 Hey everyone, Chris here from IELTS Advantage and in this lesson we're going to answer a student question and it reads, how do we develop our ideas when dealing with an unfamiliar topic during the speaking exam? So this is a very common fear that a lot of students have so we're going to help you with this. So what we're going to do is look at three reasons why you should not worry too much about this. The reason why we're including this one is a lot of people get very stressed about this and that can seep into other parts of your performance and kind of lower your score if you're really really stressed out. So we're going to look at why this is not as big of a worry as you think it is and then two strategies for coping with unfamiliar topics during the speaking test. So first reason why you should not worry too much about this is it is very very unlikely to happen. Where this fear comes from is students go online and they Google IELTS speaking questions and they find fake questions. All right so fake questions are created by people who don't really know what they're doing and if you go and look at real speaking questions, if you go and look at the Cambridge online or look at any of the Cambridge books, the vast majority of questions are on things that you should be familiar with and you should be able to talk about but if you look online and look at fake questions you're going to find lots of questions on crazy topics that you don't know nothing about and if you focus on the worst possible scenario you might fail. What do I mean by that? So let's say you thought that if you leave your house a bus might hit you. So is that likely? Not really. Could it happen? Yeah people get hit by buses but if you spend your whole time worrying about the worst possible thing that could happen then you're not really focusing on improving. You're not really focusing on the things that are going to really help you in the speaking test. The same thing is like if you go on holiday your plane might crash, planes do crash sometimes but it's highly highly highly unlikely to happen to you but that could ruin your holiday because you're so afraid of getting on the plane and then you're so afraid of getting back that you don't really enjoy your holiday. The same thing if you're worried about the worst thing that can possibly happen then you're spending all that time worrying rather than focusing on things that will actually help you improve your score like pronunciation and fluency and grammar and vocabulary. The things that really do matter. So focus and try and be positive that the majority of the questions will be fine. I promise you. Number two the second reason why you shouldn't worry too much about this is you're being judged on your whole performance. You're going to be asked a bunch of questions in part one. You're going to be asked one question in part two and you're going to be asked quite a few questions in part three. The examiner is not giving you a score based on your worst answer. The examiner is giving you a score based on your whole performance your total performance and one poor answer or an answer that you feel uncomfortable giving or you don't know enough about that topic. Don't worry too much about that because everybody has a poor answer. Everybody gets questions that they are not that comfortable with. That's why the examiner bases his or her, bases the score that you get on the whole performance. So if you get one question like that don't worry too much about it. And number three it's not a knowledge test. So a lot of you talk about what if I don't know anything about this topic or that topic. It's not a topic test. It's not a knowledge test. It's not an IQ test. It's a speaking test. Alright what are the examiners thinking about? They're thinking about your grammar. They're thinking about your vocabulary. They're thinking about your pronunciation and they're thinking about your fluency and coherence. Nothing in here, nothing that they're going to give you a score on is related to knowledge or topics or content or anything related to that. And the strategies that I'll give you now allow you, even if you know nothing about that topic, to be fluent and to demonstrate good pronunciation and good grammar and good vocabulary. So you don't need to worry about this as much as you think. So let's now look at the two strategies. There's two possible strategies. Imagine that the examiner asks you a question you know nothing about it or you think you know nothing about it. So one is to be open and honest that you know nothing about it. Some people really like that strategy and others that I work with they like to just make up a story. They and we'll talk about each of these and the strengths and weaknesses of each of these. So a lot of the questions even though they're kind of designed for everybody you might get a question that's just not applicable to you whatsoever. I work with a lot of students from the Middle East and some of the questions just simply do not apply to them. For example, I had one student who I was working with and one of the questions was it was a part two question and it was on tell me about a music concert and she just explained I'm from Saudi Arabia. I've lived in Saudi Arabia my whole life because of my religion. I don't go to music concerts and then she went on to explain what it was about her religion that she couldn't go to music concerts and then she said if I could go to a music concert I would like to go to this one and that one and she spoke for two minutes about the fact that she couldn't go to a music concert because of her cultural background and and her religion. So even though she couldn't technically answer the question and couldn't technically talk about that it was absolutely fine and no examiner if you are open and honest and just tell them full and give them the reason why you know nothing about that then that will be fine remember you're not being judged on one answer you're being judged on the whole thing and it's impossible for you for every question to be like I know nothing about that so just be open and honest about it but there's two ways that you can do that one very effective way and one that's not effective. Some people are open and honest and just say I know nothing about that topic all right that's not so good all right if you just say I don't know or I don't know anything about that topic again you're not really demonstrating any grammar any vocabulary or fluency or pronunciation because you're not giving the examiner enough to go on but if you say I don't know anything about that topic and then elaborate on that in the same way that my student did that when she knew nothing about music concerts and explained why and really developed her answer doing that and that was absolutely fine. Other students are more comfortable just making up a story some people are natural storytellers and some people like doing that they like inventing a story and it's not lying and you know the the high old speaking test is not a lie detector test you're not talking to the police and it's not an honesty test you can make up a story remember what you are doing is you are demonstrating that you can speak English fluency pronunciation grammar and vocabulary whether that's the truth or not it doesn't really matter the examiner is not going to like wait there I'm going to check whether what you said is true or not they don't care however this one making up a story some people are not comfortable with this at all they are just not used to telling a story they're not used to inventing things and they're not comfortable with that other people who I work with are very very comfortable with that in fact even if they do have a real story they actually prefer to make up a novel story a false story so those are the two strategies though those are very easy to use either be open and honest but develop your reasoning and explain why you can't answer that or just make up a story the example I had here was I was working with a Vietnamese student and the question was about a gap year and in Vietnam it's just not very common to go on a gap year the year between ending high school and going to university here in Ireland and the UK it's very very common for people to take a gap year but in Vietnam there was there they're just they don't do it that much some people do but very rare so the Vietnamese student he was a natural storyteller and he just made up a whole story about him going to Europe and traveling and he talked about going to London because he liked Harry Potter and he went to Ireland because he likes the Game of Thrones where it's filmed and all of these things just made it up and was very fluent and demonstrated that he could talk about it and what I would recommend doing is try and find some questions or you could do this with a partner try and find some questions on topics that you're not very comfortable using or not very comfortable talking about try being open and honest and just say I don't know anything about that and developing it or try making up a story and see which one you you feel most comfortable with it's always best to tell the truth just use this as a last resort but as I already mentioned it's for these reasons it's actually very unlikely to happen so don't worry too much about it hey Chris here again hopefully you enjoyed that video if you want more videos here are some for you here on the screen and don't forget to like and subscribe hopefully see you again soon bye bye