Speaking

A Guide to Telling the IELTS Examiner Lies

I was chatting to an IELTS examiner about things that stop students doing well on their speaking and writing tests and one thing he said was really interesting- ‘The speaking and writing tests are not lie detector tests.’

What he means is that many students think that you have to tell the absolute truth. You don’t.

For example, a student in his class was asked to describe their favourite outfit during a practice exercise. The student said they couldn’t remember any details about their favourite outfit, so they stopped speaking after 10 seconds. When asked about this, the student explained that they really couldn’t remember anything, so there was nothing they could do. There was, lie!

You will never lose marks for being dishonest during the test, as long as your lies sound plausible and answer the question.

For example, the student above could have simply invented their favourite outfit and then added imaginary details. In this way they would have been telling a story that is false, but they would get a much higher score for their answer because it was fully developed.

Below are some other ways you can use lies to help you:

Part 1 Speaking

Most of these questions will be about you, so you shouldn’t really have to lie. However, there might be some things that you can’t remember. When this happens you can simply elaborate with a few things that might not be true.

For example, you might be asked to tell the examiner about your house. If you can’t remember the names of the rooms or the different furniture, simply tell them about rooms/furniture that you can remember, even if they are not actually in your home.

Part 2 Speaking

People often run out of things to say in this part and it is much easier if you can make things up.

You might have to describe your favourite book or the last movie you watched. If you can’t remember some of the details, don’t panic, simply add in false details. Don’t worry, the examiner is never going to stop you and tell you that it is untrue. It is much better to lie and keep talking, than hesitate or pause because you have nothing to talk about.

For example, I asked a student to talk about the last movie they saw. I don’t know why, but they said they couldn’t remember the last movie. I told them to just tell me about any movie they could remember. ‘Isn’t that telling lies?’ said the student. It doesn’t matter, it is a speaking test, not an honesty test.

Part 3 Speaking

This is probably the part that will help you the most because you will be asked questions that you might not know much about and the examiner also wants you to give fully developed, extended answers.

If you know nothing about what the examiner is asking because you have no experience dealing with that topic, pretend you do. I was doing a speaking test today and I asked a student two questions:

Are police respected in your country?
Who is respected more, police or lawyers?

She had no idea how to answer these because she said she had never met a police officer or a lawyer in her entire life. Her answers were not so good because of this and her fluency really suffered. Instead she could have simply made up some stories or facts and told me what she thought. It would have been much better for her to speculate what people think of police and lawyers, than to stumble through her answers with mostly ‘ummms’ and ‘ahhhhs’.

Remember there is no right or wrong answer to these questions. The examiner is not testing your ability to give a ‘correct’ answer, they are testing your ability to communicate in English.

Writing Task 2

Each of your main ideas in your essay should be supported by an example. This helps to fully develop your ideas and boosts your score. One of the complaints I hear from students is that they cannot think of examples. Again, make them up.

You have to be more careful with these because they really must sound plausible. I was teaching a student this technique and in their next essay about banning smoking in public places they said ‘92% of British people died from passive smoking last year.’ This is a made up example, but it is totally unbelievable. You should only use made up examples that make sense and actually help support your main idea.

Won’t the examiner check?

No. The examiners won’t be taking out their phones and checking all of your facts. They are testing your ability to communicate in English, not how truthful you sound.

Should I lie as much as possible?

No. This is not what this guide is about. Telling the truth should always be your first option because it is much easier to talk about something that is real. However, if you are struggling to find an answer, don’t be afraid to make some details up.

I hope you found the above useful. For more information about IELTS, please feel free to have a look around the site.

7 Ways Idioms Can LOWER Your IELTS Score

By Christopher Pell 5 Comments

I probably get asked more questions about idioms than any other single thing. Every day I get questions like:

Will using idioms increase my score?
Which idioms should I use?
How many idioms should I use in the speaking test?
Should I use idioms in the writing test?

This is one of the most misunderstood areas of the test and making some of the mistakes below can really lower your score.

Below are 7 ways idioms can decrease your speaking and writing score.

Mistake # 1- Using Idioms in Writing Task 1 Academic

Task 1 on the Academic test requires you to describe data, a map or a process. This should never require you to use idioms because you are writing an academic report and the use of informal phrases is not appropriate.

Mistake # 2- Using Idioms in Formal Letters

Task 1 on the General Training paper asks you to write a letter, which can be either formal or informal.

It is fine to use idioms in an informal letter, as long as you use them correctly. However, using them in a formal letter is not appropriate and you will lose marks for using an informal tone.

Mistake # 3- Using Idioms in Writing Task 2

Writing Task 2 for both Academic and General Training requires you to write a short essay in an academic style. Just like formal letters or academic reports, it is not appropriate to use informal language, such as idioms, when writing this style of essay.

Mistake # 4- Overusing Idioms in the Speaking Test

Idioms can be used in the Speaking test and can help you get a higher score because you are using more idiomatic language, but this does not mean that you should use them in every single sentence.

There is no rule for how often you should use them, but you should listen to how native speakers use idioms. If you listen to native speakers, they do not use them as often as you think.

If you overuse idioms you are going to sound very unnatural, you will make more mistakes and you could also lose coherence because you are focusing more on idioms than actually answering the question. Finally, it could also lead to your fluency suffering because you are thinking too much about idioms and this will cause you to hesitate and pause while you search for the latest idiom.

Here is an example of one student I spoke to who overused idioms:

Me: Where are you from?

Student: You will be really over the moon when you visit my hometown, but it often rains cats and dogs. I only go there once in a blue moon. If you go, you will really hit the nail on the head.

This is an extreme example, but it would surprise you how often students try to insert idioms at this rate. Again, there is no fixed rule as to how often you should use them; listen to how native speakers talk and you will soon get an idea of how you should use them appropriately.

Mistake # 5- Using Idioms You Don’t Understand

One of the worst things you can do is learn lists of idioms and then expect to use them correctly in the test. You must understand the meaning and how they are used in context before attempting to use them in the test.

For example, a common idiom is ‘once in a blue moon’ to describe something you do rarely. In the test, when asking someone how often they do something, students say ‘once in a blue moon’ and then go on to describe how they do this activity regularly. It is then obvious to the examiner that they do not really know the meaning of the idiom they used and this will lower their score.

When learning idioms, you should learn how and when they should be used. A good way to do this is by listening to how native English speakers use them and you can note down any idioms and then practice using them correctly.

Mistake # 6- Saying Idioms Incorrectly

Some of the ‘idioms’ that students have used over the years include:

‘Raining dogs and cats’
‘Hit the nail with the hammer’
‘Overjoyed the moon’
‘Once per moon’

This happens when you try to use idioms too often or you learn lists of idioms and try to use them before knowing them 100%.

Follow the 100% rule- don’t use any words or phrases unless you know the meaning, context, use and pronunciation 100%.

Mistake # 7- Thinking About Idioms Too Much

If you are constantly thinking about idioms because you are trying to insert them into your answers as much as possible, your fluency is going to suffer.

You have enough to think about in the test (ideas, developing your answers, grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation etc.) and the more you think, the less fluent you become. Make your life easier by only using idioms when it is natural to do so.

Next Steps

Now that you know what NOT to do, check out my article on how to use idioms effectively.

7 IELTS Fluency Problems (and how to improve them)

By Christopher Pell 6 Comments

Of all of the things I assess on the IELTS Speaking test, the most common problem is fluency.

Fluency is your ability to speak smoothly (not quickly) without noticeable effort or loss of coherence. Poor fluency is normally associated with frequent self-correction, hesitation, pausing or repetition.

In order to help you improve your fluency I will identify the most common reasons for poor fluency and then look at how to improve each of them.

We will also discuss what you can do each day to help you improve your fluency.

Problem # 1- Trying to Speak Too Quickly

As I mentioned above, students with good fluency speak smoothly, not quickly. It is a common misconception that good fluency means very rapid speech.

If you listen to how native English speakers talk, they do not normally speak very quickly. Listen to native speakers on the radio, news or movies and this will give you a good idea about how quickly they speak.

Trying to speak too quickly in any language will cause a loss of coherence because your brain simply can’t keep up with your mouth. Combine this with speaking in a second language under exam conditions and the result is going to be a loss of coherence and lots of mistakes.

Solution– Focus on speaking calmly and smoothly. Listen to native speakers and try to copy their pace of speech.

This will not only help your fluency, but will also give you more time to think of ideas and find the correct grammar and vocabulary.

Problem # 2- Trying to Think of Ideas

Students often complain that they can’t think of ‘good’ or ‘correct’ ideas and this causes their fluency to suffer.

This is often caused by a misunderstanding of what is actually being assessed on the speaking test. If you look at the official marking criteria, you will notice that there is no mention of ‘good’ ideas. As long as you give an answer that is related to the question asked, you will be fine. It is not an ‘ideas’ test or an ‘intelligence’ test, it is a speaking test.

Unlike a maths test, there is no right or wrong answer. Just show the examiner your ability to speak.

Solution– Do not worry so much about the quality of your ideas and focus on the quality of your speaking. Talk to the examiner about what you know about the question being asked. If you know nothing, or very little, about the topic, don’t be afraid to tell the examiner.

This will not be a problem in Part 1 because the questions are all about you, so you will obviously have no problem thinking about ideas for that.

For Part 3, some of the questions will be difficult. You just have to accept this and try to answer them as best you can.

For Part 2, you need to have a structure…..

Problem # 3- Not Having a Structure

This problem is mostly related to Part 2. Students have to talk for up to 2 minutes about a topic given to them by the examiner.

You will be given a cue card before you talk, just like the one below. You are given a general topic to talk about and then there are three or four things that they suggest you should talk about.

The problem here is that many people run out of things to say and then their fluency normally suffers.

This is for two main reasons. Firstly, many people think that they can only talk about the three suggested things on the card. It is difficult to only talk about three small things for 2 minutes. Secondly, most people do not prepare anything else to talk about apart from the three things on the card.

Solution– You must talk about the general topic at the top of the cue card, but you are free to talk about whatever you like within that topic. Therefore, you could:

Introduce the topic
Give your opinion about the topic
Talk about the past, present, future of the topic
Give a description of the topic
Tell a personal story about the topic

When you combine these things with the things they suggest you talk about on the cue card, it opens up many more possibilities, allows you to structure your answer during the 1 minute planning time before you speak and ensures that you will have enough to talk about during the two minutes.

For more information about this please check out my Speaking Part 2 Strategy.

For more information about how to structure your Part 3 answers please check out my Part 3 Guide.

Problem # 4- Focusing Too Much on Grammar and Vocabulary

Grammar and vocabulary count towards 50% of your score and they are very important, but thinking about them too much will lower coherence.

If you focus on them too much you will be constantly thinking of the correct language to use and this will lead to lots of hesitation and pausing.

This ‘language first’ approach is often the result of strict school teachers who prioritised grammar and vocabulary over speaking skills.

Solution– Find two part 2 questions. Get something to record yourself like a phone or computer. You are going to record yourself answering the two questions.

Answer the first question focusing on language, making sure you get all the grammar and vocabulary correct.

Answer the second question focusing on fluency and not worrying too much about grammar and vocabulary mistakes.

Which one sounds better? You will make more language errors in the second one, but your overall performance will probably be much better. If you do this exercise on a regular basis, you will soon learn that you should have more confidence in your language ability and realise that fluency is what you really need to work on.

Problem # 5- Not Enough Practice

Many students have great vocabulary and grammar, but they never actually use this language by speaking or writing. This causes huge problems for both pronunciation and fluency, 50% of your score.

Like any skill, speaking requires practice and unless you practice often, you are not going to be able to get one of the higher bands.

The biggest problem for students is not being able to find partners to speak with. However, there are many ways you can do this.

Solution– The first solution is to use the suggestion for problem 4 above.

You can also try to find native English speakers in your own area. If you live in a large city, there are probably lots of online groups of English speakers who want to practice your language with you and you can practice English with them.

There are countless websites that offer language exchanges. You practice your language with them and they practice English with you in exchange.

Finally, there are lots of Facebook groups where IELTS learners practice speaking with one another. Here is a link to my group.

Problem # 6- Trying Not to ‘Umm’ and ‘Ahh’

Many students associate making ‘ummm’, ‘ahh’ and ’emmm’ sounds with poor fluency. If you hesitate frequently and makes these sounds, then it is a problem, but making them sometimes is not only fine, it is totally natural.

Listen to anyone, in any language, and they naturally make these sounds when chatting with someone. The problem is that many students obsess about not making these sounds in their speaking test and the result is they think about them too much and it is totally unnatural to do this when you are speaking. This results in a loss of fluency and it takes up too much of your brain power that would be better used on language and ideas.

Solution– Accept that making these hesitation sounds will happen and they are totally natural and acceptable. If you make them infrequently, don’t worry.

Again, you can record yourself and find out how often you make these sounds. It is probably much less than you think.

Finally, people normally make these hesitations when they are thinking of ideas or searching for language. See the solutions to problems 2 and 4 above and they will become less of a problem.

Problem # 7- Stress

If you are very nervous and stressed out during your test, you are going to be less fluent than normal. Think about someone speaking in public who is very nervous. How is their fluency?

The main reason, I think, that people are nervous during their test is that they are not fully prepared.

Solution– Follow the suggestions above and you will be fully prepared and confident.

For more help with speaking visit my IELTS Speaking page.

IELTS Speaking Topics Video

By Christopher Pell 1 Comment

Speaking Part 3 Tips

By Christopher Pell 1 Comment

After your 2 minute monologue in Part 2 of the Speaking test, the examiner will ask you around 4-5 more abstract questions about the same general topic you talked about in Part 2. For example, if Part 2 was about mobile phones, they might ask you deeper, more complex questions about mobiles like:

How have mobile phones changed the types of relationships people make?
Some people think that children should not be allowed to use mobiles, do you agree?
How has mobile phone use changed in the last 10 years?
How will mobile phones change in the future?
If you could add any new feature to a smart phone, what would it be?

As you can see, these questions are trickier than questions like ‘Where are you from?’ and ‘What’s your favourite colour?’ in Part 1.

Below are some tips to help you get the best score you can possible get in Part 3. Most of these tips are about the psychology of Part 3 because I have found that students are not mentally prepared for this section and good students often get lower score because of this.

For more information on the linguistic side of Part 3, please check out my Part 3 guide.

1. Don’t try to finish quickly

Speaking for up to 15 minutes in a foreign language is tiring. You might not have slept the night before, you are stressed and you might have also done other tests that day. In short, you will be exhausted and your body will want you to take it home and tuck it into bed as quickly as possible.

Lots of students give very short answers because they simply want their test to be over as soon as possible. Know that the examiner will keep asking you questions (and the next ones will probably be more difficult), so it is much better to give a full answer and answer the question to the best of your ability, than to simply give a short answer and hope that it ends quickly.

2. Know that the examiner is trying to stretch you

Part 1 is really just a warm-up and Part 2 is a monologue, so Part 3 is the examiners chance to really test you and stretch your language abilities to the very limit. The main thing to remember is that they will ask you questions you won’t be able to answer as well as you hoped. They will often increase the difficulty until you can’t answer the question. They are not trying to be cruel, this is just the best way for them to test your knowledge of grammatical structures and vocabulary.

Think about a personal trainer or athletics coach forcing an athlete to perform more and more strenuous exercises to judge their true ability.

If you know this is going to happen you will not get stressed out and you will answer the questions more confidently and get higher scores.

3. Don’t be afraid to ask questions

There will be words in some questions that you don’t understand. The rule is that you can ask the examiner to explain what one word means, but you can’t ask them to explain what a whole sentence means.

You can also ask them to repeat the question, if you didn’t quite get what they said.

Please don’t abuse this privilege and try to use it for every question.

4. Always give an answer

There will be at least one question that you have no idea how to answer. Don’t worry, this is normal- see point number one. The most important thing to do is to at least make an attempt. You have been speaking for 15 minutes and one question is not going to lower your mark for the whole test. However, the worst thing you can do is to simply not attempt an answer. If you have this mindset, then you won’t push yourself to the limit of your abilities.

It is also fine to admit that you have no idea. Simply say “I’m really not sure about this question, but if I had to answer, I would say…..”. The examiner will be much happier that you attempted an answer, rather that just saying “I don’t know” or blankly look at them (which happens more than you would think).

You can also give yourself time to think about the question by saying ”That a difficult question, just give me a second to think about that.” or ”I’ve never thought about that, to be honest, give me a moment.” However, don’t do this for every question, only the ones you need to actually think about.

5. Think about what structure the examiner is testing.

The examiner needs to know that you are capable of using a wide range of structures. Don’t worry about inserting as many structures as possible into your answers because they will ask you specific questions to test specific grammar structures. Let’s look at the examples above:

How have mobile phones changed the types of relationships people make? – opinion/past/present
Some people think that children should not be allowed to use mobiles, do you agree?- evaluating someone’s opinion
How has mobile phone use changed in the last 10 years.- past to present (perfect tenses)
How will mobile phones change in the future?- future/prediction
If you could add any new feature to a smart phone, what would it be?- hypothetical

When you know what the examiner is trying to test, you can give them what they want. See our Part 3 Common Questions for more information on the common structures that are tested.

When you know all of the above you will be more mentally prepared than the vast majority of IELTS candidates and this will lead to a more confident performance and higher score.

If you have any questions, please comment below or join the conversation on our Facebook page.

IELTS Speaking Part 2 Tips

By Christopher Pell 3 Comments

Many consider Speaking Part 2 to be the most difficult part of the IELTS Speaking test because it is a monologue. A monologue is different from the rest of the test because you will be speaking alone, without any questions or help from the examiner.

The examiner will give you a cue card similar to the one below:

As stated above, you will have 1 minute to prepare before you speak and you are expected to talk for between 1-2 minutes.

Below are 7 tips to help you with this section of the test:

1.You Don’t Have to Talk About Every Bullet Point

In the Official Marking Criteria for the Speaking Test there is nothing that states that you have to talk about every bullet point. Lots of IELTS examiners know this, but they don’t tell students because they don’t want to give them an unfair advantage.

You will always be given a general topic at the start of the test and then ‘You should say:’ followed by 3-4 bullet points. The rule is that you must talk about the general topic at the top of the card, but you don’t have to talk about all of the bullet points. Note that it says ‘You should say’ not ‘You must say’.

The bullet points are there to help you, so if you want to talk about them, please do. However, if there are one or two that you don’t like or you don’t feel comfortable talking about, leave them out and talk about something else. Make sure what you talk about is within the general topic and you will be fine.

2.Have a Strategy

IELTS is much easier if you have a strategy for each part of the test. You can use this strategy when you are practicing and then you will be much more confident in the real test.

I have developed a very effective strategy for Part 2 of the Speaking test that many students have had success with. Please click here to view it.

3.Preparation

They say practice makes perfect and this is very true for IELTS Speaking.

Don’t memorise answers. There are too many topics for you to memorise and it is highly unlikely that you will get the same topic in the real test. It is a complete waste of time and leads to some very strange answers. If the examiner spots this, they are allowed to give you a Band 0!
Focus on fluency and pronunciation. Record yourself and listen to yourself. How could you improve your fluency and pronunciation?
Learn functional language used to describe common grammar functions, such as talking about the past, present or future, giving your opinion, evaluating someone’s opinion and talking hypothetically.
Time yourself so you know how much you have to speak in 1-2 minutes.

4.Use 1 Minute Wisely

You will have one minute to prepare before you start talking. You will not have enough time to write full sentences. You will, however, be able to write keywords. These keywords should guide you through your talk and help if you can’t think of ideas.

Having a strategy will also help you because you will know exactly what to talk about and you will be able to make a clear plan using short notes and keywords.

5.Personal Experiences Are Best (but telling a lie is OK too.)

The best answers are always about things you have actually experienced in your life. You will be able to describe these things in much more detail and you will also be able to talk more coherently about them. Students tend to be more confident talking about real experiences and this helps them with their fluency and pronunciation.

However, some of the cue cards will ask you to talk about things you might not have experienced at all in your entire life. It is fine to lie. The examiner will never check your answers or worry about whether they are the truth or not. However, they might ask you some follow-up questions, so be prepared for these.

In my experience, the best strategy is to use real experiences first and add in some lies to help you answer the question fully. Use your imagination and you will be fine.

6.Expand Your Ideas

It is much better to fully expand each main idea, than to simply state lots of main ideas and not develop them at all.This will help you give more impressive answers and it is also a better use of your time. It is much easier to think of a few relevant ideas and develop them, than it is to think of lots of different ideas.

When you are practicing, a good way to expand your main ideas is to use ‘Who, what, why, where, how‘. This will help you quickly and easily develop your main ideas and you will also get used to the grammar structures needed to do this.

You can also use your senses to help you use a wide range of vocabulary. Think about how things looked, sounded, smelled and tasted. You obviously won’t be able to talk about all of these things for every topic (you would sound a little strange describing how a book tasted) but you will normally be able to use two or three of them.While practicing you can use a dictionary to help you describe these sensations and expand your vocabulary.

7.Mistakes are OK

Everyone makes grammar and vocabulary mistakes. Every time I make a new video it takes me longer to edit out the mistakes than it does to record the video. Even students who get a Band 8, or even 9, make small mistakes. This is totally understandable and you should therefore not panic when you make a mistake.

I have listened to students who were half way through their Part 2 question and then they made a small grammatical error and they completely lost their way and their score went from a very high one to a very average one.

Being nervous and stressed affects your ideas, pronunciation, fluency and normally leads to further grammar mistakes. When you make a mistake simply forget about it. There is nothing you can do. Don’t panic and continue.

For more information on the Speaking test, please check out our Speaking page.

If you have any questions or comments, please comment below or join the conversation on our Facebook page.

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