IELTS Speaking: Tips That Actually Raise Your Band Score

By Connor Engels, OCT · 27 July 2026

What the examiner is actually scoring

The speaking test lasts roughly 11 to 14 minutes with a real examiner, and it is marked on four criteria, each worth the same:

• Fluency and coherence — can you keep going, and does your answer hold together?
• Lexical resource — is your vocabulary precise and varied enough for the topic?
• Grammatical range and accuracy — do you use a range of structures, and are they correct?
• Pronunciation — can you be understood easily?

Notice what is not on that list: being interesting, being right, or having an impressive opinion. Candidates lose bands trying to sound clever. The examiner is listening to your English, not judging your views.

Part 1: extend every answer

Part 1 is four to five minutes of familiar questions about your life, home, work or interests. It is the easiest part of the test and the one most candidates underperform in, because they answer honestly and briefly.

"Do you like cooking?" — "Yes, I do."

That is a complete answer and a wasted opportunity. You have given the examiner four words to assess. Aim for two or three sentences: answer, reason, small detail.

"Yes, quite a lot, actually. I find it relaxing after work because it's the one thing I do that has nothing to do with a screen. I've been trying to learn my grandmother's recipes lately, with mixed results."

Same question, same honesty, roughly six times the assessable language. That is the whole trick to Part 1.

Part 2: use the minute properly

You get a cue card, one minute to prepare with paper and pencil, and then you speak for one to two minutes.

Most candidates use the minute to worry. Use it to write four or five words, one for each part of the prompt. Not sentences — you will not have time to read them, and reading aloud sounds flat.

Then speak in a shape:

1. One sentence naming what you are going to talk about.
2. The background — who, when, where.
3. The detail — this is the bulk, and where your vocabulary shows.
4. Why it matters to you, or how you felt about it.

If you run out before the examiner stops you, add a comparison or a contrast. "It's quite different from…" will generate another thirty seconds from almost any topic.

The prompt is a scaffold, not a contract. If a small invention makes the story easier to tell fluently, tell it. Nobody is checking whether the holiday happened.

Part 3: opinions need reasons and examples

Part 3 is a four-to-five-minute discussion of broader, more abstract questions connected to your Part 2 topic. This is where higher bands are won and lost, because it demands more complex language.

The pattern that works is opinion, reason, example, and then a qualification:

"I'd say it's mostly changed for the better, mainly because information is far more accessible than it used to be. My parents had to go to a library for something I can find in seconds. That said, I do think we've lost some patience along the way."

That last move — "that said", "although", "it depends on" — is worth practising deliberately. Hedging language is complex grammar in disguise, and it lets you talk about difficult questions without needing a firm answer.

Fluency beats perfection

Candidates stop mid-sentence to fix a small grammatical error, lose their thread, and take a hit to fluency and coherence to protect grammatical accuracy. That is a bad trade. Correct yourself once, briefly, and move on. Repeated self-correction reads as hesitation.

Fillers are fine and natural in English, as long as they are English fillers. "Well," "I suppose," and "let me think" buy you time. Long silences do not.

Vocabulary: precise, not decorative

Lexical resource rewards the right word, not the rare one. A memorised idiom dropped into an unrelated answer is obvious and it costs you, because it signals rehearsal rather than range.

The better preparation is topic vocabulary. Work through the common IELTS themes — education, environment, technology, health, work, travel — and for each, learn eight to ten words you can use naturally. That is far more useful than a list of impressive-sounding phrases.

Pronunciation: your accent is not the problem

You are not marked on sounding British or Canadian. You are marked on being easy to understand. Two things matter far more than individual sounds:

• Word stress. Stressing the wrong syllable makes a familiar word unrecognisable, more so than mispronouncing a vowel.
• Chunking. Group words into meaningful phrases with small pauses between them, rather than pausing at random. It makes you sound more fluent even at the same speed.

How to practise in the four weeks before the test

1. Record yourself. Answer real questions out loud and listen back. It is uncomfortable and it is the fastest feedback available.
2. Time Part 2 every day. Two minutes is longer than it feels. Build the stamina so the length stops being the problem.
3. Practise with a person, not just an app. The test is a conversation with a stranger, and that pressure is part of the skill.
4. Build topic vocabulary in sets, not word by word.
5. Do not memorise answers. Examiners hear rehearsed responses constantly, and they mark them down.

The short version

Extend your Part 1 answers. Use the Part 2 minute to plan a shape rather than a script. In Part 3, give a reason and an example, and qualify your view. Keep going when you stumble. Those five habits move scores more reliably than any amount of new vocabulary.