Episode number four, IELTS speaking.
G'day.
My name is Glen Spearing and I've been teaching English as a second language and English as a foreign language for nearly 10 years, both in Australia and overseas.
I've prepared exam students throughout that time and have taught communication skills at university level to students who have entered through the IELTS and English as a second language pathway.
Some of my students have scored extremely highly in their IELTS exams and, as a result, have been able to work for internationally renowned organisations such as the United Nations.
This podcast is a combination of strategies, tips and tricks that I've learned over that time to make sure that you have the best chance possible to achieve your maximum score.
Are you ready?
Let's go.
Before we begin, just a little bit of housekeeping.
In the previous episode, I neglected something pretty important.
Booking the test.
Booking your IELTS exam is at the same page.
Ieltsorg that I recommended as your first stop for finding out about the IELTS test.
And also before we begin this episode proper, I have a Patreon bonus episode which is a live lesson of someone coming into a class with me for the first time doing a speaking lesson.
So if that's of interest to you, then check that one out as well.
In this episode, I will be talking about the IELTS speaking exam in general.
The following two and perhaps three episodes will be dedicated to the three parts of the exam or part one, part 2A and 2B, if you prefer to think of them like that.
I will try and cover as much ground as I can, because the speaking part of the IELTS exam is the shortest part of the exam and also the one that students are able to improve most quickly on.
In this episode I will be talking about how it is marked or scored, what that actually means and how it looks.
Detailed discussion of pronunciation and grammar for particular parts of the IELTS speaking exam will be in later episodes, although I will be giving examples and demonstrating what will make for good responses throughout this series.
Your listening question for today is, how is your speaking assessed?
Your IELTS speaking exam is a little different to the other elements of your exam in the fact that it is most often on a different day altogether.
It may be on the same day before or after the other three skill assessments.
In fact, most of my students have done their speaking test well after the main tests.
When you arrive to your speaking exam, make sure you arrive on time and well rested and as relaxed as you possibly can in exam circumstances.
You will be taken into a room for a one on one interview with your examiner.
Although your interview will be recorded, your band score will usually be assessed immediately afterwards.
The entire interview will last between 11 and 15 minutes, with that time divided into three parts.
Speaking part one involves an introduction and a general interview.
This can involve parts of your life, such as your family, your home, where you live, what work you do, what you study and what your interests are.
You can think of this as a general discussion, the same as you would when you are meeting someone for the first time.
But the objective here is to make you feel a little bit more relaxed and get a better sense of who you are.
This will usually go for between four and five minutes.
Speaking part two is known as the long term.
The examiner will give you a task card which asks you to talk about a particular topic.
The card tells you what points you should include in your talk or discussion and instructs you to explain one aspect of the topic.
You have one minute to prepare your talk, to write notes and to organise the structure of your discussion and speech, and the examiner will give you a pencil and paper to help you do this.
It is important that you actually do take notes in this task, because you will be expected to talk for up to two minutes without interruption.
So it is difficult for anyone at this point to speak for two minutes on a particular topic without having their ideas organized, especially if you are an English learner.
So this is a very, very important part of the speaking exam.
The examiner will ask you to begin talking and will then stop you when the time is up.
They may or may not ask you one or two questions on that particular topic.
And this usually lasts for between three and four minutes, including the time that you have to make notes speaking.
Part three is known as the discussion, and if you want to think about part two and part three as part two a and part two b, then that is also what a lot of teachers and a lot of students think of it as as well, because part three is a discussion on what you were talking about in part two.
The idea is for you to be able to explain in more detail and perhaps even in a more abstract way, what you were discussing in part two.
This can also last between four and five minutes.
In the IELTS speaking exam, you're marked or assessed on four criteria.
The first one is fluency and coherence.
Second is lexical resource.
The third is grammatical range and accuracy.
And the fourth is pronunciation.
Fluency and coherence assess how well you can speak at a normal speed without too much hesitation.
It also includes putting your sentences and ideas in a logical order and using cohesive devices like linking words pronouns, conjunctions and so on, to say what you want to say and in a way that is easy to follow.
Lexical Resource assesses the range of vocabulary you use and how accurately and appropriately you use vocabulary to express meaning.
It also includes the ability to express yourself using words for a topic you may not necessarily know.
And so this is an important part of the assessment.
I'll speak particularly about this topic in a later episode, when we are talking about how to answer or how to approach topics that you don't necessarily feel comfortable with.
But basically, the lexical resource assessment assesses your vocabulary range.
Grammatical range and accuracy assesses the range of grammar you use and how accurately and appropriately you use it.
So the different band scores that you receive in this part of the assessment are determined by not only the range of grammar that you use or that you are aware of, but how appropriately and how accurately you use it as well.
Pronunciation is what it sounds like.
It assesses your ability to speak in a way which can be understood without too much effort.
And really the main part of this is what we would call intelligibility.
How easy is it to be understood?
How easy is it for someone to understand what you're saying?
Are you mixing up words and sounds?
Is the intonation and the stress patterns accurate, or are the rhythm and stress patterns accurate?
These sorts of things it's not.
Generally, and this is one thing that has been taken out of the test for quite a number of years now.
It's not assessing your accent.
Only in the higher band scores of eight and nine does accent really come into play here.
It's only when it has an impact on your intelligibility, but they are not assessing your accent or how you sound.
Your mark for the speaking is determined by your overall performance.
It is not broken down into individual sections.
Let's take a closer look at the marking criteria and what it looks like.
The first criteria is fluency and coherence.
Fluency is a debated term, but in the marking rubric it talks about speaking speed, pauses and delays.
In language teaching, we would generally consider this to be automaticity.
In other words, how long it takes you to respond and how easily you move from one idea to another.
The key takeaways from this is the importance of speaking at a natural rate, not too fast and not too slow, and using linking words and other strategies to move from listening to responding and building an answer.
Coherence will also be judged in a similar manner.
If your ideas flow naturally and you can use linking words to go from one answer to the next, you will score well.
If one idea has nothing to do with the next, then it will appear incoherent and be much more difficult to use linking words and linking language.
In any case, one of these important strategies is using what we call discourse markers.
Words like um maybe perhaps right okay, and in australia, most famously yeah nah, i'll do an episode specifically on these, but a common mistake students make is bringing a discourse marker unintentionally in from their first language into english.
Among Spanish speakers, for example, it's commonly heard as ee.
This is an indication for the examiner that you are processing and thinking in your first language and then reinterpreting and translating in English.
Lexical resource is perhaps the easiest to understand as a learner.
Lexical resource is perhaps the easiest to understand as a learner.
This is the range of vocabulary that you use.
But it is not so simple.
To get above a band 7, you need to use that vocabulary correctly.
You need to be able to use those words with multiple meanings and be able to use the vocabulary most suitable for the topic at hand.
Grammatical range and accuracy is the criteria that is easiest to self-assess as a learner.
There are particular things that will place you above a band 7 or below a band 7.
I'll have more to say about this in the next episode, but accuracy and awareness are what will separate a band 6 score from a band 7 score or above.
For example using comparatives and superlatives.
Perfect tenses, gerunds and the basic tenses will generally score you in the band 6 range.
Using them accurately and correctly will get you above band seven.
It's perhaps the same level of skill we would use to separate an intermediate learner or an upper intermediate learner from an advanced level student.
It's also why you will hear the common advice to use the structures you know well rather than overstretching yourself and get almost guaranteeing that you will get below a band seven.
The next episode will give you tips on how to improve this aspect for your exam.
Pronunciation is just one of the four aspects for the marking criteria, but it occupies the largest space in terms of anxiety and pressure for students.
Once you look at the marking rubric, you'll notice that most of this is dedicated to word stress and syllable stress and sentence stress, intonation and connected and rapid speech.
It's one of my personal gripes that what gets most attention on social media in terms of English teaching is to do with accents and how to say things with a particular accent, rather than what will help you say these words, sentences and questions clearly and intelligibly.
In terms of improving your speaking.
For each of the criteria, I have spoken in a previous episode about general advice, getting involved in language exchanges and exploring conversation groups in local libraries, and so on.
There are some other things that I would recommend as well.
For fluency and coherence, nothing beats practice, practice and more practice.
Having a good teacher that helps you to develop opinions, arguments and responses with linking words or a study buddy, for that matter, is definitely worthwhile.
YouTube is a great source for many things, including increasing vocabulary and pronunciation at the same time.
I will always recommend documentaries for a variety of reasons, and with good subtitles you will get subject appropriate vocabulary as well as some sound letter and sound word correspondence.
I have some videos on my YouTube channel for this, as well as pronunciation accuracy.
In fact, pronunciation and vocabulary can be developed at the same time in a lot of ways.
Methods like the Pimsleur method are a tried and tested method of listen and repeat vocabulary acquisition, and there are many sources for similar things now.
It is boring, but if it is good enough for spy agencies, the CIA and so on, it's good enough for me.
When it comes to pronunciation accuracy for all learners, vowel sounds, and particularly the long vowel sounds, are the key.
I have videos for tips and tricks on these on my social media.
And if you'd like to request some specific pronunciation material, get in touch with me through my Patreon and I will create that content for you.
There are a few good YouTube channels for specific pronunciation practice.
The English Language Club is a favorite of mine, and I know other teachers use it as well.
So if you haven't already, then that is a good one to check out.
In particular the individual phonemes and the phonetics and the spelling sound correspondences of each phoneme.
The other thing to be aware of is the specific challenges of pronunciation you will face depending on your first language.
For example, those with the European language as their first language may need to work on their ch, sh and j sounds.
Those from Eastern Europe will need to pay more attention to their intonation and sentence stress.
African language speakers will have to pay additional attention to their plosives and their blended sounds with vowels.
South Asian language speakers will have to work on their word stress.
And most Asian language speakers will have to think about their R's, their L's, their N's and their M sounds.
When it comes to improving grammar for your speaking.
It may seem counterproductive, but getting writing will help you immensely, and this is going to be the topic of the next episode speaking part one and how to use writing to help you in this process.
And that's where we will leave it for today.
A reminder that your listening question for today is how is your speaking exam assessed?
In the next episode, i will be talking about speaking part one and how to improve your grammar at the same time.
So I look forward to having you in attendance when we look at that.
But it's bye for now.
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