five rules of connected speech we won't get into them today but one of them is linking
and this just means that all of our words are connected when we talk they are not separate
words that would be weird they're connected um and also of course intonation and stress i would say
those are the two most important things to practice yes and this often is what's the most
difficult for students because you have so much to think about you're thinking about the vocabulary
you need to use you're thinking about grammar you're thinking about ideas and you forget to
think about what's my tone am i using a monotone and then maybe you're saying something you should
sound really excited about you're talking about how much you love hanging out with your friends
and you're saying it like i love hanging out with my friends in a monotone which is not appropriate
you have to have appropriate intonation for the answer totally and then like another extreme if
you're describing a difficult situation or experience and speaking part two don't stop
don't sound happy about it don't be monotone about it like show with your voice that it was difficult
so for example um let's say you're describing a time like your wallet was stolen or something
then you're not gonna say and then this guy stole my wallet and all my credit cards were in there
like you're that would be really weird um instead you're gonna be like and then i realized this man
had stolen my wallet and all my credit cards were in there right like totally different intonation
it changes the whole like vibe of what i'm saying yes exactly often if we're sort of not thinking
about how it comes across how it sounds and our intonation goes up at the end when it should go
down we're just giving the wrong impression the wrong sound the wrong tone for the emotion for
what we should be saying so this takes practice this is not something you can go in on test day
and do perfectly when you have so many things to think about you need to be thinking about
this as you practice record yourself can you hear your intonation changing can you hear the
emotion for what you're saying you'll have to mimic shadow native speakers to practice this
totally um and guys you can find out what your ielts score would be if you took the test today
go to allyearsenglish.com my score we made a very cool free ielts quiz for you guys
get your estimated ielts band score and resources to help you prepare so go to allysenglish.com
my score all right awesome aubrey this was a show chock full of information
yes i love when we share details about the scoring system because this is so vital for you guys to
understand what the examiner's listening for so share this episode with a friend do you
know someone studying for the ielts that might know this on the podcast this is vital that they
understand this totally all right awesome thank you aubry i'll see you next week all right bye-bye