IELTS at A Glance-3
IELTS Speaking Test Procedure
This is a
face to face interview of yours which is taken by an IELTS Certified Examiner
in about 11-14 minutes some days prior or after all the other tests dates, but
they ensure that the speaking test is administered within a span of seven days.
Mind that your interview is carefully recorded on an audiotape. The content
and the procedures of the speaking test are the same for both the IELTS Academic
and IELTS General Training categories. Like most common element the core testing aspects of speaking
are Fluency; Coherence and Cohesion; Lexical Resources and lastly Grammatical
Range and Accuracy.
There are three
sections in this test as highlighted below.
Section-1
It takes
about 4--5 minutes where you are asked to give a brief introduction which may
include your likes, dislikes, and even your interests in sports and music.
Section-2
This portion
of your test takes about 3--4 minutes. Here, the examiner asks you to pick any
one topic on a card, and you are provided with a minute time for preparation.
Now you have to speak on the topic in a convincing manner giving the required
reasons and examples within a span of 2 minutes.
Section-3
In the last
section of your speaking test, you will have the pleasure of conversing with
the IELTS Examiner. Meaning that you are asked some questions related to the
topic you discussed in section-2. But then this time you require to critically
analyze, observe, and give a well calculated and convincing answer with
relevant examples and valid reasons as it contains an abstract topic/subject of
your discussion. You have to be aware of the use of your grammar, accuracy, tone, and
other factors mentioned above.
IELTS Writing Task-1 Procedures
In task-1 of
the IELTS writing task, we have two different topics for both the formats and
their patterns. Let us talk about the Academic writing task first and then
proceed to the General Training writing task.
IELTS Academic Writing Task-1
As already
discussed earlier, here test takers are assigned a set of visual information to be described/interpreted
in their own words. These non-verbal items can be of bar charts,
line graphs, tables, maps, diagrams (usually processes of doing/preparing a
certain thing), pie charts, etc. in one or two in the question set. It is far
easier than Writing Task -2 as it is more like an information-transfer task. You
are very unlikely to bring in any other information which is not shown in the visual
(charts/graphs) Alike speaking, test takers are usually expected to fulfill the
minimum requirements of the task in these headings -
1. Task Achievement
(25%)
2. Task Response
2. Coherence
and Cohesion (25%) (logical flow and connection ideas/information with causes,
reasons and examples using powerful
connectives)
3. Lexical Resource
(25%) (use of a wide range of relevant vocabulary and collocation)
4. Grammatical
Range and Accuracy (25%) --a diversified use of grammar items like-
a) Articles
b) Preposition
c) Concord
d) Question Tags
e) Tense
f) Sentence
Transformations
g) Voice
h) Narration (Indirect
speech)
i) Connectives (conjunction)
j) Causative verbs
k) Conditionals
Writing Strategies
Following
strategies can be instrumental for the candidates who are going for academic
writing task-1. However, these strategies can also help any other learners who
want to improve their writing skills for any other purposes.
1. Carefully observe
and understand the demand of the question.
2. Plan for a
3-5 paragraphs report/ interpretation of the chart(s).
3. Collect some
smart registers (relevant words) like shows,
illustrates, trend, tendency, fall,
rise, proportion, dramatic, twice as much, nearly, slightly, thrice as high as, etc.
4. Do not use
any doubtful vocabulary/idioms or sentence structure if you are not sure; it is
better to use simple words and sentences in such situations.
5. Use
appropriate connectives /transitions like, similarly, on the other hand, in
spite of…
6. Write the
introduction paragraph in not more than 2-3 short sentences using the same
information is given in the question but do not use the same words/ sentences;
paraphrase and use your own sentence.
7. Have about 3-4
short body paragraphs talking about different aspects of the charts separately. Here,
you are writing all the data and facts as a report.
8. You can
start your body paragraph by comparing the highest and the lowest data; as: According to the 2019 census, …
9. Write your
conclusion in 2-3 short yet compact sentences.
10. It is
advisable to use all simple, complex, and compound sentences wherever possible.
But do not overuse them.
11. Do write
more than 150 words as the threshold is 150 words; you can go as long as 170-180
words.
12. Use variable
tenses as per the demand of the task (the past, existing, and future predictions).
13. Make use of the
passive voice as and when needed.
14. Mind your
spellings, punctuations, and capitalization; be careful about the use of the
compound nouns and of which some are written as one and the others are written
as two words like classroom, blackboard, college team, university graduates, etc.
15. Use British English (spelling and grammar)
as far as possible
16. As writing
task-1 accounts for only 33% of your total task, be watchful about the time as you
have another long essay writing task accounting for the next 66% of your
writing
17. Also ensure that
you use full formal words and not any contraction or colloquial words like
guys, fellows, buddy, kids, nukes, etc.
The End
