IELTS Speaking Test Fluency Tips - Part 3

In our previous posts in this series, we’ve looked at how to demonstrate fluency in Part 1 and Part 2 of the IELTS Speaking Test to help boost your band score in Fluency and Coherence.

In this final blog, we’ll talk about Part 3 and how to deal with challenging questions in a natural and fluent way.

Answering on-the-spot

In both Part 1 and Part 3 of the test, the examiner is going to ask you a number of questions and, unlike Part 2, you need to answer them with no time to prepare or think about what you’re going to say.

The challenge in Part 3 is that these are not questions about your life, they are questions about your opinions on topics generally related to the topic of Part 2, and actually do require some thought and development.

Compare

a)      What do you like to do in your free time?

b)     How have the ways people spend their leisure time changed in your country?

We’ve covered how to address question a) in the first blog of the series where we looked at ways to expand ‘easy’ answers. But how can you deal with the challenge of a more abstract or opinion-based question about a topic that you’ve perhaps never even considered before?

Do not rush in

Often, in Speaking Part 3, when a test taker is aware of the need to show fluency to the examiner, they begin their answer straight away and might start confidently but what do you think happens after the first sentence or so?

Examiner: How have the ways people spend their leisure time changed in your country?

Test taker: A lot of changes happened. More people like to….erm…well they spend less time on sports and more on screens and video games and social media and…well…

The issue here is rushing into giving an answer and then, sort of running out of things to say. What can happen, as a result, is you end up giving a list of examples rather than a fully-rounded answer.

Instead, avoid giving your answer straight away. That doesn’t mean sitting in silence but using language to buy a little bit of extra time to think about what you’re going to say.  

Buy thinking time

You might have already seen or have started using some phrases and expressions to help give you some time before providing your answer. Phrases like:

“That’s an interesting question.”

“I’ve never really thought about that before.”

These phrases are very useful in the IELTS test, as they help you avoid sitting in silence while you form your ideas. But you need to be very careful about using them too often. As they are fixed phrases, you are not really demonstrating your own use of language. So keep these as a back-up and use them sparingly. Try instead to get into the habit of using the question itself to buy time.

How has the test taker used the language of the question? Do you notice that they are using the question to help lead into the answer?  If you compare this sentence with the fixed phrases above, which one demonstrates more language?

By reformulating the actual question, you’re demonstrating to the examiner that you’ve understood what’s being asked and you have the language to provide a response.

But this is not the full response. What do we need next?

Support your answer

Just as in Writing Task 2, we need to support and develop our answers. The simplest way to do that is to think of reasons as well as examples to provide a full answer.  Why do you have that opinion? What examples from society can you use to support your opinion?

Let’s think of a reason and example for the question we’ve seen about leisure time:

Practice

Try practising using this strategy with sample Part 3 questions. Record yourself giving fully-developed answers (i.e. with reasons and examples) and listen back to your responses while using  the band descriptors. How have you met the features of the criterion of Fluency and Coherence? Try it again with a full Speaking Test and the strategies that we have covered across this blog series.

 Let us know how you get on in the comments.

Good luck with your speaking test.

Why not check out our on-demand IELTS Speaking Pack and get access to our webinar lessons to learn more about improving you band score in Fluency and Coherence and Lexical Resource?