Tuesday, November 30, 2010

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.)





Monday, November 29, 2010

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?

Sunday, November 28, 2010

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

Friday, November 26, 2010

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

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

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.


Tuesday, November 2, 2010

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'.