Buying time and recovering

Think aloud about content instead of filling silence, upgrade or restart a sentence that is going wrong, correct slips without breaking your flow, and get back on track when you lose the thread: the kind of hesitation and self-correction the IELTS descriptors accept at bands 7 and 8.

Level C1 25 min6 exercisesLesson 11 of 12 in Speaking C1

Trains: IELTS Speaking Part 2, IELTS Speaking Part 3, TOEFL iBT Speaking – Take an Interview

What you'll learn

Understand what the public IELTS descriptors say about hesitation, self-correction and reformulation
Buy time by thinking aloud about the content of the question, not by searching for words in silence
Reformulate, correct and restart briefly, without apologising or losing coherence
Recover from losing your thread or running out of ideas in a long turn

Lesson content

11 steps · 6 exercises · 25 min total

1. Warm-up1 question
2. LearnThe skill and the strategy
3. ModelSee how it's done
4. Practice 1Choose the best recovery
5. Practice 2Shadow smooth recoveries
6. Practice 3IELTS Part 2: keep going under pressure
7. Practice 4IELTS Part 3: think aloud, then qualify
8. Practice 5TOEFL Take an Interview: recover without restarting
9. Exam tips3 tips
10. Key vocabulary12 words
11. SummaryReview and finish

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