 Hi everyone, Chris here from IELTS Advantage with lesson two of our speaking mini course. So three steps to band seven speaking. So let's look at the three steps and the three lessons. So step one, we looked at this on Monday, today's Wednesday, we looked at part one. So if you're watching the recording of this or you're watching it live, feel free to go back and look at part one after we finish up today. Because part one speaking, a lot of people think that it's just not important at all. Or some other people think that it's like more important than it is. It's good. It's a really good idea to find out exactly what part one is because you want to start the test as strongly as possible. Step two. So today, we're looking at part two. This is the part, you know, sometimes called the long term where they give you the cue card and you have to, you know, plan for one minute and then speak for up to two minutes. A lot of people really, really worry about this. And it's not something you do actually have to worry about that much. Step three, Friday at 11am, we're going to go live on Facebook, 11am UK time. And we're going to look at part three of the speaking test. Part three, in my opinion, is the most difficult part, which is where you'll be asked the more difficult questions. But just because you're asked difficult questions doesn't mean that's actually a bad thing. It's actually a good thing. So we'll be telling you why that is a really, really good thing on Friday and giving you a strategy for part three. So what are we going to do today for part two? So we're going to look at what the goal of part two is. What is your goal? What's the thing that you want to be doing? We're going to look at some common problems that students come up against and some common strategies. There's a lot of strategies online, especially on, if you look at YouTube, Facebook, you'll find a lot of people who say like this is a magic way or a special way to answer part two. There isn't any special way to answer part two. There isn't any magic way that's going to guarantee that you improve your scores. But we'll look at a way that will help you as much as possible and help you prepare for the test and get the best score possible for you. And we're going to look at that strategy. And this strategy actually does work because we've helped thousands of students improve their part two and improve their overall score in the speaking test. So we're going to show you what that is. So what is the goal of part two? What should you be looking for? And what should you be looking to do? You should be looking to speak fluently and coherently for up to two minutes about the topic. All right, so some key words here. Fluently. Let's get rid of that big black marker. Let's change this to a pen. We'll change the color to red. So you need to be speaking fluently, speaking without too many pauses and hesitations on natural pauses and hesitations and coherently actually talking about the topic that's on the cue card and developing that idea and speaking for up to two minutes about the topic, not about anything else apart from the topic. And the examiner should be able to understand what I'm saying. So understanding what you're saying that's related to pronunciation. Can the examiner understand what you're saying or do they have to strain to understand you? And are you using grammar and vocabulary effectively? Principally, are you using grammar vocabulary accurately? You do also have to worry a little bit about your range of grammar, your range of vocabulary. But for most students, what they should focus on is accuracy. And we're not going to talk about this too much today. What we'll focus on more is strategy. So in the comments in Facebook, what I want you to tell me is what are some problems or what are some things that you worry about when it comes to part two speaking? What are you really really worried about? Or what things do you do in part two speaking that you think are leading to you getting a lower score? In the comments, tell me what you think. And I'll have a look. I have my phone. Let me see if my phone is working. Don't be shy. Let me see if I can use my phone instead of Justin's phone. Yeah, sure. My phone. Let me see if my phone is working. Okay, so Hardeeb said lack of ideas. Good, Hardeeb. Yeah, a lot of people are worried about that. Anybody else? Kate says no ideas. Okay. Anybody else? Any other ideas? Apart from Hardeeb and Kate. She says thinking what topic. I'm not too sure what you mean by thinking what topic, but if you want to explain what that means, there is a lack of information. So lack of ideas, lack of info about the actual topic. So maybe you do have ideas, but you just don't know how to develop those ideas. Vocabulary, what are you saying? Oops. Good. Speak for two minutes. Good. Okay. So here are some ideas. What we're going to do now is I'm going to show you a cue card like you would see in the test. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to demo what I think is the main problem that students have with part two. I'm going to demo like as if I'm a student and I have this main problem. Okay, so let's get a cue card up. So went to the British Council's website, their free website and we'll take a cue card from then because you should always use real example questions because if you don't use real example questions, you'll get fake ones and you'll mess it up. We'll talk about that in a second. Okay. So here's one from the British Council. Describe something you own which is very important to you. Okay. You should say where you got it from, how long you've had it, what you use it for and explain why it is important to you. Okay. So what I'm going to do is look at this as if I'm a student and demo exactly what I think is the main problem. And then in the comments, tell me what you think the main problem is. Okay. And remember that I have to speak for up to two minutes. So on my watch, let me see. Okay. So imagine that I planned it out already. So something that I own that is very important to me is my watch. I got it from Argos, which is a shop here in my hometown. I've had it for about six months. I use it for telling the time and recording my workouts. And there's also a feature for the weather on it, which I use sometimes and my calendar is also on it. And it's important to me because as I said, it helps me record my workouts. So it tracks all of my activity and I know how healthy I am and how much exercise that I've done. So I got it from Argos and yeah, I've had it about six months. I use it to tell the time and it's really important because yeah, because it's a really nice watch. I like this watch. It's really good. Okay. So that was demoing a student that has these big, big problems. So what are some of those problems? After listening to me do that, some of these might be correct, but are there any other things that I was doing that might be a problem? Remember, the goal is to speak fluently and coherently about the topic for up to two minutes. And the examiner should be able to understand what I'm saying and my grammar and vocabulary and pronunciation should be up to standard. So let's have a look again to see if anybody has any further ideas. Let's see. So a lot of you are tagging your friends while done. So based on what I said, what do you think? You get the ideas here. Okay, so not developing. Not developing ideas. Good. Repeating ideas. So no one has picked up on the biggest problem. Hesitations, not really. There weren't that many. Fluency does not mean speaking perfectly. All right. I'm never pausing or hesitating. It means speaking at a natural rate without unnatural pauses and hesitations. Little pauses and hesitations are fine. Lack of connectors, no. No linking words. I mean, they do help a little bit, but it's not bad pronunciation. No. Could you understand what I said? Hopefully. Okay. So the main problem was I didn't speak for two minutes. All right. What I did was, see, you get the cue card. The main problem was I looked at this bullet point and I talked about that one. Then I looked at that bullet point. I talked about that one. Then I looked at that bullet point. I talked about that one and then I talked about this one. And I didn't develop any of these points, but I ran out of things to say within a minute. Less than a minute. I've done all of these. So this is what a student does. They look at this one. Then they talk about this one. Then they talk about this one. Then they talk about this one. And then they're like, oh, I have nothing else to say. And what happens then is they go off on a tangent or they repeat themselves, which is what I did. I just repeated the same things over and over again. And then they just stop. All right. So for me, this is one of the biggest problems that you face when it comes to part two. So how can we solve these problems? Let's have a look. Another problem is a lot of you are using strategies that you find on the internet. And just because somebody says these are band nine strategies or magic strategies or something like that doesn't mean they're actually going to work. So let's look at some common strategies that you'll find online and think about how do they actually work? So one common strategy is talk about each point in the order that you see them. All right. So the strategy is talk about that, then that, then that, then that. Okay. Is this an effective strategy? Well, as I've just demonstrated, and as I do this with our students in our course, we do maybe 40 to 50 students a week doing practice runs with part two. And we've done that for four years. So we see this over and over and over again. When they do that, they just run out of things to say. And they then they stutter and they panic and they don't know what to do. And it's also a very, very unnatural way to speak to somebody. If somebody asked you this question, would you ever look at a list of bullet points when I talk about one and then look at down again and then talk with the other and then look like it's just a very unnatural way to speak to someone. So is this going to get you to your goal, which is to speak fluently and coherently for up to two minutes about the topic? No, it's not going to help you. So be very, very careful who you listen to and what strategies you use, because you might be better off with no strategy whatsoever, rather than following something that's going to lead to a lower score. Another common strategy that a lot of students who start working with us uses, they'll talk about the past, they'll talk about the present, and then they'll talk about the future. All right? So does this help? To be honest, some students really do like this. And it really does help them. The majority of the people that we work with, it doesn't help them at all. Why? Well, it's very rigid. All right? Again, if I asked you that question or any other question in the world, would you answer it in that way? Would you say, okay, let's talk about the past, then let's talk about the present, then let's talk about the future? No, it's a very, very unnatural way to answer anything. So it's making it more difficult than it needs to be. Also, a lot of people who use this strategy, like talk about the past and the present and the future, they tend to run out of ideas. They're like, okay, past and they talk a lot about that. And then present, like, okay, I own this watch now. And then they start talking about the future and they can't think of anything to say. And then they start again to panic and that can affect their fluency and their coherence and everything, to be honest. So it does work for a minority of students, but the majority, it doesn't help them at all. And so again, be very, very careful with what you listen to. So when we were thinking of this strategy and how to help people with this, what we normally do is just think, how do people normally speak to each other? So it's a speaking test. If you're chatting to someone, like if Justin and I went for a coffee after this lesson, what would our conversation look like? Our conversation would look like, I would ask him a question, he would answer it back and forth like that, a normal conversation. So if you think about this as your brain, how do we normally talk to each other? Well, we have some sort of input, which is normally like a question or a comment. Let's keep it simple. It's just some sort of question. Our brains are going to process the information and then there's going to be output. So this will normally be someone speaking. All right. So by using these very rigid strategies and using bullet points in that way, or past, present, future and things like that, you're just complicating everything. You're making things as complicated as possible without actually using the normal process that you have, which is just question, think about it and answer. So how can we use this to help us answer the questions effectively? Okay. So what is happening here is a lot of people are under the misconception that you must talk about this, then you must talk about this, then you must talk about this, then you must talk about this. Okay. That's wrong. All right. You do not have to talk about each one of them in order and only talk about the bullet points. What do you have to do? There's only one thing that you must do. You must talk about the topic here. Okay. So for this question, I must talk about, I must describe something which I own, which is very important to me. That's the only thing. If I don't want to talk about any of these, that's fine. The only thing I need to do is this. Now, am I saying never talk about the bullet points? No. Most of them are going to be very, very useful, but use them as tools to help you rather than as a crutch to rely on. Because if you're using them as a crutch, like a crutch is like, if you break your leg, you use a crutch to help you walk. A lot of you are using these as a crutch and that's, does a crutch actually help you walk effectively? No. Use these as tools rather than a crutch. Well, what does that mean? Well, if you look at these, where you got it from? Okay. So yeah, I want to talk about this, but it's going to be very, very short. It's going to be one line. All right. I don't really need to develop that at all because there's nothing really to develop. Where did you get it from? A shop called Argos. How long have you had it? Yeah, I probably want to talk about that, but again, it's just a very small, small piece of information. What you use it for. Yeah, definitely. I want to talk about that. And there's many things that I can talk about related to that. Explain why it is important to you. I don't really feel comfortable talking about that one. Don't want to talk about that one. So don't. Are there other things that I could talk about related to that? Sure. I could talk about details. I could talk about features. I could talk about past. I could talk about present. I could talk about future. But I don't have to. What else could I do? Story, my opinion on it, or my feelings about it, and anything else. Like anything else I can think of it. So instead of three bullet points, which don't really help me at all, now I have one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine extra. All right. So am I going to use all of these? Am I going to talk about this, then this, then this, then this, then this, then this, then this, then this, then this, then this, then this, then this? No, that's not what I'm saying. What you do is when you're planning during your one minute planning, you just note down a few extra things that you would like to talk about, and then you use these naturally to talk about them. Okay. You might not talk about the present. You might not talk about the future. You might not talk about your feelings. You might not talk about opinion, but you might have a story about it and how you felt about it in the past and the details and the features, and that's really, really going to help you. So what you're doing is all of these different things are providing you with a wide array of things to talk about. It's like a toolkit. All right. The more tools you have in your toolkit, the better. And then during the one minute planning stage, you're just noting these down, thinking about them, and then talking naturally and not spending the whole time looking at your bullet, like bullet point number one, talk about that. Okay. Then bullet point number two. Okay. Then talk about, you're not going to do that. So this might be the first time you've seen this strategy. So let me spell it out. Number one, establish main topic. What is the main topic? Okay, this is the main topic. I must speak about this. Remember that. Number two, think about each bullet point as we just did. Okay. Yeah, I can use that one. Yeah, I can use that one. Yeah, I can use that one. I don't want to use that one at all. That's, I don't even understand that one. Add any others that will help. Well, I definitely have a story about that. So that's going to be really easy to talk about. This one's going to be really easy to talk about the features that definitely can't really think of anything else. There might be a few details. So there's a lot of things that I can talk about. Is this going to get me to two minutes? I'll be able to speak fluently and coherently. Absolutely. No problem whatsoever. Five, speak naturally until examiner stops you. So let's demo that. Okay, so that's a little bit messy. I might not be very coherent if I do that. All right, so let's demo it as if I'm doing it the real test. Okay. Okay. So first thing I need to do, something you own, which is very important. Okay, so I know that one. I'm going to do that one. I'm going to do that one. This one. No, I'm going to talk about how much it is worth. I'm going to talk about my opinion. I'm going to talk about the future. Okay, and that's me done. And then I would just sit and think about it. Okay, so let's go. So the most important thing, or let me set a timer. So time myself. So most important thing to me is this jam board. All right. And the reason why it's really, really important to me is two reasons. Number one, it is the most expensive thing that I've ever bought in my life. It was about $10,000, which is significantly more than anything else I've ever bought more than my car, I believe. So I got it about six months ago. With six months ago, I called Google. Google, they are the people that make it. It's called a Google Jam Board. And you can only buy it from Google because I think they don't want anyone bumping or discounting the price and selling them for less than $10,000. And so it was originally designed as a collaboration tool. So Google in their headquarters, they've got offices all over the world. And what you can do with the Jam Board is you can draw on it and make notes on it. And someone in a different part of the world with another Jam Board or with a laptop or a tablet or even their phone, they can interact with it, draw things and give you feedback and there's a camera on it and everything. In my opinion, I wouldn't say it was a waste of money because we can use it every single day to plan stuff out and it looks great in lessons and it's very interactive and things like that. However, the $10,000 price tag was a little bit pricey considering that there's a lot of bugs in it and it doesn't really work in the way that we wanted it to work. For example, it doesn't allow us to use PowerPoint. We would have loved to have PowerPoint slides or Google slides, even we can't even use Google slides, even though slides is connected to Google. So we have to draw everything, which is okay. But in my opinion, I will not be buying a new one in the future. I will probably buy a Microsoft one. I can't remember the name of the Microsoft one, but they have one and it's much, much better. So that was dead on two minutes. So the examiner would have stopped me. So you see how much easier it was to talk about because I gave myself the freedom to talk about many, many different things, but I did only talk about this. All right. So what you're doing with that strategy is the strategy itself is not going to improve your pronunciation. It's not going to magically help you, you know, think of amazing vocabulary or grammar or anything like that. It's just giving you every chance to be able to get the best score possible on test day. But the number one thing you need to remember with it is you need to practice it. Okay. So you cannot just take this strategy, walk into the test tomorrow and get a band seven. Doesn't work like that. I wish it did, but it didn't. You need to practice it. All right. So, but if you do practice it, you're really going to improve every aspect because you're but just the act of practicing it over and over again is going to help you. So get real practice questions. Don't get fake ones from fake sites because they're unreliable. Use the strategy by looking at the question, planning it out for one minute, and then record yourself. Use your phone to help you. All right. So record yourself on your phone. Listen and then critique yourself. All right. Criticize your own performance. Think about fluency. Think about coherence. Think about grammar. Think about pronunciation. Think about vocabulary. And if you do that over and over and over and over again, you're practicing speaking part two. You're becoming more comfortable with speaking part two, but you're improving your fluency. You're improving your coherence. You're going to improve your grammar because you're going to spot lots of grammar mistakes and you're going to try and fix those. You're going to improve your pronunciation because you might pick up on some pronunciation errors or you might pick up on the fact that your intonation is a little bit off or your connected speech or sentence stress or things like that. And your vocabulary as well. You will be picking up that you are maybe making some little errors or collocation errors or you could maybe use a more complex word when you're using simple words or you're repeating words sometimes. So using that strategy is good, but the person who practices it and does all these things, they're really going to improve. So summarize everything. Start with the end goal in mind. What is the end goal? What do you want to be doing? If you apply this to everything you do, it's just going to improve everything. Avoid common problems and avoid common strategies. Some of the strategies might work. Some strategies I don't know about might work. I don't know. But ask yourself, does this help me with my end goal? If it doesn't, then maybe it's not the magic strategy whoever's talking about it. Maybe it's not as magic as the person who says it is. Try a strategy that focuses on the end goal and practice and critique yourself. And that's it. It doesn't need to be any more complicated than that. But the key is to do these things. Don't watch a video and be like, oh, that's amazing. And they're not doing anything. The student who does it is going to improve. Just to let you know, we have a new free writing course, Three Steps to Band 7 or above. It is a live course that we're going to be doing next week. It starts on Wednesday, but we're going to open it up this Friday, Friday the 18th. But there'll only be limited places available because it's going to be in a secret group and everything. We're going to limit the number of people that it's available to. We're not going to be putting it on Facebook or YouTube or anything. So if you're interested in that, check your email if you're on our email list. I can't speak anymore. I've been making too many videos today. If you're on our email list, you'll get an email about it. If not, check our Facebook, YouTube, all that will be and talking a lot about it over the weekend so you can get in. It's totally free and it's helped thousands of people in the past so it can help you. So that's pretty much it. Let me have a look, see any interesting comments. Let me see if there's any questions or comments or anything like that. Very good comment. You're wrong, but it's a good comment. All right. So from Ishe, I said, you said the word and too many times. Okay. So this is a common misconception. A common misconception is that if you repeat any words, you're going to get a lower score. All right. So try and speak for 15 minutes and only use the word and once or only use the word or or or of or like articles, prepositions, these words that just come up again and again and again and again. Good vocabulary does not mean only using unique words. That's not what good vocabulary means. So very good comment because it shows a common misconception. Let me see. And even if it's a keyword, like if you're talking about cars, there's only a certain number of ways you can say cars and if you're talking about cars for 15 minutes, you're going to say car a lot. Like it's just the way it is. Any strategy for being coherent? That one. Coherent means that you talk about the topic for up to two minutes and you develop your main ideas properly. Okay. So thank you very much guys. I've got to go, but hopefully a lot of you put that into practice. If you need anything, feel free to get in touch. Chris at iAltsAdvantages.com is my email address and make sure that you check this out on Friday. There's only limited places available and we won't be putting it out to the public. But if you're interested in improving your writing scores, get involved. Thank you very much guys and see you again soon. Bye bye.