Do you use natural spoken English?

 *** Do you use natural spoken English?

If you listen carefully to native speakers of English, you'll notice some important differences in the way they speak compared to learners of English. Native speakers use connected speech, weak sounds, intonation and sentence stress that many non-native speakers find difficult or 'unnatural'. Ask a teacher or research online how these pronunciation features influence your speech. Listen to recordings of native speakers of English (for example, on YouTube) and try to imitate their use of connected speech or intonation by pausing the recording and repeating what you hear. With enough practice, you will start to sound more like a native speaker.

# Do consider grammar vs fluency

To do well in the speaking test you will be expected to be both grammatically accurate and fluent. Often, students worry too much about their grammar and this stops them speaking at a natural pace, thus reducing their score for fluency.

A good thing to do is record yourself. Record yourself once and just focus on being grammatically accurate. When you listen back, you might hear how unnaturally slow your speech is. Next, record yourself and try not to worry about making any grammar mistakes, just try to speak at the same speed you do in your native language.

By doing this, you not only practise your fluency, but also identify common grammar mistakes and then fix them, making you even more fluent. Even native speakers make small grammar mistakes when speaking, so don’t worry too much about them and use them as stepping stones to success.

# Do find your passion

Students often obsess over past exam questions and practice these over and over. The problem with this is students often get bored and speak without any passion about these topics. A better way is to find something you are really interested in and practice speaking, using this topic. If you love football, listen to the commentators during matches or listen to a podcast about the weekend’s matches. If you are into fashion, watch some fashion shows on TV or YouTube. You can practice talking about these things with a friend, record yourself or find other like-minded people online and chat to them.

# Do take time to think

If you are asked a question you are not sure about, don’t be afraid to take a moment to think about it. This is totally natural and something native English speakers do more than you think. The important thing is to tell the examiner you are doing this by using phrases such as the following:

That’s a difficult question. Let me think for a second...
That’s a very interesting question. Let me think for a moment...
It’s very difficult to know exactly, but perhaps...
It’s difficult to say. I think…
I don’t really know for sure, but I would say….

But make sure you don’t start every question with one of these phrases. The examiner will spot this and your mark will suffer if the examiner thinks you have prepared scripted answers.

# Do correct yourself

Don’t be afraid to correct any mistakes in the exam. This shows the examiner that you are aware of the mistake and know your grammar. Some students don’t like doing this because they think it alerts the examiner to your mistake leading to a lower score. The opposite is true. In fact, if you think about it, you probably correct mistakes in your own language all the time.