IELTS Exam:

IELTS Tips for Speaking
Tip 1 Part of the reason they start the speaking test with 'giving personal information' is to put students at their ease, so the examiner gets a chance to see what students are capable of during the test. Therefore students should just relax and answer the questions as naturally as possible. 

Tip 2 Students shouldn't just provide one-word answers, but it isn't necessary to stretch one question out to the whole 4 or 5 minutes either. Extended speaking is tested in Part Two of the speaking paper. In other words, the answer to 'Do you have any brothers or sisters?’ is not 'Yes', but it isn't 'My eldest sister is 5 foot 2 inches tall and her birthday is 7 weeks after mine….' either. Again, be natural.

Tip 3 Students should remember that the different parts of the speaking test do not have separate marks, so it isn't the end of the world if they start slowly just as long as they have showed what they can do by the end of the test.

Tip 4 The examiner has had a long hard day, and is human too- so be interesting!

Tip 5 A good warmer, and practice for providing interesting extended answers to the questions, is getting students to ask their partners exactly the same question over and over again. Each time they answer the question, students should give a different response. For example,

A:' Where are you from?'
B: 'Seaford'

A:' Where are you from?'

B: 'A small town on the south coast of England'

A: 'Where are you from?'

B: 'A really boring place to grow up' Etc.

Tip 6 Another good practice activity for this is to have play the ‘Don’t answer yes or no’ game. Basically, one student sits in front of the class and answers all the questions the other students ask them. If they say ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ at any time they are out, and another student takes their place. The winning student is the one who stays there the longest.

Tip 7 A simpler warmer is just getting students to question each other in detail about a different one of the possible topics at the beginning of each lesson.

Tip 8 Getting students to concentrate on communicatively important things such as keeping eye contact and not fidgeting can help some students by taking their attention off the actual language they are using.

Tip 9 A range of times and tenses may come up in this part, and it a good opportunity for students to show they can talk about the past, present and future as the topics are less demanding than in the other parts of the speaking exam.