A SENSE OF ENGLISH
For foreign students hopeful of securing a place at university in the UK, preparing for IELTS (International English Language Testing System) can be very stressful, not to mention costly.
At a cost of £100 just to sit the exam, repeated failure to get the required result can considerably dent the bank balance!
Employing some general strategies, like reading a wide range of articles, and listening to discussions of an academic or formal nature will of course help, but effective preparation for IELTS must also involve the use of some more specific techniques.
Each of the four disciplines that are tested (Reading, Writing, Speaking and Listening) requires different skills that should be honed through practice. Today we will highlight some important points that relate to the Speaking, as this is the one that tends to pose the biggest problem for Asian students.
Although you don’t know what is coming up in parts 2 & 3 of the Speaking test until the day itself, your first priority should be to fully prepare Part 1, in which you have to talk about yourself. There is no excuse not to be properly ready.
Start by make headings on a piece of paper: My country/hometown, My family, My studies/job/career, My interests/hobbies. Then prepare (with the help of your teacher or a native speaker you trust) 10 or 15 quality sentences about each. Commit these to memory, and practise them until the point where you feel completely comfortable using them.
Bear in mind the marking criteria for the exam: fluency, range and accuracy of vocabulary/grammatical structures and pronunciation will all be assessed. Diligent preparation will enable you to score highly in each of these facets and send you into part 2 with confidence.
In part 2 you have a minute to prepare to speak about a particular topic. The challenge here is to find the balance between making your thoughts or story easily understandable to the examiner and attempting to impress with your sentence structure and vocabulary.
Ask yourself this question: when you try to construct more difficult sentences, do you hesitate more or find yourself starting the sentence again? (Sometimes more than once?) My experience of preparing Asian students for IELTS is that they often do this.
An important tip: Hesitancy is specifically mentioned as something the examiner must mark down. Also, starting a sentence again reflects badly on you, as it shows that you hadn’t thought through the whole idea first.
Only start a sentence that you know exactly how it is going to end. If that means that you are more limited to shorter sentences, then so be it. That is preferable to making two or three attempts to express an idea, which will make the examiner tired.
If the question you are confronted with is difficult, keep things simple. If you are asked to talk about an interesting journey that you have made, and you can’t think of anything, make something up. The examiner doesn’t know you. You can lie if it helps you. The exam is a test of your English, not your morality!
For parts 2 and 3 you need to memorize some sentence structures that are transferable to different situations. Prepare thoroughly how to describe people and places in detail, have ready a range of expressions to offer your opinion together with appropriate sentences to justify it.
Very important: do not prepare it on your own! You will need the help of a capable native speaker with the sentences and expressions you want to memorize. Make sure it’s someone who you trust in a linguistic sense; someone who can understand exactly what it is you are trying to say and then put it into good quality English for you.
For foreign students hopeful of securing a place at university in the UK, preparing for IELTS (International English Language Testing System) can be very stressful, not to mention costly.
At a cost of £100 just to sit the exam, repeated failure to get the required result can considerably dent the bank balance!
Employing some general strategies, like reading a wide range of articles, and listening to discussions of an academic or formal nature will of course help, but effective preparation for IELTS must also involve the use of some more specific techniques.
Each of the four disciplines that are tested (Reading, Writing, Speaking and Listening) requires different skills that should be honed through practice. Today we will highlight some important points that relate to the Speaking, as this is the one that tends to pose the biggest problem for Asian students.
Although you don’t know what is coming up in parts 2 & 3 of the Speaking test until the day itself, your first priority should be to fully prepare Part 1, in which you have to talk about yourself. There is no excuse not to be properly ready.
Start by make headings on a piece of paper: My country/hometown, My family, My studies/job/career, My interests/hobbies. Then prepare (with the help of your teacher or a native speaker you trust) 10 or 15 quality sentences about each. Commit these to memory, and practise them until the point where you feel completely comfortable using them.
Bear in mind the marking criteria for the exam: fluency, range and accuracy of vocabulary/grammatical structures and pronunciation will all be assessed. Diligent preparation will enable you to score highly in each of these facets and send you into part 2 with confidence.
In part 2 you have a minute to prepare to speak about a particular topic. The challenge here is to find the balance between making your thoughts or story easily understandable to the examiner and attempting to impress with your sentence structure and vocabulary.
Ask yourself this question: when you try to construct more difficult sentences, do you hesitate more or find yourself starting the sentence again? (Sometimes more than once?) My experience of preparing Asian students for IELTS is that they often do this.
An important tip: Hesitancy is specifically mentioned as something the examiner must mark down. Also, starting a sentence again reflects badly on you, as it shows that you hadn’t thought through the whole idea first.
Only start a sentence that you know exactly how it is going to end. If that means that you are more limited to shorter sentences, then so be it. That is preferable to making two or three attempts to express an idea, which will make the examiner tired.
If the question you are confronted with is difficult, keep things simple. If you are asked to talk about an interesting journey that you have made, and you can’t think of anything, make something up. The examiner doesn’t know you. You can lie if it helps you. The exam is a test of your English, not your morality!
For parts 2 and 3 you need to memorize some sentence structures that are transferable to different situations. Prepare thoroughly how to describe people and places in detail, have ready a range of expressions to offer your opinion together with appropriate sentences to justify it.
Very important: do not prepare it on your own! You will need the help of a capable native speaker with the sentences and expressions you want to memorize. Make sure it’s someone who you trust in a linguistic sense; someone who can understand exactly what it is you are trying to say and then put it into good quality English for you.
No comments:
Post a Comment