Part 2 speaking practice – tell a story

In this post I am going to give you the chance to listen to and learn from one of my former students doing part 2 speaking in IELTS. I also give you some handy tips and a practice exercise to improve your own speaking and your fluency in particular. This matters because if you are sufficiently fluent and coherent, the examiner is quite likely to miss many of your mistakes in grammar and vocabulary.

One fluent approach – tell a story

The first version you are going to listen to is extremely fluent. How is this done? By telling a story. Here are some reasons why I suggest story telling works well:

1. it’s natural: many people enjoy telling stories and find it quite easy. When you are under stress in the exam, doing the easy thing is normally good advice
2. it’s interesting: examiners like to be interested and hate getting “learned” answers. Make the examiner like you and you are half way there
3. stories tend to give you interesting vocabulary. You start to use a greater variety of words to describe things. Variety is good
4. stories are great for fluency: you just keep adding more detail

Listen and learn

This is an extremely good answer from one of my former students. She got a 9 in speaking, so don’t worry if you’re not quite as good!

How to do this – who/where/what/why/when

If you think you have nothing to say, ask yourself the who/where/what/when questions. Try to think detail, don’t just give short answers. Look at this example when she talks about when she met her friend. She doesn’t just say at Christmas but:

I remember this particular instance. It must have been Christmas, or around Christmas anyway because we had this massive Christmas tree and she came over and it must have been early/mid afternoon…..

This is highly fluent and contains some excellent spoken language: “this particular instance” “massive” “early/mid afternoon”.

How to do this – and

Spoken language is simple language. If you try and use complex linking structures, you only make life difficult for yourself. So do the simple thing and use “and”. Count the number of times she uses “and”. I lost count.

How to do this – close your eyes and see the picture – don’t make notes

Some people are much better visual thinkers than linguistic thinkers. One trick I have tried with my students is getting them to close their eyes before they speak and not make notes. It may sound silly but it can work. If you see a picture, you know how to describe it. If you see a blank piece of paper, you see a blank piece of paper with no notes on it. Frightening. Try it. You may be surprised.

How to do it – practise well – as easy as 1-2-3 or 3-2-1

If you go to my IELTS speaking practice page, you will find some practice cue cards. Here is one way to use them, if you have a group of friends. Don’t try and speak for 2 minutes on your own.

1. chat with a friend (or to yourself) for 1 minute about the topic
2. then chat with another friend (or to yourself) for 2 minutes about the topic
3. then try 3 minutes

Each time you do this, you should find you have more to say. you become fluent as the words are already there. But you also need to be coherent, so do the same thing in reverse. This time speaking by yourself, ie;

1. 3 minutes by yourself about the topic
2. 2 minutes by yourself about the topic
3. then 1 minute

Each time you repeat yourself now, you will need to speak much more efficiently, or coherently, in order to say everything in time. Try it. It works. Promise.

Get more free speaking lessons

You might also be interested in:

• Organising your talk in part 2
• Understanding IELTS speaking – think real life situations
• Eye contact and IELTS interview technique
• Find your perfect IELTS speaking partner
• Improve your IELTS speaking skills – 10 tips

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