So you want to improve but you never get around to practising or you just don’t know the best way.
Sounds familiar? Well, you’re not alone. But luckily help is at hand. Try out these tips:
Five Steps for Improving your Spoken Vocabulary
1. First choose some natural vocabulary that you want to use more – this could be a phrasal verb, a linking phrase or some academic vocabulary.
2. Next, write them down, maybe on your hands or on a post-it note and stick them on the wall. Maybe on the fridge, near the kitchen sink, next to the bed, anywhere where you can build them into your daily routine.
3. Every day make different kinds of sentences using the phrases. So for ‘hang out’, I like to hang out with my cat. Yesterday I was hanging out at the park and I ran into an old friend.
4. The next step is to practise the whole question. At first, make some notes to help you but then later ditch the notes, and do it without them. Don’t worry if your answer changes over time. That’s what you want – make it more natural.
5. Practice as often as you can – on the toilet, in the shower, on the way to work. Try it out, let me know how it goes.
Now it’s your turn! Put your answers in the comments.
There are three parts to the IELTS speaking test and most students agree that part 1 of the speaking test is the easiest.
In fact it’s designed that way in order to ease you into the test, but don’t be fooled. It’s just as important as the other two parts and it’s your best chance to make a good impression.
It feels like a friendly interview and that’s because you’ll be asked questions on two to three personal, familiar topics such as your job, your studies, your hobbies, but also more random topics like rivers, clothes or your mobile phone.
But all the questions will directly be about you – no academic opinions required, and you only have to give relatively short answers (not like the long answer in part 2) and use general English.
Make sure you practise part 1 as much as the other parts. For some students, these topics seem too easy, so they might feel like they’re wasting their time studying or practising for them, that’s exactly why you should.
Part 1 is the first and best chance to impress the examiner, so you should practise a range of common questions.
That way you can be as fluent as you can and be able to show off some good, natural vocabulary.
This means phrasal verbs like ‘hang out with my friends’, idiomatic phrases like ‘grab a coffee’, ‘catch a movie’ or linking phrases like ‘it sounds kinda obvious’ or ‘believe it or not’.
To improve your fluency, you should try to extend your answers by directly answering the question then adding two bits of extra information.
So for ‘How often do you eat fast food?’ you would say:
“Well I usually eat fast food about once a week, and that is more often than not means grabbing a take out from the KFC near my home, but to be honest I only eat fast food when I’m too busy or too lazy to cook!”
Here’s a list of example part 1 topics and questions to get you started:
Work – what’s your job?
Studies – What do you study?
Home – Do you like your home? Why?
Hometown – Is it an interesting place to live?
Colours – What colour would you not choose for your home?
Clothes – Do you wear the same clothes when you go out and when you’re at home?
Fast food – How often do you eat fast food?
Music – Did you study music at school?
Films – Is there a cinema near your house?
Trees – Have you ever planted a tree?
Cooking – Who usually does the cooking in your house?
Rivers – Would you like to live near a river?
Now it’s your turn! Put your answers in the comments.
Practise the questions above and let us know how it goes.
Do you know any interesting Speaking Part 1 topics?
Hi everyone! Today’s word is affect. Affect means to have an impact or effect on something. It is the verb of ‘effect,’ which is a noun. For example, the increase in monkey population will greatly affect the number of available bananas.
Some of the most common collocations for affect include: affect your health, affect performance, affect the environment, adversely affect, seriously affect, indirectly affect.
Hi everyone! Today’s word is perception /pəˈsɛpʃən/. Perception is how you view the world. It means the same thing as viewpoint, but we use it in different situations.
We often say that there is a different from perception and reality.
How do your friends see you? Maybe they think you are really hard-working. But in fact you are very lazy. In that case, there is a difference between perception and reality: they think you are hard-working but in fact you are lazy.
Some common collocations for perception are: public perception, relationship between perception and reality, reinforces the perception, change someone’s perception.
Here are some example sentences using the collocations:
The public perception of Donald Trump is that his life is chaotic.
The relationship between perception and reality changes depending on how well you know a person.
People think I’m lazy and I reinforce that perception by falling asleep at work all the time.
To change everyone’s perception of me I need to drink coffee and stay awake.
Here I am on our YouTube Channelhanging out by the river and telling you about ‘Perception.’
Here’s a famous quote: ‘Facts matter not at all. Perception is everything.’ Stephen Colbert.
Now it’s your turn! Put your answers in the comments.
"The highest quality materials anywhere on the internet! Dave improved my writing and vocabulary so much. Really affordable options you don't want to miss out on!"
