hey Aubry how you doing I'm great how are you Jessica
oh and I am excited to work on some art projects tonight I'm just really getting into my new hobby
yes I know I luckily am able to follow Jessica on Facebook and she's doing this cool I'll describe
it for you it's like wood burning and then you're painting it and yes show something you guys have
to come to YouTube so you can see what Jessica is YouTube so you can see my new uh my new obsession
it's it's wood burning and so I burn pictures into wood and then I paint them it's such a
cool hobby such a good creative Outlet I love it so that's why I'm excited uh what's why are you
happy today Aubry we actually oh this is kind of funny we're getting Turf on our lawn which
I think I talked to you about this a while ago I was always the holdout for Turf like
I didn't want to do it I want real grass but they've asked us to stop watering grass here
in Arizona because there's a drought and it's we just really don't have water to be watering
grass yeah so we're finally replacing grass with Turf and just realizing if we want grass we need
to live somewhere else yeah I mean that's the reality that's really the reality yep
um guys this beginning conversation we can connect it to IELTS because if you listen back and try to
copy or mimic how we talk that will improve your pronunciation so there's just a little side note
another way to use the podcast especially the beginning like natural conversation that we have
um but that's what we're talking about today guys is very specific details about your pronunciation
score yes we got a really good question about this this and we're often telling students you
have to think about the pronunciation score you have to think about intonation because
so many of our students will find themselves focusing on vocabulary and grammar and sort
of forget about the pronunciation score the fluency and coherence score so we're doing a
deep dive today answering this question providing details about this specific score that can help
you on test day yeah exactly because remember guys at the end of the day it's all about the
score right that is it that is all we focus on on IELTS energy on this show is to give you
guys the information you need to increase your IELTS scores nothing more nothing less right
um because like even if you are a naturally timid or shy person you speak softly you don't you're
not expressive in your first language you know what you can't do that on IELTS even if it's not
natural to you you have to focus on your score that's why you're there so let me get to this
question so this is from Jonah Beck giraffe thank you for writing in um if you guys have
your own question send them to us support all yoursenglish.com and we may feature it on an
episode so um this person says that I'm gonna say he they I'll say they they have a natural knack
for picking up new words and idioms awesome um but here's his main question so say for example he's
using great vocab like he says hinge on instead of depend on that's a nice phrasal verb right there
um with that vocabulary and proper word stress and pronunciation features like intonation does that
guarantee a high band score okay so great vocab great pronunciation features does that guarantee
a high band score in speaking unfortunately no right there are four separate scores that are
all equally weighted and you have to do well on all four even if you have amazing band 9
vocab amazing band 9 pronunciation awesome you still need grammar and fluency that fluency and
coherence score those also have to score highly enough to average out your overall seven or higher
yeah so again guys it comes back to the score um it's wonderful if you have fantastic vocabulary
right that's great so okay check off that box tick you're good in that category you still have
three other categories to think about right yeah just like depend on your strength and let that
one thing carry you because just like Aubry said guys remember your speaking score is an average
of those four categories it's not like fluency is given more weight than pronunciation or vice versa
right they're all weighted equally exactly so we are going to dive into that pronunciation score
today especially this um listener speaker was asking about these pronunciation features like
intonation and word stress but there's actually more to it than that I've also had students
say I feel like I've got the intonation the word stressed down and then I ask well what about these
other features right that's that's not it there's a lot that goes into that pronunciation score we
want to make sure you guys are aware of everything The Examiner is listening for all right so let's
talk about the exact things you are scored on in pronunciation um first guys what it says is
like pronunciation features features of connected speech for example like what is connected speech
um connected speech is is actually five I think it's it's five or six I think it's five rules
that govern the way our words change and become linked together when we are speaking There are
rules for example linking so if one word ends in a consonant the next word ends in a vowel like
um an apple I don't separate them when I'm talking I link them an apple right
um assimilation assimilation is when a sound changes and aubry's going to give you an example
of that in just a second um and then there's illusion illusion is when a sound sound disappears
like we don't say comfortable we say comfortable that or it totally disappears so these are the
natural features that the examiner will notice so let's do an example of assimilation Aubry what's
that so one one example is that native speakers if one word ends in a sound like the letter T and
the next word starts with uh the letter Y that becomes like would write CH and so for example
the words treat your or treat you it's not treat you with a guide like a break and a hard T that t
y becomes CH so if you're asked about pets on the IELTS exam and you want to say it's vital to treat
your pets well you hear that between those words and if the examiner hears you separate that and
there's no assimilation and you say it's vital to treat your pets well your score is affected
it's not natural it's not natural in order to get that band 9 for pronunciation you have to
exhibit all of the features that we're talking about today um if you exhibit most of them you
can get an eight if you exhibit some very well but not all of them you get a seven you know
what I mean like we we talked recently um we did a deep dive into your grammar score
and it's the same right like if you do like some things really really well you get a seven if you
do more things really really well you get an eight if you do everything perfectly you get
a nine it's like it's the same kind of thing here um so one just note about that we we do
um use these features to change the way we text each other now so for example if you're
encouraging a friend to do something nice for themselves then we say like treat yourself treat
yourself challenges the way that we speak that is assimilation um and you can totally talk like
that on the exam it's not informal it's not um like weird slaying or inappropriate or anything
like that that is natural that is how we talk I think it's a very common misconception that
that's like a more informal way of speaking no this is how we speak out work this is how
even the most formal speaking we use all of these features it's just the way that natural
speech Works in English and remember guys it's all about the score the examiner notices these things
typically we notice the absence of these things like in the example you just said you know if I
hear somebody said treat your pets that doesn't sound natural to me there are no uh pronunciation
features there that sound natural and that is specifically what you're scored on guys
um all right so that's the connected speech a lot of features there The Examiner notices
when they are not present um intonation so oh that's a big one of course I just went I don't
know why I did that um Aubrey can you give us an example of a low scoring intonation sentence and
a high scoring intonation sentence yes we talk about this a lot on the podcast because we see
students make mistakes here a lot and we feel like it's maybe the easiest one to raise your
score if you if you know what you should be doing right so here's an example if you're asked about
you know a recent time you ate at a restaurant a recent time you ate a dessert and you say
I ate a super decadent dessert last night that's a very boring intonation that's quite monotone
there's no Variety in your tone whereas this is band nine into Indonesian right I ate a super
decadent dessert last night I got so excited to hear your band night intonation before you
even said it I could see it you were like giddy you're like a little giddy School child oh my God
so good um if you are listening to this on a podcast player thank you so much hit follow and
do remember that we are also on YouTube every episode IELTS energy TV so you know what you
can see Jessica be super Kitty as you should see her face while she's waiting for my band 9
example you gotta check in it out guys it's too fun not to check out okay two more quick notes
Here on what the examiner needs to hear um for your pronunciation score and they're both about
stress so there's two different ways we talk about stress the first is syllable stress or word stress
for example um band five or six because you could still make errors here and get a six I might hear
a student say romantic movies that's so weird you're stressing the wrong syllable so to get
a band seven or higher you need to correct the correct you need to stress the proper syllables
and say romantic movies for example yes it's true right this is one of the another one of the most
common areas we hear because if if you're sort of you have all these other things to think about
you're trying to use idioms you're trying to use interesting vocabulary it's very easy to forget
to pay attention to to repeat the syllable stress the way you hear it when you listen to our podcast
listen to movies right it's easy to just sort of not pay attention to that at all and then say it
differently than you hear native say it and that again it's just a natural speech it sticks out
sticks out like a sore thumb all right the last thing sentence stress and I'm gonna just put in
the same category here pausing because both of these things affect the natural rhythm of your
sentences so here's an example with um without sentence stress without pausing without Rhythm
this would be a band Five band Six right I've been working in the company for let's say five
years and it's just like blah blah blah blah blah but if we're going to do that correctly get a band
seven or higher then I would say I've been working in the company for let's see five years like you
could definitely hear that some words are louder some words are softer and quicker there's pauses
um and that's just part of the whole Rhythm yes and it's also problematic if your pauses
are in the wrong place like imagine that the sentence were like I've been
working in the company four let's see five years all right then that's like getting those pauses
but in the in an unnatural place right and so that does count against your fluency score right
pausing in the wrong place that will uh decline your fluency score um so guys jam-packed episode
today full of advice thank you to uh Jonah Becca giraffe thank you listener uh guys send
us your questions support all yoursenglish.com and remember to hit follow wherever you're listening
to us right now all right awesome Aubry um we have some grammar talk coming up in the show tomorrow
I'm excited yes awesome looking forward to it we'll see you guys tomorrow awesome bye foreign