In the IELTS Speaking test, it helps to use some emotion when you express yourself. This will help you sound more natural and potentially improve your score for Fluency and Coherence. How can you speak with ’emotion’?
Tip 1: Use hand gestures
Making deliberate, controlled movements with your hands can help you to speak with emotion. But try not to use uncontrolled gestures. This will have a negative effect on your speaking.
Tip 2: Emphasize key words
When you speak, try to emphasize words and phrases that are important. This will give your speaking some rhythm and make you sound more natural. For example:
I’m going to describe a PRESENT I gave to a VERY GOOD friend of mine. Her name was KATE and she came from my HOMETOWN.
Tip 3: Use some extreme adjectives
Most IELTS candidates use only ordinary adjectives (good, bad, hungry, tasty, small, big, easy, tired, etc.)
But using a few ‘extreme adjectives’ can help you speak with more emotion and also improve your score for lexical resource (vocabulary), which is 25% of your band score.
Extreme adjectives are words like tiny (= extremely small), huge (= extremely small), spotless (= extremely clean), filthy (= extremely dirty), amazing/incredible (= extremely good), terrible/awful (= extremely bad), exhausted (= extremely tired), stunning (= extremely beautiful).
If you want to emphasize an extreme adjective, we use the adverb ‘absolutely’, not ‘very’. For example: The bathroom was absolutely tiny.
Tip 4: Use intensifiers
Intensifiers are adverbs or phrases that strengthen the meaning of other expressions and show emphasis. Examples of common intensifiers include absolutely, completely, complete, extremely, highly, really, so, too, totally, total, utterly, very and at all. Using intensifiers APPROPRIATELY can make your speaking sound more natural and fluent by adding emotion.
To see examples of these tips, watch the video below:
This FREE eBook Shows You What Kinds of Tasks and Questions to Expect in the IELTS Speaking Test.
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