Speaking
IELTS speaking pronunciation is worth a quarter of your speaking band, and it is widely misunderstood. You are not being marked on how close you sound to a British or American speaker, and having a recognisable accent costs you nothing at all. What is being assessed is whether you are easy to follow, and whether your stress, rhythm and intonation carry meaning rather than working against it.
Whether words arrive intact rather than mumbled or run together into something unrecognisable.
Whether you stress the right syllable, and the right word in the sentence. Misplaced stress causes more misunderstanding than a wrong vowel.
Whether your words join the way English joins them, rather than being delivered one at a time.
Whether the tune of your voice matches what you are saying. Enthusiasm, doubt and disagreement all have a sound.
When you first hear an unfamiliar language you do not hear words, you hear a stream of sound. As you learn, individual words start to separate out, partly because teachers and course materials speak more slowly than anybody does in real life. The trap is that learners then keep producing those separated words, which is precisely what makes speech sound effortful.
Joining words the way native speakers join them is one of the fastest ways to sound more natural, and it does not require you to change a single vowel.
When a word ends in a consonant sound and the next begins with a vowel sound, the consonant moves across and attaches to the vowel.
word ends becomes wor-dends
green apples becomes gree-napples
ends on a consonant becomes end-so-na consonant
begins on a vowel becomes begin-so-na vowel
When a word ends in an ee sound and the next begins with a vowel sound, a light y appears between them. You do not add it deliberately. It happens when the two are genuinely joined.
three eggs becomes three-yeggs
he asked becomes he-yasked
the exam was difficult becomes the-yexam was difficult
When a word ends in an oo sound and the next begins with a vowel sound, a light w appears instead.
blue eyes becomes bloo-weyes
two onions becomes too-wonions
did you ask becomes did you-wask
Do not try to apply these consciously while you are being assessed. Practise them aloud in advance, slowly at first, until the joins happen on their own. Thinking about linking during the test will cost you far more in fluency than it gains you in pronunciation.
Intonation is the rise and fall of your voice, and in English it carries meaning that the words alone do not. The same four words can be an enthusiastic acceptance or a polite refusal depending entirely on the shape of the voice.
I would love to come. Rising movement, wide pitch range, strong stress on love. The voice does a lot of work.
I would love to come. Falling movement, narrow range, trailing off. The listener knows a but is coming before it arrives.
This matters in the test because the examiner deliberately asks about things you like and things you dislike. Those questions are an invitation to demonstrate range in your voice, and a candidate who describes their favourite place in a flat monotone has declined it.
Answer each aloud, twice: once meaning it, once feigning polite interest. Record both and listen for whether an outsider could tell them apart.
Read each exchange aloud in the way the punctuation and wording suggest, then choose the meaning the speaker is conveying. This tests the same skill from the listening side, and intonation questions appear in the listening test as well.
“What do you think of the shirt?” — “Well… it is certainly a colour.”
The hesitation and the empty compliment do the work. Saying something is certainly a colour praises nothing.
“Do we need to book?” — “On a Tuesday? I would not bother.”
The rhetorical question dismisses the concern. Tuesday is quiet, so booking is unnecessary.
“It is the best restaurant in town.” — “If you say so.”
Disagreement. If you say so concedes the point without accepting it, and is nearly always said with a falling tone.
“We are flying at six in the morning, changing twice.” — “Lovely.”
Not pleased. A single positive word attached to an unattractive fact is read as sarcasm.
“How was the camera?” — “It does everything the advert promised, more or less.”
The qualifier more or less withdraws most of the approval that came before it.
“Sorry, what was that?” — “I said, the meeting has been moved. Again.”
Annoyed. The detached Again as a separate sentence carries the irritation, not the repetition itself.
“How was dinner?” — “The bread was excellent.”
Praising only the smallest element implies everything else is not worth mentioning.
“Shall we walk?” — “It is only twenty minutes!”
Keen. Only plus the rising exclamation minimises the effort and pushes for agreement.