Speak English with IELTS – Part 1
Transcript
Hola muchachos! Learn to speak English with IELTS. I am sharing one key tip (plus more!) that you can use today to start practising speaking in English! Listen to this episode and find out what it is!
Hola muchachos! You are listening to English made simple. This is episode 21, Numero 21. Hey everyone, my name is Milena. Welcome! This is episode 21 of English made simple. Wow. I wish I was 21 again. Yeah right! In your dreams Milena! In your dreams! haha Welcome guys. In this episode, we are going to learn to speak English while practising for IELTS. What is IELTS? IELTS stands for International English Language Testing System and it tests you on 4 skills; reading, listening, writing and speaking.
And in this episode, we will talk about the speaking part specifically. Just so you know, this episode is not only intended for people who are doing the exam, it is also intended for people who want to practice speaking English. So, for those who are joining in, who are new to the show, you can go back to episode 13 or 14, numero 13 y 14. You can find out a little bit more about IELTS and TOEFL exams. Before we begin; a special hello to Carlos from Peru! Hola Carlos! Como estas? How are you? Good Luck for your exam mate! All the best!
Hope it goes well! By the way, ‘mate’ is an Australian slang. Slang from Australia to say amigo or buddy. So good luck buddy. And to other listeners out there who are getting ready for IELTS, you can go to Englishmadesimple.net, my website www.englishmadesimple.net. You can download a free E-book that will help you with your exam preparation. You can avoid some common mistake made by Spanish speaker when learning English. That’s going to help you with your exam. Right, I am going to put a link in the description of this episode. Here is an interesting fact guys, I would rather go to the dentist than the IELTS exam, es verdad. I don’t like exams and I don’t like going to the dentist. I don’t like exams in general and as a matter of fact, I have never met anyone who was excited to sit an exam. Do you know of anyone like that? Do you know of any friends who are excited to do an exam? But because we have to do the exam; if you are going overseas to live in an English speaking country or if you are studying overseas, in Australia, UK, US, it is a requirement to sit an English exam because they want to test your English skills. So, we have to prepare for it.
Did you know there is one good thing about doing IELTS? It gets you ready to speak. It forces you to speak English. That’s the good news. You have to speak English. So what happen with the speaking part of IELTS? The speaking part of IELTS; you are sitting in a room with another person with an examiner who is asking you questions. It is an interview based test. It’s like going to a job interview, entrevista laboral. It’s like going to a job interview. So they are asking you questions and you are replying. The questions they ask you are something to do with everyday topics; general topics. And in this episode, I will tell you how you can prepare for the speaking part of the exams and build confidence at the same time. I will also give you an example question so you are aware what kind of questions they could ask you.
What are the potential questions for this exam?
First of all, what do they mark you on in the speaking part? They mark you on your pronunciation and fluency and vocabulary. They mark you on grammar and accuracy and comprehension. If you don’t understand a question, you can always tell them ‘sorry can you please repeat that?’ So just so you know, you are allowed to ask them a question as well. What you also need to be aware of is they mark you on the grammar. So for example, ‘Do you only use present tense for the whole test or are you able to correctly use the past tense, present perfect, and future tense. How well is your grammar…So this is basically what they mark you on… Now here is what you need to do to prepare for the speaking test of IELTS and here is what you need to do when you are learning to speak English. First thing you can do, go to British council website, the IELTS website. I am going to put a link on my website. I am going to put a link in the transcription of this episode to British Council IELTS website.
Find some practice questions. There will be quite a few questions to select from; so pick one. Pick one question. Then take your phone and record yourself, graba tu voz! You will be surprised how nervous you will be just because you are recording yourself. The idea is to make yourself uncomfortable. Get yourself out of the comfort zone.
This is how we build confidence and you will get better at speaking English because you will be uncomfortable and you have to think about your answers. Find out some new words that you can use when you are answering questions and that’s very important. If you have to repeat answers as many times as necessary, then that’s awesome because you will remember those words. Righto! That’s my main recommendation for the speaking part. Go online, find the questions, take your phone and answer those questions while you are recording yourself. That’s what I have been doing with my students and one of the students went from 6 to 8. 9 is the highest mark you can get. We recorded maybe 20 sessions until my students was comfortable and feeling confident. Cause that’s the idea! When you are going for the interview and when you are actually speaking to the examiner, you want to feel confident and when you feel confident, even when you make slight mistakes, the examiner won’t notice because you feel comfortable and you are confident and somehow it helps your pronunciation as well when you are confident.
So what is one topic that you need to be aware of that you need to practice for? The speaking part of IELTS, they usually ask you to describe somebody; a teacher, or an actor, a family member. They could ask you to describe a favourite city or city you live in. An interesting holiday you went to. Describe any interesting item that you bought; it could be a device or a phone. You could talk about your phone. So you need to be ready to describe things and people. You need to learn the vocabulary that describes people, things, cities, experiences as well. So for example, they could ask you to describe your favourite teacher. My favourite teacher is Mr. Iglesias and Mr. Iglesias is a good person. This is a very simple sentence and we need to expand on that. We need to find more descriptive words. Descriptive words are adjectives. So we need to find out the synonyms of the word good. One way to do that is go online or go to Weon Inteligente haha Cambridge dictionary. Go online and type ‘good’ in the dictionary and see what synonyms or similar words come up. What do you get? What result do you get when you search for the word ‘good’? Another way to answer these questions is you could try to answer these questions in your own language. So how would you describe your favourite teacher in your own language? I just want to make you aware… I just want you to realize that there is more than one word to describe someone. So we are not just going to say my teacher is a good person. Even in your own language, you are going to use more than one word to describe someone. So, first try to answer it in your own language and then try to answer it in English. Try to find out more words to describe someone in English. Okay? Excellent!
I hope this is helpful so far. I actually want to give you more tips for your speaking part of IELTS. Listen to the question carefully. Get familiar with the question. Does it start with why, what, who, which? Most of the questions start with these type of words. Listen for some keywords as well. Does it say education, city, and family members and so on? It will give you a clue how you can answer the question. You could also get a question when you think ‘Well, I don’t have a favourite movie’. I have not been to a museum before so i don’t know how to describe a museum. The great thing about IELTS is you can lie, mentir! The interviewer doesn’t know who you are. He/she doesn’t know anything about you. All they want to do is listen to your English. They want to mark you on your English so make things up. Make it up. Just invent an answer. You can make it up! You can also be honest and you can say to the interviewer, well to be honest, I have never visited a museum before but I have a friend who loves going to the museums and she says there is a good museum in Santiago called Pablo Neruda, it’s about a poet from Chile, who won a Nobel award for his work. You can answer it like that. As long as you are speaking fluently! As long as you are confident answering the question. When you are replying to a question, you can give your answer and then state 1 or 2 reasons why. Why is your teacher a good person? My teacher was very inspirational. When I was in high school, my high school teacher, Mr. Iglesias was very inspirational. That’s why I have decided to study computer science because of my teacher. That’s the reason. My final tip is. If you want a high score in IELTS; use phrasal verbs and collocations. Use them correctly. It will increase your score here. Try not to speak slang. Don’t say ‘yeah’. Say ‘Yes’ if you need to answer with a yes or no. Say ‘yes’ don’t say ‘yeah’ or ‘nahh’. One more thing guys to remember is to keep it simple. Speak at your own pace. Don’t rush it. Don’t speak too fast. Just slow down a little bit. It can happen when you are nervous. You want to speak fast and you want to say so many things.
I know this episode is for people who are doing the IELTS exam but this is also good for people who are preparing for job interviews or giving presentations in English. Do the same exercise as if you are preparing for IELTS; the speaking part of IELTS. As I said before, I guess that is one good thing about IELTS, it forces you to speak in English and you have to speak in English. This is one way for you to prepare for job interviews and presentations. Don’t be disappointed if you don’t get the score you need. There is another chance to do it. It is not the end of the world guys. Don’t give up. The first time I saw an IELTS question to describe my city. I struggled a bit to answer this question because this is something i don’t talk about every day. I don’t talk to my friends and describe Melbourne for example. But if somebody asked me to describe Melbourne, I have to stop and think. What can I say about Melbourne? This is why even the native speakers have to prepare for IELTS. If they ever had to do IELTS, they also have to prepare.
So that was the first parts of IELTS, the first part starts off easier, the first part and the second and the third part of IELTS speaking is about you giving opinion. I am going to cover this in the next episode how you can give an opinion about certain topics and that is the last part of IELTS speaking. The whole test is 20 minutes long. Guys, if you find this episode useful, please share this with your friends. Again, good luck for your IELTS exams Let me know if you have any questions. All the best and until next time, I will try to include more stuff about collocations and phrasal verbs. This will be really helpful for your English exams but it is also useful for anyone who is learning to speak English, this is how native speakers speak, they speak with phrasal verbs! Good luck everyone. Talk to you soon.