IELTS Speaking is a face-to-face, informal discussion with

an IELTS examiner, and is the same for both Academic and General
Training. The test is divided into 3 parts and is designed to test your
pronunciation, fluency, grammar and vocabulary.
Marking Criteria
There are four parts to the IELTS Speaking marking criteria:
1. Pronunciation
2. Lexical Resource
3. Grammatical Range and Accuracy
4. Fluency and Coherence
You’ll find help with each part of the IELTS Speaking marking
scheme below.
1. Pronunciation
I believe that pronunciation is the most important skill to master in the
IELTS Speaking test.
Quite simply, without clear pronunciation, it doesn’t matter how good
your fluency, grammar or vocabulary are. If the examiner can’t
understand what you’re actually saying, you will struggle in all areas.
2. Vocabulary (a.k.a. Lexical Resource)
Vocabulary is probably the most misunderstood area of the whole test.
Most students think that learning lists of ‘high-level’ words or idioms
will get them the score they need. In fact, it’s probably the best way to
LOWER your score.
You should use vocabulary as a tool to help you communicate clearly,
NOT to show off.
 3. Fluency
Fluency is a really tricky area because it is so connected to grammar,
vocabulary, and confidence. Luckily, I believe that it is the area that can
be ‘fixed’ quite easily.
4. Grammar
Make sure you don’t make any mistake.

IELTS Speaking Tips

1. Speak some English every day.

It is better to practice a little bit every day and improve your

skills gradually than to speak your native language.
2. Ask the examiner questions if you don’t understand.
Your IELTS Speaking test is meant to be like a normal
conversation between 2 people. Therefore, if you don’t
understand a word you can ask the examiner to explain what it
means. Just say ‘I’m sorry, could you explain what X means?’

You can also ask them to repeat the question. However, you
can’t ask the examiner to explain the whole sentence.
3. Do a 24-hour English warm up.
It takes most IELTS students 10-15 minutes to ‘warm-up’ and
perform to the best of their ability on test day. Just like an athlete
needs to warm up before a sporting event, you also need to warm
up before your IELTS exam.
 Therefore, you should speak, write, read and listen to English for
24 hours before your IELTS Speaking test. Your family and friends
might think you are crazy, but it will make a huge difference to
your score!
4. Give full answers.
‘Yes’ and ‘No’ are NOT satisfactory answers in your IELTS
Speaking test – you need to show the examiner how good your
English is.

If you give very short answers, there is no way the examiner can
know how good you are. Therefore, you should try to extend
your answers with explanations and examples.
5. Correct your mistakes.
People make small mistakes when they speak all the time,
especially when they are nervous in an exam. By correcting your
mistakes as you make them, you can show the examiner that you
really do know your grammar and vocabulary.
When you make a small mistake, simply say sorry and repeat the
sentence correctly.

IELTS Speaking Part 1

Part 1 is about YOU.
The examiner will ask you familiar, everyday questions about your
life. This will last around 4-5 minutes. If your fluency is strong, you
will be able to give longer answers. If you often hesitate when
you answer, then you will waste time and your answers will need
to be shorter.
PART 1 COMMON TOPIC LIST:
• Work
• Study
• Hometown
• Home
• Art
• Birthdays
• Childhood
• Clothes
• Computers
• Daily Routine
• Dictionaries
• Evenings
• Family & Friends
• Flowers
• Food
• Going out
• Happiness
• Hobbies
• Internet
• Leisure time
• Music
• Neighbours & Neighbourhood
• Newspapers
• Pets
• Reading
• Shopping
• Sport
• TV
• Transport
• Weather
 IELTS Speaking Part 2
Part 2 is sometimes called the ‘long turn’.
You will be given a cue card and you will have 1 minute to prepare
your answer. You will then be asked to speak for 1 to 2 minutes.

IELTS Speaking Part 2 Tips

Many consider Speaking Part 2 to be the most difficult part of the
IELTS Speaking test because it is a monologue. A monologue is
different from the rest of the test because you will be speaking
alone, without any questions or help from the examiner.

The examiner will give you a cue card similar to the one below:
Speaking Test Part 2: Candidate Task Card
Describe a lake or a sea that you visited. Please say
• What is its name?
• Where is it?
• When did you go there?
• What do people do there?
You will have to talk about the topic for 1 to 2 minutes.
You have 1 minute to think about what you are going to say.
You can make some notes to help you if you wish.

Below are 7 tips to help you with this section of the test:

1.You Don’t Have to Talk About Every Bullet Point

In the Official Marking Criteria for the Speaking Test there is
nothing that states that you have to talk about every bullet point.
Lots of IELTS examiners know this, but they don’t tell students
because they don’t want to give them an unfair advantage.
You will always be given a general topic at the start of the test and
then ‘You should say:’ followed by 3-4 bullet points. The rule is
 that you must talk about the general topic at the top of the card,
but you don’t have to talk about all of the bullet points. Note that
it says ‘You should say’ not ‘You must say’.
The bullet points are there to help you, so if you want to talk about
them, please do. However, if there are one or two that you don’t
like or you don’t feel comfortable talking about, leave them out
and talk about something else. Make sure what you talk about is
within the general topic and you will be fine.

2.Have a Strategy
IELTS is much easier if you have a strategy for each part of the
test. You can use this strategy when you are practicing and then
you will be much more confident in the real test.

3.Preparation
They say practice makes perfect and this is very true for IELTS
Speaking.
• Don’t memorise answers. There are too many topics for you to
memorise and it is highly unlikely that you will get the same topic
in the real test. It is a complete waste of time and leads to some
very strange answers. If the examiner spots this, they are allowed
to give you a Band 0!
• Focus on fluency and pronunciation. Record yourself and listen to
yourself. How could you improve your fluency and pronunciation?
• Learn functional language used to describe common grammar
functions, such as talking about the past, present or future, giving
your opinion, evaluating someone’s opinion and talking
hypothetically.
• Time yourself so you know how much you have to speak in 1-2
minutes.
4.Use 1 Minute Wisely
You will have one minute to prepare before you start talking. You
will not have enough time to write full sentences. You will,
however, be able to write keywords. These keywords should guide
you through your talk and help if you can’t think of ideas.
Having a strategy will also help you because you will know
exactly what to talk about and you will be able to make a clear plan
using short notes and keywords.
5.Personal Experiences Are Best (but telling a lie is OK too.)
The best answers are always about things you have actually
experienced in your life. You will be able to describe these things
in much more detail and you will also be able to talk more
coherently about them. Students tend to be more confident talking
about real experiences and this helps them with their fluency and
pronunciation.
However, some of the cue cards will ask you to talk about things
you might not have experienced at all in your entire life. It is fine
to lie. The examiner will never check your answers or worry about
whether they are the truth or not. However, they might ask you
some follow-up questions, so be prepared for these.
In my experience, the best strategy is to use real experiences first
and add in some lies to help you answer the question fully. Use
your imagination and you will be fine.
6.Expand Your Ideas
It is much better to fully expand each main idea, than to simply
state lots of main ideas and not develop them at all.This will help
you give more impressive answers and it is also a better use of
your time. It is much easier to think of a few relevant ideas and
develop them, than it is to think of lots of different ideas.
When you are practicing, a good way to expand your main ideas is
to use ‘Who, what, why, where, how‘. This will help you quickly
and easily develop your main ideas and you will also get used to
the grammar structures needed to do this.
You can also use your senses to help you use a wide range of
vocabulary. Think about how things looked, sounded, smelled and
tasted. You obviously won’t be able to talk about all of these
things for every topic (you would sound a little strange describing
how a book tasted) but you will normally be able to use two or
three of them.While practicing you can use a dictionary to help you
describe these sensations and expand your vocabulary.
 7.Mistakes are OK
Everyone makes grammar and vocabulary mistakes. Even students
who get a Band 8, or even 9, make small mistakes. This is totally
understandable and you should therefore not panic when you make
a mistake.
I have listened to students who were half way through their Part 2
question and then they made a small grammatical error and they
completely lost their way and their score went from a very high
one to a very average one.
Being nervous and stressed affects your ideas, pronunciation,
fluency and normally leads to further grammar mistakes. When
you make a mistake simply forget about it. There is nothing you
can do. Don’t panic and continue.

IELTS Speaking Part 3

Part 3 is more abstract.
This is your opportunity to really develop your answers and
discuss the issues brought up by the examiner. The topic will be
linked to the topic you discussed in Part 2, and this will last 4-5
minutes.
7 Common Question Types
The seven common question types that appear in IELTS speaking
part 3 are:
1. Opinion– What do you think about ‘this’? Remember to say why
you think that way and give examples.
2. Evaluate– What do you think about someone else’s opinion?
3. Future– What do you think will happen in the future?
4. Cause and Effect– What caused ‘this’ and/or what effects has ‘it’
had?
5. Hypothetical– Talk about imaginary or unreal situations.
6. Compare and Contrast– Talk about the difference and/or
similarities between two things.
7. Past– How were things different in the past and how have they
changed?

Grammatical Structures
Opinion
One thing you should not do is start every sentence with ‘I
think…’ or ‘In my opinion…’ The IELTS examiner will be looking
for how you vary your language. Below are a number of ways
you could do that:
• As I see it,
• Personally,
• For me,
If you feel very strongly about something you could use:
• I’m convinced that….
• I’m certain that….
• I’m sure that….
If you are less sure about your opinion you could give a weaker
opinion by using:
• I guess that…
• I suppose that….
• I’d say that…..

Evaluate
In these kinds of questions you will be asked what you think about
someone else’s opinion. We will therefore need to use
expressions that allow us to agree or disagree.
For agreement we can use:
• That’s so true.
• That’s for sure.
• That’s exactly how I feel.
• No doubt about it.
• I suppose so./I guess so.
• You/they have a point there.
For disagreement we can use:
• I don’t think so.
• I’m afraid I disagree.
• I totally disagree.
• I beg to differ.
• I’d say the exact opposite.
• Not necessarily.
• That’s not always true.
• That’s not always the case.
Remember that you will have to extend your answers with
explanations and examples.

Future
You are often asked to predict how a certain topic will change in
the future.
For making future predictions we normally use ‘will + verb’,
however this is quite simple and the examiner will be looking for
your ability to use more complex structures to predict the future.
More complex structures could include:
• X plans to…..
• It is predicted that….
• X intends to….
• I foresee…..
• It is foreseeable….
• Conditionals- If X + verb…..
• It is likely that…
• It is probable that….
• It is unforeseeable that….
• I envisage….

Speaking Part 3 Tips

After your 2 minute monologue in Part 2 of the Speaking test, the
examiner will ask you around 4-5 more abstract questions about
the same general topic you talked about in Part 2. For example, if
Part 2 was about mobile phones, they might ask you deeper,
more complex questions about mobiles like:
1. How have mobile phones changed the types of relationships
people make?
2. Some people think that children should not be allowed to use
mobiles, do you agree?
3. How has mobile phone use changed in the last 10 years?
4. How will mobile phones change in the future?
5. If you could add any new feature to a smart phone, what would it
be?
6. As you can see, these questions are trickier than questions like
‘Where are you from?’ and ‘What’s your favourite colour?’ in Part
1.

1. Don’t try to finish quickly

Speaking for up to 15 minutes in a foreign language is tiring. You
might not have slept the night before, you are stressed and you
might have also done other tests that day. In short, you will be
exhausted and your body will want you to take it home and tuck it
into bed as quickly as possible.
Lots of students give very short answers because they simply want
their test to be over as soon as possible. Know that the examiner
will keep asking you questions (and the next ones will probably be
more difficult), so it is much better to give a full answer and
answer the question to the best of your ability, than to simply give
a short answer and hope that it ends quickly.
2. Know that the examiner is trying to stretch you
Part 1 is really just a warm-up and Part 2 is a monologue, so Part 3
is the examiners chance to really test you and stretch your
language abilities to the very limit. The main thing to remember is
that they will ask you questions you won’t be able to answer as
well as you hoped. They will often increase the difficulty until you
can’t answer the question. They are not trying to be cruel, this is
just the best way for them to test your knowledge of grammatical
structures and vocabulary.
Think about a personal trainer or athletics coach forcing an
athlete to perform more and more strenuous exercises to judge
their true ability.
If you know this is going to happen you will not get stressed out
and you will answer the questions more confidently and get
higher scores.
3. Don’t be afraid to ask questions
There will be words in some questions that you don’t understand.
The rule is that you can ask the examiner to explain what one
word means, but you can’t ask them to explain what a whole
sentence means.
You can also ask them to repeat the question, if you didn’t quite
get what they said.
Please don’t abuse this privilege and try to use it for every
question.
4. Always give an answer
There will be at least one question that you have no idea how to
answer. Don’t worry, this is normal- see point number one. The
 most important thing to do is to at least make an attempt. You
have been speaking for 15 minutes and one question is not going
to lower your mark for the whole test. However, the worst thing
you can do is to simply not attempt an answer. If you have this
mindset, then you won’t push yourself to the limit of your
abilities.
It is also fine to admit that you have no idea. Simply say “I’m really
not sure about this question, but if I had to answer, I would
say…..”. The examiner will be much happier that you attempted
an answer, rather that just saying “I don’t know” or blankly look at
them (which happens more than you would think).
You can also give yourself time to think about the question by
saying ”That’s a difficult question, just give me a second to think
about that.” or ”I’ve never thought about that, to be honest, give
me a moment.” However, don’t do this for every question, only
the ones you need to actually think about.
5. Think about what structure the examiner is testing.
The examiner needs to know that you are capable of using a wide
range of structures. Don’t worry about inserting as many
structures as possible into your answers because they will ask you
specific questions to test specific grammar structures. Let’s look at
the examples above:
• How have mobile phones changed the types of relationships
people make? – opinion/past/present
• Some people think that children should not be allowed to use
mobiles, do you agree?- evaluating someone’s opinion
• How has mobile phone use changed in the last 10 years.- past to
present (perfect tenses)
• How will mobile phones change in the future?- future/prediction
• If you could add any new feature to a smart phone, what would it
be?-