819. What does it really mean to be good at English?

hello welcome back to Luke's English podcast how are you you're doing well I hope so here's a brand new episode for you and there is a PDF transcript for this one it's a transcript of pretty much everything I'm going to say in the episode and you can download that transcript free you can just download it you'll find a link in the show notes for this episode uh wherever you're listening to it if you look in this in the notes the text notes you'll find a link to get the transcript that I'm reading from okay you can also find that link on the page for this episode on my website you can just download it free I'm not even going to ask for your email address or anything you can just get it free just in case you would like to be able to read all of this stuff as well as listen to me say it if you want to kind of go back and and check words or repeat after me or do ever do whatever it is you want to do with that you can the link is in the description okay right so let's get started I'm now going to start reading from that PDF transcript and I'm going to start reading from it right now so here we go hello everyone in this episode I'm going to be answering this question are you ready good so the question is what does it really mean to have good English how do we assess someone's English level how can IELTS help us to understand what good English is and why is all of this important anyway admittedly that was four questions rather than just one but the main one is what does it really mean to have good English so here's an episode which I hope will be really useful as a way of helping you to understand what it really means to be good at English we're going to consider some things about how English is assessed so that means how your English level is judged the different skills which are involved in using English and what aspects of English are the most important I hope this episode gives you a bit more perspective on what it means to have a good level of English also there will be a lot of vocabulary for describing English skills and English levels or assessment in English and that includes a lot of meta language meta language that basically just means the language we use for talking about language so try to notice all of that vocabulary too hopefully this episode will help you think about these things hopefully it will help you to think about your level of English how to assess a person's level of English and also how to talk about both of both of those things so the language that we use to talk about those things so it's important for any language learner to get a sense of what they should be aiming for in their learning so that they don't spend their time on the wrong things and that they have the right things prioritized in their learning that's kind of the the point here so do you remember the episode I published at the beginning of the year uh that's 2023 just in case you didn't know what year it is unless of course you're listening to this in the future sometime and you're kind of coming back to this episode from the future anyway I published an episode at the beginning of 2023 with Santi from Spain working in a top job at Oxford University press do you remember that episode it was called number 806 perseverance positivity and practice with Santiago Ruiz de Velasco from Oxford University press 806 you'll find that in the episode archive on my website and if you haven't heard it go back and check it out okay it's uh it's a good one now this episode that I'm doing right now follows on from that one I was inspired to do this episode after seeing some responses from my audience to episode 806 okay just as a reminder Santi learned English mostly as an adult when he moved to London after studying at University in Spain all right he had some very challenging experiences being immersed in the English language and eventually found his way to a top job in the English teaching industry itself not as a teacher but in publishing he ended up as the managing director of English language teaching at Oxford University press and he got to that position despite the fact that his English is not perfect in quote marks so I was pleased with that episode because it allows us to use santi's personal experience as a way to consider the importance of motivation and attitude in dealing with challenges in learning English or any other language and also it raised questions about what good English really means with Santi I would say that the proof is in the pudding the proof is in the pudding this is an idiom in English which kind of means how do you know if the pudding is good right how do you know if it's good well the we know if it's good um we will know if the pudding is good when it's eaten when it gets eaten and if people go hmm this is delicious then we'll know it's good all right it's a bit of a strange idiom but anyway the proof is in the pudding in this case means that we know that santi's English is good because he uses it successfully every day so the proof of santi's level of English is in the way that he actually uses it so the proof is in the pudding is a way of saying that we we can we know that something is good when it is actually used and then we can see how how good it how well it works when it's actually used okay the proof is in the pudding we'll find out how good it is when it's actually used so in the case of santi's English we know his English is good because he uses it successfully every day at work right every single day at work he uses English to successfully perform a number of different communication tasks I expect he writes emails and reports in English conducts interviews in English does presentations has meetings probably does negotiations sells products and services in English and builds relationships with people in English no doubt both professional relationships but also meaningful personal relationships too obviously that would probably be in his free time unless he's building personal relationships with people at work I don't know I don't know his life but anyway I'm assuming a lot of that right I mean I don't know exactly what his job involves but you know I'm assuming a lot of those things because I don't know every single thing he does in his job every day but I'm pretty sure that he does all of those things right they're just totally normal communication tasks at work and it's not just at work for Santi I'm sure he also socializes in English too so so the the point is I think the fact that he does all those things seemingly successfully right this is the this is proof of his competence in English right okay now I think it would be very hard to be the managing director of the English language teaching Department of Oxford University press without those kinds of communication skills in English but as I mentioned his English is certainly not perfect by any means and he says this himself too and a number of listeners in the comments section on YouTube pointed this out or they felt compelled to point out um shortcomings in his English right some people did saying things like this like he clearly has a Spanish accent or he made mistakes which made me surprised that he's in that position and I expected someone with RP English that sort of thing I'm paraphrasing there but that's the gist of of the comments in fact I can show some of the comments that um that were left in response to that episode so one comment says simply this his accent bad actually yeah his accent bad actually I actually replied to that one saying does it matter I said does it matter if he's working and communicating successfully okay so what does it actually mean to have a bad accent anyway what is a bad accent I mean when I was talking to Santi sure I could tell he was from Spain because hello he's from Spain but I was able to follow what he was saying so I suppose a bad accident probably means uh one that you can't understand but I could understand Santi anyway that was one example another one is this too bad santa uses you know too often so this one was a reference to the fact that Santi does use the filler expression you know he uses that quite a lot now we've all got our own fillers that we use habitually but anyway this commenter felt it was necessary to point this one out too bad santa uses you know too often and I had to reply I probably shouldn't shouldn't have replied because sometimes it's best to just to not reply not that that was I mean that's not really a really mean or abusive or trolling comment you know it's a fair statement I suppose because I'm replying to it here but anyway too bad santa uses you know too often and my reply was yeah it's really held him back hasn't it it's really held him back hasn't it if something holds you back it prevents you from making progress so I suppose my sarcastic comment uh was uh to say uh yeah okay so he does say you know quite a lot but it doesn't seem to have stopped him from succeeding okay maybe he could use some different fillers just to avoid repeating the same thing but why did this person who commented Focus only on that when there were so many other positive things to take away from the episode um so so and anyway what is wrong with saying you know quite a lot you know the way that we you know sort of fill things into our sentences you know what's wrong with saying you know quite a lot well I suppose here are some things right so first of all it doesn't stop us understanding him it doesn't it doesn't stop him expressing himself so he doesn't use that word fillers filling filler words like like sort of you know those things are almost like subconscious we don't choose to put them in they just kind of come in they're like little vocal ticks that are used when we're thinking um but those things don't actually stop us from understanding Santi and it it didn't stop him from expressing himself maybe even it may be actually useful in expressing himself so it's just an aesthetic issue not a functional issue Aesthetics that just means the way that something sounds or looks and whether it sounds or looks nice okay um so santi's saying you know and this is really only an aesthetic thing isn't it that it maybe affects um how pleasant it is to listen to him but it's not really a functional issue because we it doesn't seem to affect our ability to understand him and I suppose it's just annoying for some people but it doesn't actually change the message or cause anyone misunderstandings so a bit of perspective here it's not such a big deal is it really unless you're really focused on it unless you're really sort of easily bothered by that sort of thing sure Santi could work on this and maybe I'll maybe I'll email him but we all have things to work on and then a third comment is was this Santiago must be a great manager but he doesn't manage to pronounce the sh sound properly fair enough that one is quite funny I suppose he must be a good manager but he doesn't manage to pronounce this sound properly the sh sound sh I suppose that's a sh sound my response to that was well Nobody's Perfect okay now I shouldn't focus on the negative comments the vast majority of comments in response to that episode were positive I must say but I noticed that whenever I feature someone on this podcast who is not a native speaker and even some guests who are native speakers but uh have accents that are not like receive pronunciation some listeners have to comment or criticize what they are hearing I don't think this is really the right attitude to have personally I mean it's not a competition is it I don't think so but the fact that Santi has that job has achieved that and continues to do that in English is something that can't be taken away from him I mean people can point out errors in his English But ultimately the fact remains that he uses English very successfully on a daily basis and that's important the fact that he uses English successfully what do I mean by that what does using English successfully actually mean I'm going to talk about that because this is the point of the language it is functional language is a tool which we use to do a job okay language is functional and it should be judged first and foremost on that whether it works as a communication tool if English is a hammer do I have a hammer If I Had a Hammer I've got a hammer here somewhere okay all right here's here's a hammer um obviously podcast listeners people in audio land you can't see this but imagine I'm I I'm holding a hammer you don't need to imagine it I actually am holding a hammer a hammer is a thing you would use to put a nail in a wall or put a nail in a piece of wood right so a hammer is a tool which has a very specific job you use it to put a nail in a wall okay now that the hammer the Hammer's job is to actually get the nail in the wall right and it should be judged first and foremost on its ability to do that the second thing is and you know in terms of its ability to do that we're talking about it the fact that it has the um uh a head which is made of a strong metal uh the the surface that you use when you hit the nail is is big enough um that it that that it uh it it's weighted properly that there's enough weight in the head that the handle is the right length that the handle is designed so it's easy to easy to grip and easy to hold on to right those are the functional things that we should consider when we are judging whether a hammer is a good hammer or not but then obviously there are other things the hammer should I suppose look nice because if you're gonna own it have it in your home and use it sometimes and probably if you buy a hammer you're probably going to have that hammer for a long time so it should look quite nice as well which means it should be made of a a nice a nice wood with a nice grain in it and maybe it should have some paint or a design on it which looks nice but it's you know it doesn't matter if it if it um it doesn't really matter if it looks really nice if the hammer doesn't actually hit the nail in the into the wall does it it's kind of kind of similar with language the aesthetic aesthetically pleasing aspects of language like the way it sounds and and so on those are important things but they surely they're not the the first and most important things and the things that we should focus all our attention on right that language first and foremost is functional and it should be judged first and foremost on that whether it works as a communication tool sure Aesthetics are important too okay the absolute best communicators also have English which is a pleasure to listen to which is easy on the ears and is Rich Pleasant and entertaining but that stuff is also a matter of opinion and taste and is really just the cherry on top of the cake most of the time right right why focus on the Cherry you need to have a cake first before you can have a cherry you need something for the Cherry to go on right okay I don't know if my cherry on the cake metaphor is working there but maybe anyway priorities I think it's all about priorities uh focus on the really important things first and that means the cake and then work on the Aesthetics that's the cherry on the top of the cake afterwards okay as I said I'm getting a bit lost in this cherry cake metaphor now but I hope you get what I mean so common attitudes and assumptions about good English the point is that these comments are indicative of certain attitudes about English proficiency they show us what a lot of people think makes someone good at English namely these things first of all accuracy accuracy means using English without making errors so if you are accurate it means that you don't make many errors okay so we call this accuracy so accuracy especially grammatical accuracy is the most important thing and speaking with zero errors is what makes you good at English so no mistakes okay so remember we're we're talking about sort of I think like common attitudes about what makes someone good at English usually the first thing that people say is that someone speaks without making any mistakes okay another attitude is that all Learners of English should have received pronunciation or another sort of stand maybe a sort of a standard American Maybe but we're talking about British English here on this podcast so uh let's use received pronunciation so the attitude is all Learners of English should have received pronunciation as their Target in terms of pronunciation and if you speak with a different accent or with obvious traces of your first language then this is a problem and hearing someone use English with an accent is somehow shocking or even unpleasant and then third you're good at English if you use complex English meaning longer words um formal words a lot of idioms and convoluted sentence structure okay so basically the what this kind of attitude which I see quite a lot boils down to you need to make no pronunciation errors on or grammar mistakes and you should use complex impressive language and this is what makes someone good at English so that that short list of assumptions there is based on the things I've heard and read from Learners of English during my teaching career I've met thousands of Learners of English and also I've read and also I've read thousands of online comments from Learners of English too and I often notice these attitudes I suppose it's understandable really that some people think like that I mean it's it's understandable I totally get it because not everyone has thought about this subject a lot because they don't work in language teaching right and also people have been taught that English is all about correct grammar and correct pronunciation and these things are also the obvious sort of low-hanging fruit in terms of English assessment low-hanging fruit just means is another expression which just means like the easy things the things that are easy to see and easy to get so in terms of English assessment the low-hanging fruit is no grammar you know grammar mistakes pronunciation like influence from the first language and probably complex vocabulary or sophisticated impressive vocabulary okay um this is probably just what people get taught because at school typically you end up focusing on those things don't you on you focus on grammar you focus on grammar rules you get tested there's lots of right and wrong exercises um and pronunciation is very obvious now it's not everyone's job to think about how to assess someone's language level and to be honest I only learned about this from doing professional training reading academic books teaching IELTS courses and working out the assessment criteria for Cambridge exams and stuff and we're going to look at that official assessment criteria for judging someone's language level later in this episode in order to find out that it's not just about grammar and pronunciation errors and that there are other important factors obviously being correct in pronunciation and grammar are important things but only to a certain extent like with the example of Santi I feel like some of those comments are trying to take away santi's achievements but you can't can you you can't really like I said before the fact remains that although he makes a few mistakes in grammar and clearly has a Spanish accent when he speaks English despite those things he is a very successful user of the English language and you can't take that away from him so how does he manage it then how does he manage to do it without being perfect well what makes someone good at English then what else is important what I'd like to do now is talk about actually what makes someone good at English and to show that there is a lot more involved than just accuracy meaning making no errors and complexity using big impressive rare words that no one else knows defining what makes someone good at English should be an important thing for us all to consider and remember I think for you if you are a learner of English this is all about how you can get a sense of what you should be focusing on and what you should be trying to achieve also it can help you get out of a negative frame of mind when learning English if you're afraid that your pronunciation is not perfect or that you know that you make errors when you speak right that that can actually be very limiting for you can like totally ruin someone's confidence if they're really afraid of making mistakes so it might help to know that those things are not the be-all and end-all in this English-speaking game I'm calling it a game like it's a rap game or something well maybe you consider English to be a game kind of you know why not also if you're a teacher of English like me thinking about this can help us to guide our students and to provide the right kind of teaching to help them to achieve things in English like to set certain realistic targets and and so on and set realistic expectations so how do you assess someone's English level well let's use IELTS as a way of helping us to answer this question right let's use IELTS IELTS some of you are going I I what Aya IELTS i-e-l-t-s okay that's the international English language testing system it's a sort of famous English test so let's use IELTS as a way of helping us to answer this question by looking at how IELTS measures someone's English level we can work out what good English actually means so what is IELTS then well I've just kind of just said this haven't I um the international English language testing system and this is from Wikipedia by the way this paragraph um so the international English language testing system is an international standardized test of English language proficiency for non-native English language speakers it's jointly managed by the British Council IDP IELTS Australia and Cambridge assessment English and was established in 1989 okay that was from Wikipedia basically IELTS is probably the standard international test for assessing someone's level of English as a foreign or other language it's just a very common test that people have to do in order to get an official uh English level score which they can then present to universities if they're trying to apply for university courses in English and they can present their IELTS score to employers who maybe have a requirement for a certain level of English so if you've got your IELTS score this is like an official an officially recognized reliable score a judgment or an assessment of your English level which you can use for various different purposes so working out someone's level of English accurately and reliably is not easy sure I could speak with a learner of English for 10 minutes I could do like a little interview with a learner for 10 minutes and get a good idea of their level right um but to get a fully detailed assessment including different Reading Writing listening and speaking skills a longer and more rigorous test is needed and this is why the IELTS test is quite long and quite complex it takes a few hours to do the test and it's divided into lots of different parts it's all done in a serious and thorough way so IELTS is a test that's been developed over a very long time by experts in English language teaching and testing based on a lot of academic research and professional experience into how people learn and use the English language right so it's you know it's really serious they've a lot of thoughts and research and experience has gone into it IELTS was developed by academics teachers and examiners from Cambridge University and the British Council these people know what they're doing when it comes to finding out someone's level of English they want to do it properly because this is important right universities and employers want to get a reliable sense of the level of English of potential students or employees so they can be sure that those people will be able to use English to work or study successfully a reliable test is vital for this and that's what IELTS is for now it might not be a perfect test there's probably room for improvement in some regards right in fact it probably could be even longer and even more thorough but that might just be impractical anyway let's look at the way IELTS works and we'll see if we can draw from it some conclusions about the whole question of what it means to be good at English so IELTS is in four sections as you may know speaking listening reading and writing okay so there are four parts to the IELTS test each part is of equal importance to the other so they're speaking is 25 listening 25 reading 25 writing 25 and right so they're they're all equally important and already this shows that there are four skills involved in someone's English ability and of course this reflects the type of things that you might need to do in English okay you have to speak to people you have to listen to people speaking in various situations you have to read English in different forms and you have to be able to write in English okay so it's not just speaking skills that's just one part of the picture let me talk about those four skills in a little bit more detail we'll start with speaking of course speaking is often considered as the most important skill it's the obvious skill this is what we notice in people as well as being vital for functional social communication speaking is very closely connected to our identity and the way we express who we are to the world naturally it's often the way your English is judged because people meet you talk to you and then immediately get a sense of your English level from that conversation fair enough speaking is important but in IELTS it's only 25 of the test it represents 25 percent of your final IELTS score and as we will see speaking can be divided into different sections too so it's not just speaking this different subcategories of assessment within that and pronunciation is only one of those sections let's move on to listening so this is underestimated in terms of its importance I've talked before about how perhaps surprisingly we spend more time listening than doing any of the other skills um in episode 586 of this podcast I talked about the importance of listening you can listen to that episode 586 and also uh in a in a YouTube video which I uploaded a couple of years ago also called the importance of listening in learning English that was a conversation uh where I kind of echoed some of the same points I made in episode 586 so uh yes listening is underestimated also it's absolutely vital that we understand the people we are talking to so these are listening skills if we don't understand the people we're talking to then everything breaks down now one way that I judge someone's language level when I'm talking to them is is the amount of effort I have to make for me to be understood by that person okay so if I am um talking to a learner of English and I've been given the task of judging their English level through a little spoken interview one of the factors that helps me decide is the amount of effort I have to make for me to be understood by that person how much am I having to carry the conversation you know how much work am I doing to to to maintain the conversation how much am I carrying it so this is a way for me to judge their listening skills in conversation now if I just talk normally without having to adapt my English or pay close attention to make sure the other person is following me if I could just talk normally and just be myself it means their English is great okay and I'm talking about really just relaxing and being myself not in presentation mode just in kind of normal conversation mode if I can just relax and be myself then that's a good sign I've met people who have had good English on paper and who were capable of producing sophisticated spoken English for example in a presentation or something but they were simply bad at having a conversation because their listening skills were not so great they didn't seem to be listening or just didn't pick up on a lot of the things I was saying right I'm talking about having a conversation with someone and they just don't notice a lot of the things that you're saying maybe they're not listening maybe they don't think listening is that important or maybe they're just a lot of things are they're just missing a lot of things and they don't even realize it because that's the thing about listening It's tricky because you can't see or hear the things that you're not understanding with reading you can you re you've got your page and they're all the words there and you know you can see the things that you don't understand but with listening the things you don't understand sometimes they're invisible especially if you're dealing with like fluent speech if you're trying to listen to fluent speech a lot of the words or syllables or Whatever Gets squashed and sort of seem to disappear you're just kind of picking holding on to the bits that you understand and a lot of the other stuff just becomes noise and it just passes You by you know so yes I have met people who've had good English on paper but in terms of conversationally they were pretty bad because of their listening skills for example when listening to me talk they didn't seem to realize how I felt about certain things we were talking about they didn't notice little jokes I was making they didn't react to certain points I made and didn't respond to my efforts to talk about certain things and it wasn't because they were just bad communicators even in their own language it's because their listening just wasn't good enough and they weren't able to follow what I was saying and in fact didn't even realize it so listening also relates to being able to deal with different accents English is a diverse language and people speak it slightly differently all over the world not just in different countries but in different parts of those countries and this is this is a good thing and a beautiful thing right um so being good at English means being able to understand English in all its diversity only a small percentage of people speak English like me with my accent let's call it modern let's call it standard Modern English received pronunciation um okay you could let's say um although sometimes you might hear little traces of an accent or certain colloquialisms and stuff but anyway so only a small percentage of people speak English like me if you hear someone from well anywhere and they have an accent which is in any way different from my standard British English or whatever accent you consider to be neutral right whatever accent you consider to be clear and normal if you listen to someone from who has an accent that's in any way different from that and you don't understand it then I'm afraid that is not the fault of the accent or the person speaking it okay for example you know if you say I can't understand uh someone from Liverpool that's not because um a Liverpool accent is intrinsically difficult to understand because everyone in Liverpool understands each other just fine right it's just because of your position in relation to it you're not familiar with it enough and you know you can't deny that you can't say uh only I will only understand these people or I will only understand this kind of English that means you're not really developing true English listening skills okay so if you don't understand someone with a slightly different accent it's not because of the accent it's because I'm afraid your listening skills are still not good enough you're still not familiar with spoken English now don't feel bad about that okay don't feel bad about that please that's not the point all right the point is listening skills are a huge part of the puzzle think of Santi from episode 806. he described struggling so much every day when working in London as a waiter he didn't understand what people were saying to him people were asking for a Coke and he was bringing them their coat right he he first arrived in London and actually heard real English being spoken and he freaked out it wasn't like it was in the textbooks at school he didn't understand what he was hearing in London I expect he met various English people from different parts of the country the English he heard was unrecognizable to him at the beginning because he simply had never heard it before his English skills his English listening skills improved dramatically while living in the UK as he got exposed to the language when I spoke to him I felt he was completely on my wavelength and I didn't have to struggle or make a lot of effort um to kind of adapt my English or myself during the conversation I could relax and I felt like he would be able to follow my train of thought so I didn't feel like I was doing a lot of heavy lifting during the conversation right a lot of listening is connected to pronunciation as well good listening skills also relate to an ability to understand the way people produce the oral version of English and this means being familiar with things like connected speech that's the way words get connected together when people speak illusion that's the way certain sounds get removed or disappear sentence stress that's the way we emphasize different syllables in a sentence word stress that's the way we emphasize different syllables in words and the unstressed syllables of those words might not be pronounced with full vowel sounds uh weak forms that's the way certain words like prepositions or auxiliary verbs will be pronounced with weak forms and they sound squashed right and all of those things okay it's about sort of understanding how spoken English really works with all those features it's about knowing the oral version of the language which is often very very different to the written version this doesn't just mean knowing it academically understanding the phonology and you know like knowing the sort of uh the science of pronunciation doesn't mean just knowing the rules and stuff but knowing it through familiarity having heard a lot of English from diverse sources so that you have kind of trained your ears to it so it's not a huge shock or surprise when you actually hear it being used in the normal way right so it's about learn being becoming familiar with the different versions of English so it's not a huge shock or surprise when you actually hear it being used in the normal way this is why it's important for me to make sure I include plenty of conversations or content with people who speak different in different ways different accents and uh who are not like grading their English too much um reading what about reading now I don't have so much to say about this except that reading is not just about knowing the words that you are seeing and knowing which grammatical forms are being used it involves being able to see being able to identify the bigger picture what those words and that grammar are really communicating to you can you identify so when you're reading a text can you identify the opinion or attitude of the person who wrote the text so what do they think right can you identify what they think or whether they are being serious or humorous in their writing can you get the tone of the can you pick up on the tone of the piece that you're reading can you identify their mood can you identify their intentions and the overall purpose of the writing can you identify what kind of text it is an article in a newspaper a business report an advertisement a formal email if I just gave you a piece of writing without you know just out of context and said all right where did that piece of writing come from would you be able to do it right internal email external email a piece of fiction a humorous true story a religious text an old-fashioned piece of writing something modern are you aware of the different stylistic and linguistic conventions of different types of text are you able to read between the lines to kind of see what's being suggested but not explicitly suggested can you identify specific information as well as more General things so you know it's more than just knowing individual words and grammar forms it's also about overall text structure organization and tone again it's not just about speaking in the real world all of these things come into play all the time the listening the reading the writing the speaking it's if you're actually using English you know uh in a in a in a fully developed way all these things come into play all the time it's a it's a it's all a mix of dealing with input understanding it responding to it while managing the pragmatics of communication so managing what impact language has on other people right not just about having certain not just about um speaking without making any mistakes um although that is important of course to an extent and then finally writing this relates to reading in the way that it's not just about knowing lots of words or grammar points but knowing how to put those words and structures together to make a piece of writing that is coherent that means easy to understand for the reader cohesive that means logical and organized and which does what it is supposed to do for example to persuade to inform to request information to entertain and so on right and again let's go back to the thing about pragmatics also your the piece of writing should somehow manage the relationship you have with that person as well so that you're not being rude or something like that with writing sometimes the whole is greater than the sum of its parts right it's a bit like cooking a good meal it's not just the ingredients and the cooking utensils it's about having the overall vision for making a delicious meal and then using those ingredients and utensils to produce the intended result and deliver it at the right time and have your guests say hmm Luke this is delicious even if your name is not Luke it would be weird if they did that if your name was Santiago and you made someone delicious food and you gave it to them and they said Luke this is delicious I don't know what that would mean that would mean the food was so good they forgot your name now it's like oh my God this food is so delicious I can't remember your name even though you're my best friend even though you're my husband I can't remember your name because the food is so good maybe that's it I don't know um right so writing is like that in the sense that it's about putting the parts together to create something that is greater as a whole than it is just the sum of all the individual parts that you've put into it so in terms of words that you might use in writing or in speaking it's not about knowing a lot of words either that helps of course right but the reason I say that is because some people might judge their English by the number of words they know like for example the higher the number the better they are at English not necessarily and it's not about how fancy or obscure those words are and I say that because some people might judge their English by the Rarity of the words they know like you know knowing very rare words for example knowing some words that even a lot of native English speakers don't know that's not necessarily an indication of being good at English what's the use of writing something or saying something that most people just can't understand because you're using very old or very obscure rare words okay so it's not necessarily about the number or the value of each word on its own it's about using the right words in the right combinations at the right moments to achieve the right result and that may be the most important part achieving the right result it's no good writing an email to someone and filling it with loads of complex and literary words and phrases that nobody really uses on a daily basis especially in an email the effect on the reader will be just to confuse them and that's essentially failing to communicate right that's kind of like what what would this be like Luke um well yeah never mind so I've said it before and I'll say it again English is not just about what you know it's about what you can do it's about your ability to complete tasks in English effectively to understand other people and then have other people understand you right it's about knowing when to use Simple English sometimes and when it's appropriate or necessary to use something more complex or something more specific write words write form write order write time okay it's not just about dazzling people with certain big impressive words that apparently native speakers use so I just talked about the four skills in English right speaking and listening writing and reading speaking and listening are together because they deal with the oral version of the language the the language in the air and reading and writing go together because they deal with the written version of English the the language written down now because I'm referring to my interview with Santi from episode 806 which was an oral interview let's focus our attention for the rest of this episode on the spoken word okay on speaking skills I did say that um speaking is only a quarter of the whole picture but I think for many of you out there speaking is what you want to focus on right so let's consider what makes someone a good speaker of English what I'm going to do now is look at IELTS assessment criteria and I know you're thinking fantastic Luke this is what we've been waiting 50 minutes for this is the kind of sexy content that I've come to expect from episodes of Luke's English podcast I mean that conversation you had with Amber and Paul about toilets was entertaining but it's nothing compared to how exciting this is IELTS assessment criteria yes uh what is IELTS assessment criteria well assessment criteria means the specific ways in which English is judged okay the criteria means the specific standards by which English is assessed or judged measured okay how do IELTS examiners judge someone's level of English when you take an IELTS speaking test you will receive a score at the end right the score is calculated by The Examiner after they have listened to you and in fact while they're listening to you as well they kind of work it out but anyway The Examiner makes the final decision after they've listened to you and after they've marked you in a few subcategories right so speaking is broken down into a few subcategories and you're given a score for each category and then those scores are added together and then an average score is worked out okay what are those categories you're asking well you've got fluency and coherence and I'll be explaining these fluency and coherence that's one lexical re resource resource lexical resource and grammatical range and accuracy and pronunciation I'll explain those in more detail in a moment but those are the four categories So speaking is divided into those four categories fluency and coherence lexical resource grammatical range and accuracy and pronunciation each category is defined further and certain criteria or standards are defined which help the examiners decide what score to give in each category all right okay so I mean even though even those categories are broken down into more specific descriptions in other Cambridge exams like fce that's first certificate of English and CAE that's the certificate of advanced English speaking scores are assessed with similar criteria to IELTS but there's also a score for Global achievement okay this is like a score for overall task achievement how did you achieve the task when you do a speaking test um in fce or CAE you're given a few tasks to do for example it could be a short interview having a discussion doing a short monologue or presentation and Global achievement basically means did the person manage to complete the task effectively here's a quote from um the Cambridge English website explaining how scores are measured for fce first certificate of English which is like a B2 level exam if you if you pass that exam it means that you have B2 level of English and you get a certificate as a result which you can show to people look on B2 there it is there's the certificate so here's a quote from uh Cambridge English explaining how their uh speaking scores are measured okay so candidate speaking performances are assessed using scales which are linked to the common European framework of reference for language levels the assessor gives zero to five marks for each of the following criteria this is what I just said isn't it now this is for c a e and fce right rather than IELTS so IELTS was fluency and coherence lexical resource grammatical range and accuracy and pronunciation for fce and CAE it's grammar and vocabulary discourse management pronunciation and interactive communication and then marks for each of these criteria are doubled the interlocutor that's like the examiner gives a mark of zero to five for Global achievement so in CA enfc there are actually two examiners there's the one who speaks to you and there's the one who sits at a table in the background and makes you feel nervous the interlocutor is the one who actually talks to you and they may they record a single score for Global achievement the other one the Assessor who sits at the back staring at you and listening to you making you feel nervous they give you scores in the other ones so basically what's the thing I'm saying there uh Global achievement you get a mark for that and that Mark is multiplied by four this is a bit confusing but basically this means that Global achievement is more important than any other single criteria what is global achievement for me this is how well the person succeeded in the communication task right and what I mean by this is this is the important thing your ability to complete a communication task effectively is more important than just having uh correct pronunciation or grammar having a few errors in your English is not the end of the world and what's more important is Task achievement and that includes all the stuff about getting things done in English and getting the right result from a bit of speaking if you make a couple of errors in in the middle of it it's not that bad if people still understand you right now this doesn't mean that Cambridge you know IELTS and Cambridge exams and so on are basically advocating for low standards in English and they oh it doesn't matter you know what it does let's not worry about being correct it doesn't really matter no it just shows that um the priority with English is to actually communicate and get things done okay so um task achievement for example did you work well with your speaking partner in order to achieve the task you were doing maybe to discuss some travel options maybe something like that before deciding together which one was the best or having to make another joint decision of some kind that's the kind of task you would have to do in one of those exams actually let's have a look at a sample part three section from a CAE speaking test shall we let's do that shall we okay let's look at a part three so they're in um in the CAE exam as far as I remember there are four parts and part three involves working together with a partner so in CAE you're tested in the speaking test with another candidate and sometimes you speak on your own sometimes you speak with the interlocutor and sometimes you speak together with the candidate okay so um what you're going to see on the screen or on the PDF I'll describe it to you is some extracts from a sample speaking test from this page cambridgeenglish.org by the way CAE is another English test designed by Cambridge English if you pass the test you get a certificate which proves that you have advanced level English at C1 level yeah look at that CAE is similar to IELTS it's based on the same research and conclusions that have been used in creating IELTS so it can help us to understand how English is assessed as well so let's look at the extracts to see an example of a speaking task that people have to do uh when taking CAE okay um so right and we'll we'll look at this to just give us some context or a case study for what would be considered uh good English um for that for this part okay so in part three The Examiner is interested in seeing how people use English to achieve something in collaboration with someone else okay so it's about interaction and working together for a common goal which I think are important communication skills so here we have um a part three task from CAE on the screen and this is a script so first the interlocutor then that'll be me the interlocutor says this now I'd like you to talk about something together for about two minutes here are some things that people often have to make decisions about and a question for you to discuss first you have some time to look at the task right so first of all you have some time to look at the task the interlocutor said here are some things that people often have to make decisions about and a question for you to discuss first you can look at the task so the task shows us a diagram and in the middle there is a question and then branching off from that question are a number of different things so the question in the middle is this what might people have to consider when making these decisions what might people have to consider when making these decisions and the options choosing a university starting a family moving to another country getting married and finding a job so what might people have to consider when making these decisions right so that's what the task says now says the interlocutor talk to each other about what people might have to consider when making these decisions so at this point in the test you have two minutes to talk to your fellow candidate about what people might have to consider when making these decisions so you can kind of briefly together go through the options and talk about what people might have to consider when making these decisions so it'd be something like this first person says okay so um what do you think um I I you know what about choosing a university and the person says well um choosing a university you'd probably have to think about the location of the University and probably what kind of courses they offer and the other person would say yeah that's right and maybe the the price as well of the University because different universities have have different uh prices you know for for the for the education yeah absolutely how about starting a family this surely is an important thing you'd have to consider lots of things for that wouldn't you uh yeah um all sorts of things it may be the most important one but um uh we can come back to it maybe what about moving to another country I mean you're gonna have to think about where exactly you're going to move and whether you know the language right yeah so that's certainly language maybe the most important one but you need to know about the culture and the the sort of economic situation of that country as well and so on um you know lots of factors there what about getting married that's another one well getting married obviously you just have to make sure that you've found the right person right yeah good point right it's going to be that for two minutes um and then the interlocutor says thank you when the two minutes is up and then the unlock interlocutor says now you have about a minute to decide in which situation it's most important to make the right decision okay so the candidates now have to decide which situation is the most important in which one is it the is it most important to make the right decision and so you'd say hmm let's see do you want to start okay um um I think probably starting a family or moving to another country these ones strike me as maybe being the most important and the other person would say yeah absolutely I think for me starting a family has got to be the most important one uh because well it's just such a huge decision isn't it to bring children into the world yeah absolutely because um you've got to be you're going to be responsible for their for their education so um I think this is probably the most important one if you make a wrong decision here then you know it could be disastrous for those children's lives and also for your life as well if you if you you know don't think about it properly yeah exactly because you've got to think about you know there's there's so many different factors you've got to think about uh uh whether you you can afford to do it and if the the relationship that you're in is is is the Right One In which to bring up kids and so many different things but I think that probably the the starting a family is probably the the most important one uh yeah absolutely I would agree right so it would be something like that okay now you should see how Global achievement or task achievement is important here this is about how you were able to use English to complete a communication task with another person right and I think that is a really important thing to be included in the exam and for people taking the exam to consider remember what language is for it's for achieving things and completing tasks effectively right so you know even if you had perfect pronunciation and perfect grammar if you didn't interact with the person the other candidate if you didn't interact with them very well then you you would lose a lot of points right if like the the way to do that badly is to kind of say what you've got to say so I think that raising a family is the most important one because um bringing children into the world is a very serious thing and so you need to think about that very carefully and then the next person just sort of waits for you to finish and then says there they says what they think I think that moving to another country is probably the most important one because it can affect your entire life and if you make the wrong decision it could be very dangerous or you could end up losing a lot of money and losing a lot of time and experiencing culture shock and then this person goes um bringing children into the world I think is the most important thing to make to to make the right decision about and the other person you know like there's no connection the the people what the examiners are looking for is for one person to make a point and the other person to show that they've listened and heard that point and understood it and then to maybe build an and expand on the things that other person has said and make reference to the what to what that person is said these are all things that you should be able to do because ultimately we should be using English to work together to achieve things right and so those sorts of skills are being measured in that exam not just pronunciation and grammatical accuracy okay if you can do that if you can work together well you'll get a good score for Global achievement and you get a good score for what was the other category that was mentioned in that quote from the website interactive communication there are other things here discourse management and so on but anyway let's keep pressing forwards here with this episode ultimately communication is is a means to an end it's a tool for a job just like my hammer although hopefully your communication is a bit more sophisticated than a hammer because if if you communicate in the same way that a hammer works and it's just bang bang I want some bread you know I want a coffee that's like the hammer version of if your English was a hammer but um it is a it is a tool for a job right it's a means to an end the means that's the tool is the language but the end result is to actually make an agreement to make someone feel something to make someone understand something to organize something with someone and successfully complete a specific task so Santi from episode 806 didn't pronounce some words and sentences correctly or in the same way that I would but in the grand scheme of things it didn't really matter he might have conjugated some verbs wrongly like getting a few Ed endings wrong or forgetting third person s or even just using present tenses when he should have used past tenses sometimes or just saying you know as a filler a bit too often but in the grand scheme of things it didn't matter did it now those things are still important to get right don't misunderstand me I'm not saying that you don't need to be correct in grammar or pronunciation or that it doesn't matter which words you're using Santi would get more points in an exam if he improved some of those little errors not that he's going to take an exam or anything he doesn't need to but of course those things are important the point I'm making is that it's about the bigger picture and there are plenty of other factors involved let's look let's have some real fun now and look at specific IELTS speaking band descriptors I'm going to get really specific now okay so let's look at the specific IELTS speaking band descriptors and you're thinking what the hell does that mean Luke well IELTS scores are given in bands you've got bands zero one two three four five six seven eight nine these are bands okay not bands like the Beatles The Rolling Stones The Who The Oasis blur not those sorts of bands unfortunately though that would be pretty good wouldn't it congratulations it's like oh I've got you know I've got my IELTS results oh really what did you get oh my God I'm in the Beatles which Beatle are you I'm I'm Paul I'm Paul McCartney wow brilliant or what what score did you get oh I'm in um who would it be I'm in Coldplay all right okay that's not so bad you know that's that's okay yeah but I wanted Radiohead I don't know anyway band zero one two three four five six seven eight nine nine is high zero is low okay no one gets nine by the way and no one gets zero uh Cambridge well maybe some people do if they sit there and it's like okay question one uh just nothing if there's no English to be assessed then I think you get nothing if you don't write anything or say anything I'm sure it's happened so uh Cambridge English uh at ielts.org publishes a list of descriptors for each band score these describe what the different bands mean in terms of specific speaking skills this should reveal the ways in which Speaking is assessed in IELTS right so you can consider your English as we talk about these descriptors we're going to look at them all in a moment on a PDF from the IELTS website now first let's picture the IELTS speaking test all right imagine it some of you have done it already remember how was it horrible or okay picture the IELTS speaking test there's you you're the you're the candidate and then there's the examiner that's going to be me right I'm sitting opposite you in a desk you come in you're feeling nervous you've been studying you've been practicing you've been listening to Luke's English podcast deep breath right let's go and you sit down in front of the examiner right so how do IELTS examiners assess your spoken English so I've done IELTS training before so talking about me as the examiner right I've done IELTS training before I've I've you know taught people how to prepare for the IELTS test and I've done mock IELTS tests quite a few times where I've pretended to be The Examiner okay and also I've done this for other people's classes for example they've they've um you know other other my colleagues who are teaching an IELTS course have said Luke could you on Friday morning could you be our IELTS examiner for the mock exams I'd like to say sure okay and I sit there and then the students come in one by one the first student comes in and they're like what my examiner is Luke from Luke's English podcast like yeah sit down please do you have your marking sheet have you got your identification you know all that stuff so I've done all that stuff before and I've done the same with fce CAE Beck Vantage back higher right that they're similar they're all very similar not the same but similar so if I was doing a mock IELTS test with my students and if I was The Examiner I would interview the candidate give them speaking tasks to do and at the same time I would have to work out their score on the desk in front of me I would have a script for me to follow a bit like the one we looked at there for CAE I would have different tasks and questions for the test and some paper and a pen for writing notes and for writing the person's score but it's not just a single score for speaking I wouldn't just have a single category on that paper called speaking with a space for a number right that's not how it works it's not like candidate's name date speaking and a space it's not just that instead I would have a piece of paper in front of me with at least four subcategories on it I've mentioned those sub-categories already so we'd have you know fluency and coherence and a space for me to write the score lexical resource a space grammatical range and accuracy space pronunciation in a space and then maybe some notes I might write some notes about General task achievement and then an overall score which is an average of all those four categories together all right so I'd give a score in each category and then work out an average across the four categories now I'm not an official IELTS examiner I'm a teacher who is trained to prepare students for IELTS so that's just the way that I do it but I know for certain that the examiners use at least four subcategories when assessing a candidate speaking so here are those categories again for the third time fluency and coherence lexical resource grammatical range and accuracy pronunciation what do those things mean okay I'm going to explain what those things mean now just one thing I just want you to note that accuracy that's whether you make mistakes or not it's only half of one of those categories you've got grammatical range and accuracy that's just one of the categories so what do the categories mean let's let me talk about what those categories actually mean and then we will look at the descriptions of different scores for each category what's the difference between an ielts-6 and an ielts-7 for example so this information I'm going to read now is from ielts.org uh their page uh which set which is called how are band scores awarded for speaking so what is fluency and coherence fluency and coherence refers to the ability to talk with normal levels of continuity rate and effort and to link ideas and language together to form coherent connected speech right so the ability to talk with normal levels of continuity right continuity refers to your ability to keep talking without pausing and stopping to think right so that's like your rambling ability actually rambling no because rambling if you just ramble and you don't keep your organ your your your responses organized and to the point then you can lose points for that because there you lose coherence anyway continuity is your ability to keep talking without pausing stopping and stopping for a long time to think rate that's basically your speed okay the word the words to time ratio so if uh you speak in this kind of way then you'd you know that's a that's a low rate so right normal levels of continuity and rate so we don't want the kind of machine gun approach I'll just get as many words and speak as quickly as possible that's not normal just relax calm down we want a reasonable normal level of continuity and rate and effort as well effort is important if you're there going um so speaking uh English is obviously um important um when uh you are in um International um uh uh situations uh that's that's effort right you're making a lot of effort so we don't want that level of effort we want a normal level of effort and to link ideas and language together to form coherent that means clear and easy to understand connected speech connected it's not connected speech there doesn't just refer to pronunciation but the idea that your words and ideas are all linked up together and there's a sense of connection of the ideas as well as the words okay the key indicators meaning the most important things to notice of fluency are speech rate and speech continuity so being able to speak at a reasonable speed and to be able to continue speaking without everything breaking down the key indicators of coherence that means the way you're clear are logical sequencing of sentences so that one sentence logically follows another sentence clear marking of stages in a discussion so for example to say well first of all I think blah blah blah but having said that blah blah blah blah then again blah blah blah a third Point could be blah blah blah and finally blah blah you know those sorts of things clear marking of stages narration or argument and the use of cohesive devices which I've just sort of mentioned really connectors pronouns conjugations pronouns are used to refer forwards to something you're going to say or refer back to what you've already said um connectors conjunctions Expressions used to build longer sentences to demonstrate a certain level of control over the language which allows you to keep talking without stopping making clear and easy to follow points okay okay both within sentences and between sentences all right um and then what is lexical resource lexical resource refers to the range of vocabulary the test taker can use and the Precision with which meanings and attitudes can be expressed the range of vocabulary the test taker can use range um have I mentioned this before probably a wide range refers to the variety of different words that you can use if you have a wide range you're using many different you've got many different words and expressions available to you right imagine the if you go to a shop and you you want to buy um you're looking for a hammer you want to buy a hammer at the hardware shop and you go into the hardware shop and in the hardware shop they've got a very wide range of of tools and they've got 19 different types of hammer it's like you're going to hammer for this hammer for that you know all these different sizes and shapes and things at a very wide range of hammers maybe it's too many maybe um similarly if you if you want to buy some you know some food for dinner and you go to the supermarket and you want to buy sort of like certain vegetables to help you make your favorite recipe um you want to what you want to see is a wide range of different vegetables available you want to see all the different types of you know different types of potato sweet potatoes different sort of root vegetables and carrots and lots of different green vegetables you know and right you want a nice wide range similarly your lexical resource refers to you know how many words are available to you how many can you use and the Precision with which meanings and attitudes can be expressed so are you able to express a specific idea with the right words so it's not just using fancy words but being able to convey specific ideas and specific meanings and attitudes okay the key indicators are the variety of words used the adequacy and appropriacy of the words used are these words adequate meaning do they do the job that they're supposed to do which is to communicate a certain idea like is the person listening to you do they understand wow they understand exactly what you mean or are they is the person kind of going uh like doing a lot of doing a lot of the work like just trying to interpret what the hell this person's talking about what is this vague what what is this vague word salad um so that's bad obviously you want adequacy where the the word is does exactly what it's supposed to do and appropriacy of the words used so this refers to the right style the right register not too formal because in English our spoken vocabulary can be quite informal quite friendly and relaxed right so it doesn't mean using very formal language or using very specialist terms but using the sort of everyday English that most people use in conversation especially in response to the question that's been given for example do you like living in the area where you live right and you know that so that calls for just normal regular everyday English rather than like special scientific terminology and stuff so that's about um appropriacy and the ability to circumlocute circumlocute I've defined it already in the text that I'm reading from if you can circumlocute it means you can kind of get round problems where you're trying to express something and you realize I just don't have the word for this what do you do in that situation when you just don't have the word for the thing you're trying to explain well you need to circumlocute circumly circumlocute circumlocute you need to circumlocute meaning find other words to get around that problem and to continue right that's what circumlocute circumlocute means without noticeable hesitation right so use the right words uh the right in the right style the appropriate style to show a wide range of vocabulary to say exactly what you mean so the other person doesn't have to struggle to understand and that when you come across a situation where you don't know the word which is very common happens to native speakers too that you find ways to effectively get around that find other words to say what you're trying to say without it breaking causing your flow to break down completely right so that's a lexical resource what are grammatical range and accuracy so we talk about range we've got lexical range lexical refers to vocabulary right grammatical range here is the the number of different grammatical forms that you can use to express yourself so grammatical range and accuracy refers to the range and the accurate and appropriate use of the test taker's grammatical resource your grammatical resource is your shelf in the language supermarket in your head and in that language supermarket in your head you've got the grammar section and on that shelf hopefully you've got lots of different grammar forms lots of different structures and forms available to you like we'll have a bit of that I'll have a bit of that we're going to need that you know oh I'm describing something that happened in the past I'm going to need a bit of past continuous bit of past perfect maybe a lot of past simple all of that and I'm going to need those conjunctions here and maybe a bit of third conditional as well have that as well oh God this is going to be the expensive sentence um right that's your range that you can call upon lots of those different things and uh accurate so obviously that you don't make mistakes so that is important an appropriate use of the test taker's grammatical resource appropriate so again that you use the right style of language for a you know normal conversation that you're not sort of speaking um with the same kind of complex grammar that you might find in a legal contract for example the key indicators of grammatical range are the length and complexity of the spoken sentences the appropriate use of subordinate clauses and the range of sentence structures especially to move elements around for information Focus that's like you know Shifting the emphasis of the sentence so you can move this element to the beginning of the sentence and grammatically it's still it still maintains its structure so you're using hedging you know adverbial structures inversions those sorts of things the key indicators of grammatical accuracy are the number of grammatical errors in a given amount of speech and communicative effect of error so it's not just the number of errors but whether those errors have an effect on your ability to communicate okay all right and then finally pronunciation pronunciation refers to the ability to produce comprehensible speech to fulfill the speaking test requirements comprehensible means that people are able to understand what you're saying and it's got to be enough for you to do the tasks that are given to you all right the key indicators will be the amount of strain caused to The Listener that's again where the listener is kind of like uh what was that was that uh okay that was you know like the listener sort of trying to decode what you're saying I think that was I went to the post office but I'm not sure uh you know that's strain so key indicators of the level the your pronunciation skill how much strain is caused to The Listener the amount of the speech which is unintelligible which is like no just no idea what that was that was unintelligible just can't identify it and the noticeability of influence from the test taker's first language for example wow it's very noticeable that this person is from Spain or Korea or wherever it is that the person is from so that is a factor so to be fair Santi would have probably lost a couple of points there but in terms of it being in terms of his pronunciation being good enough to fulfill the speaking test requirements I think it was I think that he would pass right I mean there is no pass or fail in IELTS but I think he would be getting a decent score for that I'm not here to to give Santi and IELTS score by the way um now we could look at some of those descriptions from ielts.org but we're going to get very into some very specific details here but let's come on let's have a look okay fluency and coherence lexical resource grammatical range and accuracy pronunciation let's look at sort of like a number four for fluency coherence it says cannot respond without noticeable pauses and may speak slowly with frequent repetition and self-correction Link's basic structures but with repetitious use of simple connectives you know what the text is too small for me to actually see it I need glasses and I feel like I don't need to do this because I the answer I gave just before was was sufficient to explain what these things mean but I mean if we look at a number nine for fluency and coherence it shows it says this speaks fluently with only rare repetition or self-correction so you only repeat yourself or correct yourself sometimes rarely so a bit of repetition or self-correction is acceptable and you can see that I do that sometimes and I'm Luke from Luke's English podcast uh any hesitation is content related rather than to find words or grammar speaks coherently with fully appropriate cohesive features develops topics fully and appropriately okay whereas like a five or a six is willing to speak at length though may lose coherence at times so the person is able to speak at length but after a while or sometimes it's what they're saying sort of doesn't make complete sense probably because they lack the control or the the lexical resource that they need you know uses a range of connectives and discourse markers but not always appropriately so you might be using some of those linking words or discourse markers you know maybe the person is saying it depends of or they might say something like in despite of and then um and then a clause like despite of I went to the park you know which it should be uh despite the fact that I went to the park or although I went to the park okay anyway that's there for you to look at if you like that's the IELTS speaking band descriptors uh which categories are the most important you might be asking yourselves well the um in terms of like fluency and coherence lexical resource grammatical range and accuracy and pronunciation which categories are the most important well the fourth categories are of equal importance in the exam I expect but if I had to choose I would say that they go in order of importance from left to right so with lexical resource no with fluency and coherence being the most important one followed by lexical resource grammatical range and accuracy and then finally pronunciation but it's a bit like the Beatles again because you know if we say like John Paul George and Ringo um and Ringo is the last one if you don't have Ringo you know it's still it's not the Beatles it doesn't work if Ringo is not there if any one of them isn't there it's not the Beatles in the same way with the speaking exam in IELTS speaking test in IELTS if one of those four things is just not there then the whole thing falls apart right so you can't have fluency and coherence with zero in pronunciation it just doesn't work of course um so they're all of equal importance but if I absolutely had to choose if someone was going to smack me in the head with a hammer if I didn't choose so if I had to choose I would say that they go in order of importance from left to right with fluency and coherence probably being the most important but of course if any one of those categories is significantly weak they will drag down the overall level for example if you are unintelligible in pronunciation it sort of doesn't matter how many words you know or or if you don't pause to think if just if you're just babbling and no one understands any of the noises that are coming out of your mouth then what's the point uh grammatical accuracy is mainly significant if errors cause misunderstandings but I guess errors can give the wrong you know errors can give the wrong impression you know there's a uh in the test they will tolerate a certain amount of error in your grammar but after a while if you want to get it up to the eights and nines then you need to be using having you need to have almost no errors in your English at all right um interestingly I feel like pronunciation grammar and Lexis that's vocabulary all help us to achieve fluency fluency is where those three systems combine without a wide range of Words which we can recall and use instantly we can't express ideas quickly specifically and coherently but also we call upon our pronunciation our ability to link our words together and to get the words out the actual motor uh you know the muscle work of the factory of producing the words it's got to be an efficient machine you know you've got to be in physical shape to actually get the words out you know without grammatical structures we can't link ideas together clearly and express complex things without our speech breaking down and falling apart and as I said without pronunciation we can't get our words out fluidly and clearly with words linked and yet stressed to give emphasis an impact so they're all important um so let me talk about assessing santi's English and I hope you don't mind Santi if you are watching this but uh I wonder what score Santi would get if he took an IELTS speaking test I shouldn't really speculate about that right but I can say that I've mentioned this that his weak spot is probably pronunciation although this is still at a good level because I was able to understand him and after all he is Spanish and so it's normal that he has a Spanish accent right he's not going to be judged too harshly for that he shouldn't be uh and then perhaps grammatical accuracy as well he made a few grammar mistakes which probably stuck out because we were looking for them right because I think that when people listen to my guests on my podcast they are judging their English okay that's what you do isn't it as language Learners you're hypersensitive to that stuff so he made a few mistakes they probably stuck out because we were looking for them I bet a lot of people listening we're focusing intently on his English and judging him a lot and to be fair he handled that very well right he didn't seem to be too bothered by the fact that he was on an English learning podcast so fair enough pronunciation of grammar grammatical accuracy right but he really makes up for his weak spots by having good grammatical range so he was able to employ a range of structures which allowed him to have control over what he was saying and to express some complex ideas also strong lexical resource um he was able to find just the right words he used Words which were appropriate for the conversation like switching from bits of slang when it was appropriate to more formal language to describe his work and so on and generally he used some very nice very descriptive idiomatic sometimes and frequently used Expressions phrases and words you know things like let's crack on and a number of other things and then excellent fluency and coherence so he organized his ideas with Clarity he didn't seem to struggle any more than someone might in their first language as far as I could tell he didn't pause excessively right or desperately search for for things he was trying to say there was no point where it broke down he was able to keep going and going linking one idea to the next so there you have it okay everybody some things to think about there as we Edge towards an hour and 40 minutes of podcasting here conclusions let me give some conclusions at the end so being good at English is not all about having a British accent or never making a grammar mistake there are plenty of other things involved in being good at English and I think that everyone should think about those things too and remember to work on those things and remember to also consider those things as really good things really important things too of course it's up to you if your goal is to have a British accent in which case which one if you if you really want a British accent which one is it that you want uh but if that is your goal then I'm not going to stop you but I do want you to put that in perspective and to realize all the many other things which you can focus on and finally at the end here I just want to give you a message of encouragement as Learners of English out there because one of the main lessons learned from my conversation with Santi was that perseverance positivity and practice are three of the most important factors in this game that we call learning English so keep your chin up keep practicing don't stop even if it seems difficult just keep going don't let your weaknesses stop you there are other areas where you can be strong don't worry about achieving Perfection I mean you can strive for it be my guest but don't worry too much if you're not getting a hundred percent in everything just keep going and do your best and you might find that that is enough or in fact more than enough and enjoy it you only get one life and it's happening right now so what are you waiting for go ahead and use English and make some connections with people be curious about others be Keen to connect with them and be kind as well be kind and generous with your time and your attention to other people you meet and talk to and also be kind to yourself as well don't judge other people's English too harshly it's not a competition okay everybody right that's the end of this episode I hope you've enjoyed it if you did if you found this useful give me a like or a comment or a review okay and have a nice morning afternoon evening or night and I will speak to you soon but for now it's time to say goodbye bye bye bye

Channel: Luke's English Podcast

Views: 669,106

Keywords: learn, learning, english, lesson, lessons, luke, podcast, luke's, vocabulary, native, speaker, interviews, listening, pronunciation, british, accent, london

Id: dyu5xlo1Rpg

Length: 94min 55sec (5695 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 12 2023