IELTS EXAM: Some More English Speaking Tips
- 21.12.2017
- Автор блога: Евгений Родин
- Категория: IELTS exam

IELTS раздел «Говорение» — полезные подсказки
There are not too many things you need to bear in mind if you want to improve your speaking considerably.
- Firstly, you should improve your pronunciation. In order to speak properly, you should end up your words with a vowel. For example, ‘last train’ should pronounced like ‘lah strain’. The same holds true for ‘tay koff’ instead of ‘take off’ or even ‘bo ks’ instead of ‘box’.
- Secondly, you should utter your stressed syllables a pitch tone higher. For instance, banana should be pronounced with the second syllable higher than the rest. There are several exceptions: numerals from thirteen to nineteen. They have the last syllable stressed, however, the first syllable should be pronounced higher.
- Thirdly, you should drop some unstressed syllables (‘fammly’ instead of ‘family’ or ‘choklit’ instead of ‘chocolate’).
- Lastly, you should add ‘intrusive y’ and ‘intrusive w’ if you have phrases like ‘the (y)apple’ or ‘too (w)often’. Russians need to know that in English we have ‘stronger’ consonants and weaker vowels. In other words, your consonants should not be dropped for no particular reason. It goes without saying that none of your sounds should be influenced by Russian pronunciation. When I hear Russians speaking English, in most of the cases they mispronounce ‘th’, ‘short i’ and ‘r’. If you cannot pronounce English ‘r’ properly and keep pronouncing Russian ‘р’ instead of English ‘r’, I would recommend to vocalize your Russian ‘р’ and make it barely audible. It would be better than your Russian accent. And do not try to sound like Margaret Thatcher or Tony Blair, it is always funny to hear foreigners sound like Eton graduates. Do not imitate BBC English because it is not used by natives. What you really need to do is to find some native speaker online and to imitate their accent. Accent really matters.
You should also mind your grammar and vocabulary, but you should not be obsessed with it. It means that you should start speaking without too much hesitation.
So, I hope my advice would help you achieve your goals.