IELTS Energy 1439: How to Speak Longer on IELTS Speaking
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This is an IELTS Energy Podcast, Episode 1439, How to Speak Longer on IELTS Speaking.

Welcome to the IELTS Energy Podcast from All Ears English, downloaded more than 22 million times with former IELTS examiner Jessica Beck and Aubrey Carter, the IELTS whiz. If you are stuck with a low score, our insider method will help you get the score you need to unlock your dreams. Get your estimated band score now with our two-minute quiz. Go to allearsenglish.com

forward slash my score. Do you have a hard time giving long enough answers on IELTS speaking? Today, you'll learn strategies to provide more detail and high scoring vocabulary to increase IELTS speaking scores.

Treading water is an English idiom that means you are working at something but getting nowhere. Are you treading water with your English? Get your personalized English fluency level with our free eight question quiz. Find out why you're stuck at

and how you can stop treading water. Take our free English level quiz at allearsenglish.com/fluenciescore. That's allearsenglish.com/fluenciescore. Hello IELTS expert Aubrey. What are we bringing our students today? This is very exciting. We got a great question about when you're stuck

in IELTS speaking and you know you haven't spoken enough, but like, how do you speak longer? What can you do? We have some great tips for you today. I think this happens to a lot of students like the one who wrote into us. This was during a webinar and this person said that they're stuck at a 5.5 or 6 in speaking because they just, they just,

stop, right? They can't speak for as long as they need to. And that hurts all of your scores. It hurts your fluency score most of all, but it also hurts your vocabulary score because the examiner literally cannot hear enough words from you, right? To have any noticeable amount of interesting vocabulary because there's just not enough happening. So we are going to take turns today and we're going to model what a short

sort of 5.5 answer might be. And then we will add to that. We will upgrade that to a band nine answer and talk about why. So it's a very fun episode. We're going to do, we're going to show you these things for part one, part two, and part three today. So stay until the end.

Yes. I'm excited for you to see this because there's two short answers. You might find yourself thinking, oh, those are the answers I'm giving when I'm practicing or when I've taken the exam before and I thought that was long enough. I had some interesting vocabulary. So I think this is going to help a ton for you to see what a 5.5 or 6 answer looks like and then how you can, strategies for speaking longer, what you need to add in order to get a band 9 speaking answer.

Exactly. And guys, if you want some more model speaking answers, we did an episode called IELTS Energy 1436, Recent Speaking Questions About Homes. And remember, you have a 50% chance of being asked about your home or hometown straight away in IELTS Part 1 Speaking. So scroll up and check that out if you missed it. All right, let's get into this. Aubrey, do you want to ask me the first question?

Yes. And then I want you to give a short answer. We'll talk about it and then you'll give us a longer answer. So the question is, how is the weather today? It's pretty sunny and warm outside.

Nice. So you can see like, yes, she answered the question, right? But it's not enough. You're not showing fluency. There's no interesting vocabulary. This is going to score a five. And here's what is confusing because like in real life, that's, you wouldn't answer in a long way for that question, right? So that's another way that IELTS is different than just normal everyday speaking, right? You cannot, no matter what the question is, you cannot have just a one sentence answer.

Exactly. All right. Now give us a band nine answer, Jessica. How is the weather today? Oh my gosh. It's gorgeous. It's beautiful outside. It's really sunny, which I wasn't expecting. I thought it might rain. And in fact, it is so unseasonably warm that I think I might actually go to the beach today.

Nice. So much, ooh, unseasonably is a great adverb, right? Unseasonably warm. Nice. All right. Now I'm going to ask Aubrey a question. All right. We're still in part one here. What is your favorite kind of weather? I think rainy days are the best. It doesn't rain here often, so it feels really special when it does. Okay. All right. Now that's, that's,

even bordering on okay, right? Like there's two sentences, there's a simple sentence, there's a complex sentence there. So it's bordering on okay. Like I would say that's a six answer, right? But still not a seven. So let's try again. What is your favorite kind of weather?

Rainy days are the best. It never rains here. So when there's like a downpour and I jump outside and get drenched, I'm so happy. I am sick of sunny days, actually. It's sunny all the time here. So it becomes very humdrum. And I actually kind of get in the doldrums when it's sunny. I want to see some rain.

There was so much great vocabulary there. Humdrum is like boring and normal. And in the doldrums mean like, I'm sad, I'm depressed. So a lot of great vocab there. But I think the this first takeaway strategy, guys, is

Our longer answers, and this is true for any spontaneous, fluent answers. They're not pre-planned. They're not scripted. They're not perfectly organized. What we're doing is we're really just narrating whatever thoughts come into our head at the time. So like at the end of my part one answer, I was like,

you know what i think i might i think i might go to the beach today right um and then aubry like in order to extend your answer you not just answered what your favorite kind of weather was but you also said what whether you didn't like was and talked about that so there are so many directions we can take our answers um if we trust our brains right and we just narrate our thoughts as they come

Yes, exactly. And this will take practice, right? It's easy to give one sentence and just answer it like you would conversationally. Like you said, oh, it's a sunny day. In order to extend and use that interesting vocabulary and interesting pronunciation, you've got to practice so that you're ready ahead of time. For sure.

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All right, now I'm gonna ask you, ooh, you have to do part two, Aubrey. - Hey, I got this. - So, okay, let's have the worst part two answer, right? Really short. Describe your favorite city or a city you have visited that you very much like. - I really love New York City. I'm just gonna stop there. Imagine your part two answer is supposed to be two minutes and you just say, "New York."

It's like not even a complete sentence. You're like, New York. And here's again, like in real life, like nobody would be like, describe your favorite city you have visited. We would never say that. We would be like, what's your favorite city? And then if someone else just said New York, you'd be like, oh, cool. Why? You know, like that's conversational. Part two isn't

not real life back and forth. It's so tricky. Never do you speak for two minutes while someone just stares at you. This is so unnatural. Like, I mean, I hope you do a lot of practice. Let's hope you don't. So actually that reminds me of like, you have to be a me monster in part two. Right. So in our, it,

but you don't want to be a me monster in real life. We talk about how to not be a me monster and how to bring other people into the conversation as like a connection skill in our new C1 course. And it's just funny because like you have to be a me monster in IELTS part two. Okay.

exactly good point right and this you're probably not used to this you likely are bringing someone into the conversation asking them questions so it's going to feel very unnatural to just describe something for two minutes totally all right but now you have to all right my timer's ready all right describe your favorite city

This may sound super cliche because everybody loves New York City, but it definitely is my favorite city in the world. And I've been to some big cities in Europe, Paris, London, Barcelona, and I truly love all of those places.

but New York holds a special place in my heart because I first went there when I was thinking about doing a master's degree. I visited a friend and I was just there as a tourist and I didn't know much about New York. I hadn't been as a young person. We did all the things. We went to Top of the Rock at Rockefeller Center. We did the Empire State Building, which by the way, if you have to choose between the two, Top of the Rock, absolutely. We saw all of the

parks we went to the statue of liberty like all of the things you do as a tourist and then we saw it as locals right we moved there i did my master's degree and we no longer did any of the touristy things we started going to you know still museums and things but like local art festivals and events

there was something to do every single day in New York. In contrast, where I live now, there's never anything. I'm like looking up what to do in Gilbert, Arizona. Nothing. Like there's very little that you can take a family to do. And in New York,

The city was just rife with possibility every moment of every day. There was a cultural festival, some kind of event, free music concerts in the park, Shakespeare in the park in Fort Tryon up north every weekend. And free. A lot of these events were free to the public.

which was super helpful for us because we were poor, broke students at the time. And we had children, so we certainly couldn't afford to take them to a lot of these things. But luckily, there were, you know, the city there was really mindful about helping everyone be exposed to culture and celebrations without having to work over a lot of money. Thank you. Thank you.

You wanted to get one last idiom in there. Fork over. I could talk about New York for a year. I bet you could. Yeah. Fork over a lot of money. That's awesome. So that's such a great idiom to be like, you know, you're paying a lot of money to fork over a lot of money. So one thing I want to highlight here first is how Aubrey started her answer. She's like, now this is I don't want to be cliche. Right. Because Aubrey

This is a great way to start an answer on IELTS if you think a lot of people would have the same answer, right? Because, yeah, a lot of people are going to say New York City, right? For sure. But at the same time, you know, because you listen to us, you know that you need to stand out. You don't want to sound like every other student. So if you are giving an answer that you think a lot of people give, say that. Be like, I don't want to be cliche, but...

And then the way that Aubrey was able to fill so much time, first of all, because she chose a place that she really knows. And even if New York weren't her favorite city, she should choose it because she knows it very well, right? The details that she could list, right? And if guys, if you're giving an answer,

about a place like that and you cannot list as many details, what you can do is just choose like one or two of those places and talk about those places a little bit more, right? So that would be another option. And another way to extend that is to contrast the...

that city with a city that maybe you don't really like, maybe like where you're living now. So those are a couple strategies you can use to elongate your answer in part two. So that was awesome. All right. So many good tips there. Like I thought about choosing, I love London. I love Barcelona, but

Do I know it well enough to talk about it for two full minutes? Yeah. I would definitely need to use some of those strategies. If I did, I would talk about, you know, I could talk for a minute and a half about going to the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona. And as long as I've answered the question, absolutely. Right. Go more detail into one place.

Totally. All right. We have one more model for you here. Part three, which remember, part three is always linked to part two. So part two was asking to describe a favorite city. And part three will all be, all of the questions will be about cities and urban areas. All right, Aubrey, will you ask me a part three question, please? Absolutely. What are the advantages of living in a city? It's fun. There's a lot of stuff to do.

She answered the question. I answered the question. But band five, right? No interesting vocabulary, no interesting pronunciation, intonation. It's not showing your fluency. So I'm excited to hear a band nine answer on this one.

All right, Jessica, what are the advantages of living in a city? Oh my gosh. Before I get into the advantages of living in a city, which by the way, to my mind, there are a multitude of benefits. I honestly grew up in a small town, which I loathed. I could not wait to move to a big city. I had these dreams of living in cities like New York, LA, you know, Madrid, London, it

Any big city, honestly, I would choose would be preferable over my little teeny small podunk town. So yeah, getting back to the question, why? Like, why did I want to live in a big city so badly? Which would be the advantages of being in a city, right? There's just so much to do, right? There are so many ways to entertain yourself and to expand your mind and horizons. And that's something that's really part of my personality. I am so curious about...

I just, I have a constant and insatiable thirst for knowledge. And in a city, you can satiate that thirst for knowledge. You can go to museums. You can find free lectures at universities. You can

Even just roam the streets on any random night and find something amazing happening. Meet strangers, go to community events. There's always going to be something to do. And of course there are disadvantages, but I don't even want to think about those because there's disadvantages to everything. And I think living in a city is really the only option.

Ooh, very nice. I love the vocab satiable and then satiate, right? So I think you said insatiable, meaning like cannot be satisfied, like there's not. And then satiate as a band nine verb, meaning to satisfy that, right? Ooh, so impressive. Great vocabulary. Great vocabulary.

All right. So I think the biggest takeaway that you guys should go back and listen for, honestly, in our model answers is that really the way to talk longer, to say more, to be more interesting and more fluent on IELTS is to dive into your personal real experience and your personal real opinions. Because that's really what it came back to, right? In all of our answers, the way we were able to speak

to speak more was just to pull from our own experience. Yes. And on part three, especially, you never know how long, like it's probably going to be about a minute. The examiner might interrupt you if they need to ask more questions, but you need to be prepared to speak for about a minute on all of these different topics. You cannot just have one sentence answers with very little details if you want to score seven or higher on the exam. Totally. Exactly. All right, guys, come back to

back to the blog if you want to read some more articles and listen to some more podcasts go to allearsenglish.com ielts to check out all that free material and aubrey i'll see you on friday awesome see you guys friday bye bye thanks for listening to ielts energy hit subscribe now and don't forget to find your estimated band score at all ears english dot com slash my score

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