10 Key IELTS Speaking Mistakes

everyone Chris here from IELTS advantage calm in this video we're going to look at the speaking test and we're going to look at ten key mistakes that might stop you getting a bond seven or above on your IELTS speaking test so every single day of the week I do mock speaking test with my students where I do a full mock test with them and then I give them immediate feedback and the same things keep coming up again and again and again so we tailor our advice exactly to what the students said and give them individual feedback but there are a range of about ten things that I say on a daily basis to my students who do the mock test with so what I thought I would do in this video is share these ten things with you so you're probably not guilty of all of these ten things but even if you are doing a few of these key mistakes it could stop you getting a seven or above and all of this advice will help you perform much better on testing and your speaking test so let's start off with number one relax alright so one thing that I see with students even in the mock speaking test so not even the real test is they come in and they're very tense they're very stressed out and they don't speak to me like a human being they speak to me like gay IELTS recording object or something something just like a robot an IELTS robot just recording their response so they're not really speaking to me in the same way that they would speak to their friends or their colleagues if they were just having a conversation and what this means is two things the way that they're speaking is very very formal and which you know it's not a you shouldn't be using very very informal language in the speaking test but not really formal either think about how you speak to your classmates or your colleagues or your friends how you would speak to them so that sort of style of speaking but more importantly when you are relaxed and you're speaking to the examiner like a human being your brain is just able to process everything far better or more so you if your brain is really stressed don't then you were very rigid and you're worrying about everything and you're speaking to the examiner like an examiner then everything is not going to work so well up here but if you relax a little bit and just realize that the examiner wants you to do your best wants you to speak to them like a human being you'll do much better and you'll really stand out from the other students because all the other students will be like hello my name is Chris I am from are like people don't speak like that alright but if you go in and you just chat to the examiner and focus on clear communication you're going to really really stand out from the other candidates really really important that you do relax in the test I know what is a like a life-changing exam but try to do that as much as you can number two part one so part one is about you so part one you cannot get the questions wrong because they're asking about you all right so there are normal everyday questions about you things like your home your job your studies your home time what you do in your free time things like this so what I see with other students is they tend to overthink these answers these part one answers and they try and give very impressive answers and really you don't need to do that again just speak to the examiner in a conversational way in the speaking test especially for part one and you don't have to think of impressive ideas or anything because they are asking about you you can't get the question wrong and even if they ask you quite a strange question just give them an honest answer and you'll be absolutely fine number three don't overthink it this is probably the most common thing that I said to students after I do a mock speaking test with them you're overthinking things so what they do is they're thinking of so many things or thinking of ideas vocabulary grammar their fluency or pronunciation so many things and what this does is it lowers their fluency somewhat so if you're thinking a lot then your fluency tends to suffer so instead of just answer the questions naturally what they're doing is they're thinking of like okay what is a really good idea here what does the examiner want to hear how is my grammar how is my vocabulary if you overthink things then it's not so good when I get get it through to students that they should answer the question naturally don't try and think too much about it then their performance not only book not only fluency but their grammar and their vocabulary and their pronunciation just seems to flow much better when they do that some students get annoyed with me and say like Chris I have to think what are you talking about so I'm not talking I'm not saying that you should not think at all in the test what I'm saying is try not to overthink things especially with ideas ideas are not as important in the speaking test as you think so you must answer the question you must develop your answer but there's no Act there are no extra marks for impressive ideas or anything like that you know just focus on clearly communicating with the examiner and you'll be fine so before grammatical range will take care of itself so another thing and I don't see this as much as these other three but some students are guilty of this normally done to just they've been told the wrong thing about what they need to do or they've looked at the marking criteria and they've misinterpreted the marking criteria so a lot of students are really really focusing on showing how many different tenses and grammatical structures and all of those different things and complex sentences and without a real focus on communication you're going to be asked a range of different questions you're going to be asked about the past the present the future why things have changed from the past of the present how things will change in the future you'll be asked your opinion about things asked to discuss other people's opinion to compare things to contrast things the questions themselves will require you naturally to use a range of different grammar structures and tenses everything else so if you just focus on answering the questions and again this comes down to not overthinking things the grammar structures will take care of themselves again if you're thinking about all these complex grammar structures in your head how do you think it your fluency is going to be not so good so focus more on grammar mistakes on accuracy making sure that you limit the number of mistakes that you can as much as possible you are going to make grammar mistakes everybody does and but try and limit them as much as possible and don't think too much about the different grammar structures and tenses and things like that obviously do you think about you know what tense am I going to use or what structure am I going to use but don't obsess over it and overthink it again so number five don't stick rigidly to the part to bullet points so part two the examiner is going to show you a cue card and at the top they're going to ask you to talk about a certain topic so I did a video the other day and the topic was talk about a beautiful place in your country or your hometown or something like that there are lots and lots and lots of different topics that they must might ask you about but to help you on the cue card they give you four bullet points so they said you should talk about and then the four bullet points that's a mistake that I see students making is that they look at the bullet points and they their whole talk is just bullet point number one then bullet point number two then bullet point number three bullet point number four and what happens two things happen that's a very unnatural way to speak to anybody you know reading bullet points I'm just regurgitating those things that you've you've that are on the cue card or you might have make made notes you know head down just reading what is on the paper is very unnatural way to speak the more important thing or the bigger mistake that I see students making is they get to bullet point number four and thirty seconds or a minute and still the goal and that kind of they're too reliant on those blood points so I'm not saying don't use the bullet points but use the bullet points just to help you speak naturally don't rely on them and stick to them rigidly and if you want to talk about something else related to the main topic that's absolutely fine you could give your opinion about it you could talk about how it was in the past you could talk about how it will change in the future you could describe it you could tell a personal story about it you could talk about examples there are many many many many things that you could talk about related to that topic so use the bullet points if you want but don't stick to them absolutely rigidly you know head down reading them and then you run things to say and it also affects your fluency as well so practice using and using the bullet points to help you but not to hinder you when you're practicing number six develop your part three answers so this normally happens with some students that are at a very very high level so grammar is great their vocabulary is great the pronunciation is great and they get to part three and some of the part three questions might be a little bit more difficult than you anticipated but the main mistake that I see students just not developing their answers enough so a lot of students have the capability to talk about the answers at length but they just don't do that and that will affect your fluency and coherence score if you don't develop your answers and off in part three and a really easy way to develop your answers is and you don't have to use this for every question you know some questions you'll be able to just talk about naturally but if you need a little bit of help developing your answers think about answering the questions so think about that is like a topic sentence explanation explain why you think that or why other people think that examples you could use a personal story or just an example of something you've seen in a newspaper or a story on TV or YouTube or whatever anything that you can talk about and that is one point and then you can go on to a second point or show a contrasting point explain that to give a personal example a personal story something like that and that will really help you you're part 3 answers and don't worry if you get a really really really difficult question in part 3 of the speaking test that is the examiner testing you really trying to stretch your language abilities so if you get a really difficult question in part 3 you should be kind of happy it shows that the examiner thinks that you are going to get quite a high bond and it's testing to see if you deserve that higher bond so always attempt the question always try and answer it always try and develop it in part 3 number 7 communication is key so the number one thing that IELTS wants you to demonstrate is can you communicate using your life through speaking with the examiner all right one thing that they do not want you to demonstrate is how many impressive big long academic words that you know alright so vocabulary is important it's 25% of your total mark but what I see with a lot of students is they go in with the intention of just showing the examiner how many amazing words they know rather than actually communicating answering the question all right so do show the examiner that you have a range of vocabulary but don't go in and be like okay mmm try and think of a big academic word say that word and try and think of it again that might sound like you know a silly example but it does happen with a lot of students do not use vocabulary unless you know what it means you know I see a lot of students who memorize long lists of nine vocabulary there's no such thing really and then they just regurgitate it in the in the ten on test day I'm really it is good to show the examiner that you know somebody you know you know vocabulary but again coming back to point number four the examiner is going to ask you a range of different questions on a range of different topics you will not truly use a range of vocabulary just by talking about the different topics so focus on answering the question I'm clearly communicating with the examiner and the vocabulary will look after itself certain extent so at number eight listen to a mistake so this is before your test way before your test weeks a month what happens is when you are speaking often you do not hear the mistakes that you're making pronunciation errors vocabulary errors and grammatical errors especially even when I listen back to my videos I'm like do I sound like that oh I made this mistake everybody makes mistakes when they're speaking but one really helpful thing that has helped my students is huge amount that it's totally free you can do it at home is just get your phone get a partner or just get some practice speaking questions and just ask yourself those questions or get a partner to ask you those questions and record your answers listen back that's the most important thing you need to do you will probably be amazed at how many little mistakes that you're making could be a grammar error could be a pronunciation error and just being aware of these mistakes is a huge thing the first step to fixing your mistakes is becoming aware of them and on the speaking test many students are not aware of these little mistakes and these little mistakes can add up number nine clarity is key so the most important thing related to pronunciation pronunciation is 25% of your mark is clarity in other words can the examiner understand what you were saying what it does not mean is do you have a British accent or do you have an American accent or whatever accent I don't have a British accent I don't have an American accent I think I would do quite well on the IELTS speaking test it is not about accent it is about clarity all right can the examiner understand what you were saying not everybody has different pronunciation issues depending on your country or just individually there could be some things that might not sound very clear to the examiner if you're hoping to get you know seven eight or even nine you have to the examiner has to understand absolutely everything that you say so listen to your performance yourself or get a really good teacher to help you out with that to tell you other than on certain countries have certain little pronunciation issues figure those up and fix them there are other things that you need to do like displaying that you can use intonation sentence stress word stress chunking all of these different things but really really for pronunciation really focus on clarity number ten so Hospital at least do the hard work before the test do not go into the neck sitting outside the test and you're like oh my god I haven't prepared anything I haven't I'm not ready for this if you do that you're going to get very very nervous you're not going to be relaxed and bad things could happen do the hard work figure out what your mistakes are before the test practice as much as possible do a mock test with a teacher or by yourself at home I'm not is really really really going to help you figure out why you might not be able to get the score that you need fix those mistakes practice until you're able to get to that level so there's a few ways that you can practice at home and just Google IELTS speaking questions should come up and IDP the British console IELTS org Cambridge English these are really good sources for and speaking questions record yourself to a full test that's totally free listen back and you that will really help you if you are currently in an IELTS school or you have an English teacher ask them to do like a little mock session with you and give you some feedback if that your teacher is an IELTS examiner or an X examiner they'll be able to give you very very good advice on that if they don't have any experience with English or sorry IELTS they'll be able to help you with your English so pronunciation how is that can they understand everything that you're saying grammar vocabulary fluency how is that any English teacher will be able to help you with that we also have a service we have the mock speaking test service so what we do is I meet you on skype and full test with you and I give you instant feedback on your performance and I'll try and link that below the video if you want to do that but there's also other free options and on the website go to aisle to Vantage calm slice speaking or just go to aisle to Vantage calm and you'll find lots and lots of speaking resources there thank you very much guys hope that was helpful those are the most common things most common mistakes that I see my students making and let me know what you think of those do you make any of those mistakes yourself hard did you get around it if you've already got the score that you needed what did you do in the test to help you I give advice to other students thank you very much guys go to IL to banish calm if you need anything and feel free to share like whatever you want to do with this video see you again soon guys bye bye

Channel: IELTS Advantage

Views: 128,320

Keywords: IELTS, speaking, IELTS Speaking, IELTS Advantage, chris pell, ielts speaking test, ielts help, vip course, the ielts listening test, ielts mistakes, speaking english, speaking mistakes to avoid, 10 speaking tips, 10 key ielts speaking mistakes, ielts students, How to overcome speaking mistakes, ielts test, ielts exam

Id: m7fm72G48rw

Length: 18min 8sec (1088 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 19 2017