Essential Phrases to Help Your FLUENCY in IELTS Speaking

- Here are some essential phrases

to help you become fluent in IELTS speaking.

(upbeat music)

Hello, this is Keith from English Speaking Success

and the website, the Keith Speaking Academy.

Now, to speak fluidly in English and IELTS speaking,

you need to learn the vocabulary and the grammar

and then practise so you can be flexible

and respond quickly to questions.

Oh yes,

and you must never give up.

Keep practising .

But you also need coherence.

Co, what?

Co-her-ence.

Coherence, right?

Is the smooth

flow of your ideas,

where your sentences are connected to each other,

and they flow smoothly.

So the listener or the examiner

finds it easy to follow what you are saying.

This will include signposts,

telling the listener where you are going.

I'm gonna talk about this or this.

It will include connectors,

which are like bridges connecting your sentences.

Come with me,

follow me over the bridge.

And also fillers,

which help you control the pace of your speech.

So in this video,

I'm going to give you

some really good phrases,

signposts to begin speaking,

signpost to generalise,

and signpost to talk in details

or give details and examples,

as well as connectors

to connect your sentences,

and some great fillers as well.

And

as a bonus,

at the end of the video,

I'm gonna give you some phrases for a skill

that almost no teachers are talking about

even though it appears in the band descriptors.

And if you don't do this,

you won't get band seven or above.

Find out more about that

towards the end of the video.

Right now, let's jump in with some signposts,

yo!

Okay, let's look at some nice phrases

to begin your answer.

Now I'm looking here particularly at

the part two question,

where you have to give a longer turn.

Really important that you begin very clearly,

very directly with a nice start, right?

So, what you don't want to do,

well, let's take the question, right?

For example,

"Describe a person you admire."

What you don't want to do

is something like this.

Yes, admiration is a great human quality.

It is important for us to look up to people,

especially elderly people

because admiration can help other.

Because that's going

to totally confuse the examiner.

"What are you talking about?

Admiration? Quality? Human?

I've asked you to describe a person."

Right?

It's gonna be confusing.

The signposts are not clear.

Much better signpost will be something like this.

I'm going to tell you about my uncle.

I'd like to kick off

by telling you about his job.

Great.

I'm going to tell you about 'boom', this person.

Very clear and I'd like to kick off

by telling you about some aspect,

maybe their personality, their job,

how you knew them, and so on.

We could also try something like this.

I'm going to tell you about my uncle.

To start with,

let me tell you about his job.

So this time we use, to start with,

let me tell you about his something something,

right?

Okay, lovely.

In addition,

we could also say something like,

the person I want to talk about is my uncle,

my mother, my father.

Or the person I want to talk about

is none other than my uncle.

That's a nice expression, none other than.

We use that often when we are gonna say something

that may surprise the examiner.

Now because the examiner doesn't know you,

it's easy to surprise them.

So you could always say that, right?

The person I'm gonna talk about

is none other than my brother.

So it's a good idea to be direct.

In fact, you can even say

you are going to be direct.

Something like,

getting to the point,

the person I want to talk about is my uncle.

And then you begin.

Lovely.

Now in part three of IELTS speaking

very often we have to generalise, you know,

making these broad assumptions

or giving general ideas about things

often quite abstract, right?

For example, let's take a question.

Is it easy for older people to change?

Here, we're gonna say something quite general, right?

We might want to say something like,

By and large, I'd say.

Overall, it seems to me that.

I tend to think that.

Let's have a look at these in action.

By and large, I'd say it's harder for them

because they're often stuck in their ways.

Overall, it seems to me that it's harder for them

because they're often stuck in their ways.

I tend to think that it's harder for them

because they tend to be stuck in their ways.

Great, let's go now from the general

to the detailed and giving examples.

Now in your IELTS speaking part three,

in your answers it's a good strategy

to talk generally and then give examples.

Be more specific, right?

This helps you develop your answer

and well will help you show off

a wider range of language.

Let's take some examples.

Imagine the question,

how do you think people could become healthier?

That's the question.

Of course you can say bababababa.

For example,

or babababa for instance, right?

But here are some more creative ways

of saying it.

To share one example with you.

To name one example.

More specifically.

In particular.

Now, let's have a look

at these in the same answer,

but using these different phrases.

I think there's a bunch of things

people could do to get into shape,

to share one example with you,

they could go for a brisk walk

first thing in the morning.

I think there's a bunch of things

people could do to get into shape.

To name one example,

they could go for a brisk walk

first thing in the morning.

I think there's a bunch of things people could do

to get into shape, more specifically,

they could go for a brisk walk

first thing in the morning.

I think there's a bunch of things

people could do to get into shape.

In particular, they could go for a brisk walk

first thing in the morning.

Let's move on.

Now the most common connectors

in natural spoken English are

and,

but,

so.

And it's perfectly fine to use these.

So ignore any YouTube teachers

who tell you don't say and

because it's fine to say and, really.

And, but and so.

And there are other words

you can use as well, right?

So in addition to 'and',

we could say,

on top of that,

actually, as a matter of fact.

For example,

I like history.

On top of that,

I like geography too.

I think they both overlap to be honest.

I like history.

Actually, I like geography too.

I think they both overlap to be honest.

I do like history.

As a matter of fact, I like geography too.

I think they both overlap to be honest.

Synonyms for but,

you could say that said.

Notice the intonation.

That said,

it's a mm.

So it's a falling rising.

That said,

or mind you.

Same intonation.

Mind you.

Can you say that?

Mind you.

Lovely.

For example,

I like fast food,

that said, I wouldn't eat it every day.

I do like fast food.

Mind you, I wouldn't eat it every day.

Finally with so,

when it means giving the reason, right?

You could say that's the reason

or that's the reason why.

For example,

I love football,

so I often go

to watch the match live on Saturdays.

I love football,

that's the reason why

I often go to watch the match live on Saturdays.

Lovely, let's move on to fillers.

Now fillers in English tend to be things like,

um,

er,

well,

you know.

And they tend to be seen as negative things.

I think the problem is

that they are overused

and if we overuse them it's negative.

However, these fillers

are part of natural spoken English

so it's fine to use some of them.

Um.

You see.

The thing is when you overuse them

I would suggest that

because things like um and hum

can be confused with hesitation,

which will bring down your fluency score.

So a quick tip for you,

if you think you're going to say um

then just go

quiet.

Say nothing.

As simple as that.

That will help you reduce your hesitations.

What I want to look at in this video

are the more complex fillers

that are often used to gain time,

especially in part three

where you get those difficult questions

you need time to think

and you can time to think.

Here are some simple,

well actually not simple,

complex fillers that you can use, okay?

And I'll try and show you how to use them.

Let's take the question.

Will we use electric cars more in the future?

That's a tricky question.

I think we probably will because.

Okay.

Or because it's a question about the future

you could say, that's hard to predict.

That's hard to predict.

To predict is to guess

what's going to happen in the future, right?

You could say,

that's hard to predict,

but I guess we probably will because.

Another one.

I'm no expert,

but I suppose we probably will

use electric cars more because.

And finally one of my favourites,

but you have to practise this one.

So will we use electric cars more in the future?

It's funny you should ask

because I was thinking about that the other day.

I think we probably will because.

Right, so you can see the phrase,

the pause

to take time to think

and then you give your answer, right?

Nice.

Okay, now let's switch

from part three to part one.

Part one you often get questions about,

do you like this?

Do you not like this?

What's your favourite sport, hobby, drink?

And of course you could just say,

well it's basketball.

Well it's coffee because, right?

But if you want to gain a bit of time

to think and you might do,

'cause you know I don't know

what my favourite sport is.

You could say things like the following,

talking about my favourite sport,

it has to be basketball.

See, I have time to think.

Or

when it comes to my favourite sport,

I'd say

it's basketball.

Finally,

if I were to talk about my favourite sport,

I suppose

I would choose basketball

because

and so on and so forth.

Nice.

Okay, so these are simple

and complex fillers that can help you gain time.

Let's

move

on.

Now do you remember

at the beginning of the video

I talked about a skill,

the one skill and the phrases you need

that almost nobody's teaching,

even though it's in the band descriptors.

Have a look at the band descriptor under vocabulary.

Band seven

uses paraphrase effectively.

Now paraphrase,

well it has two basic different meanings,

but it is so important that you can do this.

First of all,

it's where you rephrase the question

in another way using synonyms.

This is very common in IELTS writing, okay?

To some extent in IELTS speaking.

So if the examiner says,

Well, do you like history?

Yes, I'm a big fan of history.

Like, I'm a big fan of,

I've paraphrased, okay.

The second way of paraphrasing

and equally important is when you're trying

to explain something or describe something,

but you don't know the words to do it.

Maybe it's an unusual object

and you just can't find

the right vocabulary in English.

What you must not do is go,

oh, I don't know how to say that.

No, you must find a way

to express that idea with different words.

That is effectively using paraphrase.

Otherwise you won't get your band seven.

Ha!

For example, let's say the examiner,

you're talking about coffee and computers

and the examiner says,

"do you ever spill coffee", right?

Spill coffee on your computer.

And you say,

"no, actually because I have one of these."

But you don't know the name.

And of course in the exam

you won't have in your pocket,

oh one minute, yeah,

I've got one of these.

What? No, that doesn't happen.

So you need to find a way round describing it.

Listen to me explain

and notice the language I use.

Actually no, I never spill coffee on my computer

because I have, well I have a special thing,

I don't know the specific name of it,

I'm not quite sure what it's called,

but it's basically it's made out of plastic

and it's something that I put on the table

and it raises the level of the computer,

similar to a car jack and it raises it up

so that the coffee can never

spill on the computer.

Right now.

See, I was able to describe the object,

use some quite nice language,

and even though I didn't know the word stand,

the examiner will not mark me down

cause I didn't know the word stand.

He will actually say, or she will say

or they will say,

"great,

the candidate has paraphrased

something they didn't know how to say

and they talked about it in a lovely way."

Effective paraphrase.

So the sum of the phrases I use were,

I don't know the specific name

or I don't know the exact name.

I'm not sure how you call that

or I'm not sure what you call that exactly.

You could also say,

it's a kind of

or it's similar to.

Great, simple phrases.

Make sure you learn to paraphrase.

It is so important.

So there we have it.

We've been looking at signposts to begin speaking,

to generalise, to give details and examples.

We've looked at connectors,

and,

but,

so,

and synonyms for these.

We've looked at fillers

to help you gain time and control of your speech

as well as the ability to paraphrase.

I hope all of this is useful for you.

If you liked the video,

if you have liked the videos

press the subscribe button,

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and if you want the PDF of all of these phrases

so you can practise and become fluent,

click on the link below in the description

you can get it for free.

And I

can't wait

to see you in the next video.

Take care of my friends.

Bye, bye.

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