The 4-Step System To Practice Speaking English

- How do you practice speaking English for IELTS?

Do you have a method?

Do you have a good method?

Let me share with you my method in detail;

the Speaking Success System

in this second video about succeeding in IELTS speaking.

(gentle upbeat music)

Hello, it's Keith from the "Keith Speaking Academy"

and of course this YouTube channel,

"English Speaking Success".

So welcome to this second video.

Oh, if you haven't seen the first video yet, this one,

make sure you go and watch it,

as I explained the system that I've used

to help 1,000s of students across the world

succeed in their IELTS speaking test.

I also show you the most common mistakes

IELTS students make with their speaking,

and what to do instead to make sure that you don't do that

and you succeed with your IELTS speaking test.

It's the same system ongoing, or we are going,

we're doing it together,

we're going to put into practice today in today's video

and it's a system that I am sure will help you

succeed in IELTS speaking.

We'll do some examples.

You can go through the exercises with me,

you can pause the video

or you can just sit back and enjoy, whichever you like,

but we'll go through the entire system.

It's the big reveal.

You can also download the PDF of this later,

just click on the link down below and that's it.

Let's do a very quick recap

of the four steps of this system, right?

Number one, try, where you try and answer a question

from IELTS speaking to see what you know and don't know.

Number two, discover, where you watch

or listen to a proficient or native speaker give an answer,

and you learn some of the language

and how they use that language.

Number three, practice, where you practice

repeating the chunks you have picked up

from the discover stage.

And then four, build, where you give your answer,

give different answers to the same question

to build flexibility.

Right, let's jump straight in.

(air whooshing)

Okay, let's begin. Let's take a topic,

a typical IELTS topic and everyday life topic.

Let's talk about, aha.

(Keith grunting)

What? Thank you for shopping at (mumbling).

No, no. Ah, at the bottom, money. (giggling)

Let's talk about money. Okay.

(air whooshing)

A question you might be asked is,

"Do you prefer to spend or save money?"

Now what I want you to do is pause the video

and just give an answer, an improvised answer.

Don't think, don't prepare,

don't write down, just give your answer.

This is a part one question so probably around 15 seconds,

two to three sentences.

Ready? Pause.

Great, welcome back.

Now, when you gave your answer

you may have given a very confident answer

that you really like. Great.

But you may be not too sure and not too confident.

Maybe you said something like,

"I prefer to spend money, I can't save,"

which is a bit short.

And maybe your answer was short

because you don't have the ideas

or you don't have the vocabulary, but there's a gap, right?

And that is the key thing, if there's a gap

we need to build up your knowledge and your skill,

and that's gonna be the next step.

If there is no gap and you're very happy and confident,

go, stop watching the video.

Go and do your IELTS test now.

For the rest of you,

let's move to step number two, discover.

(air whooshing)

Okay, in step number two, discover, we're going to discover

the language used by a proficient speaker

or a native speaker.

In this case, it's gonna be me.

I'll give you my answer, listen carefully

and try and notice some interesting vocabulary

or grammar or language, okay? Here we go.

So, do you prefer to save or spend money?

I definitely prefer spending money,

I mean, I love splashing out on things

that I can't really afford.

I know I should manage my finances better,

but I'm just not very good at putting money aside like that.

Now, did you hear the chunks that I used?

If you can use just one of those chunks,

already your answer will be better.

Now, what do I mean by chunks?

Okay, a chunk is a piece of something.

We say, for example, focaccia.

(plastic rustling)

That is a chunk of bread. Oh, smells delicious.

A chunk, right? It's a piece of bread.

A chunk of language is a piece, a piece of language.

For example, we can have,

chunks can be a common phrase like,

"It's time to go, it's time to go."

It can be a grammatical chunk like,

"I'm interested in something, I'm interested in sport,

I'm interested in doing sport."

It could be a collocation like, red wine, white wine,

black tea, have a shower, all kind of collocations.

It could be an idiom. It's a piece of cake.

No, Keith, it's a piece of bread.

No, a piece of cake, meaning it's, it's easy.

Exactly, exactly.

So when you're listening not only to this answer

but listening to English in general,

you want to be noticing.

That's the skill to develop,

it's to notice the chunks, right?

So look out for the grammatical chunks,

the lexical chunks, the collocations,

the idioms, things like that.

It's a skill you can develop.

Now, the goal is with the IELTS speaking question

and the answer is not to memorize the answer.

The goal is to learn the chunks and memorize the chunks,

and then use those flexibly in your own answer, right?

That's a key thing.

Now, so how do you notice chunks?

It's something, it's a skill you can develop.

We'll do it with this answer

and I'll point out the way to do it.

In English, there are different kinds of words

and the main thing to look at is take the key words,

so nouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives,

and look at the words next to them,

the word before and/or the word after,

and notice that, okay?

Let's have a look, I mean, for example, I said,

"I'm interested in sport", right?

"I'm interested in sport".

There we've got interested is an adjective and we say,

"I'm interested in." Not on or at, in, plus a noun.

Or "I'm interested in doing sport.

In plus a verb in the gerund.

That's what you notice, that's what you note.

And then you can use it flexibly,

"I'm interested in English",

"I'm interested in learning English",

"I'm interested in learning French". It's true, right?

Let's come back to my IELTS answer

about spending or saving money,

and let's just analyze it a little bit.

So I said, "I definitely prefer spending money".

Definitely is an adverb, right?

It means without a doubt, for sure.

And I'm using that before prefer,

so I can see that is a great chunk,

"I definitely prefer something."

When you're really sure, "I definitely prefer tea",

"I definitely prefer spending money".

Next one, "I love splashing out on things

I can't really afford".

So to splash out on something

is to spend a lot of money on something, okay?

So here we've got the verb splash

and we can notice it's used here,

the word after is out on, splash out on something,

because we spend money on something.

So notice that chunk, right? Splash out on.

Many chunks in English, it helps to listen to one sound.

Don't listen for splash out on,

listen for splash out on, splash out on.

That's the sound you want to listen for,

and try to reproduce, right, splash out on.

Next, "I know I should manage my finances better."

So I can see my finances is a noun

and the verb here is manage, meaning to organize.

So, manage your finances means organize your money.

Well, your finances is interesting.

My finances includes money, assets,

maybe stocks and shares,

all the things that have value for me.

My finances, notice it's plural, finances.

Finance is the field of money,

but my finances, right, is my money.

So, manage my finances,

again, that's the chunk you want to learn.

But I'm not good at putting money aside like that.

To put money aside, literally, is to put money on one side,

meaning to save money. Put money aside.

Another chunk that you should notice

and then move on to practice.

How do we practice? Well, that is step three.

(air whooshing)

Right, let's move to stage three, step three, practice.

You're gonna love this, this is my favorite part.

Here with the practice,

I'm gonna show you some of the different

practice activities I do.

I do a lot more in the Gold Course

but this will give you a flavor of what we do.

Now, some people think you need a teacher live

to correct you.

Actually, with a lot of your practice, you don't.

Just follow the instructions,

Imagine I'm in the room with you

and I'm just telling you what to do, okay?

I'm gonna tell you different things,

I'm gonna ask you to repeat, change a word,

say the opposite, and give a phrase true for you.

These are some examples, there are more.

We'll do these today.

Once you master this, you're gonna see

your pronunciation rocket,

your vocabulary rocket, and your fluency rocket.

Three rockets, fireworks, right?

Now, let's have a look,

let's take an example first of all here.

So, remember we're focusing on sounds

so I'm not gonna write everything for you.

First of all, listen to the sounds.

Repeat. Splash, splash out.

Splash out on a holiday. Good.

I'm going to splash out on a holiday.

Listen to the stress. (mumbling)

I'm going to splash out on a holiday.

Great. Now then, let's change a word.

Let's change a holiday for a new phone.

I'm going to splash out on a new phone.

Change for a new car.

I'm going to splash out on a new car.

Nice, good. Now then, let's go back to the original phrase,

I'm going to splash out on a holiday.

Say the opposite.

You should say, "I'm not going to

splash out on a holiday," right?

New phrase, I often splash out on holidays. Repeat.

Great. I often splash out on holidays.

Now say the opposite.

Good. I don't often splash out on holidays,

or I never splash out on holidays,

or even, I rarely splash out on holidays, right?

All of those are good.

Next, come back to my phrase,

I often splash out on holidays. Put it in the past.

I often splashed out on holidays. Splashed out,

splashed out on holidays.

Great. Finally, say a phrase that is true for you.

I might say, "I splashed out on a holiday last year

with my family, and we went to Italy."

Also, I splashed out on a new MacBook two years ago.

Right, that's it.

So, these are all different ways of practicing.

I'm here with you, and can you see how

you're not just repeating but you're starting to think,

you're connecting at a deeper level of learning

because it's not just automatic pilot,

you're really engaged with the language

and that's building up your ability.

It's a bit difficult at the start

but it gets easier and easier,

and as you do this with different chunks,

well, the world will change for you. (giggling)

Right, now the next bit of the practice

is to go back to our IELTS question

and give your answer again.

This time, I just want you to try and use that one chunk

"splash out on" in your answer, okay?

Develop the answer as you can, okay?

Again, I'll say the question, pause, give me a short answer,

two to three sentences. Are you ready?

So, do you prefer to save or spend money? Pause.

Great. Well, I hope you may be able to use splash out,

that new chunk. Don't worry if you can't,

it's not easy to start using

something new you've just learned, okay?

It does take a bit of practice, but that's fine.

This is the idea of how the system works.

Just for your reference, here is something I might say.

"Do you prefer to spend money or save money?"

Well, I prefer to spend money, actually.

I often splash out on holidays and clothes,

maybe new clothes, probably more than I should, actually.

I guess I'm just not very good at saving.

That's it, right? Different from my first answer,

but I'm starting to use these new chunks.

Okay, let's move on to step number four, build.

(air whooshing)

Okay, step four, build, is about building flexibility

and building your answers.

So instead of memorizing one answer

and repeating it and repeating it and repeating it,

you give different answers to that same question.

And here, it's very free practice.

You can use the chunks or not use the chunks.

Doesn't matter too much,

the important thing is you're building your flexibility.

And why are we doing this? 'Cause if we look at

the IELTS band descriptors for speaking,

you'll see at a band seven and above

uses vocabulary resources flexibly,

uses a range of complex structures with some flexibility.

Flexibility is the key word

that the examiner is looking for.

And so you need to be able to react

and change your answer, okay?

So simple, step four is you go back to the question,

"Do you prefer to spend or save money?"

and give two or three different answers.

Forget about trying to give a perfect answer,

just speak and improvise, okay?

Let me try, okay.

"Do you prefer to spend or save money?"

I prefer to spend money.

I do love going round the shopping mall

at the end of the month when I get paid.

I tend to blow all my money on clothes.

Yeah, I'm not very good at saving.

Or, "Yeah, I prefer to spend money.

I have this habit of spending most of my salary

so there's nothing left at the end of the month.

I know I should save, I mean, my father

tried to hammer it into me that I should save money

but, yeah, I never get round to it." Okay?

Now those are higher level answers

but you can just say whatever you can say at your level.

You have a go. "Do you prefer..."

and you can pause and give your answer.

"Do you prefer to spend or save money?"

(air whooshing)

Okay, I'm assuming you've paused, have a go,

you've seen the system, right? Great.

Okay, you've seen the system.

The key here is to study, to study,

to practice, to practice, to study, to practice.

On a long-term basis you're building your vocabulary,

your pronunciation, and your fluency

and flexibility to answer your IELTS questions, right?

I hope you can see that this is quite a systematic way

and an easy way to practice

for your IELTS speaking questions and topics,

and for the IELTS speaking test.

It's also quite fun and engaging.

And this, the "Speaking Success System",

it's a method that I've used with 1,000s of students

to help them go on to improve their level

from a five to a six or a six to a seven,

and get the score they need in IELTS speaking.

And the great thing about this

is that you're not only helping you

with your IELTS speaking, but you're improving

your overall ability and confidence in English speaking,

which you have for the rest of your life.

When you go and live in another country

or work in an international company

or study in the University of your dreams,

whatever it may be, you're building up that confidence,

well, to be a confident speaker of English.

(air whooshing)

So, would you like to prepare for your IELTS speaking test

with, you know, this method?

Now, there may be one or two things that are stopping you.

And when I show this method to students,

they usually ask some common questions.

Two common questions. The first question is,

"Well, where can I find exercises and materials like this

suitable for me to do IELTS speaking?" Good question.

And the other common question is,

"Should I also practice with real people?"

So, the first question, where can you find materials?

You can look across the internet

and probably find materials that are useful for you,

preferably video and audio,

try not just to read from written answers.

Or in my Gold Course I have it already made.

The whole course is based on the "Speaking Success System".

Different topics and questions,

practicing using this system.

It's all there, ready-made to go.

The second question, should you practice with other people?

You don't have to, but it's a good idea if you can.

Mainly because as you build up your skill and confidence,

it's about communicating with people.

That's what language is, right?

And so, if you can chat to other people that you don't know,

you're gonna learn that communication skill

and become more confident

as you push out of your comfort zone.

At the end of the day, when you face the IELTS examiner,

you have to speak to a stranger

and you have to be comfortable to do that,

so it's probably a good idea.

The good news is, also, in my Gold Course

we have online breakout rooms

where you can speak to two or three other students,

students around the world on the course,

and practice your speaking.

We have sessions every day,

there's guided questions you can follow,

there's no teacher it's just you, the students,

practicing in very small groups.

So, there you have it.

There you've got the "Speaking Success System".

You can go and practice on your own

or you could come and join us in the Gold Course,

ready-made system, and the Breakout Rooms,

plus strategies and tips on how to address the exam,

live lessons like the ones I do on YouTube,

we have two of those every month,

all on the latest topics

and things that you should be looking out for.

And we even have Zoom meetings with me.

All the students come in, we practice,

we ask, there's question and answer.

So if you want that community of support and contact,

connecting with other people and myself,

it's all there in the Gold Course.

So, if this four-step system makes sense to you,

if you feel, "Yes, that can help me."

Then you're ready to take the next step.

And the next step can be to sign up for the Gold Course,

the "IELTS Speaking Gold Course".

You can check out, there's a link below here.

And when you're ready, then you can take the next step

to transform your English speaking to become,

well, to go from being a struggling English student

to being a confident English speaker,

so you can face the examiner with confidence

and ace your IELTS speaking test.

And I can't wait to see you in the course.

That's it for today. Thank you so much for watching.

Remember, you can download the PDF of this,

review it, get a feel for it.

And do remember, please, to subscribe to my channel

and turn on notifications, like the video if you did,

leave me a comment, tell me what you think

about this system.

And I will see you in the course and/or in the next video.

Take care, my friend.

All the best. Bye-bye

(gentle upbeat music)