IELTS Ep 8 - Home & Accommodation: IELTS Speaking Part 1
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What is the purpose of Part 1 in the IELTS Speaking Test?
Hello and welcome to another episode of the British English Podcast. Right, today we're looking at part one of the IELTS speaking test, the warm-up, if you will. It's the first few minutes of the exam where the examiner asks you some nice, simple questions about your everyday life before things get a bit tougher later on. Now, I know you might be thinking, part one, why are we doing part one, the easy bit? We should be doing the difficult bits, part two and three, right? Why are we bothering with part one? Well, that's exactly why we are. Because part one is the part everyone assumes is easy until the moment your answer is over in about four seconds and you're sat there in silence wondering what just happened.
So today we're going to fix that. We're talking four very common part one questions, all on the topic of home and accommodation. And for each one, I'll give you a band five, a band seven and a band eight. nine and each version will show you the difference to help you better understand what sounds stiff what sounds non-native and what sounds fluid and natural right so get comfortable maybe get yourself a cuppa and let's get into this one A quick recap, though, for anyone new to the test. Part one is the opening few minutes. The examiner asks you simple, friendly questions about your everyday life, where you live, your work or studies, your hobbies. That sort of thing. There's no cue card, no big discussion.
It's basically a quick chat. And because it's a chat, there are two, actually maybe three classic ways people get it wrong. The first is answering too short. Do you like your home? Yes, I do. It's nice. Done. And then nothing. The conversation just falls flat. Onto the next question. The second way of doing it wrong is to over answer like it's a part three question by saying, well, homes play a crucial role in modern society because they provide a foundation for blah, blah, blah. It's a question about your flat. Calm down. Don't get all philosophical on them. And the third way you could do it wrong is to sound memorised, right? Oh, my accommodation is located in a convenient residential area, right? If it's overly rehearsed, it sounds a bit robotic.
Unless you're a very good actor. But the other risk of rehearsing it too much and making a memorized answer is that you might fall into the trap of using stiff, unnatural structures and clinging onto them. And we don't want them to know we've rehearsed it. The problem with that, if you might be wondering why that's a problem, Is that they aren't actually getting to know your true level of English and they know that they can sniff it a mile away. If they if they are aware that you are memorizing a script, they will think, right, this isn't the actual level. i i can't judge them on that rehearsed script because if they ask you a question that you haven't rehearsed then you might have no english for it that you are able to just come up with on the spot and that's the whole point of the artsy test
It is to test your spontaneous ability to communicate in English. So keep one idea in your head for this whole episode. Part one is a conversation, not a presentation. Your job isn't to impress, it's to sound like a normal, relaxed human being who happens to be speaking very good English. Right, question one. Do you live in a house or flat? Right, so the band five answer might be, I live in a flat. It is nice. I like it. or maybe a more natural version would be, I live in a flat. It is nice. I like it. Now there's nothing wrong with that exactly. It answers the question, but it's over before it started. And now the examiner is going to move swiftly on to the next question without having been given any evidence that you can actually speak fluently.
Band seven might be, oh, I live in a flat just outside the city center. It's not huge, but it's comfortable and pretty convenient for work. Okay. That's pretty good. We've got a location, a little detail and a reason. It actually feels like an answer now, but then if we go up to a band nine, it might sound like this.
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