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5 IELTS Speaking Tips for a Better Score

IELTS Speaking Tips for a Better Score

1. Be confident and relaxed when answering the question, and do not hold back from saying what you think or feel.

2. Make sure you speak at a natural speed and pause in between sentences for a few seconds.

3. Put your answer into a form of a story for a better impact on the examiner.

4. Speak without any hesitations or interruptions. If you do stop speaking, make sure it is because you are organizing your thoughts. Long pauses lead to confusion and frustration for the listener because they don't know why there was such an interruption.

5. Keep eye contact with the examiner while speaking and try not to look nervous.

How can I improve my IELTS Speaking score?

  • Start with a strong introduction
  • Speak in full sentences
  • Try to use examples when expressing your answer. This way, you will have the opportunity to clearly state the major points in your answer without sounding too redundant or confusing.


Is IELTS speaking difficult?

Yes. Most IELTS speakers need to do a lot of practice and preparation to get a high score in the speaking section.

  • IELTS speakers should prepare and practice their speaking as much as possible before the exam to make sure they are ready on test day.
  • Practice at least once a day from something like 15 minutes up to about an hour on common IELTS topics that may come up on the test day.
  • Do several mock speaking tests to build your confidence.

    • How can I improve my IELTS speaking skills at home?

  • 1. Practice speaking aloud the way you would like to speak in the exam. This method will help your pronunciation and help with wording and sentence structure.
  • 2. Create practice scenarios that mimic what candidates might encounter in an IELTS speaking exam.
  • 3. You can also rope people into acting as your IELTS examiner. Ask them to text you simple question prompts or ask questions from previous IELTS test exercises. That way, it feels more realistic.
  • 4. Answer lots of actual University of Cambridge speaking tests under timed conditions. Good luck!

    The IELTS cue card question is in Part 2 of the IELTS speaking test.

    It consists of a topic statement (question) with three bullet points indicating information or details that you should include in your response.

    You will be asked to talk about the topic in the cue card for between 1 and 2 minutes.

  • Note: 1 minute is the absolute minimum you must be able to talk for otherwise your IELTS speaking score will be negatively affected.

    • Ideally, you should be able to talk for around 2 minutes on any topic that appears in the speaking exam.

    A full 2-minute response provides a much better sample of your English speaking for the IELTS examiner to evaluate. So your IELTS speaking score should be higher.

    The examiner will give you the topic cue card - you can see an example above (download PDF for IELTS cue card guide at the end of this post) – and explain that you have 1 minute to think about your answer (plan it); the examiner will also give you a piece of paper and a pencil so that you can make some notes about what you want to say in your answer.

  • TIP: don’t rush to start – take the full 1 minute to think of examples and vocabulary you want to include as part of your response.

    • The examiner will indicate when it’s time to start.

    Try to keep talking and avoid any long unnatural pauses while you are talking about the topic on the cue card during Part 2.

    The examiner will let you know when to stop (normally after 2 minutes) so don’t worry if they interrupt you while you are speaking – it means that the time limit has passed.

    If you are still speaking, you probably gave a good confident, and fluent answer.

    Download the IELTS PDF which contains examples of IELTS speaking test cue cards with sample answers.

    download

    You can use the examples in the PDF as a guide to practice speaking skills for the IELTS speaking test.

  • TIP: record yourself speaking your responses to the questions and then listen to yourself and analyze how you could improve your answer. Then practice some more.




    • Good luck with your IELTS test!


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