IELTS Task 2 Strategies

Understand the Format:

Familiarize yourself with the format of the Task 2 Speaking Test. It typically involves speaking on a given topic for 2 minutes, followed by a brief discussion with the examiner. Knowing what to expect can alleviate anxiety and help you manage your time effectively during the test.

Enhance your vocabulary

Most of the questions are about people, places, things, activities, experiences.

It is a good idea for you to brainstorm higher level words that you know that can be used to respond to these types of questions. For instance, for any topic about a person you could describe them as an INTROVERT [shy] or an EXTROVERT [outgoing]. For places you could talk about the AMBIENCE [the atmosphere of the place]. To describe an object like a smart-phone you could have language to describe its size TINY [small], shape as RECTANGULAR and the colour of its case as MAGENTA [purplish-red]. Try to start by thinking about the words you already know.

Prepare some model answers

In addition to preparing language about the common topic areas of people, places, things, activities, experiences; a good way to prepare for Part Two is to prepare a model answer for each of these common topic areas for a couple of reasons:

1. If you prepare for a question about a person, let’s say your best friend, you could apply this answer to other questions about people. For instance, if you are asked to describe an adventurous person you could talk about your best friend and explain why he or she is adventurous in some way. And, let’s say you get asked to describe a good teacher; if you are good at telling stories, you could even pretend your pretend your best friend was your teacher!

2. No matter what the topic, you should be able to say something about people, places, and things. By preparing some vocabulary and ideas about these topic areas you will essentially be preparing for any question.

Note

1. You should not prepare too many model answers. The idea is to just prepare a few for each of the common categories [people, places, things, activities, experiences].

2. Before you take your test, you should practice using your model answers to respond to different questions. Look at different Part Two questions and think which of your model answers could best fit in. And, if none of them perfectly fit in you might have to start off your answer by directly answering the specific topic, and then moving onto one of your prepared topics, or even use parts of different answers.

3. You may need to customise the answer to fit the specific question. For instance, if you have prepared the topic about your best friend and the question is about your neighbour then at the start of your talk you either need to say that your best friend is your neighbour, or else just pretend that your best friend is your neighbour without actually saying it.

4. With practice you should be able to answer almost any question with just a few model answers that you can customise to answer specific questions. Note that this is an excellent way to increase your score because you will be familiar with the topic which will enable you to speak fluently and if prepare the topic well it will have high-level vocabulary and grammar in it.

How many words are needed for a model answer?

You should ideally speak for 2 minutes. A native speaker speaks at about 145-160 words per minute and then there are pauses between ideas. A non-native high-level speaker may speak a bit slower perhaps 110 words per minute. A lower-level speaker may speak at fewer than 100 words. You might want to work out your speaking speed. to get an idea of how many words you will need to speak. If you plan your model answer to be 250 words, that will be more than enough.

Tell a Story

Stories are useful to extend a talk in Part Two of the speaking exam. They often come out very fluently, are interesting, and result in the expression of a wide range of vocabulary and grammatical structures. The following explains these benefits in more detail:

1. It is often easy to speak fluently as ideas can often come out more quickly. This is because stories are often clear in our mind and we have told people certain stories many times and so they come out fluently in the exam.

2. Stories can also be helpful to speak minutes because there are often different parts to them such as a beginning, middle, and end; or a cause, effect, and solution.

3. Stories can be really interesting and can help the examiner to be interested in what you are saying.

4. Stories can also allow you to make things up which can help you to extend your talk and also use higher-level language. For instance, in the real story there might have been a white dress… but in the IELTS story you might change it to a magenta dress with a dark blue ribbon.

5. The story may not make up the whole of your response. You may start by focusing more on the topic card and then later move onto the story. Because of this aspect stories can be particularly useful with topics that you find difficult to talk about.

Essentially, start by talking about the topic and then shift to a story that is somewhat related to the topic. Imagine you have been asked to talk about “your favourite wild animal”. Maybe, after half a minute, you have said all you know about pandas! Now you can tell a story about going to the zoo and seeing a panda!

Time sequencing words

To make clear the sequence of events in a story use time words such as:

In the beginning

After that…

Subsequently…

In the end…

Tenses for stories

Stories occurred in the past so when we are describing what happened in the story we need to use the past tense.

I went to my best friend’s birthday

However, we need to use the present tense if we are describing facts and opinions about these past events.

She is a kind woman

Note that if we use the past tense then it suggests that she is no longer kind!

Follow up questions

You may be asked a follow-up question at the end of your 2-minute speech. You just want to give a short single sentence answer to this, unless you didn’t speak for very long [under 2 minutes]. This is because the examiner needs to move onto Part Three of the test quickly. You can use this technique to answer a follow-up question.

1. Brief answer, repeating the auxiliary verb [have and do in the examples below]

2. Use the same tense

Examiner “Have you done this type of work before?”

Candidate “No, I haven’t.”

Examiner “Do you know anyone who has?”

Candidate “Yes, I do, my cousin does this job.”