 Hey everyone, Chris here. Hope that you all had a good weekend and let's start the week by looking at how to improve our speaking to a band 7 level or above. So last week we looked at a reading style stuff. We looked at a lot of reading stuff and we created a little mini course. So a lot of you asked for help not only with reading but help with speaking. So that's what we're going to do in today's lesson. What we're going to focus on all this week is speaking. So Monday we're going to look at part one which is today. On Wednesday we're going to look at part two of the speaking test and on Friday we're going to look at part three of the speaking test. So just keeping it really really simple we're going to focus all on part one then on Wednesday part two and then on Friday part three. So Wednesday at 1 p.m. we're going to look at part two and at 11 a.m. on Friday we're going to look at part three. And what we're going to do is not give you a massive course that covers absolutely everything. What I decided to do is just distill down into you know a very very digestible easy to digest you know 20 minutes or something like that and so that you can look at it and get the absolutely absolute essentials that you need in order to improve. So we're not going to waste your time with anything that's not relevant and we're also going to make everything as interactive as possible. So instead of you just sitting back and watching a video and not really learning anything we're going to make everything as interactive as possible to get you to contribute to the lessons so that you can activate your brain a little bit and learn from the lessons as well. So part one so what we're going to look at in this lesson is first of all what is part one and what are the what is the rationale behind the style of questions and what the examiners are going to be asking you what the examiners are going to be thinking about and importantly what we're going to look at secondly is what not to worry about and because looking at if you look at YouTube or Facebook or just Google and you know speaking part one you'll find a lot of misinformation you'll find a lot of things that people say are really really really important when they're not important at all like contribute zero to your score so it's really important that you understand what not to worry about so that you can focus on the things that will actually improve your score because one of the keys to success is focusing on the things that will improve your score and ignoring the things that don't improve your score. We're going to look at some common mistakes so what I'm going to do is I'm going to get Justin who's here with me to ask me some random questions and I haven't told him which questions to ask or anything like that he's going to throw these questions at me and I'm going to pretend to be a student making some of these common mistakes and in the comments you guys are going to tell me which common mistakes I'm making then we're going to look at the flip side of that which is he's going to ask me more questions and I'm going to try and demo what a good student would do or what you know what a student at a seven eight or nine would be doing and then we'll from that we'll take some best practices so things that you should be thinking about things that you should be doing on test day. Finally we're going to give you a PDF download and with lots of the common topics that you'll get in part one of the speaking test and some sample answers for those not to be copied of course but just so you can give you an idea and solidify the things that we've been talking about today. So what is part one it's really really really important that you understand that part one is about you why am I saying that why is that important well one of the common things that students say but the speaking test is and maybe you've even asked this question already in the comments I can't see the comments but I wouldn't be surprised if somebody said this what happens if they ask me about something I know nothing about or I can't talk about well all of the questions are about you so it's impossible to get them wrong because they're asking about you so the best thing that you can do for part one is just answer the questions naturally how you would speak to a friend or a colleague or a teacher if they asked you one of these questions because they're just normal everyday questions that they might ask you about you and also importantly if they ask you a question that you just have no idea about you can honestly answer because it's about you I don't know about that and explain why you don't know it and we'll look at some examples of that because remember it's not a knowledge test or an IQ test or how much do you know about this topic test it's a speaking test so remember that and remember that the questions in part one are about you part two part three a little bit different but part one they're about you so don't worry about the content don't worry about having knowledge about these topics this part's going to last around four to five minutes and the examiner is going to ask you a range of different questions they can't just ask you like one or two questions and hope that you speak for a very very long time and you'll see the significance of this in a second when we talk about you know what things you should be doing what things you shouldn't be doing so be aware that they'll ask you a range of topics and a range of questions within each of those topics and it'll take about four to five minutes and this will be the obviously the first part of the speaking test so do not do not worry about the following things you might think that these things sound like I've made these up or these are things that I'm you know just I'm just passing the time by telling you these things or to be entertaining or something like that but these are things that you will actually find on the internet you will find these in facebook groups you'll find these on blogs you'll find these on youtube channels especially youtube channels for some reason telling you that these things are really really really important especially for part one none of these things are important at all there is a real article from a real school telling you which clothes that you should wear in order to improve your speaking score I'm not making this up I found this myself I posted it about six months ago or nine months ago it is a school actually wrote what clothes you should wear in order to improve your speaking score we got a question a week ago from a student who asked is it okay to wear trainers and not formal shoes in the speaking test would that lower his score if he was wearing like sports shoes you do not need to worry about your attire do not worry about this and why am I even talking about this to make you laugh no it's because if you're worrying about things like this then you're not worrying about the things that actually matter and which is very very very important do not worry at all about how you greet the examiner there are whole youtube videos dedicated to how you greet the examiner it does not matter it really really really does not matter at all how you greet the examiner when you're greeting the examiner the test is not going on the test does not start until part one starts and you've already greeted the examiner so like obviously you don't want to go in and punch the examiner in the face or anything like that but like you know under normal circumstances you're not going to do that so you'll be absolutely fine greet the examiner in the same way you would greet anybody else yeah that's all you have to worry about and if you greet him like incorrectly i don't think there's any incorrect way of doing that it really doesn't matter again don't waste 15 minutes i saw a 15 minute youtube video on how to greet the examiner do not waste 15 minutes of your time talking about that also you'll see a lot of people asking like did i get a low score because my body language wasn't right or because my eye contact wasn't right or because i didn't use enough hand gestures or too many hand gestures like you'll get a lot of students coming into the test and like they'll they'll maintain eye contact with you for a very very long time and they'll do weird things with their hands you're like oh okay it's not the student's fault it's because the teacher told them that these things are important they're not important at all why because these things have nothing to do with your ability to speak English it doesn't matter what your body language is like it doesn't matter what your eye contact is like it doesn't matter what your hand gestures are like they have no they don't contribute to your score in any way importantly also don't worry about the examiner examiners are human beings you know just like going into mcdonald's sometimes you'll get a server mcdonald's who's really really friendly and really nice and sometimes you'll get one who is not friendly and not nice and is rude it's exactly the same with examiners is it part of their job to be friendly and to be nice kind of i suppose but really their job is to listen to you and give you an accurate score on your speaking test that is their job that's the most important thing that they need to do we will get a lot of emails from people saying i think i failed my test because my examiner didn't like me whether they like you or not has no bearing on your score whatsoever or we'll get someone saying i think i failed my test because my examiner was rude to me or was unfriendly you know they might have had an argument with their husband or their wife or their girlfriend or their boyfriend or they might be just in a bad mood they might be hung over they might have had a you know been sitting in traffic before getting there and being just in a bad mood the examiner's demeanor whether they smile at you or whether they don't has nothing to do with your score also if they are doing their job correctly they might be focusing on your pronunciation and your fluency and your coherence and your grammar and vocabulary obviously it's they might not have a big cheesy smile on their face while they're doing that because they're focusing on what they need to do they might be serious about what they're doing so don't worry about any of these things and importantly if you go to a school and they start teaching you about body language and hand gestures and what close to where and how to greet the examiner leave that school because they're not focusing on the things that matter the things that matter are these four things and these four things only these are what the examiners are going to be listening out for during your speaking test and during part one but throughout all the parts pronunciation fluency and coherence vocabulary and grammar so what do these things mean i could do a whole video on you know a whole 30 minute video on each of these but just to summarize very very quickly can the examiner understand what you're saying all right do they understand a hundred percent of what you're saying if they can you're on your you're on your way to getting a seven or above for pronunciation you do need to worry about some higher level pronunciation features like intonation and connected speech and things like that but you know just for the purposes of this video and to be concise just worry about them understanding what you're saying grammar and vocabulary you do have to worry about range a little bit but for most students accuracy is the real reason why you're not getting the score you need focus on your grammar being accurate and your vocabulary being accurate and we'll talk a bit about showing off and trying to impress the examiner with fancy vocabulary and fancy grammar in the in the rest of this video and and throughout this week fluency are you able to speak at a natural pace or are you do you have a lot of pauses and hesitations and coherence are you answering the question are you developing your answer enough for the examiner to understand the answer to your question the point you're trying to get across those are the things that you really really need to be thinking about not these things all right do not worry about these um so we'll be thinking about these throughout the week and talking about these throughout the week so here are some common mistakes okay so what we're going to do is talk about these very very briefly then I'm going to get my glamorous assistant here to ask me a question I haven't prepared any answers or anything like that I wanted to be as natural as possible and I will pretend to be a student who is doing one of these common mistakes in the comments what I want you to tell me is which of these am I doing all right so why am I doing this to make the the lesson as interactive as possible if you just sit back and watch a video you'll maybe learn 10 20 percent but if you're thinking about it and engaging with the lesson you're going to learn more and that's the reason why we make these videos is to help you guys learn so and to improve your scores so robotic delivery so speaking like a robot memorized answers so looking at a very very we'll not talk about it because I don't want to give you too many clues but memorizing an answer and giving a memorized answer instead of just a normal answer trying to impress the examiners so think about the things that people try and do to impress the examiners way too long and way too short okay so think about these it might be multiple ones or it might just be one but let's start with the first question and can I have your phone are you using your phone for the questions you can use it for that one just so I can see the the comments that people are making if you give me a first question and then you can begin what are your favorite websites my favorite website is IELTS Advantage because it helps me with my IELTS scores okay so that's the first one and what do you think would be the problem with that one so Justin asked me what's my favorite website and I said my favorite website is IELTS Advantage because it helps me with my IELTS scores which of these things do you think is the problem in the comments let me know okay so it's pretty obvious it's too short but why is that a problem so I mean the grammar was fine the vocabulary was fine the fluency was fine pronunciation was fine why is that a problem well you're not really giving the examiner enough to go on if you give a really really really short answer to a question and they're going to be they might ask you follow-up questions like why or can you you know asking you to develop your answer a little bit more that might put you off it might be like oh am I am I doing something wrong it'll cause extra stress you want to be developing your answer a little bit more than that now for part one you don't have to develop it much more than that but just giving one a one sentence answer wouldn't really be enough and you would have to add a little bit more detail or an explanation or example or something like that just to develop it a little bit more so that one was too short and you all got that one correct okay so this is going to be more difficult than I thought thought this is going to be really easy but trying to trying to answer a question and pretend to be someone else is more difficult than I thought all right so give me another one what's your favorite kind of weather favorite kind of weather okay my favorite kind of weather is cold weather because I do not like to be cold when I am cold I feel bad and I shiver because it is very cold I always like warm weather warm weather is nice that's why I like the summertime okay so in the comments what do you think about one was it my memorized answer trying to impress examiner too long too short robotic delivery what do you think have a look again in the comments trying to impress the examiner definitely not and do chances robotic delivery yeah so I mean this is not really a student's fault it can be a couple of things number one it can be because you're really stressed out and it is a very stressful exam obviously you you know you might have a lot of pressure in terms of it might cost you your job it might lead to your family being you know upset with you you might have a visa waiting for you it is a very very high stakes test so what happens is people just kind of climb up and speak in a very very robotic way and so that is a problem because you're not being as fluent as you could be also if you are so stressed out that you are speaking in that way then people tend to make in my experience more grammar and vocabulary mistakes because they're just not relaxed and speaking in a natural way and also sometimes it can cause pronunciation issues for the same reason because you're a lot of people when they're speaking in that way can speak in a very quiet way like inside their mouth is what how I always describe it rather than projecting their voice so it might make it a little bit difficult for the examiner so there's lots and lots of problems you can have there the other reason is a lot of people have been taught that the IELTS speaking test is a formal academic test and you should speak in a formal academic way it's not it's a speaking test about how you would speak to a normal person in a normal situation you're not going to speak in that overly formal overly academic robotic way because that's not how you would speak to someone like imagine if if Justin and I were having a meeting and I said like how's thing how was your weekend my weekend was good I went like he wouldn't really talk like that and so one of the key pieces of advice is just speak to my phone's going who's calling me um just speak to the examiner in the same way that you would speak to a friend or a colleague or a classmate or a teacher someone who you know when you're not speaking in a really really informal or formal way just in an in a normal way would be good okay another one what kind of things do you normally wear okay so you could say that I'm a real fashionista and I wouldn't really dress down once in a blue moon because I am a real fashion a holic and fashion is my life I would die for fashion so when I'm in the mood I go to the shopping center with my bodies and we buy the place out and we spend lots of money buying new clothes okay so in the comments what would you say is the problem there memorizing no I wouldn't say that was a memorize memorization Robin said trying to impress yeah so that person is trying to impress the examiner and what they're doing is they're just thinking of as many big words and idioms and you know fancy vocabulary as they can they they are not answering the question they're not thinking about answering the question they're approaching the test as if it is a vocabulary test it can also you can also try and impress examiner with fancy grammar structures and things like that but that person was principally thinking that the test wasn't a speaking test it was a vocabulary test and ignoring these things all right so when you're doing that when you're focusing just on vocabulary then you're not really focusing on being coherent and answering the question so there's a relationship between these two you shouldn't worry about these too much or sorry you should worry about these and you shouldn't worry about one more than the other because if you're going it's like for example if you are just focusing on grammar and being 100 accurate all the time then your fluency tends to go down all right because you you can't think of the perfect grammar every single sentence and hope to have really really good fluency same with your vocabulary if you're just focusing on vocabulary then your fluency and your coherence tend to be affected so there is a relationship between these two remember it's a speaking test and these are components of speaking it's not just a pronunciation test or just a vocabulary test or just a grammar test or just a fluency test so other so we talked about robotic delivery we talked about trying to impress examiner we've talked about being too short memorized answers this is when obviously you memorize an answer and this really tricks people big or trips people up because what you'll do is you'll memorize an answer for a common question like tell me about your hometown or describe your home or one of these what is your job do you what do you like to do in your free time so the memorize that answer and they'll give a normally a very very very very long answer to a question and I'm sure you've heard people do this what that means is two things normally so that will affect your coherence because you're not really answering the question because you'll ask someone like a really good example was on Friday I was working with a student and I asked them is your hometown a good place to grow up and they told me about the architecture in their hometown the transport system in their hometown their what else did they talk about education system like telling me everything about their hometown and I said to them you just memorized an answer and you about your hometown and you've given me that so that obviously affected their their coherence what will also happen when you memorize an answer is the examiner will not think oh my god this person is amazing the examiner will think this person has memorized an answer I'm pretty sure let's ask them a more difficult question or a question on a different topic or a follow-up question and see how they cope with that they'll ask you a different question and what people who memorize answers normally do is like I don't know how to answer that because it's not a memorize because I haven't memorized an answer so you're not fooling the examiner they're trained in these things they know what you're doing they do it for a job could someone come into your job and try and trick you on something as silly as that hopefully not so why do you think the examiners would fall for that you've just demonstrated that you you can't speak English you've demonstrated that you can memorize answers and give very very long answers but it's not a memorization test all right it's a speaking test so here's these common mistakes and let's look now at best practices so I'm not going to give you the best practices what I'm going to do is I'm going to ask Justin again to ask me some questions I'm going to pretend that I am a student in the test all right and I'm going to answer them as best I can demonstrate what I would do and then we're going to come up as a group in the comments you're going to tell me some of the things that you think I did right remember we're going to be basing everything on these pronunciation grammar vocabulary fluency and coherence so and compare them also with the bad examples that we showed you here okay and let me just have a look in the comments okay good question please examiner what's your favorite food I would have to say hands down my favorite food is steak so my wife cooks this for me every Friday normally I go for a workout I've been lifting weights and running around and I'm really really hungry so what I get is steak with chips mushrooms and onions and I just feel fantastic after I have that I normally have a little glass of red wine to go along with that as well so in the comments tell me some of the things that you think I did well and so how could we create some best practices in the comments and that wasn't like a by the way that wasn't a perfect answer or an answer that you should copy or an answer that you know that's the only way to answer that what's your favorite food there are a million ways you could answer that that could get you a band nine there are a million ways you could answer it to get you a band five the content wasn't important what we're trying to get are these best practices the things that you can learn from so that you can not copy that answer but model it and learn from it and okay so let me get my pen so natural so a lot of you are saying that the answer was too long there it's not really so what a lot of people learn from teachers and from online resources is that you should use a set number of sentences that like you should say three sentences or you should say a set number of words like it should be 50 words long that is not how you should think about it you should think about the answer as how can I answer this question naturally how if somebody asked me this question under normal circumstances how would I answer it don't be thinking of number of sentences or anything like that um so so a reason so put explanation here let's see so good coherence which I think what you mean is that I actually answered the question I got to the point and I answered it fully and so developed yeah good answers specific anything else okay so it's better to get like a rather than just give one answer I'll give a few different answers and then you can judge it's better to have a a good sample all right what kind of TV programs do you like to watch I love to watch US crime dramas so there's a few of those that I've really become addicted to in the past principally Sopranos the wire and Breaking Bad so these are all very very long series and and what I like about them is they're very episodic so that you can just go from episode to episode to episode and and it's try and watch like one or two a night but sometimes it goes a little bit over that because they are very very addictive so again from that what would you say are the good things that you could use to model as well someone said the idea generation was good I wouldn't really say idea generation for the speaking test so much because remember part one is about you you can't get it wrong so you're not thinking of an idea like making something up really what you're doing is just talking honestly about what you're like that was my favorite food that were those were the my favorite TV programs and those are much much easier to talk about than to make something up like to generate ideas sometimes you'll have to do that and but most of the time it's better just to speak naturally a little pause for thinking yeah so fluency does not mean speaking without pausing ever you do need to think all right and it is better to think for a couple of seconds and then give your answer than to immediately begin talking and then get lost and you know so I don't think it's you know mandatory for you to think at the beginning I don't think that that's a best practice but I think the point I'm trying to make is fluency does not mean that you never pause you it's a bad fluency is when you're pausing at an unnatural rate examples I'm fluent okay okay so I'll give one more example and then we can talk about what I did I use too many apps I use hundreds of apps actually recently what I've been trying to do is to make my phone a lot healthier for a more to make me more productive so what I mean by that is in the past I had a lot of social media apps such as Facebook Instagram YouTube and that wasted a huge amount of time so I deleted all of those from my phone and now I use apps that can track my number of steps that I'm taking my sleep general exercise calorie intake things like that and so that will help me improve in the future rather than just waste time with apps that don't really improve my life at all okay so again what do you think about that one so all of them all of them have some some common things all right and that's what you want to do you don't want to be copying the content or thinking this is exactly what he said or this is exactly what he did just think about the common things amongst them so definitely a lot of you talked about that they were natural and and yes these are about me there are questions that are asking about me there when you are in the test they're asking about you so just ask them naturally or answer them naturally and that is going to help your fluency but I also think it helps your grammar your pronunciation and your vocabulary as well because you're not thinking too much because it's just easier to talk about yourself and to talk naturally and also I wasn't talking in a very robotic way I wasn't trying to impress the examiner I wasn't trying to insert lots of fancy words or anything like that I was just speaking obviously I'm a native English speaker so that obviously helps and but as a if you're needed if you need a seven or above you should be at a high level of English anyway so just speaking in the same way as imagine you it's your first day of a new class and you're speaking to your your classmates how would you answer those questions and I so a lot of you talked about the questions are developed I gave some explanations some examples again going back to this answering it naturally I don't think it is a good idea to answer part one questions in a very formulaic way what do I mean by that so what a lot of people will do is suggest that you like answer and then explanation and then example like that is a very very formulaic way of answering a question can that help you sure it can't help you but does that mean do you answer questions in your native language in that way like imagine you're speaking to your brother your sister or your friend tonight and they asked you what's your favorite tv program or what's your favorite food you wouldn't think like my favorite food is steak explain explain you know okay it's my favorite food because blah blah blah example last week I you wouldn't really do that does that mean that you should never use explanations and examples no but just have them as like tools in your toolkit you can use them to help you help you do that all right just and having a little problem so explanations and examples think about it when you're developing things think about but I need I need to give the examiner enough information so that they can understand what I think about this but don't think about it in a formulaic way like it like a mathematical formula you can add a little bit more detail add an explanation add an example but not in a formulaic way hopefully that makes sense coherence so that's related to I developed the answer and I answered the specific question all right so you when they ask you about your favorite food tell them about your favorite food they ask you about apps talk about apps answer the specific question that they're asking you and also again developing it will help with your coherence now I'm a native English speaker so I don't want to say my grammar was great or my vocabulary was great because I was you know born speaking English obviously as well with fluency so we're not want to talk about too much about those I'm not going to pat myself on the back by saying my English is great when I'm a native English speaker of course but the more what what you will find there was I didn't try and focus on using really really impressive grammar impressive vocabulary what I did was just answer the questions naturally and by doing that the grammar and the vocabulary and the fluency just flowed from that if your grammar and your vocabulary and your fluency is good enough and you just answer the questions naturally these will take care of themselves but if you go into okay he asked me about my favorite food what's what are some big adjectives I can think of or what are some idioms I can use then your fluency is going to suffer because you're thinking way too much and you're probably going to make lots of grammar and vocabulary mistakes because you'll be thinking about grammar and vocabulary that's beyond your level that you're not able to use yet so use the grammar and vocabulary that you are comfortable using to fluently develop your answer and then everything kind of looks after itself pronunciation will not talk about that because I'm a native English speaker and I obviously hopefully my pronunciation is okay so let me have a quick look at the comments good all right so what we're going to do now is I'm going to give you a free topics and sample answers download so you can do one of two things and either you can google our website IELTS Advantage and go to this speaking part one section and you'll find it or you can just click the link in the comments that just or the IELTS Advantage is commenting now let's have a look if we go here it's called IELTS Speaking Topics so you can google that or just click the link and if you comment here speaking part one download your free PDF guide so you can just click that enter your name enter your email and I believe that it just downloads automatically or is sent to your email as well and so what you'll get there are lots and lots of sample answers and sample questions common topics again you're not going to copy these these are not so you can copy them these are not so you can take the you know the even taking the vocabulary and stuff what you can learn from it but you're not going to answer it like this because it's about you you're going to answer them based on you and your experience because that's what it's about you're not going to copy someone else but these will give you a good idea and you can also relate it back to these best practices talking about you know development and you know how I answered the questions so that will help you out so the link is if you're watching the recording of this it's in either at the top or if you're watching on youtube it'll be in the description you'll find it if you look for it and you can download that and have a look what I would suggest you do with these is an exercise you can do is take each of the questions and just write them down on a piece of paper or have it on your phone or something like that and look at each question and answer it how you would answer it and then record yourself and then listen back and think about the best practices and the the common mistakes that people make and you can critique your own work and get better on your own and do some practice at home and if you do that you'll really really improve so I hope you enjoy that on Wednesday we will look at part two which is a lot trickier than part one part one's really just easing you into the into the test and part two is a little bit more tricky so join us at 1 pm UK time on Facebook and on Wednesday and we'll look at part two so let me have a quick check see if there are any a lot of you are asking how can I improve speaking can I work with you can I you know can you help can you critique my speaking if you do want help with speaking or writing or listening or anything um I think you know an easy way to do this just comment speaking in the comments if you want one of our team to contact you um and to talk about how we might be able to help you with your speaking and they'll just send you a message on messenger can't guarantee that we'll be able to help everybody but if you do that just comment speaking and either on Facebook or if you're watching this on YouTube just comment the word speaking and we will um we'll get in touch with you thank you very much guys hope that you join us on Wednesday and hope that you find that useful and give us some feedback on the lesson if there was something that you liked tell us if there's something that you didn't like tell us if there's something extra that you need feel free to tell us and it's always good to get feedback and these lessons are free all we ask is that you give it a like or say thank you in the comments and that's all we ask for thank you very much guys see you on Wednesday bye bye