Candid Comments

  • Don’t EVER develop that habit. Spouting fancy words and expressions when you are rather obviously limited in your speaking ability is a dead giveaway. The examiners are trained to catch fakes. Believe me, you will end up using those words/phrases/proverbs/idioms etc. in ways that are incorrect and inappropriate. You will also make grammatical mistakes and commit errors of syntax along the way. All in all, it will be painfully obvious that your level of English proficiency is not what you desperately want the interviewer to believe.
  • Answers should be spontaneous and, therefore, original in that sense. Don’t focus on content. Just make sure that your response is relevant to the question asked. Don’t ramble aimlessly. At the same time, don’t sound abrupt. Briefly include the ‘why’ of every question in your response. Don’t worry too much about grammatical accuracy. As long as we can understand what you are saying, as long as grammatical issues do not prevent me from understanding your meaning, you are safe. It is fluency which matters more. Sounds strange, but that is the way it is. If you are at a 5.5 level in speaking, it’s quite possible to make a 1-band jump through one month’s practice in this way. 30 minutes but every day – this is all that you need to get a 6.5 in Speaking.
  • Avoid ‘learning’ how to speak. Speak like the way we do – concise yet comprehensive; relevant though not abrupt; entertaining while not rambling and going off-track.

 

Instead,

Speak daily with a partner (friend/relative/sibling): 20 minutes/day should be more than enough. Let him/her ask you some IELTS questions and you just answer them the way you are supposed to.

Also, at the back of every test provided in those Cambridge IELTS sample papers, you will find a full page dedicated to Speaking. Books 5 through 17 supplies 40 complete IELTS tests. From here you source 40 pages of Speaking questions. The Cambridge Official Guide provides 8 more pages of Speaking questions.

Apart from these, go to IELTS Preparation: Free Tips, Lessons & English and look up under the Speaking sub-menu to find even more practice questions arranged by section. Ignore sample responses. Because they are not yours.

 

Q: How to generate content for my responses, Samit? 

A: Ah! Maybe. . .next week?

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