Today we are delighted to share with you one way to raise your Speaking score above Band 7.5 – and enjoy while you’re working on it. This recipe was suggested by Pouya A, a native Farsi speaker from Iran, who won in our monthly IELTS results competition in May.
Pouya scored 8.5 in Speaking thanks to… watching TV! Jokes aside, here is what he really wanted to tell everyone about his IELTS preparation:
“I personally think for up to band 7.5 of IELTS, there are enough well-known books and other resources such as great websites (including www.ielts-blog.com) that are full of general information, writing and speaking samples and smart practical hints. So I try to write more for what has worked for me to achieve band 8 plus in both speaking and Listening modules in last two exams I took recently.
Getting over 7 in Speaking means you have to sound more natural or “native” and be grammatically accurate when you talk. What I have been doing during the past 6 years for achieving this is, in fact, following a piece of advice from a Russian friend of mine who had mastered English to a very high level by following numerous TV series.
Unlike many educated and academic people, I am not a big fan of TED talks or online podcasts of different kinds. Although they can be effective in some cases, they simply get boring quickly and it is especially difficult to find such materials that are consistent in terms of content and language.
TV series, on the other hand, are spectacular source of authentic, error-free and up-to-date English language in different genres of your choice. I suggest not to watch them with subtitles and always watch with the purpose of learning and not simply enjoying. The process can be lengthy and requires both patience and dedication, but as I have witnessed, this is a practical way that probably helps thousands of young people around the world take their English language to the next level.
This is true especially in many developed countries such as in European countries, in which young people still struggle to gain a good command of English.”
