How to prepare for ielts speaking test

About this Video:

Are you looking for help with how to prepare for ielts speaking test? Do you want to feel more confident and reach for Band 9? Even if you just want improve your English pronunciation, in this video, these are exactly the things that I'm going to help you to do.

You probably already know that the test is split into 4 parts:

Listening, reading, writing and speaking

And it’s the speaking part of the test that this video will focus on.

The speaking test last between 11-14 minutes, comprising 4-5 minutes where you talk about yourself, 3-4 minutes for you to talk about a given topic and then 4-5 minutes of you in conversation with the examiner, who is assessing you in four key areas:

Fluency and coherence - your ability to speak smoothly and at an appropriate speed without unnatural pauses.
Lexical resource - your accuracy and range of vocabulary
Grammatical range and accuracy - your use and accuracy of grammar
Pronunciation - being clear and understandable

So we're going to focus on pronunciation.

Now the firstly, (and probably the most important to know) is that you do NOT need to speak in a perfect British, American, Canadian or Australian accent in order to get top marks. It's true! What you need to do in order to get top marks is this:

"have a full operational command of the language. Your use of English is appropriate, accurate and fluent, and you show complete understanding."

So if it's not about accent, then what do you need to focus on?

Let's break it down into 6 simple and easy steps:

1. Individual sounds - can they understand your words easily?

2. Word Stress - are you emphasising the right parts of words?

3. Sentence Stress - are you emphasising the right words in a sentence?

4. Weak sounds - did you know that the pronunciation of some words change when they're unstressed and this can affect fluency.

5. Linking sounds - when one words meets another, the pronunciation of the vowel or consonant at the end or beginning of a word can also change, and this really affects fluency.

6. Intonation - are you using pitch and rhythm to communicate the way that you feel about what you're saying?

I'm going to walk you through each of these 6 steps in 6 videos. This video will help you with individual sounds and at the end of this video they'll be a link next lesson.

So, here we go...

Individual sounds is quite simply a question of whether your pronunciation of words is clear and understandable.

So, essentially, we're talking about your pronunciation of vowels and consonants in words - the sounds of English.

But how do YOU know whether YOUR pronunciation is clear and understandable?

Here are some ways to find out:

The first thing you could do is to have a conversation with a native English speaker, ask them to point out any words that they struggle to understand, and then record them saying those words, and you can practice and change your pronunciation.

The second thing that you could do is to read aloud sections of newspapers, magazines or books (which will also help you to increase your vocabulary) then circle any words that you struggle to pronounce or that you didn’t feel very confident with, and then check them against the online Oxford Dictionary. And in that dictionary it has each word with an audio in both British and American English that you can listen to and practice with.

Now the third thing you could do is to learn phonetics. Phonetics is a symbol system for pronunciation (so if you have ever wondered 'what are those strange squiggles next door to words in English dictionaries?' they’re phonetic symbols). And we have something called the IPA (which is the International Phonetic Alphabet) and it’s a map of all symbols and all the sounds, both vowels and consonants used in English. And what I’ve done is I’ve included two links in the description below this video. One to a free app called Sounds which is great you can have it on your mobile or your tablet and you can click each symbol and it’ll give you audio of the sound

http://www.macmillaneducationapps.com...

And online there is also a resource by the British Council which is another version of an interactive map again that you can double click on an it will give you audio of each sound and that might be another way to improve your pronunciation.

https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/ar...

Now the fourth thing you could do is to get a pronunciation eBook or a pronunciation book. There are a few on the market. Get rid of your accent by Olga Smith and Linda James and there’s another called Work On Your Accent by Helen Ashcroft and Sarah Shepherd.

Continue reading over on my website:

https://englishpronunciationroadmap.c...