IELTS Speaking the most important 60 seconds in IELTS

IELTS speaking test will be on a different day than other sections i.e. listening, reading and writing sections. It will be either seven days before or seven days after the test date that you will register for. This section will be of approximately fifteen minutes, it will be a face to face interview with a certified Ielts examiner. There will be three rounds in this test, the first round will be an introduction round where the questions will be related to the you only, then the next round will be a cue-card round in which test taker will have to prepare a monologue on a given topic of at least 2 minutes, and in the last round there will be questions related to the topic that he/she will get in cue card round.

In the speaking test, the examiner will assess the test-taker on the basis of the following criteria:

• Pronunciation
• Fluency
• Coherence
• Grammar

These four criteria are very important from a candidate's point of view also, he/she should keep these points in mind while answering the questions in front of the examiner.

In round 2 of the Speaking test, the candidate will be given a card with a topic, and 60 seconds to prepare for that. He/she then have to speak on the topic for at least two minutes. This one minute of preparation time is precisely essential, and can make all the difference in achieving the score that they need — or not able to achieve it.

What kind of topic can the candidate expect?

The topic on the cue-card will be something that anyone can generally talk about. There will not be any question related to any professional knowledge. The candidate may be asked to talk about a friend, a place that he/she has visited, an experience or an advertisement. Here is an example:

Describe a gift that you have given to someone.

You should say:

• What was the gift?
• Who you gave it to?
• When did you gift it?
• Explain why you chose this gift instead of other gifts?

You will have to talk about the topic for at least 2 minutes.

You have one minute to prepare the content that you are going to speak about, you will also get a rough paper in case you need to make notes.

What type of content can anyone create in 60 seconds?

First, he/she should focus on the keywords and underline them. Basically, keywords are the main thing that any question is asking about. In this case, they would underline ‘something you have gifted’. All of the monologue should be around this topic only; you will not get any marks for speaking other than the topic. Now they must decide exactly which item they will talk about.

The cue card helps to prepare to talk about their gift by providing a structure. The card above has four more questions following the main question. Generally, they will allocate three ideas to each point, and this will give them plenty to talk about for two minutes. Please keep in mind that whatever you are talking about in the speaking test need not to be true, you can create your own story. The points that anyone should focus on are the marking criteria.

So, for bullet point 1 on the task card they might make the following notes:

Background story/situation

Details about the gift

This gives you three things to talk about:

Firstly I’m going to tell you about the situation. I had just got my first job in Gurgaon, and I just wanted to gift something precious to my parents from my first salary. After brain storming for a long time I came to a conclusion that I should gift my parents a set of expensive mobile phones as they have never used these expensive phones. I ordered two latest i-phones as soon as I could and get them delivered to my home.

Now let’s move on to bullet point 2:

Gave the gift to my parents

Big surprise

Again, you have two points to make:

As I mentioned before, from my child hood I just wanted to give my parents a stress free life to live when they retire. It was just in time because my father’s last phone was five years old, and had almost stopped working. And now I was earning also, therefore I thought that this can be the best gift anyone can gift them right now.

And same for other points.

60 seconds are sufficient time to prepare a monologue if the time is used carefully.

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