Spoken performance enhancers

Here is a nice little video series pointing out how to respond correctly on your spoken examination. (Note: I was not able to find all videos in this series, so what you see here is just parts 4, 5 and 7.)

Spot the mistakes in this student's speaking response

This student makes a number of mistakes in here response. Can you spot a few areas?

IELTS Speaking - Can you spot a few areas where this student could improve?

Take a look at this video. This student performs pretty well, but there are some areas in need of improvement.

Positive:
-very few hesitations
-no bad pauses
-no short answers or unnecessarily long answers
-very natural use of English idioms and phrases

Negative:
-a few grammatical errors
-she gets tongue-tied at moments

Qualifying words

For those of you looking to improve your writing and reading, take note of some of these alternative ways to describe the quality of something.

Time/Rate of occurrence	Never, rarely, seldomly, once in a blue moon, occasionally, sometimes, often, next to always, always, without fail
Conditional	Only, except, if, on the condition that, provided that
Order	Before, after, first, second, third, final, last
People	Women, men, male, female, professional
Negative	Non-, un-, not, no
Quantity	Surpassing, over, under, few, too much, too little, not enough
Supporting/Refuting	Anti-, but, yet, however, on the other hand, with this, in favour of
Possibility	May, might, could, potentially, possibly, probably, must, certainly
Importance	Necessary to, need to, ought to, have to
Comparison	More ... than, bigger, smaller
Additional info	Further, in addition, also, as well

Two common mistakes made by IELTS exam takers (speaking section)

I can't tell you how many times I've seen IELTS students use sentences like:

"He told me you are smart."

Please don't become a victim of bad spoken grammar habits.

My hat goes off to Rebecca, who makes a very nice summary of reported speech here. I've also included another video of hers regarding speaking about future events. Commit these two tips to memory and practice them daily as you train.

Learn English and Study ESL Online: Intermediate Listening

Good pauses!

Here is a vid that exemplifies good pausing. As you can see, the exam taker takes a brief second after each question to respond. This makes her look relaxed, confident and much more fluent than a speaker who tries to answer too quickly or who pauses with 'um'.