IELTS Speaking: advice about errors

Today I want to share some advice from another IELTS teacher that I found in the 'comments' area below this lesson.

First, here's the question from a student called Vishaal:

Please guide me on how I can reduce the grammatical errors in my speech. Although I reduced these errors significantly in writing, I'm still making quite a few mistakes during the speaking.

And here's the advice from the teacher, sjm (thanks again!):

The only real way is to sit with a native speaker, and ask them to stop you every time you make a grammar error, and give you a correction. You then repeat the correct version back to them.

It is time consuming, but eventually your error rate should drop. The problem with speaking is that errors are often 'fossilised' in the mouth, which means that you are so used to saying them that your mouth has 'memorised' them. You need to almost 'reprogram' your mouth.

An extra tip from me (Simon):

Vishaal's issue is very common, and I completely agree with sjm's advice. But if you don't have a private teacher or native speaker who can help in the way that sjm suggests, your best solution is probably to become better at copying. Instead of trying to translate ideas from your own language, or trying to construct sentences using your knowledge of English grammar, aim to build your sentences using phrases or 'chunks' of language that you know to be correct (because you have seen or heard them being used by native speakers).

Comments

[Pachu]

Sir very usefull sir, this teacher sjm answered my question before too. Thanks

[Jackie]

Hi Simon,

I have a question regarding essay writing.

After identifying a topic of the essay, we brainstorm for ideas, and then we group those ideas for our two main body paragraphs.

I am struggling many times to group my ideas. I spend a lot of my time to understand under what topic sentence I need to insert my thoughts.

Most of the time, I face this problem when I need to deal with agree/disagree and opinion essays.

Thanks in advance
Jackie

[he li]

From my experience, Google is the best tool when English learners don't have a private English teacher.

Instead of copying native speakers' words, I prefer to write sentences using my own words. But when I am not sure about whether a sentence I create on my own is grammatically right or not, I usually use Google to search the sentence. Just put the sentence in quotes and google it. IF there are many articles or passages using the sentence, then it shows it is commonly used.

After that, the learners should frequently review these sentences so that they will be able to automatically use them in speaking and writing.

[Vishaal]

Thanks a lot Simon! I completely agree with your advice and will certainly follow this for my preparation.

I also benefit a lot by following your advice that I need to record myself and evaluate what sorts of mistakes I'm making (probably by transcribing my speech), noting it down, improving it, and again recording my speech. This is not only beneficial to my Grammar score but also helpful in understanding my pronunciation mistakes.

Thanks again to both Simon and Sjm!

[Amanpreet kaur mann]

Hlo simon,
Today was my speaking test and in part2 he asked me the question describe about an unusual Vacation you had. But I have never familiar with this topic before so I mistakenly talked about a vacation I have made with my cousin. Is my band score affect by this mistake?