The 5 Most Common Mistakes in IELTS Speaking

- Hi, I'm about to share

with you the five most common mistakes

that IELTS speaking students make

and how you can avoid them

by using my Speaking Success System.

Let's do it.

(upbeat music)

Hello, it's Keith from English Speaking Success

and the website The Keith Speaking Academy.

Now, I'm very excited.

Well, (laughs) I'm always excited, right?

But today I'm excited because more

and more students on my IELTS speaking gold course

are getting good results in the IELTS speaking test.

And I think part of that,

a key part of their success is not only the breakout rooms

where they practice speaking

with students all over the world,

it's the Speaking Success System.

It's a system that underpins the whole course.

So in this video, I'm gonna show you the system,

the four step system that students

who are currently at Band Five

and Band Six, they're using in the course

to help them succeed in the IELTS test.

With this system, I've helped, well, tens of thousands

of students worldwide succeed in the IELTS speaking test.

Now, I have over 3 million subscribers

on my YouTube channel.

I think I know exactly what it takes

to get a good score in the IELTS speaking test.

And what's more, I love motivating students like you

to continue studying to improve their fluency

and to get the results that you want.

And from all of that experience,

here is the key thing I've learned.

That with the right study system

and motivation, you too can succeed.

Anybody can.

I think so many students drop out,

they give up, throw in the towel

because they've been left to struggle on their own.

But you can do it differently.

So in this video, I'm gonna show you

the five common mistakes students make in IELTS speaking,

how to avoid them.

I'll show you the four-step system

of my Speaking Success System,

and then we'll do some practice together

so you can really feel it and know how it works.

And also, I'll give you the PDF of this lesson.

You can click on the link down below and just go

and pick that up.

Great, sound good?

Let's start.

(text whooshing)

Okay, the first mistake that students make

that stops them succeeding is writing and reading

their answers aloud.

Now, this is really common,

but it's a really bad study technique.

I know a lot of teachers may encourage students,

they'll give them the question,

encourage them to write down their answer,

and then practice reciting it.

But it doesn't work.

First of all, when you are in the real test,

you can't do that.

Excuse me, Mr. Examiner, just one moment,

just let me write this down.

Wait, okay.

You can't do that.

And in real life, no, you can't write down your answer.

Oh, nice to meet you, how are you?

Where am I from?

Just a minute.

No, come on, it doesn't work, right?

Now, sure, if you get a question, you can maybe jot down,

write down an idea or a keyword or collocations,

but don't write out the whole answer.

Because in the test, you can't,

you haven't got anything to read,

so your answer's up here.

And you'll forget, you'll make mistakes,

it'll sound memorized, you'll crash, okay?

The truth is, to improve your speaking,

you need to practice speaking.

So much better to listen to the question

and practice speaking out your answer.

I'm gonna show you a really good technique

to do this a little bit later.

But let's lead on,

it's a nice segue into mistake number two.

(text whooshing)

Okay, mistake number two, following Number one is

students think, I should memorize my answers.

Memorize answers to all possible questions,

and then I'll be safe.

There are many problems with this.

The smallest problem is there are so many questions,

it's impossible to memorize so many.

The other problem, of course,

is when you come into the test, if you get nervous,

if you forget a part of your answer, you'll block,

you'll freeze, and you'll get tongue tied.

You can't speak and then you crash, okay?

Now, I understand why students memorize.

It gives them a sense of security,

and they've crafted a beautiful, perfect answer,

which should get them a band nine.

No, it's not about writing, it's about speaking.

The skill is not crafting a perfect answer.

The skill is flexibility when you speak,

that's what you need.

I think one of the reasons

so many students memorize answers is because

it's what we are taught in primary school

and secondary school, right?

That's what teachers teach us.

And that comes down to many things.

One reason is, though our teachers,

that's how they were taught, rote memorization.

So they do the same.

And also, if you're teaching 40, 50 kids in a classroom,

it's pretty hard to teach speaking.

It's much easier to do rote learning, right?

It makes sense.

But times have changed.

Teachers now are integrating communicative

language methodologies.

They've got lots of technology that they can use

and show students to use so they can practice speaking more.

I think the problem with rote learning is summed up

very well by this student who says,

"I learn English by rote since I was a high school student.

It makes me struggle to speak well.

I note vocabulary every day,

I do not know how to put it in a sentence.

This is a student commented on one of my YouTube videos.

And I thought, yes, I understand exactly,

that's a problem.

So what do you do instead?

Don't memorize the whole answer.

Memorize chunks, phrases,

small chunks of language, right?

Maybe that's a grammar chunk.

I should have, I could have, I would've.

Maybe it's an idiom or a phrasal verb or a vocabulary chunk.

But just very two or three words, these chunks of language,

memorize those rather than the whole language.

And then when you're speaking,

your focus is on answering questions flexibly.

Improvisation, improvising, thinking on your feet,

that's the skill you need to develop, not your memory skill.

Okay, I'll show you how to do this in a moment

in my Speaking Success System.

But now let's go on to number three.

(text whooshing)

Mistake number three is using formal English.

Some students do think they should use

formal English in IELTS.

(sighs) Sometimes I go onto Facebook.

I'm not a big fan of Facebook, sorry Mark, but it's true.

But I went on one time

and I saw students asking in a IELTS forum say,

"Can I use gonna, wanna, shoulda?

Can I say, 'You know' in the test?

Can I say, 'cause instead of because?"

And students answering say, no, no, no, no,

you must not speak like that in the IELTS speaking test,

'cause IELTS is a test of formal English.

(blows lips) Oh dear.

Now IELTS, you have a general English module

and an academic English module.

And sure enough, in the reading

and the writing, it's formal English.

But in IELTS speaking, which is the same for both modules,

IELTS speaking is a test of conversational English.

You don't learn conversational English

by reading newspapers and literature

and academic documents.

Those are useful for different skills,

but if you want to learn conversational English,

you listen to conversations.

You take part in conversations, it's as simple as that.

Oh, you're still here.

By the way, if you're still wondering,

can you use gonna, wanna, 'cause, you know,

yes, you should use those in your IELTS speaking test.

Next mistake, number four, let's have a look.

(text whooshing)

Mistake number four, learning lists of vocabulary.

Now, word lists are not bad in themselves.

Sometimes they can be helpful.

I sometimes have used word lists, right?

But sometimes students are told,

"Listen, learn this list of vocabulary,

3,000 words for IELTS in alphabetical order."

(sighs) The problem here is

it doesn't give you any context.

So you don't know how to use the word.

So when you come to speaking,

you can't use the word correctly or accurately.

And in the test, even less.

So what do you do instead?

Learn vocabulary by topic.

This will give you a context, okay?

So if you're learning, take a topic of clothes, for example,

then learn the vocabulary connected to the topic of clothes.

For every topic, there's gonna be subtopics, right?

You'll have a clothes,

and then clothes for work, fashion clothes,

shopping for clothes, different subtopics.

And then within the subtopic,

you're gonna have vocabulary connected to that topic.

Shopping for clothes,

things like put try on, fitting room, the right size.

And so you are connecting the vocabulary to the subtopic

and it's helping you remember.

This is how our brain works.

It's like a computer,

you've got these folders connected to a folder,

connected to a folder.

It's how we store information and how we recall information.

You can imagine it looks like a mind map.

And in fact, mind maps are great ways to do this, right?

You've got clothes, shopping for clothes.

And then in each folder, you have your vocabulary.

In a context, a little phrase or a context.

The context, when you are studying by topic,

it could be you are listening to a podcast,

you're watching a video, or you are reading

or listening to a story.

It gives you a wider context

so you know when to use the word.

And then in the sentence, you know how to use the word.

You can see the grammar of the word, if you like, okay?

Great I'm gonna talk a bit more about this

when we look at the Speaking Success System in a moment.

For now, let's go to mistake number five.

(text whooshing)

Okay, mistake number five,

and you may have heard this down at the gym,

no pain, no gain.

So a lot of materials, approaches, even teachers we have had

take this approach, that learning English is

no pain, no gain.

You must suffer, you must work hard,

you must study really long hours

until you've got everything in your head.

Stuff this knowledge into your head.

That's not how language learning works.

I remember I once had some business students,

and when we started the course, they said,

"Keith, we don't mind if we suffer,

even if we have to sit down every evening

for hours learning the grammar, we're ready to go."

And I thought, okay.

And I explained, it's not necessary.

Really?

Really.

We know, right?

I mean, it creates a negative feeling and it adds stress.

We know from research, I mean Krashen's affective filter,

that if you remove stress, the learning is deeper.

When you're relaxed, when you're having fun

and you're focused on the moment, your learning is deeper.

All you have to do is enjoy your learning.

And enjoying your learning is actually a choice.

Some people think it's like happiness.

People think, well, it depends on the weather if I'm happy.

No, it's a choice.

And enjoying your studying is also a choice.

Of course, it can help if you've got interesting materials,

an engaging teacher, a lovely way of learning.

But it is a choice to do that

and to enjoy your learning.

So no pain, no gain, no.

Enjoy your learning, yes. (laughs)

(text whooshing)

So do you make these mistakes, too?

Listen, if you do, no worries, right?

At least now you know what to be careful with

and you can start learning English in a better way.

So now we've seen the mistakes.

Let me just summarize what you can do instead, okay?

So you are asking me, "Right, Keith,

so if I don't write the answer, I don't memorize it,

I don't recite the answer, how do I practice?"

Okay, good question.

Students who've got a band seven

or above are usually doing something different.

They're studying in a different way.

They know that writing, memorizing,

and reciting has limited success for speaking, right?

It doesn't give you the fluency

and the flexibility you need to get a band seven or eight.

It's not just about knowledge, it's about fluency

and flexibility.

So how do you build that up?

Well, those students are doing something different.

And now you can do that, too.

I must say, there are different ways to study.

This is not the only way to study.

There are different ways you can do it,

but I want to share with you the way that I teach

and the way that I show students in my goal course,

how to study with the Speaking Success System

to help them get the results they want,

be it a band seven or a band eight.

It's a system I've built up over the years

that builds up your fluency and flexibility, okay?

Here it is step-by-step,

the four steps of the Speaking Success System.

Okay, there are four steps.

Number one, try.

Number two, discover.

Number three, practice.

Number four, build.

Number one, try.

This is where you take a question from the IELTS speaking

that might appear on the exam

and try to give a spontaneous answer.

Spontaneous means not prepared.

So maybe I ask you, "Do you often use social media?"

And you speak out your answer.

And you might say, "Yes, I use Facebook."

And then you can discover where the gaps are,

where your weaknesses are.

Maybe you don't know the vocabulary

to talk about social media.

How do you say that?

And you need to discover, oh, to scroll, right?

By trying to answer spontaneously, you can discover the gaps

and then you can start to study.

Number two, discover.

Discover is where you watch or listen to a proficient

or a native speaker answering the same question.

And by listening to the answer,

you can discover the natural spoken English

you need to answer this question.

And also, it's great 'cause you discover the language

or the vocabulary in context.

You discover the chunks,

you discover how the grammar may change the vocabulary,

and you can make a note of this new language

or the language you want to learn.

The goal is not to memorize the answer,

the goal is to memorize the chunks, the little phrases

or the collocations

that can help you later create a better answer, okay?

I'll tell you more about chunks

in a future video coming soon.

Number three, practice.

In the practice step, you practice repeating those chunks

that you've learned.

But not just repeating,

you practice using them in different ways.

Maybe changing some words, using synonyms, antonyms,

changing the tense, substitution.

You can even use mind maps to help you do that.

But you're practicing the chunks.

And then you go back to the original question

and you answer it again.

But try to use something new that you've just learned,

to improve your answer a bit.

Step by step, this helps you build up your vocabulary

and improve your answers.

Then step four is build.

And this is the step most students forget and never do.

And this is where you build the flexibility

and the fluency that you really need

for a band seven and band eight.

What you do is you go back to that original question

and you answer it in a different way.

And then again, in another different way,

and then again in a different way.

So rather than memorizing

and repeating the same answer every time,

which is making you stuck,

you are answering differently each time.

Just small changes, building your flexibility.

And when you have that flexibility,

you'll be so much more confident.

The whole process is repeated again and again

and again for different questions, different topics.

And this is what I use throughout

the IELTS speaking Gold course.

It's not overnight success, right?

But it's fun, it's engaging,

and it builds up your skillset over time.

Maybe a month, two months, maybe three months,

depending on your goal.

Most people don't know this.

They don't know this system of study, but now you do.

So there you have it, the four step Speaking Success System.

One, try, two, discover,

three, practice, four, build.

And anybody who uses it can succeed

in the IELTS speaking test.

So now go ahead and succeed, my friend. (laughs)

Don't take my word for it.

Have a look what some of my students

on the Gold course are saying.

Now you might think, okay, I understand the theory,

I can see how it works,

but maybe you need some more examples to really grasp it

and feel the system, right?

Well, I'm gonna show you that in next week's video.

We'll be looking at specifically how this works

so you can get real examples and understand

and feel the method, and then you can practice it more

and more on your own, right?

It's actually really easy to do,

but I'll show you that in the next video.

In the meantime, you can download the PDF

from today's lesson, just click on the link down below,

and if you are interested in the IELTS Speaking Gold course,

also check it out in the link below.

And with that, I bid you good day.

Thank you so much for watching.

Oh, do remember to subscribe

and turn on notifications if you want to see future videos,

like next week's video.

And that's it.

Again, thanks so much for watching.

Take care, bye-Bye.

(upbeat music)