A problem that many IELTS students have is how to practise IELTS speaking.  You could, of course, start classes with an IELTS tutor, but even this might not give you the amount of speaking practice that you really need.  In this lesson we discuss why speaking practice is important and I will give you some tips and advice on how you can do this. 

Practice makes perfect 

To improve your general level of English and to increase your band in the IELTS Speaking Test it is vitally important that you practise speaking in English.  This will most directly affect your mark for the Fluency and Coherence category of your final band, but it will also increase your marks in the other three categories.  The full marking criteria can be downloaded here.  By speaking regularly in English you will increase your fluency, build your confidence and have the opportunity to expand your vocabulary.  The saying that practice makes perfect is certainly true here.  Another expression that would fit is that if you don’t use it, you lose it: it is only by using the language that you actually learn it and if you don’t continue using this language then you will forget it. 

 Tips and tricks 

Here are some suggestions as to what you could do to practise your IELTS speaking: 

Speak to somebody you know 

Now while this may seem obvious, it may not always be easy to do.  It would be better to speak to someone you know so maybe a friend, a colleague or a family member.  This could be done by phone, face-to-face or online through Skype or Whatsapp.  The important thing here is that you do it regularly.  Every day, if possible.  And it doesn’t have to be an hour session, just ten or fifteen minutes regularly will make all the difference. 

 Find an IELTS speaking partner 

If you don’t have somebody you can speak in English to then you can find an IELTS speaking partner.  There are many Facebook groups with people looking to practise their English.  Another place to meet people to practise is Free4Talk.  There you can join an existing group or set up your own IELTS speaking practice group. 

What you should talk about 

We’ve discussed who to talk to and where, now what might you actually talk about?  You could do some practice speaking exam questions, though it would be equally beneficial to discuss more general topics.  Discuss an interesting article that you’ve read.  That way you are practising summarising and recycling vocabulary from the article.  You can read more on this here.  Again if you don’t have somebody, you can start a new group in Free4Talk called News Discussion Group. 

Read speaking tests and think of ideas 

When you start reading a lot of IELTS speaking tests, the topics that come up will start to become very familiar to you as they repeat a lot.  It is a good idea to read lots of example questions and think of what you would say.  So if, for example, you see a question asking you to describe a restaurant that you like, then think of a restaurant. You could take this further by writing notes for 1 minute for the Part 2 examples. 

Targeted word lists 

Now that you are familiar with the topics that come up, you can start to create word lists for those topics.  Make sure that these lists are not just random words connected to the topic, but words you can actually use to express the ideas you have.  So in our example of the restaurant, you could create a wordlist to describe that restaurant.  There are some general groups of vocabulary that are useful for all exams such as likes/dislikes, agreeing/disagreeing etc. 

Record yourself and listen back 

My final suggestion is to record yourself.  This can be done quite simply on your phone with you answering some of the questions in a practice test that you have.  This works particularly well for Part 2 of the Speaking where you are speaking by yourself for 1 to 2 minutes.  The important part of making the recording is that you listen to it.  You would be surprised how many students fail to do this and think that the recording is merely for the benefit of the teacher.  When listening back you get to hear little mistakes that you didn’t realise you were making and find out how fluent you are.  Having a read of the marking criteria for speaking would also be beneficial here. 

Final Thoughts 

If you are able to use as many of these tips as you can you will see the most benefit, though even if you don’t have somebody to practise with there are still ways to practise on your own.  The important thing is that you do these regularly.  It is much better to do 10 or 15 minutes practice every day than to do 1 hour a week. 

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