I’m not sure what else I can improve. My skill profile already shows full scores across all areas, yet I still missed the Superior English score in Speaking.
Pls advice.
Thanks in advance.
I got 87S, 78R, 79L, and 75W on my 1st attempt after just a few days of practice for speaking only but got my desired score for now. Not much, but definitely I think I can help you guys in speaking Section.
Read Aloud:
Speak, Speak Speak, don't go too slow(word after word).. you can go a bit fast or use normal pacing. But remember if you go fast you will fumble with pronunciation and it takes your fluency. 1 2 fumbles are okay but remember don't go back correcting or even looking at that fumbled word just look forward into the sentence. Keep going.
Repeat Sentence:
I had three tricks up my sleeves. Practice this at mocks as hard as you can to develop the habit.(Max 1-2 days prac is enough but only 15-20 min and a long break and continue)
Understand what the speaker is trying to say. The brain will automatically map it out for you. This is your brain. Trust your brain on this and it's capability, it will surprise you.
In the mean time when you listen and understand, anchor the middle words but keep listening to the rest of the word. By anchoring I mean remember the middle words(some words two or three) of the sentence, you don't have to worry or bother about remembering other part or any part of the sentence but you must listen and understand it.
Once you master those two, pause yourself for 1-2sec use this buffer(but don't repeat the sentence aloud or in yourhead in this buffer, you will f**k up) cause there is a buffer of 1-2sec in exam(not many pratice test or mocks has this buffer but the real exam does). Now you guys might ask why not repeat the sentence in your head in that buffer to remeber? Well if you repeat that sentence in your head, and when the recording starts you will fumble all the remaining words( the ones) you didn't get time to repeat in your head. Also, I don't know why many people suggest to close eyes in RS, but when you do that, you start to imagine anything, (try this for example.. close your eyes you will start to think and create the visuals in your head in matter of seconds but if your eyes are open it will be hard to visualize something, you can visualize but it takes time) and in nervousness when this happens you visualize something else, you can lose everything, the anchor and what you just tried to understand. So don't close your eyes this will distract you(mostly for the ones that are stressed and have anxiety problem). After the buffer I am sure if you got the middle anchor, your brain will automatically pick all the words easily. Trust me I have mastered the RS. Try for youself.
Some sentences are too long even when anchoring. Leave the rest of word, speak up to the anchor if it's to long for you to remember.( eg for 14, words the anchor should be at middle. Around 6 or 7). If you don't practice enough you might end up anchoring on 3 or 4th word for long sentences and end up losing content by skipping the rest which then directly affects fluency, less content = less fluency for AI to judge on). You won't know if you will get long sentences or not, hence anchoring needs more practice.
One of the worst sentences are the one that begins with hard pronunciation(For example... The preliminary bibliography is due the week before the spring break) even with anchor 'if you mess the first pronunciation of the word, you will forget everything even the anchor words "due the week".. well that's luck for you. Here I would skip those hard first words.
If you do the repeat sentences well in your exam, you will feel the confidence for all the other remaining sec of speaking.
Describe image:
Use: The image provided is a barchart, map, linegraph, pie chart, flowchart and so on, gives information about title( if no title, anything in the picture with three four words or make sense of that image, is fine). Master this complex sentence first. Then x-axis y-axis, highest and lowest for most charts. Then, conclude, by just saying overall this picture was about topic.... But donot push your luck with more words and end up in a situation where you use all your time and you break your sentence half way. And if there is image, color is your bestfriend and background.
Retell lecure:
Write 1 sentence(it doesn't have to be complete) by speaking aloud so that when you are writing you don't hear what speaker is saying but once you are close to ending the sentence stop speaking aloud , start hearing again then write and repeat. Once you get 4-5 points, stop writing find the topic. So that you can easily begin your first sentence with, The lecture was about topic.. the lecturer said 1 sentence , 2 sentence, don't freaking worry about grammar just speak, even if those 2 sentence don't make sence when spoken 1 after another . Then again add The lecturer further added or add connectors(moreover, furthermore and so on) whatever you like, then speaker 3rd sentence and then 4th.. then finally the lecturer concluded your fifth sentence that you wrote. At least get 4 sentence either complete or incomplete. You only have to speak about 25 sec- 30 sec. That's it.
Now the most imortant tip: I know most of us can't remember the whole sentence, you may only get few words 5-6 words but don't worry, when you don't have full sentence start listening again.. add the word that speaker says next to your incomplete sentence by using conjunctions( and, so,...) and don't worry about making sense.
Now when you read aloud, your brain tries to fight you by saying why is this sentence not making sense and this is where why you will fumble. Don't worry about making sense. Tell your brain to shut up. Practice1-2 days, you will get there
Summarize group discussion
Same strategy as retell lecture but this is where I fumbled and blew it(but there is a catch and why) as well I was unlcuky to get 3 summarize grp discussion
So I learned the lesson, when I was was creating S1, S2, S3 .. when I wrote the sentences for S1, S2 and S3. My hand, when it went to S1 again to write a sentence, I erased the S2 sentence.. and same for S3. I panicked, I got completely lost but tried my best to write with half of my hands in the air so that I don't mess. But still I messed and lost my fluency because my brain was in a panic mode and the word I wrote was completely gone.
So the solution for this is: The erasable notebook is long make it landscape(vertical)
So instead of
S1
SENTENCE
SENTENCE
SENTENCE
------
S2
SENTENCE
SENTENCE
SENTENCE
------
S3
SENTENCE
SENTENCE
SENTENCE
------
Do
S1 | S2 | S3
Sentence | Sentence | Sentence
....
I was panicking SO I couldn't even think of this idea, and I blew it for SGD but I still try to calm myself for my next two SGD.
Now for this, say The group discussion was about topic.. speaker 1 says that s1 s2, he/she further added s3, speaker 2 says then he further added.. blah blahh.. keep talking
Take at least 3 sentence for each speaker. You can use 40-50 sec to answer this.
Respond to situation:
It's easy for me repeat the question in first person , 80% can be the question itself and rest 20% try to use your own words , whenever you question or respond anything.. suppose.. could you be able to do that? Try to question it, don't speak like you are a robot. And try to use your hands when speaking that will help you automatically to go further.. like you are talking to a person. If you practice it in AI score from pearson itself you will know exactly what you are missing from content. For this I don't really have more tips tbh.
I didn't really care about writing, listening and reading. I just needed my speaking and only praticed on it and got the desired score for me. So yeah. I hope you guys do your best and sorry if this is hard to read. Let's keep helping each other out. Thank you.
Can we use filler words after you covered 50-70% of the content?
I am not able to get marks in speaking..any suggestions wht should I do to improve it …or should I go for rescore