Body Language and the Speaking Test

Although it is never mentioned in the assessment criteria for speaking exams, your body language will count for a great deal. Being aware of how you project your body image and interact with the examiners will help boost your score. In short, this popular TED Talk argues that your body language may even shape who you are. Looking confident will help you feel confident. Try some of the techniques suggested here: you may be surprised at how effective they are.

IELTS Speaking Criteria

Familiarising yourself with the assessment criteria is one way of boosting your score on almost any exam, as it enables you to give the examiners what they are looking for. Here is a useful guide to the Speaking Criteria from IELTS Advantage, a user-friendly site that anyone preparing for IELTS should know about.

Official speaking sample video and commentary

Video address on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcaIOTRV64g

Download IELTS scale and video comments and worksheets

Suggested speaking topics and sample answers

All links below are from: http://ieltsliz.com/ielts-speaking-free-lessons-essential-tips/

1. Tips: How I got Band Score 9 in IELTS Speaking
2. Linking Words for IELTS Speaking
3. Tips: Which part of the speaking test is most important?
4. Tips: Asking the examiner questions
5. Tips: How long should my answer be?
6. Tips: Should I speak fast or slow?
7. Tips: Using wonna and gonna
8. Tips for Speaking Part 2 – Will I get a low score for speaking less than 2 mins?
9. Tips for Speaking Part 2: Difficult Topics
10. Tips: Going Off Topic
11. Video: Speaking Part 1: Common Questions
12. Video: Speaking Part 1: Common Topics
13. Video: Speaking Part 1: What’s your favourite…?
14. Video: Speaking Part 1: Dictionaries Topic
15. Video: Speaking Part 2: How to start your talk
16. Video: Speaking Part 3: Comparing Urban and Rural Life
17. Video: Greeting the Examiner & ID Check
18. Video: How to develop your IELTS speaking at home

Sample speaking test by the British Council and band descriptors

Assessment criteria

Versions of the assessment criteria for Writing and Speaking have been developed to help stakeholders better understand the level of performance required to secure a particular band score:

Downloads

IELTS task 1 Writing band descriptors35.35 KB

IELTS task 2 Writing band descriptors 35.28 KB

IELTS Speaking band descriptors (22 Dec 2015)161.11 KB

Taken from:
https://takeielts.britishcouncil.org/find-out-about-results/ielts-assessment-criteria

Also visit this page to calculate your score more accurately:

https://www.ielts.org/ielts-for-organisations/ielts-scoring-in-detail

Sample Speaking Session: Band 9

Personal questions

 

1. Do you have any brothers or sisters? Yes , I have a younger brother who is 20 years old
2. Where do you come from? I come** from Heraklion which is the capital and the largest city of Crete (Or to put it simply: This is my hometown. I've lived here all my life.)
3. Do you like your country? Definitely. Greece is a perfect country to live in.
4. What do you like about your country? Well Greece is a typical mediterranean country with perfect climate conditions but what I really like most about my country is that it combines fantastic beaches and mountainous villages.
5. What street do you live in? The street I live in is situated in a quiet seaside suburb of Heraklion, just 15 minutes from the city centre.
6. What is the street called? It's Ariadnis street, and just for the record Ariadni was a princess during the ancient Minoan civilisation.
7. Do you like your street? Until last year I really liked it but the last couple of months a main road has been constructed beside my home and Ariadnis street is not so peaceful anymore.
8. What do you like in your street? Definitely the people. The neighbours who live in Ariadnis street are very polite and hospitable.
9. Are you a city dweller? Why? No I am not since I live outside of the city.
10. Do you have a favourite hobby? I am a really active person so I prefer some sort of outdoors activity like going for a jog or going for a swim. But my favourite hobby is playing water polo.
11. What do you like doing with your friends? When I have time to spare with my friends I prefer to go for a coffee and have a nice chat.
12. What is your favourite meal? That's a tricky question since I have many favourite meals; however, if I had to choose just one I would say pasta. (You can add a few extra details about the dish, e.g. pasta with tomato sauce and tuna fish)
13. Who cooks in your family? Most of the times my mother is our chef, although my father rarely cooks since it is not healthy to eat only pasta.
14. What is the best meal prepared by a person of your family? I think that a couple of days ago my grandmother made the most delicious moussaka I have ever tasted.
    
15. Are you working or studying? Actually I graduated from the university last summer and at the moment I am fulfilling my military obligations.
16. How often do you use your computer? At the moment I can't use it that much since I am a soldier but before entering the army I used it almost everyday.
17. Do you like using the Internet? Of course, I would say that it is one of my favourite hobbies, mainly because I keep in touch with friends around the world through social media and Skype.
18. How did you learn to use your computer? I learned by myself when I was really young ,since our first computer seemed bizarre to my family.
19. Do you think it's important to know how to use a computer? I am inclined to believe that it is more than necessary mostly because if a person is computer illiterate*** it will be difficult to get a job.
20. What do you usually shop for? What Kind of food do you usually buy? I go to the supermarket early but if (no capital letter needed) I go I mainly buy pasta and fruits.
    
21. What type of house do you live in? Since I am in the army, the* most of the times a live in camp with other soldiers.
22. Do you have a garden? Well my parental house is surrounded from a big garden, and in the future I would be grateful to live in a house with a nice garden.

*'The' is needed in superlatives (e.g. the most beautiful), but is not needed when the phrase refers to the majority of times/ people/etc. e.g. The Most of the people, the most of the times

** Descend means come from, but it is not combined with a town. See examples here: http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/descend+from

***http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Computer+illiterate

3 helpful videos on IELTS speaking

Mock IELTS Speaking Test #1 (Version 1): Amazing vocabulary and structure in the answers provided

IELTS Speaking Score 8.5 with Native English Speaker subtitles: To get acquainted with the beginning of the procedure

IELTS BAND 7 vocabulary for speaking test (part 1): Vocabulary tips

The amazing future candidates!

Some speaking questions answered by Germanos

Part 1

Which magazines and newspapers do you read?

Nowadays I don’t really read any newspapers often, except sometimes that I want to be informed about the political and financial problems of my country , and that’s because I find them really expensive and apart from that I can easily find them online on the web.

What kinds of article are you most interested in?

I really enjoying reading articles from magazines with scientific content and that’s mostly because I love mathematics and computer science. I also want to know how the market’s going, so I love reading articles about the stock market, I don’t have any specific reason why I read those articles , it’s just a personal preference .

Have you ever read a newspaper or magazine in a foreign language?

Actually, I’m reading magazines in English all the time, and not just me, but all the adults, and that’s because nowadays it’s easy to (browse them from) flick through them on the internet, it's free and fast. For instance when I wake up in the morning I like drinking my coffee browsing a newspaper on the web, it’s a nice ‘company’.

Do you think reading a newspaper or magazine in a foreign language is a good way to learn the language?

Well to learn the language from all aspects no, but when you flick though a magazine , written in English for example , you can sometimes understand, people's culture and their everyday activities. However, (comma) reading an English magazine also allows you to know the people's slang, which is really hard to get acquainted with alone. In conclusion, (comma) reading a magazine can be beneficial and simultaneously can harm you, if you are trying to learn English only from them.

Part 2

Describe a restaurant that you enjoyed going to. You should say: 1) where the restaurant was, 2) why you chose this restaurant, 3) what type of food you ate in this restaurant and explain why you enjoyed eating in this restaurant.

If I remember correctly it was two years ago, the restaurants’ name was china town and it was located in syntagma (Athens) .From the first second that I saw it , it was amazing, the service was excellent and fast. (Full stop) Imagine that the waitress was filling our glasses with water all the time and her reactions were really fast. It had great salads with many vegetables, and the two most exciting dishes was duck with sweet sauce and vegetables, and a soup filled with shark fin, the last one was delicious. Other than that, I really like their ‘traditional’ beer, the Chinese beer. In a nutshell the atmosphere was amazing and I would like to visit them again in the near future, it was worth every penny.

Some of part 3 questions

Some people say that food in an expensive restaurant is always better than food in a cheap restaurant – would you agree?

Well, I have never considered this matter before, but I’m inclined to believe that sometimes expensive restaurants are believed to be better due to pricey materials and ingredients they use in order to cook the food that they serve. I also have to mention that we might sometimes pay more for the trademark of the restaurant than the actual ly food that we order, and that’s because some restaurants are luxury and we need to choose them on more special occasions like birthdays or weddings. So in conclusion I disagree.

How important is it for a country to be able to grow all the food it needs, without importing any other from other countries?

That’s a tough question to be answered, but the true question is, can a country grow all the food it needs alone? I guess the answer is no, because this is nearly impossible. For example here in Greece as a Mediterranean country we has the advantage of growing vegetables thanks to the right conditions but we don’t have all kinds of fruits that we might need, like the African ones, so we are forced to import them from our neighbors. All in all, (comma) the more food a country grows, the wealthier it gets.

Speaking Practice

http://takeielts.britishcouncil.org/prepare-your-test/free-practice-tests/speaking-practice-test-1

The Speaking test is 11-14 minutes long and is in three parts.

Part 1	You will answer questions about yourself and your family.
Part 2	You will speak about a topic.
Part 3	You will have a longer discussion about the topic introduced in Part 2.

The Speaking test is the same for both IELTS Academic and IELTS General Training tests.

How to improve your speaking score by using better vocabulary

Watch the video by the British Council: http://youtu.be/LQQE2hWrl98

Splendid help by Splendid Speaking

• Topic vocabulary for IELTS
• IELTS Speaking task sheets

BLOGGING

First of all,the word Blog is a blend of the words web and log.Blog is a kind of webside.In other words we can say tha blog is an online personal diary.I have taken up blogging lately in order to improve my english skills.Moreover,I find it extremely interesting because blogging enables me to do a lot of things.On the blog I can exchange opinions on various topics,read on-line articles,post and collect usefull links;I write my compositions and essays and I am given feedback on them by visitors.Not only do I use it for studying but I also have the ability to post my favorite photos or music.So I spend my time pleasantly and creatively by blogging.

Why do you study English?

First of all, not only am I able to communicate with other people,but I will also have an asset during job search or interviews. Besides that, I wish to continue my studies on the English language in order to get accepted by a British university as a postgraduate student.

How long have you been studying English?

I have been studying English for five years.I find taking lessons very interesting because we discuss a variety of topics and express ourselves in written speech, as well. Apart from that, English is the international language; therefore, knowing English is an asset when seeking for a job.

What are your interests?

In my interests football and swimming are included; in particular, I play football in a local team.Furthermore, I am keen on being informed about the updates and innovations of technology so I spend some time surfing on the Internet.Lately I have started blogging,which I find very interesting.Finally, I relish in travelling and visiting new places.For example, Kos was my last travel destination.

Do you work or study?

I have studied Materials Science and Technology at the university of Crete.I finished my studies in November 2010 and I am going to continue my studies by taking a postgraduate course in Britain.

Favourite books

Thanasi, I have been wondering what your favourite book is and why.

Do you prefer a story full of action or thought-provoking messages?

This is how some other students have answered this question- you may get inspired!

Have a nice weekend!

What places have you been to?

A year has passed by after I travelled to Kos.It is a beautiful island with wonderful beaches and landscapes.I have mostly gone sightseeing there and i have spent my time visiting different places.

Also I have been to Rome in which there are a lot of famous monuments and museums.I have visited different places.I have tasted the Roman cuisine and I have gone shopping to the local markets.I have had a very good and relaxing time there.