Opinion vocabulary for IELTS speaking

The language of opinions is vital in IELTS speaking. This post gives you some practical advice in a 3 step programme so that you can use it better. You will also find a simple – but very effective – practice resource to download or print off to help you do this.

Step 1 – know when you can use opinion vocabulary – think

Sometimes it’s not immediately obvious the examiner is asking you for your opinion. The question will not always contain the words “Do you think…?”. Look at these examples:

• “Would you say it’s an easy job?”
• “What’s the hardest part of your job?”
• “Do you like your subject?”
• “Is it easy to travel to and from your home?”

In each case you should be thinking about using the language of opinions. You need to see that the questions could be:

• “Do you think it’s an easy job?”
• “What do you think is the hardest part of your job?”
• “Do you think your subject is interesting?”
• “Do you think that it’s easy to travel to and from your home?”

Tip: this needs some practice to get right – not all the questions are opinion questions. I suggest you find some IELTS speaking questions or go to my speaking resource page and see which questions you can rewrite with “Do you think?”

Step 2 – learn to extend your answer – why

Of course it’s not enough just to use the opinion vocabulary: you also need to say a little bit more or, as teachers say, learn to extend your answer. The answer here is fairly simple. What you need to do is imagine the questions above are:

• “Do you think it’s an easy job and why?”
• “What do you think is the hardest part of your job and why?”
• “Do you think your subject is interesting and why?”
• “Do you think that it’s easy to travel to and from your home and why?”

If you hear this in your head, you will almost automatically start to say more by using the word “because” – even when the examiner doesn’t ask you to say “why”.

Step 3 – learn to use varied opinion vocabulary

If you do start to use opinion vocabulary, the trap is that you keep saying the words, normally: “I think” or “In my opinion”. While this is quite natural, you don’t want to do this in the exam as the examiner will be listening to how you vary your vocabulary.

Practice makes perfect

So here’s my practice activity and resource for you. It’s very simple, but often the best things are. The idea is to use this language several times so that it starts to become automatic. That’s important because you don’t want tot stop and think about this language in the exam itself.

Here’s what you do:

• find some opinion topics/questions
• speak about them
• each time you use one of these phrases, you tick the box next to it
• try and tick as many boxes as possible

You don’t need all the words of course. You should find though that with practice (and it works best with someone else) you start to use much more varied language for opinion:

Repeat the practice

This is the sort of practice that works best if you repeat it a few times. Once is good: 3 times is more than 3 times as good. Boring as it looks, it can be quite good fun – particularly if you have a study partner – because it gives you a different way to practise the same old, boring old topics.

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You might also be interested in:

• 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
• How to use your one minute preparation time

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