How to Prepare for IELTS Speaking?

Most of the candidates are not aware about the expectations from speaking section.

This section is very close to a real life situation. A certified examiner for IELTS speaking will conduct a face to face interaction with the candidate. The interactive session will be recorded for further evaluation after the completion of the test.

The format for speaking test is same for both IELTS General Training and IELTS Academics tests.

Purpose of the test

This section is designed to evaluate broad range of proficiencies.

The examiner will evaluate:

• Communication skills and general knowledge about daily topics.
• Common experiences to share so as to evaluate the communication skills.
• Length of speaking on the given topic to evaluate language proficiency.
• Expression and justification of your views.
• Speculation about the topic and analytic skills of the candidate.

The candidate should speak as naturally as he/she can. Hence, the candidate should be focussed and relaxed.

IELTS speaking test is divided into 3 sections which usually last for 11-14 minutes.

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Details about each section are elaborated below:

Part-1: It usually last for 4-5 minutes where the examiner ask about yourself and your family background. Probable questions from examiner’s end can be related to your hometown, locality, studies and work. The examiner may ask about your hobbies, interest or details about your family. This part will help the candidate to talk in more natural manner and to relax for the next part.

Part-2: The candidate will be given a list of topics which you have to select by your own choice. It will also suggest you about some points to be included in the session. The candidate will get 1 minute to read and think about the points. After that, the candidate will get 1-2 minute to speak on the topic. The examiner will not interrupt or ask questions in between the session and neither he would give any hint about the topic.

Part-3: this part is the most challenging for the candidate. The examiner will now start asking questions from the topic which you chose for part 2. This session may last from 4-5 minutes. The candidate will be test for his ability to about present, past and future, ability to give opinion, ability to talk about an imaginary situation and the ability to campare or evaluate another person’s attitude.

Marking of speaking section:

It is important for the candidate to know about the marking system of this section. There are 4 marking criteria for the examiner.

• Pronunciation
• Fluency and Coherence
• Grammatical range and accuracy
• Lexical resource

Each of the above mentioned criteria will contribute 25% of your band score.

• Fluency means to talk continuously and smoothly without any hindrance or obstructing while speaking.
• Coherence means how comfortably and clearly the examiner is able to understand your words and the meaning of the sentence.
• Lexical resource means the ability of the candidate to use extensive range of vocabulary in most accurate manner.

The evaluation will also be based on the grammar used by the candidate. Hence, the sentences should be used with minimal mistakes and maximum grammatical structures.

Last but not least, pronunciation is very important. The sentences used by the candidate should be very clear with wide range of pronunciation features.

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