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Many students prepare for the IELTS Speaking test by memorising answers, but this is not a good strategy.
- Memorisation creates stress and cognitive overload.
- It makes students sound robotic.
- Examiners detect memorised answers easily.
- It does not build real fluency.
The IELTS test doesn’t test memory nor does it reward good answers.
It tests communication and it rewards fluency.
Real fluency means flexibility.
In this post, I’ll show you 5 things you can do that will help you to answer any IELTS speaking question fluently — without memorising.
Have A Good Mindset
Don’t try to give perfect answers.
Focus on communication rather than giving a perfect and amazing answer full of complex vocabulary.
Remember that everyone hesitates and pauses when they speak. So don’t worry if at times you hesitate. In fact, use pauses to your advantage (see Phrasing below).
What’s more, there are no right and wrong answers in IELTS Speaking.
Your opinions and ideas are not that important, what matters is your language.
Forget perfection, aim for natural communication.
Take Your Time
Some examiners speak quickly, and you may feel you have to try and speak at the same speed.
Don’t do that. Don’t follow the pace of the examiner.
Take your time to listen carefully to the question and speak at your own pace.
Be confident with silence, your silence and the examiner’s silence.
It gives you thinking time.
Use Phrasing
Phrasing is the deliberate use of pauses when you speak.
Phrasing is different from hesitation which is uncontrolled stopping when speaking.
When you use phrasing, you make a choice to pause and it’s a great technique all fluent and effective speakers use.
It allows you to think, emphasise, change an idea, or choose a different word.
What’s more, it helps you avoid fillers like ‘errr’ and ‘erm’.
Look at the following sentence:
To be honest, I prefer not to eat fast food even though it is delicious.
You can break up the sentence into phrases like this:
To be honest / I prefer not / to eat fast food / even though it is delicious.
This is how you can use phrasing to your advantage, pausing deliberately.
There are no fixed rules about phrasing and where you pause exactly.
You can learn it by listening for it every time you listen to English.
Notice it and repeat it. You can also shadow audio texts to practise it.
Connect Your Ideas
An important aspect of fluency is connecting your ideas and sentences.
You can do this with discourse markers and connectors; spoken connectors. Here are some examples;
Spoken Connectors
Opinion
I think
I reckon
Reason
Because
The reason I say so is
Consequence
So
As a result of this
That’s why
Adding
On top of that
I would also add
Examples
Let me give you an example
Get Into The Flow
Sometimes when you speak, you manage to focus on your ideas, and the language just flows naturally.
You don’t have to focus too much on vocabulary or grammar. The words just appear as you speak.
This is the state you want to aim for when speaking in the IELTS speaking test.
Focussing too much on grammar or vocabulary will affect your fluency, knock your confidence and affect your performance.
This flow comes from lots of practice, and a conscious effort to focus on communication a little more than vocabulary or grammar.
It’s difficult to balance all of these, but when you feel you are in the flow, stay there and just carry on speaking like that!
These five tips will help you answer any question in the IELTS Speaking test fluently.
FAQs
Focus on communication, not perfection. The test rewards your ability to express ideas clearly and naturally—not your ability to recall perfect answers.
Not necessarily. Using simple language fluently and effectively is better than using complex vocabulary incorrectly. Clarity and natural expression are more important.
Phrasing is when you deliberately pause while speaking to organise your thoughts. It helps you sound more natural, gives you thinking time, and improves clarity.
Find out how to become a confident speaker of English with the IELTS Speaking Gold course
