 Chris here from IELTS Advantage. And did you know that students normally increase their speaking scores much more by stopping things rather than learning new things? So what we do with our students is we listen to their speaking one-on-one and then we normally identify a few of these five things that they should never do. They stop doing them and their scores increase. Really is that simple for 90% of students. So let's look at the five things that you should never do during your speaking test. And then if you watch until the end, I'll give you a full speaking course for free. So the first thing that you should never do is try and use impressive or high-level ideas or complex ideas or try and impress the examiner with impressive ideas. Number one, there are no extra marks for high-level or impressive or complex ideas. But most importantly, number two, think of your brain as a computer. So if you have too many programs running at the same time on a computer, the computer will slow down. Try doing that on your computer at home. Your brain is exactly the same. If you're trying to think of as many different complex high-level ideas as possible, your brain will slow down and your fluency will be impaired. It is much better for your fluency and your overall performance to pick something that you feel comfortable talking about that is easy to talk about. The examiner is listening out for four things and four things only, pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary, fluency and coherence. If you pick something simple for you to talk about, you're going to improve all four of those things. So never try and impress the examiner with complex ideas. Number two, never try and impress the examiner with complex high-level band nine vocabulary. Similar to the first point, if you're trying to use vocabulary that you're not comfortable using, number one, it is going to bring down your vocabulary score, not increase it, because you are increasing the chance that you will make mistakes. And number two, you are going to suffer with your fluency. Your fluency will be impaired because again, if your brain is a computer and you're trying to think of the most complex idea and then add in the most complex vocabulary, then your fluency is going to slow down. You'll start to be like, um, um, uh. So pick an easy thing to talk about and then use the vocabulary that you feel comfortable using. Now, you do not have to use just the most simple words possible but use the vocabulary that you feel most comfortable using. For the vast majority of students that we work with, the vocabulary that they already have is good enough to get them the score that they need. Where they slip up is they try and use vocabulary that they're not comfortable using. They make lots of mistakes, bringing both their vocabulary score down and their fluency score down. Number three, never try to increase the complexity of your grammar without having a good reason first. So what do I mean by that? Well, a lot of students go into the test thinking that they have to use as many different tenses and as many different grammatical structures as possible. That is a very strange way to think about communication. How we communicate, think about how you communicate in your own native language. You only use the grammar that you have to use in order to clearly communicate with the person you're speaking to. You do not say hello to your wife or to your mother or your brother and think, can I use nine different tenses when I'm saying hello? You just say hello. This is a very common mistake that we see with students is they go in and they try and use six different tenses or all the conditionals in one answer, for example. What you should do instead is just listen to the question and think what grammar would help me clearly answer this question. So for example, if the examiner asked you, when did you get married? If I was asked that question, I would say I got married in 2014. So I used a simple sentence, a simple structure and just used the appropriate tense, past simple, to talk about that. But if they asked me, how long have you been married? I would use a slightly different tense. I have been married for seven years. So I'm going to change from past simple to a different tense. So don't think how many tenses or how complex the grammar just respond appropriately to the cue in the question. Number four, never worry about the examiner. So a lot of students email us the day after they do the test and they're very worried. And they said the examiner didn't smile or the examiner wasn't friendly. It's not the examiner's job to be friendly, to smile. It's not really their job to make you feel comfortable. The main job of the examiner is to listen to you and then give you an accurate band score. All examiners are human, all right? Some humans are very happy and friendly. Some humans are not. And we all get tired and we all get grumpy. Examining is not the most exciting job in the world and it can be very long and arduous. So don't worry if the examiner is not very friendly. What you should do is just go in and give the best performance possible and don't worry about the examiner's reaction. Another thing that we often get asked is, oh, the examiner was making notes and they were writing numbers. Don't pay any attention to that. It's normally nothing to do with your performance. So please just focus on answering the questions and don't worry about the examiner. Number five, never do the test without fully understanding each part of the test. Each part is a different style, requires a different strategy, has different types of questions and we've put all that information in a free course or IELTS speaking challenge where it takes you through part one, part two and part three, gives you a strategy, talks about the different skills being tested and helps you with your grammar, your pronunciation, your fluency and your vocabulary. If you go and do the test without really understanding it, you probably will fail and throw away $250, $300 even more these days. This is a free course that costs you nothing. It will only cost you your time, takes about an hour and a half, two hours to complete and it's really going to help you fully understand the speaking test and be very comfortable on test day. So click below and you can get access to that speaking course.