Being cautious in part 3 speaking
The language of academic caution can be extremely helpful in IELTS in two ways. Naturally, it can help extend the range of your writing and speaking vocabulary by being more “academic”. More importantly, perhaps, it can help improve your coherence by allowing you to extend your written and spoken answers in a way that is both natural and coherent. In this post I look at how you can use this language to help yourself in part 3 speaking when you have a difficult question to answer.
How to use academic caution in IELTS for coherenceOne way to use cautious language in IELTS is to allow yourself to extend your answer in a logical and natural way. This matters because this will make your speech more coherent. Let me explain this with a brief example. Look at these two statements and decide which one is easier to extend:
“Young people watch too much television.”
“Most young people tend to watch too much television.”
For me, it is much easier to extend B because I have the natural next sentence of: “But some don’t and prefer to go out with their friends”. By using the cautious “most” I almost automatically get to “some” and achieve coherence. If you choose option A you may find it difficult to think of the next thing to say.
What language do you need?To make this work you need three areas of language.
opinion language: it helps to have a range of opinion language, especially for weak opinions.
concession language: this is the language of “although” but” “however” and “on the other hand”. You use this to introduce the next sentence/point of view.
cautious language: see the download for some suggestions here.
How to deal with difficult questions in speaking part 3 by being cautiousIn part 3 speaking you can expect to be asked questions that you have not thought about before. There is no problem if you know what you want to say and you can follow the normal pattern for a coherent answer:
make your statement
explain it a little
explain a bit more or give an example
come back to the question
Example 1 – you know what you want to sayHere is the direct approach with no cautious language.
“How do you think your city will change in the next 20 years?”
” I guess it will be about twice the size it is now because the population is growing rapidly. There are a lot of new industries that have been set up there recently, so people want to move there. Just to give you one example: in my own street at least 10 new houses have been built in the last 2 years alone. So, as I was saying, I’d say it’ll double in size in the next 20 years.”
But could you do this, if you didn’t know what you wanted to say? Quite possibly not. What you may need to do is give yourself some thinking time.
Example 2 – you don’t know what you want to say – be more cautiousNow look at this example. Here the speaker doesn’t know what to say at the beginning of the answer but still makes a coherent response. I have highlighted the key language in red. There are 4 points to note:
repeat/reflect the language of the question at the start to give thinking time and to get the language in your head
the use of a weak opinion word (“suppose”) allows you to change your mind later
the use of might/may allows you to change your mind half way through and stay coherent
the use of “although” coherently links the two different ideas together
“How do you think your city will change in the next 20 years?”
How do I think it will change? That’s a tough question and one I haven’t thought about before.I suppose itmight be pretty much the same as it is now. Although now I come to think of it, there are a lot of new industries that have been set up there recently and people want to move there. Just to give you one example: in my own street at least 10 new houses have been built in the last 2 years alone. So, I suppose it may grow substantially in the next 20 years.“
This is the basic pattern used. Please note that it is just one alternative and should not be learned by heart.