IELTS Speaking Preparation Notes: Part 2

IELTS Speaking Test

Part 2

• monologue

• 1-2 minutes (more than 1: 30)

• cue card - for points

• something from your life experience or knowledge

  • an important object you have

  • a location, city or country you have visited

  • a special event or occasion you remember

  • a cultural work you like

  • a situation or concept

• informal

• 1 minute to plan

• question at the end

• Making notes

• Thinking of ideas

• Extending ideas when speaking

Signposting

Signposting, also called ‘discourse markers’, are essential for a high score in th Fluency and Coherence category. It makes your speech logical and easy to follow.

we use signposting to:

• show the type of information we are saying

• show how the information connects

• organise and sequence our ideas

• emphasise a certain point

Examples

Informal & Formal expressions

Signposting opinions: Cleft sentences

| What
The thing (that) | I loved
I find annoying
I hate
surprised me
I didn’t like | is / was | the wather.
how hot it was.
the number of restaurants.
her kindness.
how many tourists there were. | | ————————- | ————————————————————————– | ——– | —————————————————————————————————————— |

Starting

• Filler

  • Okey,

  • So,

  • Right,

• Introduce topic

  • I’m going to tell you about…

  • I’d like to talk about…

• Paraphrase the topic

Make a plan

General advice: 

• You can use the instruction card the examiner gives you to structure a plan of what to say in your short talk. In this way, your short talk will have a similar structure to an essay: It begins with an introduction, then there is the main body where you make your main points, and finally a conclusion where you finish your talk.

• When giving your short talk, it’s a good idea to begin with a sentence or two introducing what you are going to talk about. There are many different ways you can introduce your talk, but one way is to paraphrase the first line of the instruction card.

• When you are talking about the different points of your talk, it’s a good idea to introduce those points too. One way to do this is to paraphrase the instructions from the ‘You should say:’ part of the instruction card. You can quite easily change these instructions into questions, which you can then answer yourself by talking about your main points. However, you should not do this for every point - perhaps one or two maximum.

• If you finish talking about your main points before the two minutes finishes, you can end your talk by using a concluding sentence.

  (Remember, you have to talk for more than one minute but you don’t have to talk for the full two minutes - after a minute you can stop if you have covered all your points - though it is recommended you always try to speak for at least more than one minute and thirty seconds. If you are having problems doing this when you practise, try speaking about each of the main points separately for 20-30 seconds. Then put them all together to form the main body of your talk.)

  There are many different ways you can conclude your talk, but one way is to paraphrase the last line of the instruction card (“and explain…”).

• Give details and expand your answers - when you say something, think “who, what, where, when, why, who with, how long,” and so on.

• Always try to use a variety of grammatical structures in your talk - think how you can use past, present, and future grammatical structures. The examiner marks you on your grammatical range, so try to show as much as you can - but remember, you’re also tested on accuracy - how many mistakes you make.