Hi guys! It's Asiya. Recently I've taken an IELTS exam in London and I got 8.5
overall with 8.5 in IELTS Speaking. Last time I took the exam I got an 8.0 in
IELTS Speaking with a slightly different strategy. So I want to tell you what I've
changed to increase my score from 8.0 to 8.5 and what you can do
to get a higher score. Ready? Let's get started!
the IELTS speaking exam is the same in IELTS academic and general training it's a
face-to-face interview with an examiner which lasts for 11 to 14 minutes and
consists of three parts now I want to give you probably the most important tip
of this video try to be chatty not smart last time I took an exam it was last
year and i tried to get a higher score and it tried to make my speech more
complex and deliberately complicated it I tried to choose smart ideas in order to
show off less common vocabulary I tried to use different sentence structures and so
on I tried to pronounce words really clearly and it got me an eight which
is a great score I suppose but this time it was much easier for me to pass the
exam and I also got a higher score so what have changed these time is I didn't
try to be smart at all I tried to be talkative you know when you're talking
to a friend you never run out of things to say and even in English it's much
easier to maintain a conversation with a friend than to present smart ideas like
you are in exam conditions right some of my students got amazing results in IELTS
speaking I'm talking about band 8 results even though they're not fully
proficient in English yet and often they don't live in english-speaking countries
either but what unites all those people is they speak quite simply
but fluently what a realized is once you start pausing hesitating looking for
those complex words of complex verb tenses whatever your score tends to go
down so try to speak simply and more fluently
next don't be too formal and speaking is an informal exam unlike IELTS writing so
you can use informal speech and that's fine just be respectful to the examiner
don't use slang don't use phrases like you're talking to
a very close friend try to say things which are not controversial or not
disrespectful to the examiner but other than that you don't need to try to sound
like you're taking an academic exam at university don't speak too fast you
don't have to speak fast in order to get a high score and not speaking you need
to show the examiner that you can speak freely on any topic so you need to
maintain this even pace throughout the exam and if you think that it may be
more difficult for you to talk on certain topics later let's say in part
three start talking more slowly from the very beginning because you know
naturally some people speak fast some people speak slowly those who speak
slowly because it's their habit their way of speaking I'm not gonna be
downgraded about speaking so you can pretend you're a slow speaker and from
the very beginning when you say hello my name is mm-hm I'm from this country just
start talking a bit more slowly from the very beginning and then maintain the
pace you have a bit more time to think about what you're gonna say next and
also the examiner will be able to understand everything that you are
saying because some people speak fast and they merge several words together
and the pronunciation is not perfect and then the examiner can't understand what
they just said and that's a problem so articulate well
and stick at a pace you can maintain your examiner will interrupt you
what was my examiner friendly well it seems every time it's different
a last time we had a little child with the examiner and then he said like okay
recording starts now what is your name give me a passport and so on this time
the lady opens a doll called my name and then when I came out she said this
conversation is recorded please have a seat
what is your name give me a pass but straight away she didn't even say hello
without recording but then what United both examiner's is they both interrupted
me and actually the last time it felt pretty brutal maybe because we had this
friendly chat at the beginning but it felt almost rude and very pleasant this
time I could actually see you that the lady felt and comfortable interrupting
me and she try to do it softly but anyway your ideas are not assessed and
as soon as they see that you can answer the question they just move on to the
next question they have to manage time closely so don't worry about being
interrupted and be prepared that you will be interrupted give open answers it
may be difficult to find what to say by trying to say at least a sentence of two
sentences for each question in part one for example the examiner may ask you do
you like your voice and if you just say oh I'm not sure I guess yes it's too
little but I understand the question is difficult but still try to say oh gosh
I've never thought about it before I guess I do but what he can say is first
time I heard my voice in a whatsapp message I was really surprised so try to
give an open answer and just say whatever you can say about it I actually
have a separate video about ways to expand your answer in part one I'm gonna
link it here what can happen during your exam and it happened in my exam is your
examiner will ask you a question about something you've just said or basically
you just said something but the examiner will ask you about it again that's a
better way to put it for example I had a set of questions about playing indoors
and our doors in my childhood the examiner asked a question I answered
and accidentally I covered something that was in the next question so she
asked about it again and it may happen in your exam - you don't think that the
examiner didn't listen to you or couldn't understand what you've just
said they have a list of questions they have to follow it so if you get the same
question again just try to add something to your previous answer or just say the
same thing and slightly different was like nothing's happened don't be
surprised talk for for two minutes in part two in part two you get a card
with the question and several sub questions and you need to talk about
this topic between one and two minutes in order to get a higher score and out
speaking try to talk for for two minutes until the examiner interrupts you you
should know that those questions are there to help you you don't have to
cover each sub question in your answer you don't have to follow the order you
can just talk about this topic in general and that's fine at the end of
two minutes the examiner may either say your time is up and then ask you a
follow-up question or just interrupt you by asking this follow
question but it's just to wrap up part two so you should provide a shot on
select one two sentences don't go into long explanations because it's time to
move on to part three I'm not very talkative myself I mean I find it hard
to talk for full two minutes on a random topic when I'm not even sure I want to
say anything about it at all so I use a number of techniques to
expand my answers for example I start with the background story then I say
like what I want to say but without any detail and then I start giving details
like one by one with quite a lot of information and I try to think of a
story I could tell within this topic I talked about all those ways to expand
your answers in this video but practicing your answers at home really
helps and again I have a PDF file with common topics and questions for IELTS
speaking which you can download I'm gonna link it in the description box
below part three is a discussion with an examiner on a more general topic such as
technology education health fitness and so on this topic should be somehow
related to the topic of part two but sometimes this connection is not obvious
at all so don't worry about it the examiner usually has like five big
questions and they will ask you some follow-up questions as well to help you
extend your answers try to talk about broader ideas and concepts in part three
and don't use yourself your family and personal examples too much in this part
even though I used myself as an example in one of the questions and it was
alright but in general give broader ideas in part three okay these were my
tips on IELTS speaking and I hope you like
all the videos have mentioned in this video are gonna be linked in the
description box below as well as the PDF of common topics and questions for IELTS
speaking it's gonna be there and I have similar videos about each part of the
IELTS exam you can watch them too thank you for watching me today good
luck with your preparations and your exam