How to Prepare for the IELTS Speaking Test at Home

hi everyone Chris here from IELTS advantage with another live lesson and today we're going to look at how to improve IELTS speaking at home so I came up with this lesson over the weekend I was working with one of our VIP students who is really really keen to get her IELTS score to the level that she needs very very quickly so I work one-on-one with a lot of our ilt VIP students do mock speaking test with them but after I did one with her she said is there anything extra that I could do at home she says I know that you have seen in your free time and I can't you can't work as much as I want to practice so what can I do at home to help me improve my scores so I'm going to share with you the technique that I shared with her and I share this with all of my VIP students and I would recommend doing this no matter how good your teacher is or how much practice you're doing with other students this is a really really valuable thing to do and it will really help you improve your speaking at home for free without any you know you don't need to buy anything or anything like that you can do it today immediately after watching this video so in this video we're going to look at the materials that you're going to need and then I'm going to give you the strategy that I share with all of my students to help them and then we're going to look at a checklist of things that you should be thinking about when you are reviewing your own work and when you're doing the test on the test day so what are you going to need number one you're going to need a sample IELTS speaking test don't ask me where you can find this just google it just Google IELTS speaking sample test and Google will help you out and what you need is a full test alright so part 1 part 2 part 3 and it's really important that you don't look at the questions before because we're going to do this under exam conditions so don't cheat and look at the questions before you do it it would be great if you can get a partner so your husband your wife your boyfriend your girlfriend your kids your granny whoever to help you with this all they have to do is read the question so what they are going to do is they are going to play the examiner and they're going to read the questions to you so they're going to play the role of the examiner and you'll play the role of you this is optional I know a lot of you don't have someone to help you with your preparation or you might be someone like me who just would rather get it done by themselves and you don't want to bother other people and so if you don't have anyone to help you with this and what you can do is just look at one question at a time and read the questions and pretend as you're reading them that's the examiner asking you the question number three you're going to need some sort of recording device I would recommend your phone if you're watching this you probably have a smartphone download some app that helps you record or make a video of yourself even better and while you're doing the test so strategy is do a mock test so under exam conditions get your partner or read the questions and pretend that you are doing a real test do not cheat do not look up ideas on Google do not you know cheat with some vocabulary that you you've got written on the wall or something like that just do it as if it's a real test it's really really really important that you don't cheat number two record it so record it using an app that records voice and or make a video even better number three listen to it and I know a lot of you don't like the sound of your own voice and what you're going to have to get over that and I'm number four what you're going to do is you're going to evaluate it you're going to think about it in the same way that an examiner would think about it and I'm going to show you some a checklist of things that you can think about when you are evaluating your own your own and speaking all right this is really really powerful because you are probably making a lot of mistakes that you are completely unaware that you're making them so as you're speaking you cannot really listen carefully to yourself when I get students to do this the number one thing they say is I can't believe I'm I was making that mistake or I can't believe my fluency was so bad or my pronunciation was so bad or this mistake or that mistake and they've been making that mistake for years and years and years and they just didn't realize it because as a teacher I can point out your mistakes but you're not going to really take that on board most of the time most of the time I'll say you know you need to improve your vowel endings or something like that okay I'm not doing anything about it but when you hear yourself you're like oh come oh okay so it's raising your awareness about the mistakes that you're making it's very very very powerful and I recommend it to all of the students that I work with even our VIP students who I you know we work one-on-one with them we get them to do this because it does really really really help evaluation so there's a few things when you're listening to your recording that you're going to think about so this is the marking criteria fluency coherence grammar vocabulary pronunciation these are the things that the examiners are thinking about they're not thinking about what you wear your hairstyle whether you are smiling at them or not or whether you greeted them in a nice way none of that matters all right it's fluency coherence grammar vocabulary pronunciation these things and these things only we'll also think about what to do in part 1 part 2 and part 3 so when you are listening back we're going to give you like a checklist of things to think about so that you can evaluate your own performance and then you'll start to see progression you'll start to see improvement and if you do this a number of times you're going to see massive improvement and the great thing about this is you don't have to wait for your next English class or you don't have to wait for like an online teacher like me to you know come online and give you your skype blessing with you you can just do this as many times as you want as often as you want so let's start off with different parts so part 1 of the speaking test is just normal everyday questions about you so your job where you're from your home time where you live your likes and dislikes what you did at the weekend just normal everyday questions alright so the things that you should be thinking about here did you answer the question and the way that you do I think about development or the way that I get my students to think about development for here is not too short not too long alright so you don't want to give a very very short answer like where are you from I'm from Ireland like that's perfect grammar the pronunciation was great and everything but you're not really giving the examiner enough to judge your your like your linguistic ability I'm not too long you don't want to say like what happens with some students is you say like where are you from and they will tell you like what their hometown looks like the history of it what the architecture is like what it's famous for like just go on and on and on and on and on and they've memorized an answer that's why they're doing that and so you don't want to be very very long because the examiner will stop you they have to ask you a range of part-1 questions and they only have a limited time to do that so if you give a very very very long answer they'll keep stopping you stopping you stopping you and you'll feel very nervous and stressed out because you'd be like am I feeling am i doing something wrong why is she stopping me why is he telling me to stop so not too short not too long the question every student asks is well how long how many sentences how many words how many seconds that's the wrong way to think about it you don't want to be going into the test thinking okay did I say 18 words or have I been speaking for 30 seconds that's that's going to be detrimental to your fluency especially and so just think about it does the examiner understand what I think about that question all right normally like but like two or three sentences is enough for part one but it'll it'll differ from four from question to question part two is when you get the cue card and you have one minute to look at the cue card plan at an answer and then they will say you should you should speak for up to two minutes so when you're doing this part get your eggs your partner the person helping you to get a digital stopwatch or look at the clock and after two minutes just let you know that you can stop talking thing that you need to think about for part two is were you able to talk at length about that topic for that time for up to the two minutes or did you stop way before did you run out of ideas did you run out of things to say so two things can happen number one for part two what you might do is you might think that you have been speaking for two minutes when really you've only been speaking for thirty seconds or one minute and then you just stop that's very very common because if you're stressed out one minute can seem like two minutes very very easily put your hand on a hot pan and tongue and for two seconds it feels like a very very very long time when you're under pressure when you're under stress and or go out on a very very very very cold day and standard for thirty seconds it feels like half an hour so time can do strange things and when you're under pressure when you're under stress the other thing for part two is watch out that you didn't run out of ideas what happens is students will look at the bullet points and they cover one two three four thirty seconds have gone past alike the fluency goes way down so were you able to speak pretty much continuously at ease at length about that topic think about that if you're struggling then you probably need to come up with a better strategy for part two part three big difference between part three and part one part one questions about you where are you from what's your job all about youth part three is questions about ideas abstract ideas not necessarily anything to do with you so for example they might say to you do you enjoy your work alright so what's your job do you enjoy your job alright that's a question about you for but in part three a typical question related to that would be and which do you think is more salary or work-life balance so that's not really about you that's a discussion of that topic so you can see part three is a more more a discussion of abstract ideas and what they're really looking for here is a as a development of your ideas so explaining why you think that using examples to help you develop your argument giving a well-developed argument a good way to think about part three it's kind of like a main body of your of your essay I think this here's an explanation here's an example other people think this here's an explanation here's an example I think this so you're developing your argument really for part three so did you do that on were you able to answer the questions because some of the questions for part three are really really difficult you must give some sort of an answer or at least attempt an answer then when you're thinking about all of these parts you should also be thinking about these four things so coherence did you answer the question very very important when they asked you to talk about a particular thing did you talk about that thing or did you talk about something else coherence is well development so did you speak for up to two minutes or did you stop way short did you develop your answers here or did you just give very very short sort of one sentence answers same with part one did you develop your answers there enough so that's what coherence is really there's there's many many extra things you need to think about but in a nutshell did you answer the question and it did you develop your answer enough fluency were you able to speak without noticeable effort without pausing a lot without hesitating a lot right everybody pauses and hesitates when they're thinking of the correct word to say or the thinking of ideas everybody does that but did you do it I don't unusually do it an unusual amount I compare that with how you speak normally in your native language in your native language you probably mmm pause and hesitate quite you know sometimes but not that much but if in all of these parts you were constantly because you're thinking of the correct grammar the correct vocabulary or thinking of ideas then you might need to work on your fluency grammar this strategy is excellent for improving your grammar because everybody is making grammar grammatical errors that they're unaware of so even the best English learners have some little things that every time they speak they make that little mistake could be articles or prepositions or verbs object agreement or Kanta belong countable nouns or many many many many many things I guarantee there's a little common grammar error that you make over and over and over again so think about those errors all right normally students are good enough to pick up on their own errors so they might make the error when they're producing the language but when they're receiving the language when they're reading it they're able to pick up on that error and if you do that and correct the grammar you're going to improve your grammar and improve your and your speaking at the same time vocabulary all right what most students think about vocabulary is how many big words that I use how many complicated high-level words that I use that's not what the examiners are thinking about a good way to think about this whenever you are evaluating your own work is did I have did I have enough words did I have enough vocabulary to easily talk about that topic or did was I limited by my range of vocabulary was I struggling to discuss that topic talk about that topic because I just didn't have the words so maybe I knew what to say in my native language but I just couldn't say it in English or maybe you the word was on the tip of your tongue but you couldn't write get it out so if that if you're doing that that's a sign that you just didn't have enough vocabulary and you need to improve that also think about accuracy think about what meaning the words that you're using especially if you're trying to use big high-level words do you understand what those words mean if you don't know what they mean 99% of the time they're wrong think about collocation zazz well think about accuracy and appropriate E of your vocabulary pronunciation two things that you should be thinking about with pronunciation number one can you understand what you say what do you have said if you cannot understand it the examiner will never be able to understand it all right you should if you're hoping for a 7 or above you should be aiming for 100% clarity the examiner can understand every single word that you are saying that should be the first thing that you're thinking about if there are certain things that you are picking up certain mistakes certain particular signs of English that you have a problem with work on those signs then if you have no problem with clarity think about the higher level pronunciation features think about connected speech weak signs sentence stress word stress intonation all of these high level pronunciation features that if you're hoping to get a 7 8 or 9 the examiner will be thinking about so instead of watching another youtube video about IELTS do this alright YouTube is great you know the Internet is great but you're not going to improve by consuming more information you don't need another YouTube video you need to do things all right you need to write you need to speak you need to read you need to listen this is a great way that you can do this at home for free without any help and you will see massive progression if you do this if you did this once a day for you know a few weeks you would see a huge improvement in your speaking if you need any more help go to this youtube channel you'll find a lot more videos I told you not to look at or YouTube videos and then told you to look at my video so maybe take what I say with a pinch of salt um but my videos are good anyway you'll also find a lot of information on my website and on the Facebook page as well if you have enjoyed this video please subscribe our social media manager Justin wants to get to 100,000 subscribers before Christmas so help them get their on he'll be very very happy so thanks guys if you need have any particular questions for me feel free to email me either myself or one of my team we'll get back to you Chris uh dial to advantage calm and once again thank you very much let me know what you thought about that and if you find this useful but key is go and do it thank you bye

Channel: IELTS Advantage

Views: 104,543

Keywords: IELTS, IELTS Advantage, IELTS Test, English, Pronunciation, live lesson, Band 7, subscribe, www.ieltsadvantage.com, IELTS Writing, Chris Pell, lesson, IELTS listening, Practice tests, tips, ielts listening, international english language testing system, ielts speaking, grammar, listening, ielts tips, In this lesson, How to Prepare for the IELTS Speaking Test at Home, How to, Prepare for the IELTS Speaking Test at Home

Id: 632CQZCxzUs

Length: 18min 29sec (1109 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 05 2018