In this brief retelling of the fairy tale about Six Brothers under a magical spell and made to live as Swans, we look at a few different kinds of commonly used phrases so that we can understand them in context.

A Stone's Throw Podcast

The Six Swans

I use this text to describe the importance of speaking casually without hesitating.
Listen to this:
I went to the sea...to the beach two weeks...ummm..ago.  My brother and I...we...ummm...we wanted to...go inside the...to go swimming.  It was very...really, really, really hot.

It is also important not to speak too quickly.  We use pauses but not long ones and not too often.
Listen to this:
I went to the sea to go to the beach two weeks ago.  My brother and I wanted to go swimming.  The weather was ... quite hot.  The water was very relieving.

Practice your speaking speed and fluency with these questions and others.  Record your voice and listen for which of my recordings you sound like.
1). What did you do last weekend?
2). What kind of books do you like to read?
3). What do you usually like to cook for yourself?


Accelerate Your IELTS Speaking with Ralph

# 4 Fluency

In episode 2 I asked if you sound English when you speak this language.  
What I meant was do you pronounce the silent letters and use other spoken features of the language.  In this episode, I review the silent b and L. 

I also refer you to this dictionary.   www.engdic.org

3 The Silent Letters

This podcast is aimed at people who have not taken the IELTS or who took it once without preparing and now want to prepare for a second try.
I'll describe how the test is organized, what the different types of questions are,
how the test is scored (banded) and the issues that are scored.