IELTS Speaking: Improve your fluency with the LASAGNA METHOD

Get confident in your speaking skills for the IELTS. To sound fluent, you must be prepared. And the recipe for success lies in my "Lasagna Method". This lesson will focus specifically on the Speaking Task of the IELTS. I will give you some tips to plan what to say ahead of time, no matter what topic comes up during your test. If you prepare yourself well before test day, you will feel confident and look confident to your interviewer. So watch this video, follow my advice, and get a high score.

Test yourself with the quiz: https://www.engvid.com/ielts-speaking...

NEXT, watch more videos in the EngVid IELTS Speaking series. It's free to watch and these videos WILL improve your score:
   • IELTS Speaking  

TRANSCRIPT

Hi. Welcome to www.engvid.com. I'm Adam. In today's video I'm going to talk about IELTS speaking. So, as normal, I'll speak a little bit faster. For those of you taking the test, you get a little bit of listening practice as well. Even if you're not taking the test, this is also very useful for you if you want to practice your speaking skills in English. Okay?

So, we're going to talk about IELTS speaking generally. Okay? I'm not going to talk about any of the three parts in specific. I want to talk about fluency in specific. Fluency is one of the categories that you will be graded on. The interviewer is listening for your fluency skills when deciding to give you the band out of nine. Okay?

Now, first of all, what does it mean...? What does "fluency" mean? Okay? Fluency has a few things to consider within it. First, how quick you respond; a fast response. So when the question is asked to you, when the interviewer asks you a question in part one or part three, they're looking to find out... They're paying attention to how quickly you answer back. If you receive the question and you need to think about the question, try to translate the question in your mind, then you need to try to build up an answer before you start speaking - the more time you take to do this, the less fluent you are in English. Okay? The graders want to make sure you understood the question quickly, you're ready to start speaking quickly; that's part of fluency.

Another thing: Connected sentences. They want to make sure that your sentences flow from one to the next; you're not just throwing out ideas. "I like it. It's good. I did it five times." Like, all of these sentences individually are not part of fluency. That means you're just throwing out ideas, but fluency is also how... The flow. The flow of your speech. And, again, especially in parts one and three when they're asking a question, but also in parts two where you need to construct the answer completely. They're listening for your thinking sounds, so: "Um... Well, uh... Um... If I... Um... Mm... " All of these thinking sounds means you're having trouble with the language, means: Your fluency is not very high, your score is going down. Okay? Try to minimize or even completely eliminate thinking sounds from your speech; they don't help you.

Now, if you need some time to think about what to say, you could say: "Well, when I think about this situation, what I usually think about is..." and then get into your answer. You say: "Well, um... Well, usually it's like this..." Well, that doesn't work. That's not fluency. That means you're having problems with the language. Okay? So cut out the thinking sounds: "Ah, erm, er", etc.

Now, extend - this is probably the most important part of fluency. Do not give one-word answers to any question. -"Do you like swimming?" -"Yes." -"Okay. Why do you like swimming?" -"It's wet." That doesn't work. That's not an answer, even, right? They want full sentences, they want a few sentences, and they want to have a few ideas all strung together coherently and with nice flow.

Now, with all these things in mind, what do most students have the most problems with when it comes to the actual speaking test of the IELTS? The most common problem is what to talk about; they just don't have ideas. Right? So here is my major tip, my major piece of advice to you when it comes to preparing for the speaking section of the IELTS test: Create an idea bank. Okay? This is what I call this exercise. In... Essentially, what this means is: Do your thinking before the test. Don't be in the test room, don't be sitting in front of the interviewer and trying to think about all these ideas that they're asking you about, because sometimes they're going to ask you about things that you have... You just don't think about; you don't really care about. […]