How Working Professionals Can Improve IELTS Speaking (Part 2)

If working professionals want to take their English a step further and improve their IELTS scores, especially their speaking, what is the best approach? In the previous article, we introduced a few ways to get started and build confidence. Today, we’ll continue with some practical tips.

If you do not have an English-speaking environment, create one for yourself. For example, when you first begin preparing, you can write down the most memorable thing from each day in a few simple sentences. This not only helps build your desire to express yourself, but also helps you accumulate a good number of basic words and sentence patterns.

This does not need to be brilliant or especially impressive. Just write with simple logic. One thing to pay attention to is practicing your control of tense. Try to use different tenses in alternation as you express yourself.

If you feel your sentence patterns are too simple and the practice is not producing the results you want, you can also try New Concept English. If time is tight, Book 3 is enough. When practicing, you should read it fluently, shadow it, and even memorize it. Only then can you build enough language intuition and vocabulary.

In addition, make sure you keep your practice time consistent. Whether in the morning or at night, you should have at least 30 minutes in total. When practicing, be sure to read aloud. This helps stimulate memory and improve the clarity of your speaking and the fullness of your articulation.

If your commute is long, you can also download some English audio in advance and listen to current affairs or learn about the latest topics every day.

After repeating these actions for a few months, you can basically recover 80% of your English ability, and you may even be able to handle Part 1 of the exam completely.

For Part 2, you need to work through past exam questions and focus intensely on practicing topic cards.

Many experience-sharing posts mention this part, so I will not go into it too much. I will just remind you of one thing: when practicing, you must have your own way of structuring answers, and each full response should be kept within two minutes.

As for the final and most difficult Part 3, because it is highly flexible, we do not recommend spending too much time preparing for it specifically. It is enough to put your time into improving your core skills. When the exam comes, just respond freely based on your ability. In most cases, this will not cause any major problem.

One thing that deserves special attention is that English is not improved one skill at a time. It is a fully integrated ability that develops across listening, speaking, reading, and writing. While improving your speaking, you should also improve the other skills at the same time.