Ideally, you have a teacher who can help guide your IELTS Speaking practice and provide feedback.
If you need an experienced IELTS teacher, click here.
However, it’s possible your budget may not allow you this luxury at present. If that is the case, read on for some tips on how to practice by yourself and self-evaluate your speaking.
Improving Fluency & Coherence and Pronunciation
If you have taken the test and keep getting below Band 6.0, fluency and pronunciation could be the reason. These two scores interlink and often come within a band of each other.
An excellent way to improve these skills as part of your IELTS Speaking practice is shadowing a native speaker.
Click the play button close to the top of the page. You will hear me saying these very words. Pause the recording at regular intervals and copy my speech, while trying to match my pace and rhythm.
Once you have finished this article, move onto another page.
In addition to learning about every part of the IELTS test, you will also improve your fluency and pronunciation.
If you are having problems with particular words try using SpeechAce. This app will analyse how you pronounce a word and give you a grade for every phoneme.
Once you have identified which phonemes you have problems with, you can use the internet to get advice on how to make that sound.
Our video course demonstrates how to use this app in conjunction with other websites to improve your pronunciation.
Improving Vocabulary for IELTS Speaking Practice– Our Top 3 Tips
1: Ted Talks
A good range of vocabulary is crucial in all parts of the test.
TED talks can help develop your vocabulary (and listening) in key areas.
The site allows you to select specific topics, so you can choose areas in which you need to build vocabulary. Most talks also come with a transcript. As a bonus, the talks can also help improve your listening.
We demonstrate the best way to use this site on our online video course.
2: IELTS News Tracker
Follow our monthly IELTS News Tracker, and we will link you to articles that improve your vocabulary.
Or follow us on Twitter for tweets linking you to articles that will help you to pass the IELTS test.
3: Other Apps
The market has too many apps and websites for us to mention here – but you will find more mentioned on our course.
In the end, you should develop techniques you feel comfortable with so that you can make new vocabulary an active part of your speech.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
You might find grammar your most significant challenge – people find it difficult to improve without help.
Nevertheless, we have some tips…
To achieve a good grammar score, you will need a good range of structures, and a good ratio of correct to incorrect sentences.
Ideally, you will book some time with a teacher to discover where you go wrong in this area. You will already know the grammar rules but need to know which rules you break most often.
Once you know this, you can record yourself and then play back the recording to try to catch the mistakes you make.
Keep on recording and listening until you are happy with your level of accuracy.
You could also send your recording to someone who will transcribe what you say. By reading what someone else thinks you said – you will know how you sound to others.
You can then use this transcript with online grammar correction services, such as Grammarly, to identify your mistakes.
Again, we demonstrate the above services in our online course…
Our Video Courses
No other IELTS video course has as many valuable tips and demos as our own.
We show you the tools our top teachers use in their lessons with students who score as high as band 9.0. With our video course, you can access this valuable information for a fraction of the cost.
If that is not enough, sign up for a demo lesson with one of our experienced teachers for the ultimate IELTS Speaking practice.
Make sure you tell us as much as you can about yourself. We get a lot of applications and don’t reply to applicants who leave the form blank.
We don’t accept every student. It is more important to us that we point you in the right direction than take your money.
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