What would happen if a footballer decided to play a game without running or stretching first? They would probably have a terrible game and maybe even injure themselves. Speaking a foreign language is no different. I advise all of my students to warm up for the IELTS test by speaking nothing but English for at least 24 hours before the test. This has a huge influence on your ability to naturally communicate in English. Tell your friends and family that you can only speak in English, and try to read and listen to English the day before the exam. Get to the testing centre early and engage the other candidates and staff in conversation. By the time your speaking test comes around, you will be ready.
Speaking is a skill and just like any other skill it requires many hours of practice. Lots of my students complain that they don’t have anyone to practise English with, but these days there are lots of ways to practise online.
Many students don’t know that you can occasionally ask the examiner to repeat the question if you didn’t understand it, or to ask them to explain what one word means. It is not a listening test. If you listen to native English speakers, you’ll notice that they do this all the time. The important thing is not to ask the examiner to repeat every question or to explain every word.
It is not a good idea to give very short answers in the IELTS test and you should try to extend your answers. Three ways to extend your answers are: 1) explaining why 2) giving examples and 3) giving concessions (showing the opposite side of the argument).
Here’s an example to the question What can people do to reduce global warming?
I believe the best way to combat climate change is to reduce carbon emissions. Carbon dioxide is the main reason the planet is getting hotter, because it is a greenhouse gas and prevents the sun’s radiation from leaving our atmosphere. For example, it has been shown that there is a link between the increased use of fossil fuels and rising global temperatures. However, some doubt this and think global warming is a natural cycle and not a man-made problem.
As you can see, this candidate has fully explained her point and provided both a relevant example and a concession.
在雅思考試中，回答太短不是個好主意，你應該嘗試拓展你的答案。有三種方法可以擴展你的答案：
解釋原因
舉例
讓步(展示論點的反面)。
這裡有一個關於“人們能做些什麼來減少全球變暖”的例子。
…
正如你所看到的，這位考生已經充分解釋了她的觀點，提供了一個相關的例子和一個讓步。
05 Do master functional language 一定要掌握功能性的語言
It is a very bad idea to memorise scripted answers, but you should be aware of the various types of functional language that might come up in the IELTS speaking test. You should be able to use the language of:
giving opinions
giving examples
contrasting views
evaluating someone else’s opinion
talking about cause and effect
talking about hypothetical situations.
You will be expected to talk about the past, present and future, so make sure you know the various forms for doing this.
If you listen carefully to native speakers of English, you’ll notice some important differences in the way they speak compared to learners of English. Native speakers use connected speech, weak sounds, intonation and sentence stress that many non-native speakers find difficult or ‘unnatural’. Ask a teacher or research online how these pronunciation features influence your speech. Listen to recordings of native speakers of English (for example, on YouTube) and try to imitate their use of connected speech or intonation by pausing the recording and repeating what you hear. With enough practice, you will start to sound more like a native speaker.
To do well in the speaking test you will be expected to be both grammatically accurate and fluent. Often, students worry too much about their grammar and this stops them speaking at a natural pace, thus reducing their score for fluency.
A good thing to do is record yourself. Record yourself once and just focus on being grammatically accurate. When you listen back, you might hear how unnaturally slow your speech is. Next, record yourself and try not to worry about making any grammar mistakes, just try to speak at the same speed you do in your native language.
By doing this, you not only practise your fluency, but also identify common grammar mistakes and then fix them, making you even more fluent. Even native speakers make small grammar mistakes when speaking, so don’t worry too much about them and use them as stepping stones to success.
Students often obsess over past exam questions and practise these over and over. The problem with this is students often get bored and speak without any passion about these topics. A better way is to find something you are really interested in and practise speaking, using this topic. If you love football, listen to the commentators during matches or listen to a podcast about the weekend’s matches. If you are into fashion, watch some fashion shows on TV or YouTube. You can practise talking about these things with a friend, record yourself or find other like-minded people online and chat to them.
If you are asked a question you are not sure about, don’t be afraid to take a moment to think about it. This is totally natural and something native English speakers do more than you think. The important thing is to tell the examiner you are doing this by using phrases such as the following:
That’s a difficult question. Let me think for a second…
That’s a very interesting question. Let me think for a moment…
It’s very difficult to know exactly, but perhaps…
It’s difficult to say. I think…
I don’t really know for sure, but I would say….
But make sure you don’t start every question with one of these phrases. The examiner will spot this and your mark will suffer if the examiner thinks you have prepared scripted answers.
Don’t be afraid to correct any mistakes in the exam. This shows the examiner that you are aware of the mistake and know your grammar. Some students don’t like doing this because they think it alerts the examiner to your mistake leading to a lower score. The opposite is true. In fact, if you think about it, you probably correct mistakes in your own language all the time.
When I think about dreams, like many of you, I think about this picture. I was eight when I watched Neil Armstrong step off the Lunar Module onto the surface of the Moon. I had never seen anything like it before, and I’ve never seen anything like it since. 當我想到夢想，與很多人一樣我會想到這張圖片。八歲時我看見尼爾·阿姆斯壯從登月艙中走出踏上月球表面。前無古人、後無來者。
We got to the Moon for one simple reason: John Kennedy committed us to a deadline. And in the absence of that deadline, we would still be dreaming about it. Leonard Bernstein said two things are necessary for great achievement: a plan and not quite enough time.
Deadlines and commitments are the great and fading lessons of Apollo. And they are what give the word “moonshot” its meaning. And our world is in desperate need of political leaders willing to set bold deadlines for the achievement of daring dreams on the scale of Apollo again.
When I think about dreams, I think about the drag queens of LA and Stonewall and millions of other people risking everything to come out when that was really dangerous, and of this picture of the White House lit up in rainbow colors, yes.
Celebrating America’s gay and lesbian citizens’ right to marry, it is a picture that in my wildest dreams I could never have imagined when I was 18 and figuring out that I was gay and feeling estranged from my country and my dreams because of it.
I think about this picture of my family that I never dreamed I could ever have — and of our children holding this headline I never dreamed could ever be printed about the Supreme Court ruling. We need more of the courage of drag queens and astronauts.
But I want to talk about the need for us to dream in more than one dimension, because there was something about Apollo that I didn’t know when I was 8, and something about organizing that the rainbow colors over. Of the 30 astronauts in the original Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs, only seven marriages survived. Those iconic images of the astronauts bouncing on the Moon obscure the alcoholism and depression on Earth.
Thomas Merton, the Trappist monk, asked during the time of Apollo, “What can we gain by sailing to the moon if we are not able to cross the abyss that separates us from ourselves?” And what can we gain by the right to marry if we are not able to cross the acrimony and emotional distance that so often separates us from our love? And not just in marriage.
I have seen the most hurtful, destructive, tragic infighting in LGBT and AIDS and breast cancer and non-profit activism, all in the name of love. Thomas Merton also wrote about wars among saints and that “there is a pervasive form of contemporary violence to which the idealist most easily succumbs: activism and overwork.
The frenzy of our activism neutralizes our work for peace. It destroys our own inner capacity for peace.” Too often our dreams become these compartmentalized fixations on some future that destroy our ability to be present for our lives right now. Our dreams of a better life for some future humanity or some other humanity in another country alienate us from the beautiful human beings sitting next to us at this very moment.
Well, that’s just the price of progress, we say. You can go to the Moon or you can have stability in your family life. And we can’t conceive of dreaming in both dimensions at the same time. And we don’t set the bar much higher than stability when it comes to our emotional life. Which is why our technology for talking to one another has gone vertical, our ability to listen and understand one another has gone nowhere.
Our access to information is through the roof, our access to joy, grounded. But this idea, that our present and our future are mutually exclusive, that to fulfill our potential for doing we have to surrender our profound potential for being, that the number of transistors on a circuit can be doubled and doubled, but our capacity for compassion and humanity and serenity and love is somehow limited is a false and suffocating choice.
Now, I’m not suggesting simply the uninspiring idea of more work-life balance. What good is it for me to spend more time with my kids at home if my mind is always somewhere else while I’m doing it? I’m not even talking about mindfulness. Mindfulness is all of a sudden becoming a tool for improving productivity. Right?
I’m talking about dreaming as boldly in the dimension of our being as we do about industry and technology. I’m talking about an audacious authenticity that allows us to cry with one another, a heroic humility that allows us to remove our masks and be real.
It is our inability to be with one another, our fear of crying with one another, that gives rise to so many of the problems we are frantically trying to solve in the first place, from Congressional gridlock to economic inhumanity.
I’m talking about what Jonas Salk called an Epoch B, a new epoch in which we become as excited about and curious about and scientific about the development of our humanity as we are about the development of our technology.
We should not shrink from this opportunity simply because we don’t really understand it. There was a time when we didn’t understand space. Or because we’re more used to technology and activism. That is the very definition of being stuck in a comfort zone. We are now very comfortable imagining unimaginable technological achievement. In 2016, it is the dimension of our being itself that cries out for its fair share of our imagination.
Now, we’re all here to dream, but maybe if we’re honest about it, each of us chasing our own dream. You know, looking at the name tags to see who can help me with my dream, sometimes looking right through one another’s humanity. I can’t be bothered with you right now. I have an idea for saving the world. Right?
Years ago, once upon a time, I had this beautiful company that created these long journeys for heroic civic engagement. And we had this mantra: “Human. Kind. Be Both.” And we encouraged people to experiment outrageously with kindness. Like, “Go help everybody set up their tents.” And there were a lot of tents.
“Go buy everybody Popsicles.” “Go help people fix their flat tires even though you know the dinner line is going to get longer.”
“給大家買冰棒。”“説明需要的人補胎，哪怕要花更多時間排隊等晚飯。“
And people really took us up on this, so much so that if you got a flat tire on the AIDS ride, you had trouble fixing it, because there were so many people there asking you if you needed help.
For a few days, for tens of thousands of people, we created these worlds that everybody said were the way they wish the world could always be. What if we experimented with creating that kind of world these next few days?
And instead of going up to someone and asking them, “What do you do?” ask them, “So what are your dreams?” or “What are your broken dreams?” You know, “TED.” Tend to Each other’s Dreams.
Maybe it’s “I want to stay sober” or “I want to build a tree house with my kid.” You know, instead of going up to the person everybody wants to meet, go up to the person who is all alone and ask them if they want to grab a cup of coffee.
I think what we fear most is that we will be denied the opportunity to fulfill our true potential, that we are born to dream and we might die without ever having the chance.
我想我們最害怕的是，我們自己放棄了我們與生俱來可以真正實現我們潛力的夢想，害怕我們至死都不曾一試。
Imagine living in a world where we simply recognize that deep, existential fear in one another and love one another boldly because we know that to be human is to live with that fear. It’s time for us to dream in multiple dimensions simultaneously, and somewhere that transcends all of the wondrous things we can and will and must do lies the domain of all the unbelievable things we could be.
It’s time we set foot into that dimension and came out about the fact that we have dreams there, too. If the Moon could dream, I think that would be its dream for us. It’s an honor to be with you. Thank you very much.
When I think about dreams, like many of you, I think about this picture. I was eight when I watched Neil Armstrong step off the Lunar Module onto the surface of the Moon. I had never seen anything like it before, and I’ve never seen anything like it since. 當我想到夢想，與很多人一樣我會想到這張圖片。八歲時我看見尼爾·阿姆斯壯從登月艙中走出踏上月球表面。前無古人、後無來者。
We got to the Moon for one simple reason: John Kennedy committed us to a deadline. And in the absence of that deadline, we would still be dreaming about it. Leonard Bernstein said two things are necessary for great achievement: a plan and not quite enough time.
Deadlines and commitments are the great and fading lessons of Apollo. And they are what give the word “moonshot” its meaning. And our world is in desperate need of political leaders willing to set bold deadlines for the achievement of daring dreams on the scale of Apollo again.
When I think about dreams, I think about the drag queens of LA and Stonewall and millions of other people risking everything to come out when that was really dangerous, and of this picture of the White House lit up in rainbow colors, yes.
Celebrating America’s gay and lesbian citizens’ right to marry, it is a picture that in my wildest dreams I could never have imagined when I was 18 and figuring out that I was gay and feeling estranged from my country and my dreams because of it.
I think about this picture of my family that I never dreamed I could ever have — and of our children holding this headline I never dreamed could ever be printed about the Supreme Court ruling. We need more of the courage of drag queens and astronauts.
But I want to talk about the need for us to dream in more than one dimension, because there was something about Apollo that I didn’t know when I was 8, and something about organizing that the rainbow colors over. Of the 30 astronauts in the original Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs, only seven marriages survived. Those iconic images of the astronauts bouncing on the Moon obscure the alcoholism and depression on Earth.
Thomas Merton, the Trappist monk, asked during the time of Apollo, “What can we gain by sailing to the moon if we are not able to cross the abyss that separates us from ourselves?” And what can we gain by the right to marry if we are not able to cross the acrimony and emotional distance that so often separates us from our love? And not just in marriage.
I have seen the most hurtful, destructive, tragic infighting in LGBT and AIDS and breast cancer and non-profit activism, all in the name of love. Thomas Merton also wrote about wars among saints and that “there is a pervasive form of contemporary violence to which the idealist most easily succumbs: activism and overwork.
The frenzy of our activism neutralizes our work for peace. It destroys our own inner capacity for peace.” Too often our dreams become these compartmentalized fixations on some future that destroy our ability to be present for our lives right now. Our dreams of a better life for some future humanity or some other humanity in another country alienate us from the beautiful human beings sitting next to us at this very moment.
Well, that’s just the price of progress, we say. You can go to the Moon or you can have stability in your family life. And we can’t conceive of dreaming in both dimensions at the same time. And we don’t set the bar much higher than stability when it comes to our emotional life. Which is why our technology for talking to one another has gone vertical, our ability to listen and understand one another has gone nowhere.
Our access to information is through the roof, our access to joy, grounded. But this idea, that our present and our future are mutually exclusive, that to fulfill our potential for doing we have to surrender our profound potential for being, that the number of transistors on a circuit can be doubled and doubled, but our capacity for compassion and humanity and serenity and love is somehow limited is a false and suffocating choice.
Now, I’m not suggesting simply the uninspiring idea of more work-life balance. What good is it for me to spend more time with my kids at home if my mind is always somewhere else while I’m doing it? I’m not even talking about mindfulness. Mindfulness is all of a sudden becoming a tool for improving productivity. Right?
I’m talking about dreaming as boldly in the dimension of our being as we do about industry and technology. I’m talking about an audacious authenticity that allows us to cry with one another, a heroic humility that allows us to remove our masks and be real.
It is our inability to be with one another, our fear of crying with one another, that gives rise to so many of the problems we are frantically trying to solve in the first place, from Congressional gridlock to economic inhumanity.
I’m talking about what Jonas Salk called an Epoch B, a new epoch in which we become as excited about and curious about and scientific about the development of our humanity as we are about the development of our technology.
We should not shrink from this opportunity simply because we don’t really understand it. There was a time when we didn’t understand space. Or because we’re more used to technology and activism. That is the very definition of being stuck in a comfort zone. We are now very comfortable imagining unimaginable technological achievement. In 2016, it is the dimension of our being itself that cries out for its fair share of our imagination.
Now, we’re all here to dream, but maybe if we’re honest about it, each of us chasing our own dream. You know, looking at the name tags to see who can help me with my dream, sometimes looking right through one another’s humanity. I can’t be bothered with you right now. I have an idea for saving the world. Right?
Years ago, once upon a time, I had this beautiful company that created these long journeys for heroic civic engagement. And we had this mantra: “Human. Kind. Be Both.” And we encouraged people to experiment outrageously with kindness. Like, “Go help everybody set up their tents.” And there were a lot of tents.
“Go buy everybody Popsicles.” “Go help people fix their flat tires even though you know the dinner line is going to get longer.”
“給大家買冰棒。”“説明需要的人補胎，哪怕要花更多時間排隊等晚飯。“
And people really took us up on this, so much so that if you got a flat tire on the AIDS ride, you had trouble fixing it, because there were so many people there asking you if you needed help.
For a few days, for tens of thousands of people, we created these worlds that everybody said were the way they wish the world could always be. What if we experimented with creating that kind of world these next few days?
And instead of going up to someone and asking them, “What do you do?” ask them, “So what are your dreams?” or “What are your broken dreams?” You know, “TED.” Tend to Each other’s Dreams.
Maybe it’s “I want to stay sober” or “I want to build a tree house with my kid.” You know, instead of going up to the person everybody wants to meet, go up to the person who is all alone and ask them if they want to grab a cup of coffee.
I think what we fear most is that we will be denied the opportunity to fulfill our true potential, that we are born to dream and we might die without ever having the chance.
我想我們最害怕的是，我們自己放棄了我們與生俱來可以真正實現我們潛力的夢想，害怕我們至死都不曾一試。
Imagine living in a world where we simply recognize that deep, existential fear in one another and love one another boldly because we know that to be human is to live with that fear. It’s time for us to dream in multiple dimensions simultaneously, and somewhere that transcends all of the wondrous things we can and will and must do lies the domain of all the unbelievable things we could be.
It’s time we set foot into that dimension and came out about the fact that we have dreams there, too. If the Moon could dream, I think that would be its dream for us. It’s an honor to be with you. Thank you very much.
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