The book was fantastic – inspirational for people wanting to achieve a dream.

If you have a dream and you are getting a bit frustrated at seeing any tangible results, watch this movie or read the book. It is bound to inspire you to keep focusing on what you want until you have it!

One day Sione was cudding the grass when all of a sutten da
ampulance went going by. Sione straight aways drop his
sapelu and run after da ampulance.

Da ampulance driver look to his side mirror and see a man in
a lafalafa running after him. Afraids for his live becos he
was in Otara’s, da ampulance tryver stepped on da cass.

His ampulance go very, very farce. But Sione farce too.
Sione loose one chandal, but he keep runnings, Sione’s
lafalafa starting to falling downs but he keep runnings.

Da ampulance tryfer look in da side mirror and he is amaze
dat da man wiff da falling down lafalafa and one chandal is
not giffing up!

Da ampulance dryfer is now concern finkings Sione chase him
because he need medical asistance. Sione, was please to see
the ampulance was stoppings for him.

About 3 minute later, Sione catch up to da ampulance.
The ampulance dryfer open da backs toor and say to Sione,
“What is da matters? You needs help?

Sione with his hands on his knees, buffing like hell looks
at da ampulance tryfer and say. “I haff da one snow-cone
wiff da chocolate flakes

Native speakers of English generally speak quickly. They tend to shorten words, run words together, use incorrect grammar patterns, speak informally, and say things out of sequence. They do not speak like your classroom teacher or the text books and audios that you may have studied as these materials are all designed for classroom use. It can therefore be quite difficult when you try and use your English in a real situation. Don’t give up!

What can you do?
Listen to or watch short news items, videos, blogs, conversations, movies and songs that use natural, spoken English. This will help your listening ability especially if you do this every day. Practice speaking like the native speakers that you hear or see. Converse with native speakers whenever you can and on a daily basis if possible. Ten minutes every day speaking on a range of topics will be more productive than 30 minutes once a month!

I then learned German at University because my sister did it at school and got good results and there was a German student called Hans in the student halls who I practiced everyday with. It was good fun as he taught me some really complex sentence patterns that made my lecturer fall off his seat from amazement!

I then learned Japanese before I went to Japan at night school but I thought the teaching was not very good and I didn’t seem to learn much. I really learned Japanese when I went to the country and HAD to use it to live! I was really motivated then and also paid for private lessons with a university student to accelerate my language.

When I returned 6 years later, I learned Maori at a University in Wellington because I needed it for my job.
So why learn a language? There are many reasons but for me, I had to be able to use it in a practical way or I really couldn’t see the sense of spending all that time studying it. What’s your reason?

Before the Test
The most important suggestion I can give is to practice speaking. You can do this by yourself, with an audio, with a friend or with a teacher but you must actually make yourself speak. Speaking is like golf, you can’t master it by watching videos, you must actually practice it. Before you go into the test, make sure that you have practiced saying some sample answers to yourself or someone else – don’t try and go into the test “cold” – you need to warm up. You also need to practice as if you were actually doing the full test. This means that you should be able to practice speaking on a range of different topics for at least 10 minutes. In fact, practicing every day for a week speaking continuously for 10 minutes at a time will be very helpful for your speaking preparation especially if you do this with a wide range of topics.

During the Test
It’s a good idea to make eye contact with the examiner, relax and smile. Try and enjoy yourself and be friendly and open as this makes a good impression. We all like talking to people who are like this! It’s OK to be nervous but if you don’t say much, frown a lot and speak quietly, then you will give a very different impression. Your examiner will do their best to make you feel more relaxed.

Don’t worry about making the occasional mistake – native speakers make mistakes when they speak but they sound natural and friendly. The examiner will expect some mistakes and is not expecting you to speak absolutely perfect English. The examiner doesn’t note down every mistake you make so the most important thing is to communicate clearly.

You must talk in the test – even if you don’t know much about the topic. You can still speak about something by imagining, or speculating and giving your opinion. Keep to the question asked and answer it as fully as possible. If you have nothing more to say, stop – don’t keep rambling on making things up! You will know more about some topics than others so the length of your answers will vary. When you have finished, the examiner will give you another question.

If the question asks for a yes/no answer – always follow up with Yes, because…. or No, because …. as this will help you to keep speaking on the topic. You will be asked a “why” question anyway so it is a good idea to get into the habit of answering with a reason and then to give examples from your own experience.

After the Test
Thank the examiner and thank yourself for the effort you have put in! Keep practicing your speaking whenever you can as you will lose your ability to speak after time if you do not maintain it.

Part 3 is where your command of spoken English really starts to show and is a continuation of Part 2. You will be asked questions that are thematically linked to the subject that you talked about in Part 2. For example, in my last blog we looked at a famous person and what you admired about them. The examiner might choose to ask you questions about leadership in politics. The questions asked will depend on how long you take to discuss your answers. You are not expected to give technical or specialist answers but you will be expected to give your opinion in natural, fluent English.

For example you could be asked to:
1. Describe a world leader. In this case you could describe anything you know about a leader and give your own opinion on the leadership qualities they have demonstrated.
2. Describe the person’s key achievements over the last 10 or so years. You could select one key achievement that created change or progress. If you are not sure of their key achievements, you could describe what you think they could have done to make things better for people.
3. Describe what the person may achieve or do in the next 10 years. This is asking you to speculate, guess or imagine so you can pretty much say what you really think or feel. Again, if you are not too sure of the person, you could indicate that if you were that same person, you would want to ……….

The key is to practice giving spoken answers in English to a range of questions on different topics. Remember to also choose topics that you know very little about. This will help you develop responses and give opinions on a wider range of topics that you might not normally consider. For more questions and answers go to our samespeak site and look at the free english speaking lessons for example IELTS questions.

Describe a famous person that you admire. You should say who the person is, what they are famous for and why you admire them. I also made some suggestions about note taking and gave an example of what you could quickly write down in the one minute that you are given to prepare.

Here is a short sample answer (remember you need to speak for 1 – 2 minutes without stopping).

Someone famous that I really admire is Barak Obama…the President of the United States. He seems to be a real family man and his wife, Michelle is quite a role model too – she’s a lawyer so she must be quite a good communicator and fast thinker. I think that because he has two children and a happy looking family, that he comes across as quite a down to earth man – I mean it’s interesting that he comes from a working class background, he wasn’t rich or pampered. Actually he had to work his way to the top, probably against racial barriers and adversity but it just goes to show, that you can achieve whatever you want if you have the determination. It kind of brings the American dream alive I guess but it reminds me of how focused and hrd working my father is. Anyway, Obama is obviously a high achiever as he worked his way through College earning scholarships, graduating as a lawyer in Civil Rights I think and then moving into politics. So being the first black President in the USA is quite an achievement if you consider how segregation was still quite prevalent in the mid 1900′s…it’s a big change for American society but probably reflects the move from a mono-cultural society to a richer one of diversity. I think it would mean that he would be more empathetic to minorities and understand their struggles as he’s experienced struggle for himself. He really did achieve something against the odds and is one of a kind.
You know I even remember when I found out he’d been elected cause my phone went crazy and I received a lot of texts announcing the news. I was on a train at the time, passing through Akihabara and I think a lot of other people seemed to know too as I could hear people talking about it. I must say, I was quite surprised as I hadn’t been keeping up with American news…I’m more interested in politics in my own country!

Ok so there’s a sample for you. If you keep practicing the same question, you can try different ways of answering it and gaining more confidence in the topic. You can then try the same question with a range of different people that you admire such as your parents, friends, actors, actresses, sports people and so on.

In the next blog, we will look at Part 3 of the IELTS speaking test!

1. Read the information you are given carefully and ensure that you use the full one minute to make brief notes. Don’t write full sentences as you will run out of time. Make brief notes that will remind you of an idea. In fact if you can draw quickly it is sometimes more beneficial to draw quick sketches as this will remind you of what you want to say more quickly than words.
2. Make sure you put down keywords that will remind you of the idea you want to speak about and that the keywords relate directly to the information you have been given.
3. Lastly, make a note of something from your own experience connected to the talking theme. When you are talking about something from your own experience, it is easier to remember and talk about. Look at the example below:

Describe a famous person from your country that you admire. You should say who the person is,what they are famous for and why you admire them.

Note that there is a main question (describe a famous person) and 3 minor questions to help you answer the main question (Who, What and Why). Your notes may look like this:

Who:Barak Obama, USA, President, wife and family, academic background
What:First black President, big change, multicultural, empathy
Why:High achiever, one of a kind, against all odds
Personal:surprised, walking home, people celebrating (how you heard and what you felt when you heard he had been elected, what other people were doing).

In the next blog I will discuss some more hints for Part 2.