Are you looking for help with how to prepare for ielts speaking test?
Do you want to feel more confident and reach for Band 9?
Even if you just want improve your English pronunciation, in this video, these are exactly
the things that I'm going to help you to do.
You probably already know that the test is split into 4 parts:
Listening, reading, writing and speaking
And it’s the speaking part of the test that this video will focus on.
The speaking test last between 11-14 minutes, comprising 4-5 minutes where you talk about
yourself, 3-4 minutes for you to talk about a given topic and then 4-5 minutes of you
in conversation with the examiner, who is assessing you in four key areas:
Fluency and coherence - your ability to speak smoothly and at an appropriate speed without
unnatural pauses.
Lexical resource - your accuracy and range of vocabulary
Grammatical range and accuracy - your use and accuracy of grammar
Pronunciation - being clear and understandable
So we're going to focus on pronunciation.
Now the firstly, (and probably the most important to know) is that you do NOT need to speak
in a perfect British, American, Canadian or Australian accent in order to get top marks.
It's true!
What you need to do in order to get top marks is this:
"have a full operational command of the language.
Your use of English is appropriate, accurate and fluent, and you show complete understanding."
So if it's not about accent, then what do you need to focus on?
Let's break it down into 6 simple and easy steps:
1.
Individual sounds - can they understand your words easily?
2.
Word Stress - are you emphasising the right parts of words?
3.
Sentence Stress - are you emphasising the right words in a sentence?
4.
Weak sounds - did you know that the pronunciation of some words change when they're unstressed
and this can affect fluency.
5.
Linking sounds - when one words meets another, the pronunciation of the vowel or consonant
at the end or beginning of a word can also change, and this really affects fluency.
6.
Intonation - are you using pitch and rhythm to communicate the way that you feel about
what you're saying?
I'm going to walk you through each of these 6 steps in 6 videos.
This video will help you with individual sounds and at the end of this video they'll be a
link next lesson.
So, here we go...
Individual sounds is quite simply a question of whether your pronunciation of words is
clear and understandable.
So, essentially, we're talking about your pronunciation of vowels and consonants in
words - the sounds of English.
But how do YOU know whether YOUR pronunciation is clear and understandable?
Here are some ways to find out:
GOT HERE
The first thing you could do is to have a conversation with a native English speaker,
ask them to point out any words that they struggle to understand, and then record them
saying those words, and you can practice and change your pronunciation.
The second thing that you could do is to read aloud sections of newspapers, magazines or
books (which will also help you to increase your vocabulary) then circle any words that
you struggle to pronounce or that you didn’t feel very confident with, and then check them
against the online Oxford Dictionary.
And in that dictionary it has each word with an audio in both British and American English
that you can listen to and practice with.
Now the third thing you could do is to learn phonetics.
Phonetics is a symbol system for pronunciation (so if you have ever wondered 'what are those
strange squiggles next door to words in English dictionaries?'
they’re phonetic symbols).
And we have something called the IPA (which is the International Phonetic Alphabet) and
it’s a map of all symbols and all the sounds, both vowels and consonants used in English.
And what I’ve done is I’ve included two links in the description below this video.
One to a free app called Sounds which is great you can have it on your mobile or your tablet
and you can click each symbol and it’ll give you audio of the sound.
And online there is also a resource by the British Council which is another version of
an interactive map again that you can double click on an it will give you audio of each
sound and that might be another way to improve your pronunciation.
Now the fourth thing you could do is to get a pronunciation eBook or a pronunciation book.
There are a few on the market.
Get rid of your accent by Olga Smith and Linda James and there’s another called Work On
Your Accent by Helen Ashcroft and Sarah Shepherd.
I've actually got my own published eBook, it was published last year.
It’s 320 pages, it covers absolutely ever aspect of vowel and consonant pronunciation,
word stress, sentence stress, intonation, it’s got 12hrs of studio quality audio,
for you to listen to and practice with, illustrations and diagrams, absolutely everything, so I’ve
put a link at the end of this video to my website where you can go and find out a bit
more and that will help you to improve your pronunciation.
Now in my experience over the last 10 years of working with non-native speakers, helping
them to improve their english pronunciation and intonation, there are 10 sounds that stop
almost all of them from sounding confident and fluent when they speak English.
And so last year I created two free downloadable ebooks with audio for those 10 sounds.
And at the end of this video they’ll be a link that you can click on and it’ll take
you to those two free resources, and it’s helped thousands and thousands of people that
I’ve worked with.
So check out my website and have a look at those.
Now the last thing you could do, and this is only if you’ve scoured the internet,
watch youtube videos and book eBooks and learnt phonetics is to get some one-to-one guidance.
You can do that with someone like an accent reduction coach or an elocution teacher, accent
reduction teacher and they will help you to pinpoint exactly where you’re going wrong
in terms of pronunciation and intonation and they’ll be able to guide you step by step
towards more confidence and fluency in English.
So look, if you want to keep learning about how to prepare for ielts speaking test then
click here it’ll take you to the next video.
But if you’d like to learn a bit more about vowel and consonant pronunciation then why
don’t you click here and download a free download that I’ve created specifically
for the ielts speaking test.
And it will really help to improve your pronunciation of vowels and consonants, it’ll give you
pictures and diagrams of the lips and tongue, audio for you to practice with so click here
and download that right now.
Now just before you do that, if you enjoyed this video and you want to find it easily
again, then click like, and consider subscribing to this channel because I post weekly videos
here every Tuesday at 8.30pm GMT (local London time).
So, I hope to see you here next week.