 Hey everyone Chris here from IELTS Advantage and welcome to day three of our speaking mini course. So the course is called Three Steps to Band 7 or Above Speaking and let's have a look at what we've been doing this week. So day one on Monday we looked at how to approach part one and then day two on Wednesday we looked at how to approach part two and we gave you a strategy that you can use on test day and also use it during your preparation to improve and today we're going to look at part three. Part three I wouldn't I don't like to say one part is more difficult than the other but in my experience students struggle with part three more than any other part of the test so it's something that you really should pay attention to and it's something that a lot of you really really worry about and also a lot of students are kind of caught unawares with some of the part three questions. Sometimes they get a question and they're really unsure about how to answer it and a lot of students just either don't don't answer it at all or give an unsatisfactory answer when they could do much much better. So we'll be helping you as much as we can to improve your performance in part three plus we're going to give you something very special at the end of this lesson. We haven't done this in a couple of months but what we're doing is we're doing a brand new writing course and it's free and it's going to be available to you guys today exclusively. You guys watching live as a thank you for joining us live this week are going to be the first people that will be given access to that writing course and more on that at the end of this lesson. We'll be giving you a link where you can join for free and everything at the end. So I haven't prepared too many slides or too much information for you today because I want to make this lesson as interactive and as organic as possible because during the week whenever we have made the lessons interactive and we've got you guys to participate it really has helped you because what happens when you when you just watch a video and don't do anything with that video you're only going to learn a little bit you know retain 10% maybe but if you actually participate in the lesson and do something and you're going to learn a lot more and that's why we make these videos just to help you guys as much as possible. So please participate in the comments and what we're going to do is make this lesson we're going to build it around you whatever problems you have you're going to tell me and we're going to help you solve those problems live and I haven't prepared anything so we'll be able to just do it for you guys so it'll be kind of like having me as your one-on-one teacher and so what I want you to think about is part three so part three of the speaking test and I want you to think about either something that you are worried about or a big problem that you think that you have and then we'll put up all of these worries all of these problems and then we'll try and solve those problems together I'll help you as much as I can so in the comments tell me what your problems or your worries are and we'll put them up on the board here so we'll get a whole list of problems and things that you're worried about when it comes to speaking part three and then we'll try and solve them together so we'll need your participation for this so please comment and let me know and I'll give you some advice on that so if you give me your phone Justin excellent okay so hello to everybody who has joined us Mazara said do you have a youtube channel yes I do have a youtube channel this video will actually be on the youtube channel we'll upload it if you're watching on youtube even though it's not live or you're watching the recording of this on please do participate as well because as I said you will help you retain the information and help you improve okay so hardy said link and vocab good hardy someone whose name I cannot pronounce ip tag sorry if I'm mispronouncing it but you said fluency yeah good always good to worry about the things that the examiners will actually be thinking about um idea generation ideas good banjo connect sentences very common one not enough knowledge very very common worry among students that they won't know anything about the topic repeating words okay a lot of you have the same ideas so misspelling you're not gonna misspelling speaking guys okay excellent all right so these are very very common worries some other problems that I would put would be something I call listing link so we'll put development here you do need to develop your answers what else uh that's about no answer a lot of people for part three don't eat sometimes they don't even attempt an answer um what else I say not answering questions sorry this is not very clear what's clear as it could be it's running out of space here okay so let's only talk about these problems these worries things that you guys are worried about and they're definitely things that we see like every single day uh someone put facial expressions no facial expressions do not so these are things worries that students have problems that students have we see these every single day like when I finish this live lesson I'll be going to and doing a zoom session with my VIP group and what we do in a zoom session is we get all of our VIPs and we ask each one of them one part three question or part two question and they answer it and the whole group listens and then we give them feedback and we see these things every single week and most of them are quite easy to fix so let's go through each of them and then what I will try and do is come up with some solutions that kind of solve all of these problems so that you know the fewer problems you have the fewer things that you're worrying about normally that's going to help you improve and improve your score so development definitely a problem so one of the things that the examiners will be looking for when it comes to part three is that you fully develop your answers and a lot of people have a problem with that because they might run out of ideas or most more likely it is that they're not really practicing in the correct way and so they're just you know hearing the question for the first time answering it in a very short way and that's not really because their speaking ability is not good it's just because they haven't really practiced what to do and they don't really have a strategy for that vocab and obviously vocab is something that the examiners will be listening out for 25% of your total mark the main worry that a lot of students have with part three is not having enough like topic specific vocabulary so a topic might come up that they say that they know nothing about and they're worried that they don't have enough vocabulary for that and there's there's a solution for that again and no answer at all and a lot of the questions in part three will will actually be difficult you shouldn't worry if they are very very difficult and will tell you why in a second but you should definitely always try and attempt some sort of answer fluency again this can be a problem because your people are not they're thinking too much about content so they're thinking about the content of what to say the ideas the explanations the examples and if you're thinking way too much then it can affect your fluency as well repeating words this is not actually something you need to worry about as much as you think I've never understood why I think it's probably because it's taught like this in many places but a lot of people think that this is the most important thing like you should avoid repeating any words as much as much as possible like every word needs to be unique you are by doing that by thinking that you are making it impossible for you to actually answer all of the questions because you're guaranteed that you're going to repeat some words and so and some words for example articles prepositions you're going to be using those words over and over and over again we had one student on Wednesday who said that my sample answer wasn't good because I used and too many times how am I supposed to do a 15 minute speaking test without repeating the word and or if you there is a word that there's just no other way of varying it and for example if you're talking about a city you went to Paris imagine you're talking about Paris or New York how else do you talk about that without repeating it a couple of times you should generally avoid and repeating the same words over and over and over again but it's not such a big problem as you think not enough knowledge we will focus on this and we'll talk a lot about this when we when we look at the solutions but this is not as big a worry as you think it is and there's a very very easy answer to this to this there's a very easy solution to this and not answering the question at all so we put that yeah so we put that over here and connect sentences again much like this one this is something that students really worry about so they think that the key to getting a high score is not repeating any words and using lots of linking words and that will get them a high score that's not true all right this is not true and you're not going to if you constantly think about why can i use another linking word and how can i use a different linking word this time your fluency is going to go down the toilet and you're not really being judged on how many different linking words you can use and you're not getting any bonus points for for using lots of linking words so i wouldn't worry about this too much and ideas really really simple solution to this problem okay so let's look at some easy solutions so the first solution is remember purpose it's a speaking test okay so a lot of you are talking about things saying things like you're worried about not knowing anything about the topic not knowing anything about ideas not having anything to talk about but you forget that it is a speaking test all right the purpose of the test is to test your speaking the purpose of the test is not to test your ideas test your knowledge and test your IQ it's not an ideas test all right so don't worry too much about ideas it's not a knowledge test don't worry about that it is not an IQ test don't worry about that some of the most intelligent people that i've ever met have really really struggled with the speaking test because a lot of doctors in particular they turn it into an ideas test they turn it into a knowledge test they think that that's what's being tested when what is actually being tested what actually is being tested are four things and four things only fluency and coherence grammar vocabulary and pronunciation okay nothing to do with any of these things always keep this in mind that it is a speaking test so if you get a topic that you just you're not too sure about just try your best try and answer it as best you can and remember that you're being judged on fluency and coherence grammar vocabulary and pronunciation what happens is if you focus too much on these then this can affect your fluency and coherence because you're trying to think too much about the ideas you're trying to think too much about the topic it can also affect your pronunciation it can lead to more grammar mistakes and can lead to more vocabulary mistakes because you're not focusing on these things you're focusing on those things okay so what is another solution to these problems so that's the first solution so what do I mean by it is a it is a discussion of ideas um so part one is about you they'll be asking you about your hometown your job your interests things like that all about you part three is not really about you although you can't talk about yourself it's more like a discussion of ideas so if you think about it in that way then and you will kind of make it into more like an essay response so if they if you seen a the question that they ask you if you seen it written down on a piece of paper and you had to write an answer you wouldn't talk about yourself and because it's not really about you it is like an academic discussion of those ideas so if you kind of think about it that way and think about your answers in that way then it really really does help with development because what are you going to do if you think about part three answers as an essay response well you're going to answer the question you're going to explain it and you're going to give examples in the same way that you would write a a main body for task two you would answer the question you would explain why you think that or why other people think that and then you would give examples and then you might also show the other side or you might state another point so this kind of solves this problem of not developing your answer not giving a full answer and it also solves that problem of you know a fluency and coherence because you you're going to be thinking about your answer thinking about what you're going to say and then giving a very fluent coherent answer because you're going to be answering the question explaining it and giving an example so that solution so solution number one remembering why you are doing the test and focusing on the things that matter and then solution two understanding that it's just a discussion of ideas and using that kind of structure and thinking about it in that way and answering it in that way is really really going to help you okay don't think that you you have to answer every single part three question like this it's not like a rigid structure that you must follow it's just a little two in your toolkit to help you answer that you can answer it in multiple different ways but it just really does help when you answer it in that way so look at another solution so one of the other problems that a lot of students have with with speaking part three is the examiner is going to be asking you more and more difficult questions especially if he or she thinks that you are really good like you're at a band seven eight or nine they're going to ask you increasingly more complex more difficult questions why are they doing that because they're mean no they're doing that to to stretch your language ability to really test you because if they throw a really difficult question at you and you answer it really well then you've confirmed that you are one of these these you know band seven eight or nine students but if they throw that at you and you're just like I don't know you're kind of confirming that not that you don't know anything about the topic you're confirming that you just don't have the linguistic ability to even tell them that you don't know anything about that topic or to to try your best and to to give some sort of answer so so accept that it's going to get harder it's going to get more difficult always attempt an answer even if you know nothing about the topic all right just try and either make it up or lie or tell them why you don't know anything about the topic but always attempt an answer and then understand you're not being judged on one question all right you're being judged on the totality of the whole test all of your answers you're not it's not like you know your first answer was like a band seven level and then all throughout your test and then the last answer the last question you didn't deal with that well and it's band five doesn't work like that all right you if you get one difficult question don't get really stressed out and that can mess up the other the subsequent answers because you're you're stressed and you think that you failed just remember that you're being judged on the whole thing not this I recently passed my driving test and I nearly messed it up because I halfway through the driving test I thought that I'd failed I thought that I did something really really stupid and then I just like didn't care about anything and I started making even more mistakes because I was getting more stressed out and more worried and not really focusing on what I needed to do so if you get a difficult question number one be happy because that means the examiner is testing you because they know that you are quite good and just accept it try your best and understand that you're not being judged on that one question okay so those three solutions focusing on what really matters understanding the purpose of the test understanding that it is is it a discussion of ideas and and to think about it as kind of like an essay response and accept that part three is going to be difficult all right if you go in thinking you're just going to get really easy you know easy question after easy question after easy question then like what would be the point in that it wouldn't be a test you'll be happy when you get a difficult question attempt an answer try your best and understand that you're not being judged all on one question okay so let's see if there's any comments Angi that's what I want to hear that lying is not about lying okay let's talk about that this is quite a quite a controversial topic I wrote an article about two years ago two or three years ago about how you should lie on the test and many teachers criticized it and said that you know students should not lie and it makes it more difficult and all those things but what I actually said in the article was you only use lying when you just know nothing about there's no other choice like you know nothing about that because what would happen was I would used to work in Vietnam and the question sometimes would not be applicable to a Vietnamese student for example one of the questions I remember was do you think gap years are a good idea and in general Vietnamese students don't take a gap year so most of the students would just be like I don't know anything about gap years I said okay that's being honest all right you've just you've not answered the question at all what you should do is you could attempt an answer by you know talking about it making it up making up a few things that are not true but only to help you and or another question I remember was the it was talking about historic castle or something like that and in Vietnam there are no historic castles or none that I know of or none that any of my students knew about so a lot of the students would just answer it I don't know anything about that that's not actually a good question a good answer to a question I said do you know what a historic castle is yeah do you know where they are yeah make it up all right you're not going to do that for every question but it does it does help you um because it's not a lie detector test it's not an honesty test it's like it's a speaking test just demonstrate so um yassir I don't agree with you candidate must have knowledge about life and society don't really accept the fact that many students do worry that they won't know anything about certain topics but if you think that way then your your preparation is not going to go very well because you're always just thinking of the worst thing that could happen if you look at real IELTS questions from real tests the vast majority of them will be you will be able to answer most of them or the vast majority of them so it's kind of like like if you were planning a holiday you could think of the worst things that could ever happen on your holiday like the plane could crash you could lose your passport you could get food poisoning you could be shot in it like whatever and but but would your holiday be enjoyable would your preparation for that holiday be enjoyable if you're just thinking of the worst possible thing that could happen no because the vast majority of people would be fine so that's my response to that um um kind of when linking verbs are very very important in speaking and writing IELTS is not really that true not as true as you think in fact for writing have a look at the official marking criteria so let's have a look here uh so IELTS task two marking criteria here we go so I'm not going to tell you what I think I'm not going to give you my opinion on this what I'm going to do is tell you exactly what IELTS say about this if it's going to come up maybe PDFs don't work on this maybe this will work we've never tried to open a PDF before so maybe they don't work okay that's not going to work but if you go to IELTS writing task two writing band descriptors and look at coherence and cohesion and look at band nine and see what it says about that all right and that will answer your questions your name is Kan Nguyen you're from Vietnam I've lived in Vietnam for a long time taught there you are correct according to your teachers a lot of your teachers linking words are very very very very important that's not necessarily what IELTS think what your teachers are teaching you and what that is saying are not always the same so be careful who you listen to let me see good question Angie what if you have no idea at all about the topic so this comes up all the time I remember I had a student it was a lady from Saudi Arabia and the question was about musical instruments and she for religious reasons she just never played musical instruments she had no experience with that at all and what she said was instead of saying I don't know what she did was she explained that I'm from Saudi Arabia for religious reasons I don't have any experience with that topic and just explained it all very fluently very coherently using good pronunciation using good grammar using good vocabulary and that was absolutely fine contrast that with what most students do which is I don't know so that's one approach just be honest explain that you don't know anything about that topic or you can make it up you can lie just don't do what what's going to lower your score is I don't know anything about that all right also read read to English read English books read the newspaper every day listen to the news listen to podcasts expand your knowledge that's going to help you improve your English but also help you improve your knowledge of the world and your ideas and everything but don't be like a lot of people who what they do is they just get angry about it and say I don't know anything about these topics it's unfair and it's a silly test and all this like are is that going to help you no it's not let's see if there's any other so here's one my friend had a difficult question they asked her about the extinction of the dinosaurs and she knows nothing about it and could not make it up well if you asked a hundred random people in the world do you know anything anything about the extinction of the dinosaurs what percentage of those 100 people would be able to tell you a what a dinosaur is b what an extinction event is how it generally happened like most people in the world would be able to talk about that they're not testing your knowledge it is not a knowledge test it is not an ideas test it is not an IQ test it is a speaking test all right so they're not testing how much you know about dinosaurs they're not testing like the Jurassic period they're just testing your ability to be able to talk about that all right and even if your friend said I'm one of the only people in the world that doesn't know what a dinosaur is and doesn't know what an extinct that would be okay but I sincerely doubt that your friend is one of those people who knows nothing about that often it's just people who don't actually want to do the test they don't want to pass they don't want to to go through it all so they're just like I know nothing about this this test is stupid that's a really easy thing to do because then you don't have to do any work you can just blame it on the test so that would be my answer to that we see good question from abdurham how to master grammar while speaking so what you can do is you can record yourself answering speaking questions listen back and then pick out the grammar mistakes that you're making and then try and figure out which areas of grammar are you struggling with the most and then you can focus on improving that those areas of grammar so it could be verb tenses prepositions articles whatever you need to figure that out yourself and then you can improve that under very good question common question can we use idioms in the speaking test yes like anything else you can use idioms in the speaking test but only use them if you are using them correctly that does not mean getting a list of idioms memorizing that list and then saying them incorrectly are inappropriately or getting them the pronunciation messed up in the test all right be very careful if you are learning in a school or have a teacher who gives you a list of idioms and tells you use these idioms in the speaking test they are going to lower your score because you're going to use them incorrectly so if you know how to use an idiom 100% that you know the context which is very difficult you know the pronunciation you know the exact phrasing you know how it's used use it but if you don't don't because it'll lower your score hard deep is it right to use hand gestures during speaking fluency coherence grammar vocabulary pronunciation has that anything to do with fluency no has that anything to do with eye contact no has that anything to do with body language no has that anything to do with the clothes you're wearing no focus on these things and do not listen to people who tell you that facial expressions body language eye contact what shoes to wear that's not a joke there is actually a article online from a real isle school telling people which type of shoes to wear in the speaking test but nothing to do but not telling the students anything about this all right so and that is not a joke you can look that up you can google it one appropriately I just went when I'm looking at this and one says is it important to avoid saying okay so if you've been listening to me speaking for the last 35 minutes I've sometimes went or paused or hesitated if you listen to anybody speaking they will normally pause and hesitate a little bit it's natural to pause and hesitate a little bit good fluency does not mean never pausing never hesitating never or I it's just a natural part of speaking what what you should be worried about is if you are using them at a non-natural rate so you're pausing hesitating quite a lot normally that's related to the fact that you're trying to think of the correct grammar trying to think of the correct vocabulary trying to you know think of the correct ideas remember it's not an ideas test and by doing that you're like saying something try to think of the correct word so that's that's where the problems come in because generally lower level learners of English will have to think a lot more about what they're saying whereas a higher level user of English will not because like you just won't have to think about it so don't worry about it as much as most people tell you that it's a problem let me see any other questions there are a lot more questions but I actually have to go and because we've got team training happening here today with the whole team so I better go sorry if I didn't answer all of your questions so thank you very much guys and here's your bonus for making it to the end of this video you're going to get exclusive access to a brand new writing task two training no one else has got access to it yet and if you want it it starts next week you will find it in the comments below right now all you have to do is just click on that and you'll be able to enter your email address there and you will be given a secret code that will bring you to where you need to be it's totally free but there are limited spaces available and it will not be released to the public it won't be on facebook it won't be on youtube it's only to people who join and it all starts next week on wednesday but as I say we're only doing it with a very limited number of people and so if you're interested click that link in the comments if you're watching the recording of this it'll also be in the description above just click on that you get all the information you need and it's focusing on writing tasks too and so what we're going to do next week is get all of you who are interested into a group and work more closely with you on your writing and help you get your writing up to a band seven level that's it for this week have a great weekend and looking forward to seeing you inside the new training next week see you again soon bye bye