Part 3 is definitely the most difficult part of the IELTS speaking exam. This is where the questions move from asking about you, to asking about the world around you, and for many students, it can be hard to come up with ideas for these more abstract questions. Today, Nick and I discuss how to unlock IELTS Speaking Part 3 questions by finding the “hidden topic” inside them.
Hey! Last week, Nick and I explained exactly how the examiner will determine your grade for Fluency and Coherence in the speaking exam. At the end of the episode, we set our listeners the challenge to record themselves attempting three current cue card questions. Today, we will be going through a selection of those recordings to give band scores and advice that will be helpful for every test-taker.
In the IELTS Speaking exam, the examiner will give you a score in 4 areas: Fluency and Coherence, Lexical Range, Grammatical Range and Accuracy, and Pronunciation. Your final score will be the average of these four scores rounded down (yes, you read that correctly, the scores will be rounded down, so you will need an average of at least 7.0 to achieve that score). However, recently I realised that that there is a lot of confusion among students as to exactly what the examiner is looking for when they grade IELTS speaking Fluency and Coherence.
Hey! IELTS is well-known for recycling the same topics for Speaking Part 2 again and again. However, they do sometimes introduce new topics into the exam, which can confuse some students. Today, Nick and I analyse 5 new IELTS Cue Card topics 2022 to show you how you can come up with ideas quickly for ANY topic. Plus, we will provide model answers for two questions.
IELTS Cue Card Feedback 2021 Hey! Last week, Nick and I set our listeners the challenge to record themselves attempting three current cue card questions. Today, we will be going through a selection of those recordings to give feedback and advice that we think will be helpful for every test-taker.
The role of any teacher is to help their students maximise their exam scores. However, over the years Nick and I have noticed that many teachers are giving advice for the IELTS speaking exam that could actually harm their scores not improve them. Obviously, this is not intentional, but it can be difficult as an examiner to sit and watch a student put into practice “techniques” that they have been given by a teacher, knowing that they could have reached a higher score if they had just responded naturally to the questions.
Hey! Today Nick and I are continuing our “Let’s do” series by completing a full IELTS speaking test. First, you will get a chance to answer the questions in a similar way to the real exam, and then you can listen on as Nick (our very own native speaker who is an ex-examiner) attempts the same test. That way you can listen to how the test is actually conducted and compare your answers to his. Plus, you will be getting the opportunity to hear what a Band 9.0 test sounds like!
Hey! This week, Nick and I look at how you should tackle IELTS Object Cue Cards, which are one of the most common in Part 2 of the exam. We will start with a brief review of IELTS Speaking Part 2 (as it has been a long time since we did a speaking episode!), and then share a range of useful lexis to describe objects. Finally, we will demonstrate how you can put all of these skills together by completing one 2-minute turn each.
We all have topics that we are familiar with in IELTS. But, there are also other topics which we may meet with a blank mind. So, what can you do to fill in your knowledge gaps? In today’s episode Nick and I will look at a difficult topic for us – housing. We will start by covering some fundamental IELTS architecture vocabulary, and then show you how you can utilise Google to find essay ideas.
Hey! I have offered a lot of advice about how to tackle part two of the IELTS speaking exam on this blog in the past. In the past when I’ve received emails from students who were worried about their IELTS cue card performance, I point them to the individual blog posts and wave them goodbye and good luck.