沪江网校的外教David是前雅思口语考官，在网校的课程有《雅思口语实战模拟》、《全外教雅思口语VIP》和雅思6.5口语课程。作为有着丰富教学经验的前考官和雅思培训室，David针对中国考生的“口语急症”给出了解答。
Hello！This is David from Britain, as the former IELTS speaking examiner, I would like to share valuable experience with you.
Students need to concentrate more on being able to describe things. Always saying why and even why they said why. Just like a boxer or fighter, you always have to follow through and think about stuff.
1 - Students need to say what they are thinking when asked a question.Even if they are thinking that they don't know or that it is too hard for them. Being honest about what they think of a question is good and also makes the conversation become natural. This is a good, in a thing that judges, conversational skills and not knowledge on a particular subject. This is why practice is very important and that learning the answers will only make them fail.
2 - Students need a whole lesson on paraphrasing. After they learn to ‘comment’ (see above -1), they can then learn to ‘paraphrase'. So many times it is never done, as I think they are never told to do it. It is a very simple thing to do as it is basically just repeating what has been asked, it is almost like the examiner is cheating and helping, as they give you the material to do the paraphrasing. Often it is not even done in part 2, which is a huge over sight and glaringly short coming of current teaching material.
3 – Learning answers beforehand. Students need to stop trying to predict the questions that they will get. It does not matter, as “there are, no right or wrong answers” (see above - 1). This speaking part of IELTS, does not care if you think 1+1=4. It only wants to hear how you talk about it and whether you can justify your own ideas, not others.
4 - Students need to stop studying for IELTS speaking in a Chinese way. Students need to understand that this is a conversation. You cannot study for a conversation. You can only practice and learn from others, hence listening to speeches and conversations. Online pod casts could be an interesting study point for this section. As i said above, “there are, no right or wrong answers”.
5 – Intonation.Students need to concentrate and think more about intonation and forget all about grammar. If a student does not understand grammar, then they are best to make mistakes with it but do the other 3 sections well. Any student doing IELTS, which does not have a basic understand of grammar, should not be doing this. High school grammar is enough for them, unless they want to become an examiner and get a 9. In that case, they would never be doing this anyway.
6 - Students need to think of their pace. They need to know when to speak quickly and when to slow down and pause. This of course is very similar to a speech. A good way to understand this is to listen to standup comedy. A comedian is meant to have something called “comic timing” and that is all about delivery.
7 - Students need a break down on what to expect from each section. What the purpose is for each section and how they can get the most out of each section and how it will then build onto the next part of the conversation. Brief breakdown of Part 1…. Part 2….. Part 3…..
8 - Students need a lesson on how to relax. Calm down and stay focused on what is going on, which is just a conversation. This goes back to understanding the sections of IELTS speaking more and what the point of section 1 is or can be turned into by the well prepared students.
Things that need to be ignored in classes for IELTS online
1 - There should be no lessons on grammar. Grammar is only a tiny part of the speaking section and students who do this, should know enough already. They can check the rules in their own time and grammar can be advised during other lessons, as they actually talk. Book learning is of no use in a speaking class.
2- Chinese.Chinese should only be spoken to explain rules for sections etc and this should also be avoided as much as possible. Any other use is a big fail in IELTS.
3 - Accents need to be ignored. No one cares if they have an English, American, Chinese or even Indian accent. Accents only affect one part of IELTS speaking and it only then comes into play, if you are 7 and above and only then, it is whether it makes it hard to understand the student or not. On a scale of importance, it is like so; one section 25%. A mark of 7 above in that section means it is only 8% now. All students who are capable of getting 7 or above can be understood. Let’s just say 1 out of 100 of these students are actually effected by their accent. That makes worrying about accents, about as important as what the student is going to wear to their IELTS “big day out”.
4 – Test. Last thing is to take the T word out of the classes. Referring it to IELTS, as a test, will only make students do it, as if it were a test and therefore doing it poorly. It is the conversation which students are graded on. As I say “there are no right or wrong answers, only those that fail to answer”.
