IELTS Speaking Practice Part 1: Grammatical range and Fluency

Louis Rogers is a freelance author and senior academic tutor at the University of Reading.  He has worked in a number of countries and taught in various contexts ranging from young learners to Academic English. Louis is co-author of Oxford EAP B1+, Foundation IELTS Masterclass, Proficiency Masterclass and Intermediate and Upper Intermediate Skills for Business Studies. 

Part 1 of the IELTS speaking test contains numerous topics and questions designed so that students can demonstrate the key skills assessed of Fluency and coherence, Pronunciation, Lexical resource and Grammatical range and accuracy. This article and lesson idea focuses on the key areas of fluency and grammatical range and accuracy.

To gain marks in grammar students need to focus not only on being accurate but also on using a range of structures. Being very accurate, but using only a limited range of structures will not help students to reach a high mark. In part 1 of the test the questions often prompt students to use certain structures. For example, many of the questions prompt students’ likes and dislikes for different points in time:

1 What subject would you like to study?

2 What was your favourite subject at primary school?

3 What do you like about the place where you study?

These questions all naturally elicit the gerund and infinitive form to talk about likes and dislikes. Practising and knowing these forms can help students to use this structure accurately with a range of topics. Working on extending responses from a simple answer of ‘I liked learning about History’ also lends itself to practising one of the key areas judged in the fluency category. It also gives you a chance to work on the grammatical accuracy of students in the extended responses they produce.

Fluency is assessed in a combination of ways. The speed of speech – this does not mean the faster the better but rather encouraging students to focus on speaking at a steady to fast speed with little hesitation and few pauses. The length of answer is also marked in this category – reminding students that this is their chance to show their ability in speaking. Simply answering the questions in one or two words is not enough.  Students need regular practice with a range of topics on extending their answers.

The activities/lesson here and accompanying game focuses on practising discussing likes and dislikes using the gerund and infinitive and using a good grammatical range to extend responses. The lesson ideally continues from Foundation IELTS Masterclass Unit 1 Speaking; however, it can be used in any IELTS lesson that is practising for part 1.

You can either follow the stages in the lesson plan here or simply add the game to any lesson in which you have taught this grammatical structure.

This article first appeared in the April edition of Teaching Adults newsletter. To find out more about the newsletter and subscribe, click here.