Speaking course
Speaking skills and grammar
Learn how each part of the Speaking test works, how to plan and extend your answers, and the grammar that helps you reach a higher band.
How it works
Speaking skills and grammar, step by step
The lessons alternate: a speaking skills lesson on one part of the test, then a grammar or language lesson on something that examiners reward. All the examples come from our model answers, so you see the language used naturally in real answers.
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1
45–60 min
Part 1: Talking about familiar topics
What happens in Part 1, the topics you can expect, and how to give a full, interesting answer of two to four sentences.
✓ Completed -
2
40–50 min
The passive voice
Form the passive in every tense and learn when it sounds natural, for example when you talk about buildings, history and changes in your city.
✓ Completed -
3
45–60 min
Part 2: The long turn
Use your one minute of preparation well, then speak for up to two minutes. Practise with timed topic cards and record yourself.
✓ Completed -
4
40–50 min
Relative clauses
Use which, who, where and whose to add detail, and learn the “comment clause” (…, which means…) that makes answers longer and more natural.
✓ Completed -
5
50–60 min
Part 3: The discussion
Answer abstract questions fully, using 24 expressions for giving opinions, explaining causes and effects, and suggesting solutions.
✓ Completed -
6
40–50 min
The perfect tenses
Present perfect, past perfect and future perfect: talk about experiences, changes over time and what happened before something else.
✓ Completed -
7
40–50 min
Extending your answers
A simple formula for Part 1: answer, explain, add an example or a contrast. Learn to extend naturally without sounding memorised.
✓ Completed -
8
40–50 min
Coordinating and subordinating conjunctions
Join ideas with and, but and so, then build complex sentences with because, although, whereas and when, which examiners look for.
✓ Completed -
9
45–60 min
Fluency and the band descriptors
How Speaking is marked, and practical ways to sound more fluent: buying time, self-correcting and paraphrasing words you don't know.
✓ Completed -
10
40–50 min
The continuous tenses
Present, past and future continuous: talk about what is happening now, temporary situations, trends and background events.
✓ Completed -
11
50–60 min
Paraphrasing in Speaking and Writing
Answer Part 1 questions without repeating the words in the question, and see how our Writing model answers say the same thing as the question in new words.
✓ Completed -
12
40–50 min
Qualified language
Use tend to, can, probably and many to make careful, reasonable claims, especially about people and society in Part 3.
✓ Completed -
13
50–60 min
Pronunciation 1: Stress, chunking and rhythm
Stress the right syllables and the important words, speak in clear chunks, and find a natural rhythm.
✓ Completed -
14
45–60 min
Collocation: words that go together
Learn the natural word combinations that examiners look for at Bands 7 and 8, using examples from our Speaking and Writing model answers.
✓ Completed -
15
50–60 min
Pronunciation 2: Intonation, connected speech and sounds
Make your voice expressive, join your words together, and pronounce difficult sounds and word endings clearly.
✓ Completed
Building your vocabulary? The Speaking vocabulary course has a lesson for each of 46 Part 1 topics.