Written Sept. 6, 2008
How To Speak in Part 2 (Page 11)
Try to make your story interesting!
Remember,
you are communicating with another human being, not an examining machine. What
makes a story interesting? A story is more interesting if it is full of details
and facts that the listener didn't know before. Examiners are especially
interested in learning something new about China so, whenever suitable, give the
examiner some new information about your country. As well as that, the examiner
is interested in learning something about you. So, try to speak
personally, not in an impersonal, formal way. And try to be original,
which means say things that are from you, that stress your
uniqueness and difference from others. Those candidates who repeat too much of
what they have read in model answers in IELTS textbooks usually sound very
unoriginal and quite boring, partly because the examiners have heard the same
things before from many other candidates who have studied the same books.
If
a story is extremely interesting to an examiner, he or she might not notice some
of your grammar and vocabulary errors or weaknesses because they are so
fascinated by the contents of your story! In this way, a story that captivates
or fascinates the examiner gives the examiner the impression that you
have excellent communication skills and the examiner will tend to judge you more
kindly for the coherence sub-score (actually, the fluency/coherence sub-score.)
Candidates
who speak with strong feelings about something tend to sound more interesting
and, in fact tend to speak at their best. So, if you can tell a story that has
some genuine emotion from you, it will help you. (But don't cry in the test if
you are speaking about something sad –
that will ruin your ability to talk!) For example, I remember a young man in one
of my classes who I thought had just average English speaking ability. Then the
class practiced the topic, "Describe an old person you know" and I
heard this young man talk about how his grandfather cried when the family gave
him a birthday party. What I noticed was this young man seemed to be speaking
about something true and he spoke very convincingly and much more fluently than
he had when answering Part 1 questions. Similarly, if you listen to the Korean
girl in the Specimen Tests speaking with pride and emotion about how the
President of her country won the Nobel Peace Prize, you'll see that she spoke
both convincingly and quite effortlessly.
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