G'day mate. How's it going? Today, I'm gonna be sharing a recommended means of how IELTS Speaking Test Part 2 (2mins speech) needs to be tackled. Well, my short answer is relax and take it easy mate. Let's get this straight!
First of all, when you are at the exam room, your interviewer (examiner) will pass on you a piece of paper and a question card along with a pencil, and you're allowed to jot down some keywords, structures, or anything associated with the question card for 1 min. And, of course, you wanna write down keywords as many as you possibly can, right? Yes, you can, you should if it's necessary. If I were you as a candidate, I'd write down only a few keywords that I'm gonna use for my speech transition. Like, this keyword is used for my intro, this keyword is for someone's view or opinion, and this keyword for counterarguments, which is my view or opinion. And no keyword is needed for your conclusive remarks, because what you have to do is to summarise main points that you've mentioned in your body's speech, or even you can repeat the same sentences paraphrased nicely.
So, I think 5 to 10 keywords should be sufficient to be able to do a 2 min-long solo speech. From my perspective, the more keywords you write down, the harder you're gonna cover all of them expanding your talk effectively. I mean, you don't wanna talk about more than two examples for just 2 mins. Otherwise, you'll probably mess up your main point of your speech. Just two examples, two evidences, and two mini conclusions before wrapping up what you have said in your bodies. In that sense, there are two essential skills that you're gonna have to be equipped with, which are concrete structure and time management. The former one is critical to develop your argument, and also important to be able to speak smoothly without having any odd pause and hesitation for the whole duration of 2 mins. The latter one is actually a bit hard to be mastered, in part because some examiners try to interject your speech if you pause too long. And, some examiners tend to keep silence until 2 mins is completely up even if you pause or don't say anything before 2 mins being up. So, you should get used to the feeling of like how long 2 mins is gonna last. Just practice makes perfect, albeit having a less probability of getting it done perfectly.
To this end, your concrete structure is of paramount importance, right? If I were you, I'd say my introduction within, like say, 10 seconds, followed by someone's arguments like 30 seconds, my counterarguments like 1 min, and 20 seconds for my conclusive remarks. I reckon someone's arguments (the first body) - a few sentences - needs to be far shorter than my counterarguments (the second body), which comprise multiple sentences, because there will be two examples and evidences. So it must be much longer than the first body. And, you know, striking the balance between the first body and the second body is significant if you wanna get a higher score in logic or coherence. And finally, you just need to say a piece of a comprehensive sentence based on what you've explained in your first and second body.
Last but not least, you don't really need to follow the Question card like answering subquestions, but you just keep in mind the main topic for your speech. If the topic is something like 'Describe a person who you admired in the past.' To get it done easily, you just introduce a person you admired in the past, and then you talk about your friend's view or opinion about this person. After that, you try to explain your own reasons why you admired, during which you have two examples and evidences to back up your counterarguments, right? And finally, you're gonna try to recapitulate someone's and your viewpoints comprehensively. You've just got to keep talking without stopping like beating about the bush. You're allowed to digress a little bit from the main topic. For me, I didn't really care about anything at all as if I was like talking to myself.
Thanks for reading my blog. Have a good one mate.