Want To Improve Your IELTS Fluency And Coherence for the Speaking Exam?
The owners of the IELTS exam have produced the video below to show candidates how to improve their IELTS Speaking Fluency and Coherence band score. As normal, the full script is underneath to help.
Play The Video…
Improve English & Prepare For IELTS Speaking: Fluency & Coherence (Script)
So you’ve decided to take the IELTS exam. Congratulations success starts with IELTS. The speaking test is divided into three sections.
Part one is the introduction and general questions, part two is the long turn and part three is an analytical discussion.
It’s important to understand the criteria on which you will be tested in the IELTS exam.
First we consider the criteria of fluency & coherence. This is one of four criteria on which you will be tested. Will cover the other three in later videos (also available on this site).
Fluency & coherence refer to your ability to speak at length. Including organizing ideas logically and appropriately signposting.
It also refers to your ability to express and justify opinions and to discuss and speculate about issues without long pauses or repetition of the same words.
Signposting is the use of words or phrases that indicate the direction of your thoughts. We will give you some examples of this in a moment.
Many students try memorizing large portions of speech to repeat during the speaking test but this can add unnecessary stress and sound unnatural we don’t recommend this approach.
Here Are A Few Tips To Improve Your Speaking Test Performance:
♦ As you are speaking about a topic build on your point of view by adding a few details. For example, if the question is what do you do? Rather than responding with, I am a teacher. You might expand this to, I have been a high school mathematics teacher in New York for over five years.
♦ For part two of the test use the bullet points on the task card to help you structure your long turn and make notes in the one minute that’s given using keywords.
♦ In part three particularly, it is important to develop your answers and to speak at length. You can do this by thinking of reasons, effects, comparisons, supporting examples and personal experience.
♦ Just make sure you are signposting what you say. For example:
– Discussing excessive T.V. watching, you might mention reasons, increasing numbers of T.V. channels compared to a generation ago and the popularity of T.V. characters, effects, increasing obesity levels, eyesight problems and other health issues.
– Use Your Experience – My nephew watches nothing except cartoons he will not study.
Examples of Signposting for Part Three of the Test:
Compare Contrast – In my view, there are two main differences…
Responding to a Point – Yes, I agree because… or I’m not sure I agree with that, you see….
Speculating on the future – I think we’ll probably see a lot of…, or maybe there’ll be more…, or it’s unlikely that we will have…
Practice Is The Key To Increasing Your Fluency, There Are No Shortcuts!
Practice using English in everyday communication as much as you can.
Record yourself talking about different subjects then play it back and listen for linking expressions, hesitation, words you may be repeating and times when your speech is slow, this will help improve your fluency.
The assessment criteria is the only thing on which you will be tested, you will not be assessed on your appearance, body language while speaking in the exam or your creative ideas.
IELTS examiners are very consistent with their application of the IELTS assessment criteria. It is the same assessment given everywhere in the country and everywhere in the world.
For more information please see the other speaking test videos, lexical resources, grammatical range and accuracy and pronunciation (also available via the menu on ieltsfreeway.com above).
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How To Improve IELTS Speaking Vocabulary
