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Simone Braverman

Simone Braverman is the founder of IELTS-Blog.com and the author of several renowned IELTS preparation books, including Ace the IELTS, Target Band 7, the High Scorer's Choice practice test series, and IELTS Success Formula. Since 2005, Simone has been committed to making IELTS preparation accessible and effective through her books and online resources. Her work has helped 100,000's of students worldwide achieve their target scores and live their dream lives. When Simone isn't working on her next IELTS book, video lesson, or coaching, she enjoys playing the guitar or rollerblading.

IELTS Speaking Test questions

Here are some real speaking test questions that students from India were recently asked in their exams. More recent topics and questions are here.

Speaking test #1

Interview

– Is bicycle a good way to move around?
– Do you think that there should be a separate lane for bicycles?
– Why should a child have a bicycle?
– Are you working or a student?

Cue card

Describe a famous person, you should say:
– Who he/she is,
– Why he/she is famous,
– Whether or not you would like to meet him/her and why.

Discussion

– Which qualities should a famous person have?
– Why does the young generation copy them?
– Who were the famous people 50 years ago and who will be famous in the next 50 years?
– Should they have personal life?
– If you had a chance to become famous what would be your attitude?

Speaking test #2

Interview

– What is your full name?
– What can I call you?
– Can I see your identification?
– What do people usually do on weekends in your country?
– What do you do on weekends?
– Did you think art is important in life, such as painting and sculptures?
– Did you draw anything when you were at school?
– Are there any art galleries or museums in your home town?

Cue card

Describe an animal you saw, which you find very interesting. You should say:
– Where you saw it,
– How you felt about it,
– Why you think it was interesting.

Discussion

– What kind of animals do people have in their home?
– Tell me about an animal you saw which is very rare in your home town.
– Why do people have pets in their homes?
– Do you think people do not respect animals these days? What about 50 years ago?
– Earlier people used animals for their work. Now, what do people use to do their work?
– Researchers are being conducted on animals, is this a good idea?
– So many animals are extinct these days. What do you think about this? Why it is happening?

Speaking test #3

Interview

– Tell me about the recent changes in your home town.
– What is the meaning of your name?
– Why were you given this name?
– How may I address you?

Cue card

Describe the happiest recent event that you had.

Discussion

– What moments make other people happy?
– What moments are happy for the elderly?
– Are rich people happy?

Speaking test #4

Interview

– What is your full name?
– How may I address you?
– Where are you living?
– How long have you been living there?
– What are the advantages of your home town?
– Is there any swimming pool?
– Have you been to any swimming pool anywhere?

Cue card

Describe a famous person in your country.

Discussion

– Why do people want fame?
– How can a person become famous?
– What kind of people get inspiration from celebrities?
– What sort of people were famous in the past, 50 years ago?

IELTS preparation tips from Kyo Koo, Band 8

Kyo Koo, the winner of October results competition (for General Training Module), shares his tips for success in IELTS:

“To be perfectly honest, I didn’t spend a great deal of time studying specifically IELTS exam (as I’m a uni student).

Anyway, some general comment I can give is that overall ability in English is what it takes. Although some preparation is essential, focusing only on the test materials is not the way to do it. Improve your overall English first, and then prepare with the IELTS test materials.

Here are some tips:

For the Listening test, apart from English learning materials, use real life materials, including daily news on TV, TV shows, and news on the radio. This can be pretty hard if your English is still a bit rusty, but this makes your ears ‘tuned’ for English listening. One more thing: do not choose news or TV shows originated from one particular country. A number of people (especially those in Asia) are more used to American accent than other accents. Try those from the UK at least. IELTS listening tend to choose British accents, and Australian accent quite a lot more than American accent.

For the Speaking test, try keeping a diary in a SPOKEN form. In other words, record a monologue of your speaking. It is like a diary, but spoken, not written. When doing that, try to use expressions you learn from a language school, or what you heard from news or TV shows. Just talk about your feelings for the day, what you did, that sort of stuff. Then play what you recorded, and listen to it. It’s really weird at first, but this really helps you catch wrong pronunciations, and expressions.

For the Writing test, try as many practice tests as possible. Unlike speaking, the tasks in the writing module can be very tricky as those are things that we don’t usually do everyday. Especially in Task 1, the letter writing, it’s very easy to lose track and spend ages to get it done. This was exactly what happened to me in the previous test I took in July (I didn’t have enough time to use my full ability in the essay writing part).

For the Reading test, as I’ve suggested for the listening, use real life materials – i.e. newspapers, magazines, etc. Advertisements in those materials DO show up in the real exam – job ads, clearance sale at stores, etc. Ah, one more thing. DO watch out for SPELLING. I’m pretty sure I missed out quite a bit of marks for wrong spellings in the answers. Even slight mistakes in plural/singular make the answers wrong.

I know that these tips don’t particularly sound like a magic bullet answer and might not be easy to do when you’re not living in an English speaking country, but these are what made my English improve.”