This is an IELTS Energy Podcast, Episode 1552.
How should I practice for Speaking Part 3?
Welcome to the IELTS Energy Podcast from All Ears English downloaded more than 35 million times with examiner-trained IELTS whiz Aubrey Carter and Lindsay McMahon, the English adventurer.
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Hello, Aubrey.
How are you feeling today?
I'm great.
How are you, Lindsay?
Good.
Having fun on the microphone today as always.
Aubrey, how often do you tend to discuss like societal issues with your friends?
Like, I don't know, things going on in culture and society.
Yeah, great question.
Not that often.
Like, yes, it does come up.
Sometimes I'll say oh, I heard something interesting on a podcast and I want to get their take on it.
But often our conversations are more casual that I don't have a lot of practice talking about those things right.
Answering the kind of questions that might come up on speaking part three or the things I would be writing about on task two.
Yeah, that's probably pretty typical, right?
Most people probably don't talk about that stuff, that that much, or maybe like 10 to 20 of the time, something like that.
Yeah, this is interesting because you can't count on Even if you're living in an English speaking country, you can't count on getting enough practice in English the kinds of topics that will come up on speaking part three, unless you instigate that conversation, right?
And you're like, what do you guys think about the environment?
Let's talk about it a little bit.
Hopefully you ask a better question than that, right?
Yeah, right.
Maybe not the best one.
Yeah, but it's true because we know our listeners know that speaking parts one, two and three are going to have different kinds of questions, right?
Just to lay that groundwork here.
Exactly right.
Part three is about society as a whole.
These more difficult issues that in polite conversation we don't always talk about that much, because they are kind of heavy.
And a little bit controversial at times.
Sometimes, yes.
Yeah, exactly.
Speaking part one and two.
Yeah, right.
These are more about personal life experiences.
Those, these kinds of conversations, like what's your favorite restaurant?
Where do you like to go to eat?
That will come up more often in your conversations.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Sometimes I have certain friends that I'll talk about this stuff with quite a quite a bit.
And you know that they have the personality for it and they have maybe a thicker skin and they can debate that sort of thing.
But it's not everyone.
Right.
So, yeah, it's probably rare that this will come up as much.
So we need to be ready to discuss social environmental, educational issues, economic issues, Aubrey.
Exactly.
Right.
So today we're going to teach you a step-by-step strategy that you can follow when practicing IELTS Speaking.
Part 3 questions.
We want you to have a strategy to follow, to take the guesswork out of it so that it doesn't create anxiety.
You know exactly what to do when you get those Speaking Part 3 questions.
All right.
Well, we need this structure stat.
Let's do it, Aubrey.
What is it?
What's our structure?
First, give your opinion.
Second, support that opinion with specific reasons, details, examples.
And then if time permitted, you can give a short one sentence summary.
So that's tricky because remember, the examiner may have to interrupt you if they need to ask more questions.
So don't worry if you haven't summarized an answer.
But if you are able to follow this strategy, summarize the answer and then just stop and let them ask their next question.
And we've said on the podcast before that it's actually a good thing when you get cut off by the examiner right.
It shows that you could have continued talking forever.
It shows your fluency.
So no worries about that at all.
But if they haven't stopped you yet and you have spoken for almost a minute on a part three question, one answer to summarize and then just let them ask their next question.
Okay, good.
And then step two, what would that be, Aubrey?
Yeah.
So this first step there was to follow that strategy.
So to have a strategy.
Step two is to write out your answers.
Before trying to answer out loud spontaneously, this might feel like a big jump and feel really big.
It's really helpful to practice writing out your response, right?
And use your notebook.
Use impressive vocabulary high-level, linking words, as a first step to sort of scaffold these skills.
Oh, interesting.
And so this is just to clarify 100%.
This is not something we're going to do on test day.
This is just the way we're going to practice.
Exactly.
This is the way we're practicing, especially if you haven't answered a lot of IELTS part three questions before and you just find yourself stuttering and hesitating and you feel like you're not doing.
Well, you know, go back and write out some answers, right?
Just look up some part three questions and then write out.
You know, take a little time and write what you would like to answer.
Use strong, specific support. specific examples and details.
This can come from personal experience, right?
But just practice writing out an answer so that you have confidence, knowing that you can come up with that answer.
Yep.
Keep in mind.
For some reason, I think students tend to think that using examples from their life or lives of people they know is too I don't know casual.
It's not academic enough, but that's not true, right?
Right.
Exactly.
What's really key is that the language you use is high level, both the vocabulary and transition phrases.
But you absolutely can use examples from your personal life, from people you know, as long as you are still using that impressive vocabulary.
Yes, I love it.
So we write out our answers.
And then what are we going to do?
We're going to read them out loud?
Exactly right.
Try to limit yourself to about a minute.
So if you what you've written takes a lot longer than a minute, Then you'll have like oh, next time I need to write a little bit less.
Try and get yourself to where your answers are.
A minute max for part three.
And then, yeah, practice reading them.
And then after the break hill, we're going to step three.
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Okay, we're back from the break.
What is Step 3, Aubrey?
Yes.
So step three is where you actually practice without writing your answers.
When you feel ready, you're starting to feel confident, then you're going to answer spontaneously.
But do this alone first.
Don't feel like you have to do this with a speaking partner right away.
Yeah, I like how we're really throughout this episode, really scaffolding.
Like you said, we're laddering up right.
We're starting with that bridge of writing it out and then reading them.
And then we're going to answer in front of a mirror in private so that there's no one listening.
And then we're eventually maybe going to have someone listen.
Yes.
If you don't, if you dive in headfirst trying to answer questions, you could get discouraged.
You could feel like this is much too hard.
Whereas if you start small, start a little easier and build up to answering spontaneously with a speaking partner or a teacher, then you're going to be building confidence and fluency, constantly practicing sharing your opinion and then details.
And by the time you are ready to go in there on test day, you're going to feel so confident.
I also love the idea of recording your answers and taking notes about what linking words you used.
That's really cool.
Yes.
So you definitely, you know, record your answers the first time you do the answer.
And then you want to like write down, take notes, if you repeat any vocabulary or words that felt really common, that you could think of a more impressive word.
Then practice the answer again, record yourself again and compare.
So you definitely want to answer questions more than once and see how you can improve them.
Yeah.
So I feel like, I mean, what I'm taking from this episode, it's a very iterative process, right?
You know, we're really scaffolding, we're scaling up our practice.
We're not going to go from knowing nothing about IELTS to all of a sudden sitting in front of a friend who's going to try to be an examiner right.
No, we take steps, baby steps, so we can get there.
Yes.
And it's just smart.
If you think about so many things that you've done in life, You rarely are expected to just be perfect about it from day one, right?
Usually you're learning foundational skills.
Then you're expected to know a little more, be a little better.
Do the same.
Give yourself that same grace for IELTS, especially speaking part three, writing task two.
That are much more difficult.
Give yourself these steps to master, to build confidence as you go.
I love that.
And that will make sure that we don't get discouraged.
We don't give up.
We can actually have the endurance to go for the 30 or 60 days of our preparation of our study plan.
And by the way, guys, we provide that study plan inside our Three Keys IELTS course.
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Right, Aubrey?
Yes, absolutely.
We have created the study plan for you.
So it's very systematic.
You know what you need to do each day, which modules to start first, which parts of the exam to work on.
So you can check out our course at allearsenglish.com slash keys, K-E-Y-S.
Yep.
And don't forget to hit the follow button right here on IELTS Energy if you don't want to miss part two of this series.
Because in part two we're going to provide band nine speaking.
Part three answers, but we're going to use this structure.
Okay.
Exactly.
We're going to show you we'll walk through a few of these answers what we would write if we were writing them out, and then we'll practice those spontaneous answers to show you a few band nine answers using this structure.
Excellent.
Looking forward to that episode, Aubrey.
So I'll see you then.
Awesome.
I'll see you next time, guys.
Take care.
Bye.
Thanks for listening to IELTS Energy.
Hit subscribe now, and don't forget to find your estimated band score at allearsenglishcom.
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