Every one can get Band 9 — IELTS Speaking Band 8.5 — How do I prepare the speaking part?

It is a long article, and I hope you find it useful to help you get what you need for your IELTS speaking.

Step 1: Start from the Band Descriptors — Know your goals

It is very important to know the band descriptors in order to get a desirable bankd in IELT, which you can find it via: SPEAKING: Band Descriptors (public version). If the link doesn’t work, just google search the keywords, IELTS speaking band descriptors.

There are many articles online explaining to IELTS candidates about how the final result of your speaking band is calculated, so I wouldn’t elaborate too much. In a short answer, your speaking band is an average of your score in four catogories, which are Fluency and Coherence, Lexical Resources, Grammatical range and accuracy and Pronouciation. These four criteria are assessed and graded separately. If you aim at getting band 6 in Speaking, I’d suggest you aim at getting 6 in all four criteria.

Some people might argue that they might be strong in two areas, but weak in the other two. As the result is calculated by their average, it will work if the candidate gets 5 in two categories and 7 in the other two. This will work. Mathematically. However, if we take a closer look at the matrix, we will find it rarely works in reality. Let’s have an example here:

e.g. Part 3 question: What makes a good painting?

I think… I think… a good painting is made of good, very good details. And the… the painter is ummmm.. good at his or her work. And so the painting has many colours and beautiful, because you know the painter practises a lot… The pictures have meanings and great to enjoy.

This answer might be graded at 5 in Fluency and Coherence, Lexical Resources. The candidate has repeated themselves a couple of times, and in real life, such fluency will affect the audience’s understanding of the speech. The candidate has attempted to use different words in the given topic, such as painter, work, meanings etc, however, there’s still a limited flexibility in their vocabulary use. Let’s say this person does get band 7 in the other two criteria, Grammatical range and accuracy and Pronunciation. This candidate doesn’t make many grammatical mistakes, and let’s assume their pronunciation is quite good. Do you think, with the language capability that they have shown in the given example, they can really sustain their performance at the band (5,5,7,7) in every question and part in the IELTS speaking test? I’d say, it’s hardly possible. Language is a combination of everything, including grammatical accuracy, vocabulary range, fluency, pronunciation etc. Yes, the test is graded separately, but your language skills will hardly have huge differences in each criterion. For who those can speak with fabulous vocabulary, but cannot form them in a grammatically correct order, they will not make sense to others. In addition, if the candidate gets any topics that they don’t really know or have much to talk about, I don’t think they can sustain their result in each and every question. The IELTS speaking test lasts for 9–14 minutes. I have timed myself each time I went into the test, it’s around 9–12 minutes. It seems short if the time is given for you to watch a video, but it’s awfully long in a test room. The nerve-racking test will affect your language performance, which is especially the case when you are using your second or even fourth language, English. IELTS is not a very affordable test, and I really hope that every one can get their wanted band at their first attempt. If you are reading or researching articles around IELTS preparation, I would suggest you reach the band you want in every criterion, so that you can get what you need for your speaking band. For me, I wanted a Band 8 in speaking. When I was preparing, I always prepared myself at Band 8 in each criterion. And, I got 8.5 at the end.

Step 2: Start from the Band Descriptors — Know where you are

There are IELTS official videos online that show you what a band 6,7,8,9 speaking candidate’s language performance is. The playlist link is: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLSAx4faA_rjNEb16E7FGDnQTSn9dAuDPv. Or, go to Youtube channel and search “IELTS officials”. The playlist is called “Speaking Test Samples”. Please always use the official sources in your exam preparation. IELTS is a big language business with many people making money out of it. There’re many so-called IELTS experts, which I respect and believe they’re experts, but they are not IELTS authorities. When we are preparing for the exam, we search for the authorities.

The videos will help you understand the descriptors. If your goal is 6, I would still recommend you watch the Band 7 and above. It is because the band descriptors are written as a learning trajectory. If you know how is a better language performance is, you are more likely to improve. Call me ambitious, but I don’t ever think that a score should limit any learners. It is especially the case for this test, as it is not for selecting purposes — it might be used as one of the selection criteria in some scenarios, but for knowing how your English language skill is. Band 9 is not something miracle. To me Band 9 means that although English is not your first language (or for some people it is), you can still use it as if you are the native language user, who can use and consume the language for academic or general uses. Everyone has a chance to reach Band 9, with your time, practice, and efforts.

After you have learnt how to read the band descriptors and graded the official videos, you need to know where you are at. Find a time and space for yourself that you are ready and no one will interrupt you, find 8 part-1 questions, 1 part-2 question and 8 part-3 questions. Ask yourself those questions and record your answer. With the audio of your own, you are going to grade it. It is hard to judge your own work, but try to take it as one of the official videos that you’ve practised. Be honest and see where you are. It’ll be where you start at.

After knowing where you’re at the moment, you are going to find out what you need by studying the bands above. The steps are:

1- Highlight the difference

It’s one of the learning tips that teachers will use every day. With a rubric or matrix, which is like the band descriptor in IELTS, teachers will highlight what the students’ have shown or not on the assessment matrix, and determine which grade/score they can get.

Let’s use the old example again here:

e.g. Part 3 question: What makes a good painting?

I think… I think… a good painting is made of good, very good details. And the… the painter is ummmm.. good at his or her work. And so the painting has many colours and beautiful, because you know the painter practises a lot… The pictures have meanings and great to enjoy.

With the audio you have recorded, you may highlight your performance as below:

How you might highlight your speaking based on the audio

Please note, you need to assess your skills based on the whole audio instead of only one piece, as this is how the assessor is going to grade you in the exam. For the purpose of showing you an example, I’ve only used one piece of work to demonstrate.

Step 3: Write down your plan

The candidate is currently at Band 5 in Fluency and Coherence, and Lexical resource, and will need to study the Bands above:

Please see the red circles

In Band 6, I have highlighted using red circles the learning goals for the candidate:

Fluency and Coherence:

• is willing to speak at length
• use connectives and discourse markers

Lexical Resource:

• have enough vocabulary to discuss the topic at length
• make meaning clear

Both areas require the candidate to speak at length. One focuses on how speech is connected and more coherent, the other one focuses on the range of vocabulary that can make clear meanings of the speakers’ thoughts and ideas. This also echoes with what I explained in the Tip 1:

a) Language is a combination of everything, including grammatical accuracy, vocabulary range, fluency, pronunciation etc. Yes, the test is graded separately, but one’s language skills will hardly have huge differences in each criterion

b) If you aim at getting band 6 in Speaking, I’d suggest you aim at getting 6 in all four criteria.

Again, Language skills are developed in every aspect.

From here, the candidate will see what their learning goal is:

• Speaking at length

through the success criteria:

1. Having connectives to make speech fluent and coherent
2. Building up vocabularies in topics

Speaking at length is your learning goal, and the following two criteria are how you are going to achieve your goal. Therefore, the following criteria are what you’ll work on.

A learning plan will be:

• Learning connectives: what are they? how do I use them?

If you search “Connectives in English”, you will see lists and posters of them. It will take quite long to master everything. Think about your first language, do you have connectives, do you use every single of them in everyday speaking? In mine, I don’t. What I will do here is to choose a comprehensive poster or list, here I’ve found one: https://www.grammarbank.com/connectives-list.html It shows you how to use the common connectives in English. Read the article and build an understanding of what connectives are, why English speakers use them, when and how. After that, I will tick the things that I already know how to use. Here, I will listen to my audio again, to make sure I do know how to use them and I have used them when I am speaking English.

e.g. Part 3 question: What makes a good painting?

I think… I think… a good painting is made of good, very good details. And (√) the… the painter is ummmm.. good at his or her work. And so the painting has many colours and beautiful, because (√) you know the painter practises a lot… The pictures have meanings and great to enjoy.

I will then highlight the connectives that I think will be useful. Again, listen to your audio, how would you use the connectives in the article to improve your speech. Here, you might want to type your speech and re-write so you can see how you can improve upon your speech.

Here’s my re-writing:

Great paintings are made of details. The painter is skillful and good at his or her work. A good piece of painting is also beautiful, so it is enjoyable. This means that the artist practises a lot and knows how to express themselves through arts. Besides the beauty of each great painting, they should also be meaningful. It is because art is an expression, and artists are experts when it comes to expressing through their pens and brushes.

The reason for re-writing your speech is that we cannot hold everything in our brain, especially around the things we are not good at. We have already identified that we need to work on our connectives, which means this is the area we are currently not strong. By writing and re-writing, we can see, think, work upon to get better. Speaking is not exactly like writing, but writing can be used as a tool to scaffold us to a higher level. From the highlighted parts in our re-written paragraph, we can clearly see what we can improve.

Going back to our learning plan:

Learning goal is:

• Speaking at length

through the success criteria:

1. Having connectives to make speech fluent and coherent
2. Building up vocabularies in topics

Through analysing the learning needs of connectives, we see that once we have better knowledge of connectives, our speech will be longer, and more coherent. For the part of fluency, it’s all about practice. Through practice, we can become more familiar with the use of connectives, and we will become fluent and confident when speaking at length. Whenever we are practising speaking components in IELTS, we will need to record and purposefully use the connectives that we have found from the list. With time, effort and practice, I am sure we will achieve the first success criteria.

Now, let’s work on the second part of the success criteria, Building up vocabularies in topics.

Everyone is knowledgeable in some areas. Think about what you’re interested in, in which area(s) you have good vocabulary range. Similarly, what you don’t have much understanding/knowledge/vocabulary about. For me, I don’t know much about design and astronomy. There’re topics around sky and interior design, which I didn’t have much to say. What I did is:

1. list what questions you would have in the areas you don’t know much
2. search for possible IELTS questions in the areas
3. try to answer the questions in 1 & 2 in English. When you feel you are struggling to explain yourself in English, write down what you wanted to say in your first language.
4. with the questions you have and IELTS usually asks, search them in English on Google or other searching engines.

Before you start reading the articles online (step 4), you should have done step 3: try to answer the questions in 1 & 2 in English. When you feel you are struggling to explain yourself in English, write down what you wanted to say in your first language. It is an important step, as it ensures you have a goal when reading the articles. There might be thousands of articles on the top

There’ll be articles that people have posted around the topics and questions. From reading them, you can note down how the author uses words and phrases to explain themselves and discuss the topic. This works better than learning vocabulary lists, as those lists are dry and don’t give you much context. Yes, the lists are comprehensive, but I am not sure if English users use those words every day. More importantly, I would like to know how I can use them in a natural speech in the right context. In saying that, a vocabulary list is valuable. It will directly guide you when you are only short of one or two words, which you can also use to search for articles. Articles will give you more insights than a long list. I remember that I was struggling about the topic of cinemas and movies. Some questions were, what your favourite genre of movies is and why people enjoy watching comedies. I search “genres of movies’ ‘, “vocabulary list about movies and cinemas”. From the result, I noted some words that I didn’t know in speaking (there are some words that I would understand in reading, but couldn’t produce in speech, which is an experience I think many multiple language users would echo with). Then, I searched the question “why do people enjoy watching comedies” “Why do people enjoy watching funny movies’ ‘. From the results, I can see many discussions from great writers. Such focused reading will build up my knowledge highly efficiently.

Step 4: Practise-Record-Reflect: Cycle these until you’re happy about your performance

This is the last step you need to do. It will be wonderful if you have a friend who you know is better in English speaking (native or not) can listen to your practice and give you feedback. From what I know, many IELTS candidates prepare their exams by themselves. In this case, your recorder will be your best friends. Don’t feel you are less adequate than those who can have someone to practise with them. My reasons are:

1. if your kind friends are at the same level as you in English speaking, they are less likely to give you effective feedback to help you.
2. Native speakers who don’t major in language or education are less likely to provide constructive feedback.
3. Under the boredom and anxiety of IELTS preparation, you are very likely to start chatting with your friends rather than focusing on the preparation — Small chats are only assessed in part 1; and you do need consolidated language skills in the following 2 parts.

However, if you have finished the previous preparation steps — you have studied the band descriptors, where you are at the moment, and vocabularies and topic-related arguments/ideas, you are great enough to be your own IELTS preparation partner.

What I do every night when preparing IELTS speaking is：

1- get the possible topics ready — I would prepare them in advance rather than researching while practising to reduce distraction

2- start answering the questions — if I couldn’t find the words to explain myself, I will check them up using a dictionary (I’d recommend Longman Online Dictionary: https://www.ldoceonline.com/, because it provides example clauses).

3- after you have sorted the basic vocabulary and had ideas, get your recorder ready and record your answer.

4-listen to the audio. You might want to get your highlighted descriptors (step 2) ready to assess if you have reached your desired level. If you do, Congrats！ Move on to the next question！ If not, be honest and in which area you need to practise more. Language is a skill, which will be improved by using it. Hence, intentional practices will make you successful. When reflecting upon the audio, I’d be specific and provide possible solutions. For example, I have written “too many ‘I think’, especially at the start”. This is the area I want to improve, and the solution I wrote was “start with ideas and statement sentences instead of ‘I think’. ” Then, I answered and recorded the same question again. 80%, I would make the same mistake again, because I was so used to the language pattern. The pattern has been established for years, and it would take some time to start a new one. And again, I am clear that the language skill will be sharpened by intentional practising. Therefore, I practise again, not using the fillers at the start in my case.

I wouldn’t record every practising piece. Recording is just a tool so that I can listen and reflect. When I know the very specific area that I’d want to practise, I don’t record. Like the example I gave, the ‘I think’ issue I had (I sometimes still say it in my everyday speaking), I’d just be mindful if I can finish the whole answer by not saying the phrase. I will record until I know I have made some changes and I am ready. Similarly, I wouldn’t record if I was just practising the pronunciation of a word. I would only record when I am ready to produce a whole answer at my best capability. In this way, I stay focused on practising instead of recording.

Conclusion:

I was confused and mad during my exam preparation. I had been distracted by the noise and negative vibe from the internet, from other exam candidates, venting about how terrible the test is. However, I have to admit, my English skills have been improved a lot when preparing for the test.

The learning of the band descriptors (the first step) has built my foundation linguistic knowledge of the English language in a systematic way. I have learnt to assess my language skills in the second step at the comfort at my home, without going through too many tests by the IELTS exams which are expensive. The independent learning skills that I have sharpened in the third step are vital to my whole-life language learning, which I hope you can benefit from it rather than reciting vocabulary lists or paying too much to those who makes money in the red ocean of IELTS business. Last but not least, my step 4. It has been my study magic for years, and I hope it gives you power.

Good luck everyone, you will get the band you need.