In speaking, it is natural to hesitate and repeat yourself sometimes in your own language. Native speakers of English do this too, of course. So don’t be afraid of doing it in the IELTS Speaking test. In fact, it often sounds better to repeat yourself and hesitate in a natural way than to remain silent. And this will help you get a good score for fluency and coherence.
So what do we mean by repeating yourself in a natural way? Well, if you hesitate because you are thinking about what to say (not how to say it in English), then it will sound natural. Take a look at this video. The Australian traveller in the video is talking about his experiences in Cuba.
Here are some examples of how he hesitates and repeats himself:
00:30 ancient cars …. ancient American cars
00:38 such a … such an exotic place to be
00:54 there’s … there’s two currencies
01:34 it was … it was …. it was impossible
01:45 for what .. you know, for what you can actually buy
02:57 the pound…. the British pound
05:57 they’re just a great … you know, they love life
06:05 they don’t complain … you know, they’re lovely people
06:10 anyway, we’re gonna umm ….I’ll just…yeah… change some some money and …
You can find many more tips like this in the IELTS Speaking Masterclass course, an essential programme of training materials for IELTS Speaking including videos and downloadble pdfs.
Hello, this is great and very nice information. It can be quite difficult for non native english speakers to get the right approach to the hesitate and repeat style and your examples are surely very helpful. Thanks for sharing.