Warm-up Questions:
Part 2 is tough – there’s no denying that. Fortunately, the IELTS knows that too, so you are given 1 minute to prepare your talk.
“How do I make the most of my 60-second preparation time?”
This is a common question I receive from students.
In this week’s newsletter, I will give you some strategies to help you prepare for any Part 2 answer.
This one comes directly from my comprehensive IELTS Speaking eBook.
My personal favourite strategy is: PDF
This stands for Past – Describe – Future
Simply, this means start your story in the past, describe in the middle, and finish in the future.
Not only does this strategy help you construct and share a chronological and therefore easy to follow answer, but it also helps you prepare your notes by making by giving you a structure you can jot down quickly.
Here’s an example:
Describe a beautiful city.
You should say:
Following the PDF strategy. Your 60-second notes could look like this:
As you can see, you can quickly separate your notes into 3 sections: P, D and F.
Then you can include details and information related to each part. When it’s time to give your answer, you can simply start with ‘P’ and go through your notes. You can also feel confident that your story will be clear, comprehensive, and will help you show off a wider variety of skills (the past tense in the past or the 2nd conditional in the future, for example.)
However, some students find this distracting and actually don’t feel comfortable using this strategy, even after some practice.
Luckily, there is another strategy you can employ that will help you ace Part 2.
If you saw last week’s newsletter, you might remember that you can talk about anything related to the topic.
If your cue card was about a beautiful city, for example, you could easily…
These bullet points are actually all you need to write on your notes.
This is great for some students who feel that their notes actually distract them more than help them.
If this is the case, you can simply write:
That’s it! You simply create a list of prompts and topics, rather than specific words or sentences. Now you don’t have to worry about going ‘off’ your notes and losing your concentration or harming your fluency.
I would recommend this technique for students who are more confident with their grammar when they speak, because there are no sentences here to make sure you say things correctly. It’s also possible to jot down some extra adjectives or phrases you want to mention as well.
Now watch the video below. Based on the two strategies you just learnt about, which one do you think I am using in my answer?
Strategy #1 – PDF?
Strategy #2 – Prompts?
Try to experiment with both strategies to find your favourite. Set 60 seconds on a timer your phone, grab a pen and paper, and get practising!
You can download the transcript to my answer here: Describe a beautiful city.doc
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“I can never think of any ideas.”
“I can’t find the right IELTS vocabulary anywhere.”
Are you having any of these problems?
If you’re struggling with vocabulary and ideas for your IELTS Speaking answers, you can find HUNDREDS more high-band example answers (written and recorded by me) to help you tackle any IELTS Speaking Topic you might encounter.
This week in fact, I’ve just uploaded the 200th example answer to the library! With hundreds more to come!
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Read these 2 levels of about ‘Cities’. Cities is quite a general topic, so here are a few different Part 3 questions which are relevant to Cities, including parks and pollution. Every level becomes more difficult but every level has the same meaning. The new words are highlighted, so if you don’t understand a word in Level 2, look back at Level 1 to find the easier synonym! This is a great way to learn new vocabulary!
Level 1: Basic Level 2: Advanced
IELTS Question #1: What benefits can parks bring to a city?
IELTS Question #2: What kinds of pollution are serious in your country?
You can find even more IELTS-appropriate vocabulary, collocations and phrases about Cities here:
Want to know the pros (+) and cons (-) of living in a city? This article is loaded with good IELTS-appropriate vocabulary and ideas.
Likewise, the benefits of having more green spaces in cities is explain in excellent IELTS-ready terms here:
Putting it all together:
Part 2 Questions:
Describe a beautiful park or garden. You should say:
Describe a beautiful city. You should say:
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