Okay, so let's imagine it's test day and you're
doing the IELTS speaking test. It's part two, the examiner hands you the task card, and you
have one minute to prepare. What do you do? If you've ever taken the IELTS test before, you
will know that when you receive that task card on test day from the examiner, and the examiner
says 'You have one minute to take some notes', that time goes extremely quickly. Let's
take a look at one of these task cards. So imagine the examiner hands you this particular
task card and says 'You have one minute to take some notes'. What are you going to write? Are you
going to write full sentences? Are you going to scribble down a paragraph? Are you going to draw
a smiley face? You need to think this through before test day so you can maximise your speaking
score. Because if you get the preparation, right, it's going to give you a good foundation for your
two minute talk. Each time I've taken this test, it's been a very intense experience. And I can't
think very clearly, and time absolutely flies, and therefore you can't write down much at
all. In fact, each time I've done it, I've kind of been stumped by the task card and spend
about 20 seconds actually just thinking of some thing. For example, let's say the task card says,
'talk about a gift you've recently received', I have to actually sort of go through my memory
and think a gift, okay, what was the last gift I received? What was the last gift? And for me,
personally, I sort of get stuck on the first gift that I can remember. So I'm just going to write
down that one gift. Let's take a look at method one, though, because it talks about how to do this
well. So method one is to read the card, describe a website you have recently used, you should say
what the website is, what you use the website for, how often you use the website and explain what
you like and dislike about the website. Step two of the method is to write down two websites. So
this one's pretty easy, everyone can come up with a website pretty quickly, I'm gonna write down
Google. Then what I'm going to do is I'm actually going to think of a second website, because one of
the problems that candidates face is they'll talk about a website for two minutes. And they really
simply run out of ideas. And when they run out of ideas and about the 90 second mark, they run out
of language, okay, so I'm going to write down a second website like, I don't know, Facebook,
something like that, or Magicseaweed, which is my favourite surfing website that checks the weather
and the waves, that would be a good one. And that would extend my language. After I have written
down the two websites and simply written Google, Facebook, something like that, or Magicseaweed,
I would then number three, read the card again. And number four, take a deep breath. So I haven't
written much at all, because in one minute, firstly, I need to think of these two websites or
these two gifts, or these two books that I've read or something like that, that's going to take 20
seconds, then actually reading the cards is going to take time, writing down the two words is going
to take time. And taking a deep breath, which is essential, is also going to take time. Let's take
a look at a another method to this though. So the same task card here describe a website you have
recently used. So you read the card, you write down a single website, then you spend a little
bit of time thinking about change, past, present, future. Let's say that website is Google. Think
about Google in the past when you first used it. Think about Google now and think about how Google
might work for search, for example, in the future. Then you read the card again, take
a deep breath, and away you go. So the reason we want to think about
change and think about the past, the present and the future of this website
is because it's going to extend our language a lot. We're going to use lots of different verb
tenses, lots of past tense verbs, present simple, present perfect. And then when I talk about the
future or use modals and maybe the subjunctive, an if statement, who knows, it's gonna get me a
good score for grammar. And if I can control my pronunciation and fluency as well, that will
also work. So here's a bit of an example. Okay, so I'm going to think about Google in the
past, maybe I can talk about the first time I used Google at high school. And I didn't even know what
it was for. And it kind of looked pretty clunky. To be honest, I didn't know what this website was,
nor did I even know what the internet was. And now in the present, I use Google a lot, I have it on
my phone, I use it at work, I use it, basically, for everything, it is really my homepage. And I
wonder what Google will be like in the future, it's going to be incredible the way that we can
search the internet in the future, maybe it will be able to read my mind, who knows. Okay, now it's
your turn, I'm going to show you a task card. And I just want you to think to yourself about which
method would work best for this particular task. You do need to be flexible on test day but having
a couple of methods up your sleeve will be very helpful. Ready? Take a look at this one. So you
need to describe an advertisement you recently saw. How would you approach this particular
task? You can tell me in the comments below what you're going to do, method one, method two,
which one works for you. So for me personally, with this one, I would probably talk about two
advertisements, maybe one that I saw on television and one that I saw on the internet, that would
give me a good breadth of language to use. Cool. Now, if you need help with your IELTS,
check this out, because you can talk to an E2 expert in a one-on-one tutorial. And these come
as part of the packages you buy on E2 Test Prep, the link for which is in the description below.
In these tutorials, you can meet with an E2 expert teacher for 45 minutes, choose the time that suits
you and the topic and skill you want to work on. And you'll get lots and lots of feedback. And of
course you can do speaking mock tests. And also just before you go, don't forget to take a deep
breath. Just before you begin your speaking part two, that will help a lot. My name is
Jay. Thanks very much. I'll see you soon.
