IELTS Speaking Part 2: Awesome Tips and Useful Phrases

- IELTS Speaking Part 2 is a piece of cake

if you know what you're doing.

Let's find out how you can succeed

in IELTS Speaking Part 2.

(upbeat music)

Hello, this is Keith from the Keith Speaking Academy

and the YouTube channel, English Speaking Success.

So in IELTS Speaking Part 2 people get nervous,

they get lost and they get confused, right?

And so they get a low score on IELTS speaking

all because of part two.

So how do you handle it?

How do you succeed in IELTS Speaking Part 2?

Well, in this video,

I'm gonna give you six tips and lots of useful phrases

you can use to guarantee your success.

I'm also gonna tell you about a challenge

that I'm running together with ELSA mobile app,

where you can practice these phrases and help you improve

and so get a higher score in IELTS Speaking.

If you don't know ELSA,

it's an amazing mobile app that will help you well,

improve pronunciation, learn new vocabulary

and build your confidence.

It's great, I am a big fan, more about that later.

Right now, let's get into the first tip.

So tip number one, plan a clear structure.

Now you may know or maybe you don't,

in IELTS Speaking Part 2,

suddenly the examiner will give you a test card,

a piece of paper and a pen or a pencil

and you have one minute to prepare.

It's really important in that minute to get an idea,

get an idea quickly, one idea that is good enough.

Don't spend the whole minute thinking of different ideas,

one idea and then use that minute to prepare your structure.

Of course you have the bullet points that can guide you.

But what you want to write down

is what you're gonna talk about.

So for example, if the question is,

describe a person you think is intelligent, right?

I may write down something like this,

I'm gonna talk about my father

and about what he does, but he's retired,

I can talk about the job he had.

I'll say that he's intelligent

because of the advice he gives me

and also he plays chess and this will stop you getting lost.

Where am I?

What was I talking about?

What was the question?

The structure, so important, don't write a lot.

You haven't got enough time, just some key words,

structure so important.

And do remember when you're speaking,

you keep this and the test card,

you keep it in front of you.

You use it a bit like politicians giving a speech,

you use it to guide you.

So for example, it might look something like this.

Well, I'm gonna tell you about my father.

He's retired at the moment

but he used to be a... dah, dah, dah, dah.

I think he's intelligent because he gives very good advice.

I remember one time he, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah,

and also what's more, we play chess

and he's a very good chess player.

He usually beats me, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah

and that's the person I want to describe.

This is your roadmap, this is your structure.

Make sure you have one, don't get lost.

Tip number two is be direct at the start.

So remember in part two, you have one,

you can talk for one to two minutes.

I recommend you talk at least one and a half minutes.

Now you might not know how long that is,

although if you have been practicing at home,

you should have a good feeling, right?

If you're not sure,

keep talking until the examiner stops you.

So be direct, some students, I think make the mistake

of giving a kind of introductory lecture

or talk about the topic, like intelligence.

Describe an intelligent person.

Well, intelligence is an important aspect of human nature.

There are different kinds of intelligence,

emotional intelligence and...

No stop, talk about the person or tell the examiner directly

who you're going to talk about.

For example, the person I'm going to describe is my father,

boom, bam.

Otherwise, any kind of preamble or talk or lecture

is gonna confuse the examiner and will not help you.

You can use a nice little idiom here.

You can say the person I'm going to describe is none other

than my father, none other than, none other than.

Difficult, right?

Can you say that?

None other than, none other than my father.

When we're talking about something or a person

that may be a surprise to the listener, you can say,

"Well, it's none other than my father."

The person I'm going to talk about

is none other than my mother.

If you're gonna talk about a place,

your favorite place, just say,

"I'm going to tell you about my favorite place,

it is boom, direct.

So be direct at the start, don't ramble, don't digress.

Don't go around all the houses, get to the point.

By the way, as I mentioned at the start of the video,

I'm doing a challenge in collaboration with ELSA

on the ELSA mobile app.

In that challenge, you can practice

all of these useful phrases for IELTS Speaking Part 2.

You can practice the pronunciation of the words,

the word stress, the phrases,

the chunks you can even practice in conversations.

It's absolutely brilliant.

Even if I say so myself, I'm really excited about it.

I think you'll love it, it's gonna help you

not only build pronunciation but help you learn phrases

like this and build your confidence.

The links are down below in the description

if you wanna download the ELSA app

but I'm gonna tell you a bit more about it later on.

For now, let's get into tip number three.

Tip number three is to use different tenses.

Sometimes students ask me,

"Keith, in IELTS Speaking Part 2,

which tense should I use?"

There's no answer.

You can use any tense depending on the meaning

you want to give.

What's important, I think is in IELTS,

you need to show off a wide range of grammatical structure,

including different tenses.

So part two is a great opportunity to do that.

Very often, there are opportunities to talk about things

in the past, things in the present and things in the future.

If it feels comfortable,

I want to show you now in this video, one technique,

it's a special storytelling technique to describe events

or activities it's as old as the hills

but it's really powerful.

And it's about using the present tenses

to describe a story in the past.

Sounds strange, right?

But let's see an example, okay?

Let's imagine we've been asked to describe an event

(clears throat)

and I begin like this.

It happened about two months ago.

I was waiting for a friend inside a coffee bar.

This woman came in and started talking really loudly

on her phone, then she sat next to me.

It was so noisy, I asked her to be quiet.

Now, if you look at the structure we've got the time

it happened, it's usually the simple past.

It happened two months ago.

When we set the scene, we usually use the past continuous,

I was waiting for a friend.

I was sitting in a bar, setting the scene.

And then there's a series of actions

which are often in the simple past,

she came in, she started talking,

she sat next to me, dah, dah, dah, different actions.

That's great, already you've got

some different tenses there

but look what happens if we change

and introduce the present tense, have a look at this.

It happened about two months ago,

I was waiting for a friend inside a coffee bar.

Then this woman comes in and starts talking really loudly

on her phone and then she sits next to me.

Oh, it was so noisy, I asked her to be quiet.

Now, can you see what's happening?

The time is the same, the setting of the scene

is the same but then I switched to - this woman comes in

and starts talking - the present simple.

What this does is it makes the action really vivid

and alive, almost as if you can see the woman here

in the conversation, right?

It brings it to life, it's a really powerful technique.

And then very often when we're concluding, talking

about the final actions, you go back to the past.

It was noisy, I asked her to be quiet.

It's a very powerful storytelling technique.

It's quite tricky so you need to practice it a lot.

And there are no rules about when you switch tense,

it's just the feeling you want to create, but try it out.

Practice it and now that I've told you,

I think as you start listening to stories,

you'll probably start noticing the use of the present tenses

to describe past events.

Very powerful, very useful, give it a go, practice

but only use it if you feel confident.

Okay, great, let's move on.

Tip number four, use some flexible templates.

I'm a big fan of templates, right?

A template is really a set phrase

but where you change one or two of the words

each time you use it.

I think templates are great 'cause they can build

your confidence, they can give you flexibility.

And in a way they're better than set phrases or idioms

because those are fixed and you memorize them.

The template, you're changing it each time you use it

but it's so powerful.

For example, IELTS Speaking Part 2,

I'd like to kick off by telling you up, up, up, up, up,

that's the template I'd like to kick off

by telling you what happened.

I'd like to kick off by telling you the agenda

for today's meeting.

I'd like to kick off by telling you what I think

about this piece of work.

It's such a great template,

very flexible when you're starting anything,

especially IELTS Speaking Part 2.

Another one, describing an event, right?

This took place, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah.

This took place quite a while back.

This took place two months ago.

This took place last year actually, great.

Another one if we're describing a place,

it's one of the dah, dah, dah, dah, dah,

places I have visited.

It's one of the most amazing places I have visited.

It's one of the most beautiful places I have visited.

Actually, it's one of the cheapest places I have visited.

Can you see?

These nice templates are giving you lots of language

and flexibility helping you show off

your grammatical range as well.

There are many more and you can find them

in the ELSA challenge I'm doing.

(screen swooshing)

If you don't know ELSA mobile app

then let me just show you how it works.

It's great, right?

So especially if you're an IELTS student,

you'll notice you can practice IELTS topics, right?

You can practice part one, part two and part three

and look at that even path three,

you can look at different conversations

and practice your pronunciation in the whole conversation.

Also, ELSA have created quite a few challenges with teachers

and my challenges in here.

And let's have a look at how one of these parts

of the challenge works.

You can practice individual sounds,

differentiating sounds

and then there's the words in context.

This is nice, have a look at this one, okay?

It asked me to practice the difference between these two,

- [Voice Over] Coast.

- That's coast.

(beeping sound)

Great, continue.

And let's have a look here.

- [Voice Over] Cart, card.

- Cart, card, cart, notice card, of course card

when you have the voice D at the end, the vowel is longer.

- [Voice Over] Cart, card.

- Card is the second one.

(beeping sound)

Yeah, it's great.

It's absolutely brilliant, you can do lots of practice,

improve pronunciation, build up your vocabulary

and also your confidence, it's great.

Now, when you go to sign up for ELSA

because you're my students, we have some discounts for you.

If you sign up for a one-year plan,

you can get a 30% discount off the original price.

If you go for the lifetime membership,

you get a whopping 80% off

and then you've got ELSA in your phone forever.

And it's great because they're adding so much new stuff,

new challenges, new information, new topics,

and you get access to all of that forever

for a one-time payment.

Go and check it out in the links below.

Right now, let's get back to those tips.

Tip number five, use cohesive devices.

Cohesive devices are these words or little phrases

that connect your sentences and your ideas.

It's like the glue that holds your ideas

and your speech together.

Sometimes they're called discourse markers,

linkers, connectors, right?

And without them, then your speech and sentences

just a disconnected.

There's no logic, it's hard to follow.

They're really important,

some of the basic ones are first of all

to kick off when you're beginning, right?

When you're going in sequence after that,

next, when you're changing topic.

Anyway, when you're concluding finally in the end, right?

And all of these are so important because they make it easy

for the examiner to follow you

and so you will get a higher score.

It's one of the main criteria for fluency

in the IELTS band descriptors so it's really important.

Here are some more examples in the middle of a story,

changing direction.

dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, anyway, what happened next was...

Anyway, what happened next was - nice.

When you're coming to the end, often in IELTS part two,

we have to talk about our feelings, right?

You may say, "When it comes to my feelings,

I'd say, I felt really happy about it."

When it comes to my feelings,

I'd say dah, dah, dah, dah, dah.

Or you could say, "as far as my feelings are concerned,

I'd say I was over the moon".

Say it with me, as far as my feelings are concerned,

there's a kind of a linking, as far as, as far as,

as far as my feelings are concerned, I was over the moon.

Or I'd say I was over the moon,

different possibilities, right?

These are great cohesive devices

you can be using to give cohesion to your answers

and really impress the IELTS examiner.

Remember, you can practice these

in the ELSA mobile app speaking challenge.

Let's move on to tip number six.

The final tip and maybe the best is tip number six,

get into the flow.

So I think all of the above tips are really good

in my humble opinion but,

and this one is also really important.

So sometimes when students are in IELTS Speaking Part 2,

they kind of forget the grammar and all the tips

and what they should be doing

and they just start talking and it just flows

and you can see them get into a flow

and they just come out with this lovely,

natural spoken English, lovely descriptions,

lovely storytelling and it just works.

And it's great because remember,

IELTS Speaking is a test of your natural spoken English

not academic English so getting into the flow sometimes,

allowing this creativity and language to come out

naturally is really great.

Of course, it depends on your personality

and possibly on your level and how much you've prepared

but if you've done lots of preparation

and you've got the confidence,

it can be really great to just get into the flow.

And I think, creativity is really important

because creativity is your uniqueness, right?

When you speak, every sentence you create is unique.

It's your creativity coming out.

If you're gonna migrate abroad and live in a new community

and country, that community doesn't want a robot,

they need your creativity.

They need to listen to you creatively expressing

your ideas in English.

Same if you go to study abroad at university,

they don't need another robot to come into the class.

They want to hear somebody using English creatively.

They need your creativity.

It's about what you can give them, it's almost,

it's your responsibility to be creative

and to speak the best that you can.

So I think it's really important.

If you're going for an IELTS band seven, eight or nine,

then don't be too straight, too narrow minded.

Don't adjust imitate lots of phrases, open up, be creative,

get into the flow, let yourself shine,

and you'll get the score that you need.

(screen swooshes)

So follow the above tips, start using these phrases

and I am confident you have a great chance to succeed

in IELTS Speaking Part 2.

Remember, I think the success is in the practice

so just practice as much as you can.

Remember the challenge in ELSA,

you can go into the challenge I'm doing,

start practicing there straight away.

The links are down below.

If you sign up for a one-year membership,

you do get a 30% discount

and if you sign up for life, lifetime membership,

there's a massive 80% discount.

Insane but great.

Go and check out the links down below

and you can have ELSA in your pocket

for the rest of your life, fantastic.

So if you've liked the video,

do remember to subscribe and turn on the notifications.

It's been a pleasure as always spending this time with you.

I hope it helps, good luck with your test.

And I will see you in a few moments in the next video.

Take care my friend, bye-bye

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