Hello, lovely, and welcome into our special episode.
I'm Maria.
Yeah, we're not doing this standard.
Yeah, because it's a special episode.
And we haven't prepared this episode.
So we are just rambling, answering your questions.
And we give you some good holiday spirit and mood, good vibes.
It's not completely unstructured, though.
We do have some questions to answer and some points to address.
Absolutely.
But it's kind of more of a ramble and disorganized stuff.
Okay, and we have a question about confidence.
So how should I be confident in my IELTS speaking?
Because you get nervous.
It's an exam.
You enter this room, the examiner is looking at you and you are starting like trembling.
You're nervous and you you know What should you do to boost your confidence.
Roy, what do you think?
Maybe we should, because I did some research on this, but maybe we should share what we do to boost our confidence.
Yeah.
What do you do?
Well, I work on breathing a lot, like deep breaths, calm down.
Do you do anything like that?
Absolutely.
Working on your breathing?
Yep.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I think breathing helps a lot.
And I used to do quite a lot of speaking in public, presenting stuff about IELTS.
And now I train teachers and I do get nervous.
So before my presentation...
I'm just in an office or somewhere in the corridor, so I take three deep breaths.
Really deep.
Is it in through the mouth and out through the nose?
Or is that not important?
I think it doesn't matter like through the nose, through the mouth, but you should breathe from your belly, okay?
And really deep, not just like no, but like like, really like.
One two three, four and still like.
Breathe in, you know, and then breathe out, and when you are breathing out it can be even longer, that's true.
I can remember reading something that you should never breathe from your chest in order to calm down.
And you can tell when people are agitated because their chest goes, not their stomach.
But actually it doesn't matter, like from your chest, from your belly, or both, from your belly and from your chest.
Just like take three deep breaths and maybe count till I know five.
One, two, three, four, five.
You're still like breathing out, right?
Or breathing in.
So does it does help to relax your body?
So that works in the immediate term, probably remembering that it's an exam.
It's not life and death.
OK, so the exam is important, but if you don't do so well, you can recover.
One way of thinking about this is like, how am I going to feel about this in five years time?
You know?
So there are very few things in life people can't recover from.
Failing an exam is something that you can always recover from.
You just have to take the test again.
If that's what's needed, then that's what's needed.
So two things in the immediate term.
Anything in the long term that can be done.
Preparation.
So preparation does boost your confidence, especially about speaking.
You can check out the topics, right?
So on this podcast, we've been discussing pretty much all the current topics.
We have, yeah.
And I think that we've done a good job of preparing people.
And a lot of teachers that are not us are working on that as well.
So it's important to realise that preparing in advance and the role that that plays, is quite important.
But if you haven't prepared in advance right, at least you know.
Read about the format of the speaking.
Right.
So that it has three parts and there's an examiner.
It's recorded.
So knowing the format of the speaking and some topics.
Still, it gives you some confidence, right?
So you know what to expect.
Yeah, exactly.
So I think that's important for exams in general.
And I mentioned this every single time I present about this exam and exams in general.
But I'll say this again, because some teachers listen to us.
If your students are preparing for IELTS... please show them the exam.
So like download the sample papers, show the students the different parts of the reading and the writing and the listening and the speaking.
Watch videos that show how the speaking goes.
Because they're there.
It's all online.
Yeah, there are videos of the speaking exam.
Because it's really frustrating when you see people coming in to exams and they don't know what's required of them.
And, you know, that's the teacher's job.
So it's something that's super important and it's not a waste of time at all.
You might not be teaching them any vocabulary, but you are teaching them something that's really important.
So it's good to do.
I did a bit of research.
Oh.
Yes.
And I should say, not all of this is my own.
So I should... cite my sources beforehand.
I listened to a YouTuber called Katie Morton.
That's K-A-T-I Morton.
And she does a lot of work with mental health.
And one thing that she did recently was four tips on how to boost your confidence.
So I thought we could talk about that for a little bit.
OK.
And the first thing she said was like, you need to have a clear idea of what your strengths are.
So she was talking about it in the context of dating.
But actually, she we could change this to think like, what can I speak well about?
So you know for a fact that in my case, I can't speak about conditional sentences.
So I don't.
And I let you do that.
But I can speak quite well about collocations, for example, and the use of tenses to convey meaning.
So this is something that I do.
In the case of people preparing for the exam think well, I'm not very good at storytelling, but I can answer questions about things.
I'm good at talking and having discussions.
I'm good at talking about things that are familiar to me.
Connected to that is, once you know what you're good at, then you work out what you're bad at, and then you just practice practice, practice as much as you possibly can.
This is where your teacher comes in.
If you have a teacher, they should help you identify these strengths and weaknesses as well.
And the other thing is, when you work out what your strengths are this is connected to the previous point you accept what your limitations are and then you ask questions and do the research in order to address these problems.
If they are in fact problems, you know.
Just because you can't answer all of the topics on part one perfectly, it doesn't mean to say that you're lost.
You have time to recover in part two.
That's a time when you can prepare your answer and you brainstorm all of this vocabulary that you know.
And then there's also talking about things that are difficult or negative.
Another thing that this YouTuber was talking about is stopping negative self-talk.
Wow, that's a nice one.
Well, some people and students in particular, and this is extremely frustrating.
It's understandable why it happens.
But some people in particular say the most awful things about themselves.
Like I was teaching in Damjedeva a couple of weeks ago and this woman was saying like oh, I'm retarded.
I can't do anything properly in English.
And it's like, that's really upsetting.
You know, you need to stop this and think like, okay, I can't do this, but what can I do?
And then move from there.
So don't say horrible things about yourself.
It's not just words.
The things that you express about yourself actually do have an impact on your self-image.
So this is really important.
Thoughts are material.
Exactly.
And connected to this, the opposite is actually helpful.
So this is another thing that Katie Morton was saying is start putting positivity out into the world, not just about yourself, not just saying nice things about yourself.
But nice things about other people, or just things that happen in general.
So one thing I like to do is send people nice comments on Instagram when I see their stories and just say like that's a really cool thing that you did.
Like, good for you.
Yeah, praising people for something.
Exactly.
You'll get that back.
And actually that makes you feel better yourself because you have done something to help make that person's day better.
And I think that can be quite good.
And then the other side of that is it's not just a mental thing, but it's also a physical thing as well.
So you know, it's not a case of how best to describe this.
It's not a case of dressing in a certain way for other people, but dressing for yourself.
If you feel confident about how you look, that also boosts your confidence in general.
So if you dress nicely, then you feel good about yourself, And I should say these things work together.
It's not just a case of put on a nice shirt and everything, all of your problems will be solved.
You need to do all of these things in equal measure.
And that can really help boost your confidence in general.
But if we talk about for exams, then it's good to.
Yeah, like put on something with your favorite color or put your favorite pair of jeans or trainers.
It doesn't matter if it's like smart or casual, but something like you feel you look good.
You look like more than good.
You look gorgeous.
Like people look at you, you know, they notice you.
Again, it doesn't matter what the clothes are.
Exactly.
But you feel confident in this particular jacket.
For example, I train teachers and usually most teachers are much older than me and I look young, right.
Oh, I used to look young.
You do look young.
You're ridiculous.
So...
And here am I, you know, like looking like, I don't know, like 14 year old, 16 or maybe 20.
And then like these teachers, they look at me like, who are you, you know?
And to avoid this, I put on my best shoes ever.
And I put on my best dress and I look like, wow, in the shoes and the dress.
And this does make an impact on people.
Because again, but I'm confident.
I'm not just like, you know, standing in the corner like me, me, me.
Hello, I'm Maria.
No, I look confident.
I'm projecting this confidence.
Confidence.
I have powerful body language.
Right.
I smile.
But again, I look natural and they feel it.
They look at my appearance.
They take it in my body language, my confidence, my colors, you know clothes and pretty much most of them comment on the shoes later and uh again, like they, uh some, some people tell me that oh, i was scared of you Because of this confidence, because of this power that you're projecting.
And clothes are important.
It works in the same way for men as well.
We could talk about being dressed well, but we talk about dressing professionally in particular.
Men wear suits because this is... It's like a military uniform, almost.
And that puts you in that mindset of being professional.
I am in control of the situation.
So there is a great deal of psychology in play based upon how you look.
It's not the only thing that counts.
You have to know your stuff.
This is why we led in with like practice practice, practice work on the inside first and then the outside.
But Maria and I know a lot about fashion, so obviously we're going to play to our strengths.
We used to wear like torn jeans at work, right?
Yeah, I had a good teacher to tell me about that.
Yeah, but you should feel comfortable, right?
So comfortable and natural.
Yeah.
Right.
And also when you are in the speaking test in this room in front of the examiner.
A good tip that I actually wrote to this student on Instagram is you can imagine Rory sitting next to you okay, so imagine like it's a speaking exam and then you're sitting there and then like, imagine rory.
That's rory next to the examiner or rory next to you.
You can imagine me screaming scotland freedom right, or like us fooling around.
You know like, and you can imagine us.
You can imagine Rory's voice inside your head because we're your family right, so you'll listen to us for quite a long time.
We hope Well, hopefully.
And hopefully people agree with us.
But actually that's quite important because if it's somebody that you agree with or admire, then you can kind of their voice is almost speaking through you, which can be really useful.
It's not that we are doing the talking for her, but it's just she agrees with our ideas that we express in the podcast.
And so for her it was easy.
And there might be something to this.
So if you don't agree with any of the ideas that we've expressed in the speaking parts, it's possible, it's okay to have a difference of opinion.
Find somebody who you do agree with.
And I think you might be quite surprised at just how much that influences the flow of your thoughts in a positive direction.
So why not try?
Yeah, so visualize.
Another point is when you do feel nervous and you look at the examiner.
So imagine this examiner in the bathroom.
Okay?
What?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Like you imagine the person next to you, or like in front of you and when you're nervous because of this person, right?
This person makes you nervous.
So imagine them like a normal, a usual human being in the bathroom.
Well, they are, yeah.
Yeah, they are kind of there, like, the same as you, you know?
It's not something like... Even, like, if you're standing in front of a president, right?
Like, it's... It's a person, you know?
And they want you to succeed as well.
There's nobody in that room that doesn't want you to do well.
And on top of that, they're probably quite nervous too.
I don't think a lot of people appreciate the fact that examiners do have strict procedures to follow.
Yeah.
So it's not just you in that room that's terrified.
It's the both of you.
And you have to work together somehow to make this process work.
You can make the examiner nervous, okay, with your beautiful clothes and your gorgeous English.
But they probably do.
They probably are quite nervous.
So just acknowledge that no one's out there to get you.
Everybody wants you to win.
Yeah, even if the examiner doesn't smile.
If you feel that the examiner looks gloomy and very serious or it's because you said something wrong no, the examiner is doing their job.
Mm-hmm.
And the examiner is being monitored quite frequently.
Cambridge checks the examiners.
Exactly.
And that's the thing you'll notice when you go into the exam room.
There's a recorder in front of the examiner.
So their supervisor hears everything that happens in that room.
So they're under pressure.
They are under pressure.
And it's probably actually we can come back to our original point that we made, that you can recover from failure.
So say that you don't get the result that you want.
You can appeal that.
And the reason you can appeal that is because every single IELTS speaking test is recorded.
So don't just think like, just because I've got this result, I have to accept it.
You don't.
You can challenge it.
And you should.
Absolutely.
So why not?
If you feel that the examiner interrupted you.
The examiner, kind of disagreed with your opinion, said no, it's wrong.
You know if, for example, the exam, the speaking exam, was less than 11 minutes, Because the official timing is from 11 to 14 minutes.
If your speaking exam was like 8 minutes, you should appeal.
You should complain.
Hell, if your speaking exam was 11 minutes, you should still appeal.
Well, it's from 11 to 14.
But you should give people the maximum amount of time to express themselves.
If you haven't, especially if you want to say more and you haven't been given that chance, then definitely appeal.
Yeah.
And if again, you disagree with the results, you can appeal and there's this procedure.
And on our Instagram there's a video with me talking about the procedure, because there are some deadlines and you file, You can fill in the special form and then your speaking result gets rechecked.
Exactly.
Yeah.
They can't lower your score.
So it either stays the same or they can get you a higher score, but they can't lower the score.
Yeah.
Okay, so we talked about breathing.
So take three deep breaths right before you enter this speaking exam room.
Then prepare.
We talked about preparation.
So know the format, know the topics, write down some nice vocabulary grammar you want to use.
Then Roy, you talked about the tips.
So could you sum up the tips?
Well, I suppose the best way of doing it is know your strengths.
Yeah.
Practice those until they improve.
Know your weaknesses.
Yep.
Work out a way to improve them and practice those.
Be beautiful on the inside and be beautiful on the outside.
And then, on the subject of all of these things, find somebody to practice with.
It can be a friend, but I think the person that we all know is going to help you the most with this is a teacher.
So with that in mind, get yourself a teacher.
If you can't afford a teacher, we have a speaking partners group that helps people to prepare for this.
It's not as professional as a teacher obviously, but you can still meet like-minded people and work towards a goal together.
And, of course, the final thing is, if you've got any questions that you'd like to have answered and maybe you can't afford a teacher, then you can always drop me a line on Instagram and I don't mind answering any questions that people might have.
Because it's scary, you know, and sometimes it can be nice and reassuring if somebody is there to say OK, this is fine.
Let's talk about how to fix it.
Yeah.
So success with IELTS Instagram and Telegram and the chat, where you can find the speaking partner for free.
That's on our Telegram.
So success with IELTS.
Yeah, and everything is available on our premium, right?
Because if you invest into our premium, you get the speaking course, you get some webinars, so you get support right.
So check out our premium.
And again, yeah, as Rory has told you, just drop us a line on Instagram, on social media.
I think that wraps up the confidence part nicely.
Thank you very much for your attention, time and support.
Good luck with your exams from Nikon.
And remember, confidence is key.
Yeah.
