The short answer: three languages, three different problems
Vietnamese, Arabic and Tagalog speakers lose IELTS Speaking marks in three different places, and a general "mistakes" page cannot help any of them. Vietnamese speakers lose pronunciation marks on word endings and rhythm, and grammar marks on tense, because Vietnamese releases few final consonants, uses pitch for word meaning rather than for stress, and marks time with adverbs rather than verb endings. Arabic speakers lose pronunciation marks on p and on consonant clusters, grammar marks on the missing "is" and "are", and fluency marks on long planning pauses. Tagalog speakers, who usually have strong English, lose lexical and fluency marks on register: "ma'am" and "sir", softened opinions in Part 3 that never reach a position, and the p and f, b and v pairs that Tagalog does not separate. All eleven habits map onto lines in the public IELTS Speaking Band Descriptors PDF (ielts.org, read 20 October 2026), and the page quotes the line for each one so you know which of the four criteria is paying for it.
The frame, from the official pages: per the ielts.org Speaking format page, the test is a recorded 11 to 14 minute interview with an examiner in three parts, marked on fluency and coherence, lexical resource, grammatical range and accuracy, and pronunciation. The descriptors note that "a candidate will be rated on their average performance across all parts of the test", so one slip is not a band. And the Band 8 pronunciation line settles the accent question: "accent has minimal effect on intelligibility". Nobody is marked down for sounding Vietnamese, Egyptian or Filipino. They are marked down for the specific habits below, each of which is fixable in days.
- Candidates from Vietnam, from Arabic-speaking countries (Egypt, the Gulf, the Levant, Sudan, North Africa) and from the Philippines, aiming at Band 6.5 to 8 for study, work or migration to the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand or Ireland.
- Each habit: why it exists in your first language, the criterion it hits with the descriptor line quoted, the fix, a 60-second drill, and a before and after answer written by TalkDrill.
- One Part 3 question answered in all three voices, before and after, so you can hear the pattern that is yours.
- Our Indian first-language pages, listed in the related articles below and on the IELTS Speaking hub, cover Punjabi and Hindi speakers and Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu and Kannada speakers; the general list is in our 15 common mistakes article, and this page goes further by treating three non-Indian languages with the same depth.
The eleven habits and the criterion each one hits
The habits are TalkDrill's judgement from Vietnamese, Arabic-speaking and Filipino learners in our IELTS Speaking practice. IELTS publishes no first-language error data. The criterion column and quoted phrases are from the official descriptors PDF.
| # | Language | Habit | Criterion it hits | Descriptor line it triggers |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| V1 | Vietnamese | Final consonants dropped or unreleased: "like" as "lie", "friends" as "fren" | Pronunciation; grammatical range and accuracy (lost -s and -ed) | Band 6: "individual words or phonemes may be mispronounced" |
| V2 | Vietnamese | Tone used for emphasis; every syllable a separate pitch | Pronunciation | Band 6: "chunking is generally appropriate, but rhythm may be affected" |
| V3 | Vietnamese | Tense unmarked: "Yesterday I go", "I live here since 2020" | Grammatical range and accuracy | Band 6: errors "frequently occur"; Band 7: "a few basic errors persist" |
| A1 | Arabic | p as b, v as f: "bark" for "park", "fery" for "very" | Pronunciation | Band 6, as above |
| A2 | Arabic | Missing copula: "my city very big", "I student" | Grammatical range and accuracy | Band 5 already requires "basic sentence forms are fairly well controlled for accuracy" |
| A3 | Arabic | Vowels inserted into clusters: "isport", "filim", "nekist" | Pronunciation | Band 6, as above |
| A4 | Arabic | Long planning pauses mid-sentence; "yaani" as filler | Fluency and coherence | Band 5: "hesitations are often associated with mid-sentence searches" |
| T1 | Tagalog | p and f merged: "pipty", "Pilipino"; b and v merged: "bery" | Pronunciation | Band 6, as above |
| T2 | Tagalog | "ma'am", "sir", "po" to the examiner | Lexical resource | Band 7 needs "an awareness of style" |
| T3 | Tagalog | Softened opinions in Part 3 that never reach a position | Fluency and coherence; lexical resource | Band 8: "topic development is coherent, appropriate and relevant" |
| T4 | Tagalog | "already" and "yet" from "na" and "pa"; vowel length (ship/sheep) | Grammatical range and accuracy; pronunciation | Band 7: "a few basic errors persist" |
For the four criteria themselves band by band, read our band descriptors explainer, or the Band 5 to 9 page in this module (related articles below), which quotes every line. The pattern across the three languages is worth noticing: Vietnamese habits are mostly pronunciation and one grammar point; Arabic habits are split across three criteria; Tagalog habits are mostly about style and position, which in our practice is why Filipino candidates with excellent English can still sit at Band 6.5 for lexical resource.
Vietnamese speakers: final consonants, tone for emphasis, unmarked tense
Vietnamese learners are a sizeable group in our practice, and the three habits below appear in most of the first recordings we hear from them. They are TalkDrill's judgement, and the fixes have been tested with Vietnamese learners in our read-aloud and mock-test tools.
V1. Final consonants dropped or unreleased
Why it exists. Vietnamese syllables can end in only a few consonants, and those are unreleased: the mouth closes but no air escapes. English releases most final consonants and stacks them in clusters ("friends", "asked", "months"). A Vietnamese speaker applies the home rule, so "like" becomes "lie", "big" becomes "bi", "friends" becomes "fren", "asked" becomes "as". The pronunciation cost is the Band 6 line, "individual words or phonemes may be mispronounced", and in our practice it is the habit most likely to produce the Band 4 version, "causing lack of clarity", because English carries so much meaning in endings. There is a second, hidden cost: the plural s and the past tense -ed live at the end of the word. If they are not released, "I visit my grandparents" and "I visited my grandparents" sound identical, and what began as a pronunciation habit is likely to register as a grammar error as well. In our practice this single habit costs Vietnamese speakers in two criteria at once.
The fix. Release every final consonant with a small puff of air, and lengthen the vowel before a voiced one ("bag" longer than "back"). For clusters, say the consonants as one slow movement: "frien-dz", "as-kt", "mon-ths". Over-articulate in practice; what feels exaggerated to you sounds normal to the examiner.
60-second drill. "like, big, friends, asked, months, worked, lives, changed". Say each word, release the ending with a puff, and freeze with the mouth in the final position. Then: "I asked my friends if they liked the big changes at work last month." Our final consonant cluster drill and past tense -ed drill score each attempt.
Before and after (TalkDrill example, Part 1: "Do you keep in touch with old friends?")
Before (as heard): "Yeah, I still tal to my fren from high schoo, we tex a lo and las year we visi Da Lat togeder." After: "Yes, I still talk to my friends from high school. We text a lot, and last year we visited Da Lat together."
V2. Tone used for emphasis
Why it exists. Vietnamese has six tones in the northern standard (five in the south) and pitch tells words apart, so every syllable carries its own pitch and its own length. English uses pitch and length for stress instead: one syllable in each content word is long and high, the rest are short and low, and function words almost disappear. A Vietnamese speaker gives each English syllable a separate pitch movement and equal length, which a British or Australian listener hears as choppy and hard to follow, with no signal for which word matters. The Band 6 pronunciation descriptor describes it precisely: "chunking is generally appropriate, but rhythm may be affected by a lack of stress-timing and/or a rapid speech rate". Band 8 asks for the opposite, "can sustain appropriate rhythm" and "flexible use of stress and intonation across long utterances". When a Vietnamese speaker wants to emphasise a word, the home instinct is a sharp pitch jump on that syllable alone; English listeners expect the word to get longer as well as higher, and the whole sentence to fall at the end.
The fix. Think in chunks of three to five words, not in syllables. In each chunk, pick one word, make its stressed syllable long and slightly higher, and let the rest run together quickly and low. End statements with a fall. Record a sentence, then say it again twice as slowly with the stressed syllables twice as long; the slow version is closer to the target than the fast one.
60-second drill. Tap on the capitals and stretch them: "I LIVE in HaNOI with my PARents. I WORK for a SOFTware COMpany." Then take a Part 1 answer you have prepared and mark one stressed syllable per content word before you say it. The word stress drill and the intonation patterns guide go further.
Before and after (TalkDrill example, Part 2: "Describe a skill you learnt")
Before (each syllable a separate beat): "I-learn-to-cook-pho-from-my-grand-mo-ther-when-I-was-twelve." After (stretched beats in capitals): "I LEARNT to cook PHO from my GRANDmother when I was TWELVE."
V3. Tense left unmarked
Why it exists. Vietnamese verbs do not change form; time is shown by words like "đã" (past), "đang" (ongoing), "sẽ" (future) or simply by a time adverb. So the natural English sentence is "Yesterday I go to the market" or "I live in Hanoi since 2020": the time is in the adverb, the verb stays bare. Combined with V1 (an unreleased -ed), the examiner hears almost no past tense across a two-minute Part 2 story, which is where past narrative is required. The grammatical range and accuracy descriptor at Band 6 allows errors that "frequently occur in complex structures"; a bare verb in a simple past sentence is a basic error, and a two-minute talk full of them is many basic errors, not "a few".
The fix. Mark the time on the verb, not only on the adverb. Irregular pasts are the priority because they cannot be rescued by a released -ed: went, saw, took, made, got, came, had, said, told, thought. For duration use "have lived in Hanoi since 2020" or "for five years". In your one minute of Part 2 preparation, write the first verb of the story in the past form at the top of your notes and keep it in sight.
60-second drill. Tell a thirty-second story about last weekend using at least six irregular past forms. Then three sentences about your current life with "have been", "since" and "for". Record both and count the bare verbs.
Before and after (TalkDrill example, Part 2: "Describe a memorable trip")
Before: "Last summer I go to Phu Quoc with my family. We stay three days and we eat a lot of seafood. I live in Ho Chi Minh City since 2019 so I really need that break." After: "Last summer I went to Phu Quoc with my family. We stayed for three days and ate a lot of seafood. I have lived in Ho Chi Minh City since 2019, so I really needed that break."
Also watch (shorter notes from our practice): th said as t or d ("tink", "dat"), initial clusters simplified ("street" as "seet"), and "yeah" as the universal opener to every Part 1 answer. The th drills on our read-aloud page cover the first; for the third, start with the content word instead.
Arabic speakers: p and b, the missing copula, inserted vowels, long pauses
Our Arabic-speaking learners come mainly from Egypt, with the Gulf, the Levant and Sudan as well. Dialects differ (an Egyptian "g" is a Levantine "j"), but the four habits below cross every dialect we hear. They are TalkDrill's judgement.
A1. p said as b, and v as f
Why it exists. Standard Arabic and most dialects have b but no p, and f but no v. The English sounds are mapped onto the nearest Arabic ones, so "park" becomes "bark", "people" becomes "beoble", "very" becomes "fery" and "seven" becomes "sefen". Part 1 topics are full of them: "people", "place", "park", "popular", "parents", "very", "travel", "favourite". The cost is pure pronunciation, the Band 6 line "individual words or phonemes may be mispronounced", but because p and b separate so many English words ("pay" and "bay", "pack" and "back", "pig" and "big"), it is also the habit most likely to produce a moment of real confusion in Part 3.
The fix. For p: lips closed, a build-up of air, then release with a puff and no voice at all; put a finger on your throat, b buzzes, p does not. A sheet of paper in front of the mouth moves for p and not for b. For v: upper teeth on the lower lip as for f, then switch the voice on until the lip buzzes.
60-second drill. "pay, bay; pack, back; pig, big; pull, bull" with the paper. Then "fan, van; fine, vine; few, view" with a finger on the throat. Then: "Very few people in my village prefer to pay by card." Our p, f, b and v drill scores it.
Before and after (TalkDrill example, Part 1: "Is there a park near your home?")
Before (as heard): "Yes, there is a big bark near my blace, and it is fery bopular with beoble in the efening." After: "Yes, there is a big park near my place, and it is very popular with people in the evening."
A2. The missing copula
Why it exists. Arabic has no verb "to be" in the present tense: "the city big" and "I student" are complete sentences. English needs "is", "are" or "am" in every one of them, and the sentences Arabic speakers build first in the test are exactly these: "My city very big", "I student in engineering", "The weather in Cairo hot", "My father doctor". Each one is a basic error in the simplest sentence form, and the grammatical range and accuracy descriptor at Band 5 says "basic sentence forms are fairly well controlled for accuracy"; a missing copula in most simple sentences means that line is not met, and in our judgement it is the single habit that most often holds an otherwise fluent Arabic speaker at Band 5.5 or 6 for grammar.
The fix. Every English sentence has a verb. If there is no action, the verb is a form of "be": "My city is very big." "I am a student." "The weather is hot." Drill the three forms as reflexes (I am, he/she/it is, we/you/they are) and attach the article in the same breath for professions: "My father is a doctor."
60-second drill. Describe your city, your family and your job in ten sentences with no action verb at all, forcing "is", "are" and "am" into every one: "Alexandria is on the coast. The summers are humid. My brothers are both engineers. I am the youngest."
Before and after (TalkDrill example, Part 1: "Tell me about your hometown")
Before: "My hometown Mansoura. It in the Delta, very green, and the people friendly. My family there, my father teacher." After: "My hometown is Mansoura. It is in the Delta, so it is very green, and the people are friendly. My family is still there; my father is a teacher."
A3. Vowels inserted into consonant clusters
Why it exists. In Standard Arabic and most dialects a syllable does not begin with two consonants, so an extra short vowel appears to break English clusters: "sport" becomes "isport" or "sibort", "street" becomes "istreet", "film" becomes "filim", "next" becomes "nekist", "asked" becomes "asked" with an extra syllable. The inserted vowel changes the syllable count, and the listener hears a different or longer word. The cost is the Band 6 pronunciation line, and together with A1 it is what makes an Arabic speaker's "sport" come out as "isbort": two habits on one word.
The fix. For initial s-clusters, hold the s for a full second and then release straight into the next consonant with no vowel: "ssss-port", "ssss-treet". For final clusters, say the consonants as one slow movement and release only the last one: "fil-m", "nek-st", "as-kt".
60-second drill. "sport, street, school, film, next, asked, strong, world". Clap the syllables; each of these is one syllable. Then: "Next week I will ask my strong friend from school to play sport in the street." The cluster drill covers the endings.
Before and after (TalkDrill example, Part 1: "Do you play any sports?")
Before (as heard): "I used to play isport at ischool, mostly football in the istreet, but nekist year I want to join a gym." After: "I used to play sport at school, mostly football in the street, but next year I want to join a gym."
A4. Long planning pauses mid-sentence
Why it exists. Arabic speakers in our practice often plan a whole, formal English sentence before starting it, then stall in the middle when a word is missing. The result is a three-second silence mid-clause, often filled with "yaani" or "eh", and then a restart. The fluency and coherence descriptor at Band 5 names it: "hesitations are often associated with mid-sentence searches for fairly basic lexis and grammar". Band 7 allows hesitation that "indicate[s] problems with accessing appropriate language" only if it does "not affect coherence". Band 9 says hesitation "is used only to prepare the content of the next utterance and not to find words or grammar". So the fix is not to stop pausing; it is to move the pause to the start of a sentence and to keep the sentences short enough to finish.
The fix. Start a short sentence immediately, then extend it with "and", "because", "which" as the ideas arrive. If a word is missing, paraphrase in English ("the thing you use to...") rather than stall; the Band 7 lexical descriptor gives credit for "effective use of paraphrase as required". Replace "yaani" with "I mean" or "well", or with silence of under a second.
60-second drill. Answer "What do you like about your job?" in sentences of no more than eight words, with no silence longer than one second, for sixty seconds. Then once more, extending each short sentence with one "because" clause.
Before and after (TalkDrill example, Part 3: "Why do some people prefer to work from home?")
Before: "I think that the main reason for this... yaani... the phenomenon of working from home is... (three seconds)... is that people they want to... to have more flexibility." After: "Flexibility, mainly. People want to choose their hours. They also save the commute, which in Cairo can be two hours a day, and I think that matters more than the salary for a lot of parents."
Also watch: "the" added to general nouns ("the life is hard", "I love the nature"), because Arabic uses the definite article for general statements. This is the reverse of the dropped-article habit on our Punjabi and Hindi page (related articles below).
Tagalog speakers: p and f, b and v, "ma'am" and "sir", softened opinions
Filipino candidates usually arrive with strong English, often as a medium of schooling, and in our practice their Speaking is usually already strong. The habits below are about the last half band, and they are TalkDrill's judgement from Filipino learners in our practice, many of them nurses heading for the UK, Ireland, Australia or New Zealand who are choosing between IELTS and OET (our OET hub has a dedicated Tagalog page).
T1. p and f merged; b and v merged
Why it exists. Tagalog has no native f or v, and even though Filipino English speakers use both every day, under pressure the older mapping returns: "fifty" becomes "pipty", "Filipino" becomes "Pilipino", "very" becomes "bery", "favourite" becomes "paborit". Sometimes the opposite happens as a hypercorrection: a speaker who has drilled f starts saying "pass" as "fass" and "people" as "feople". The cost is the Band 6 pronunciation line, and it is mild in isolation, but "very", "favourite", "family" and "people" appear in almost every Part 1 answer, so the pattern is heard early.
The fix. f and v: upper teeth on the lower lip, with air for f and voice for v; you should feel the lip buzz on v. p and b: lips together with no teeth, a puff for p, voice for b. The difference is teeth or no teeth; a mirror shows it instantly.
60-second drill. "fan, pan; fast, past; fine, pine; very, berry; vote, boat; vest, best". Then: "My favourite part of the festival is the food; very few people leave before the fireworks." The p, f, b and v drill scores it.
Before and after (TalkDrill example, Part 1: "What is your favourite festival?")
Before (as heard): "My paborit is Sinulog, it is bery pamous in Cebu and my pamily goes ebery year." After: "My favourite is Sinulog. It is very famous in Cebu, and my family goes every year."
T2. "ma'am", "sir" and "po" to the examiner
Why it exists. Filipino politeness is built into the language: "po" and "opo" mark respect, and "ma'am" and "sir" are the English carriers of the same respect, used to teachers, customers and strangers. To a British or Australian ear, "ma'am" and "sir" in a conversation usually sound like a hotel desk or a call centre, and in an IELTS interview they read as deference rather than fluency. The direct cost is small, but the lexical resource descriptor at Band 7 asks for "an awareness of style", and address terms are the most visible style marker you produce. The indirect cost is larger: candidates who say "ma'am" also tend to produce T3, the softened opinion, because both come from the same instinct not to contradict the person in front of you.
The fix. No address term at all. The examiner does not need one, and a native speaker in an ordinary conversation would not use one. If "po" slips out inside an English sentence, carry on without correcting it; a self-correction costs more fluency than the slip.
60-second drill. Record one minute of Part 1 answers and count "ma'am", "sir" and "po". Re-record with none. If the sentence feels too bare, add a reason instead ("Yes, because...").
Before and after (TalkDrill example, Part 1: "Do you work or study?")
Before: "I am working, ma'am. I am a nurse po in a private hospital in Quezon City, sir, for three years already." After: "I work. I have been a nurse at a private hospital in Quezon City for three years now."
T3. Softened opinions that never reach a position
Why it exists. Filipino conversation often prizes "pakikisama" (getting along) and hedges disagreement: "siguro" (maybe), "parang" (it seems), "sa tingin ko" (in my view), "baka" (perhaps) soften almost every claim. Carried into Part 3, where the examiner asks for opinions on abstract questions, the result is an answer made entirely of hedges: "Maybe, for me, I think it is possibly better, but it depends, ma'am." The fluency and coherence descriptor at Band 8 asks that "topic development is coherent, appropriate and relevant", and at Band 9 that it is "fully coherent and appropriately extended"; an answer with no position cannot be developed, because there is nothing to give reasons for. There is also a lexical cost: "maybe", "I think" and "for me" repeated in every sentence read as a narrow resource, not as politeness.
The fix. Position first, in one clear sentence, then reasons, then the concession if you want it. One hedge per answer is plenty, and it belongs at the end ("although I can see why some people disagree"), not the beginning. Part 3 rewards a defended view, not a balanced shrug. Our Part 3 questions and answers post has worked examples, and the Part 3 frameworks page in this module has a four-move structure for exactly this.
60-second drill. Take four Part 3 questions and answer each starting with "I think X, for two reasons." No "maybe", "siguro" or "for me" allowed until the final sentence.
Before and after (TalkDrill example, Part 3: "Should children be allowed smartphones at school?")
Before: "Maybe, ma'am, for me, I think it depends, siguro it is possibly okay in some cases, but also maybe not, it depends on the parents." After: "No, not during lessons. Phones pull attention away from the teacher, and children do not yet have the self-control adults expect of themselves. I would allow them at break time, under supervision, although I can see why some parents want contact all day."
T4. "already" and "yet" from "na" and "pa", and vowel length
Why it exists. Tagalog "na" and "pa" mark completion and continuation, and Filipino English maps them onto "already" and "yet" far more often than British English does: "I am a nurse for three years already", "I ate already", "I will go yet". Each is a small grammar inappropriacy that the Band 7 line "a few basic errors persist" can absorb once or twice, not in every sentence. Separately, Tagalog has five vowels and no tense/lax pairs, so "ship" and "sheep", "live" and "leave", "full" and "fool" merge, which is a Band 6 pronunciation point and, in a nursing context, occasionally a meaning point.
The fix. "already" only for something earlier than expected ("I have already finished"), and almost never at the end of a sentence; duration takes "for" or "now" ("for three years now"). For the vowels: "sheep" is long and the lips are spread; "ship" is short and the mouth is relaxed. Pair them aloud until the difference is physical.
60-second drill. Five sentences about your work with "for" and "now" and no "already"; then "ship, sheep; live, leave; full, fool; sit, seat" three times each. The short i and long ee drill scores the vowels.
Before and after (TalkDrill example, Part 1: "How long have you lived in your current home?")
Before: "I am leaving there for five years already, since I started working, and my parents are there also already." After: "I have lived there for five years now, since I started working, and my parents live there as well."
Before and after: one Part 3 answer in three voices
The same Part 3 question answered by three speakers, before and after. All six answers are written by TalkDrill as teaching examples; they are not transcripts of real candidates, and the band comments are our estimate of how the descriptors would apply, not an official score. The question is in the current Part 3 style and written by us.
Question: "Do you think people in your country spend too much time on social media?"
Vietnamese speaker
Before (as heard): "Yeah, I tink so. Many young peo-ple in Viet-nam use Face-book and Tik-Tok ev-ery day, some-time five hour. Las year I try to stop but I can not." Habits: unreleased endings (V1), separate beats (V2), bare past verbs (V3).
After: "Yes, I think so. Most young people in Vietnam use Facebook and TikTok every day, sometimes for five hours. Last year I tried to cut down myself, and I could not do it, which tells you something about how addictive it is."
Arabic speaker
Before: "Yes, this a big broblem in Egypt. The young beoble... yaani... (pause)... they all the time on the phone, and the family life... it affected." Habits: p as b (A1), missing copula (A2), planning pause with "yaani" (A4).
After: "Yes, it is a real problem in Egypt. Young people are on their phones all the time, even at family dinners, and I think family life is suffering because of it. My own parents complain about it every Friday."
Tagalog speaker
Before: "Maybe, ma'am, siguro yes, for me it depends po, because bery many Filipinos are on Facebook already, but maybe it is also good for family abroad, so possibly it is okay." Habits: address terms (T2), hedges without a position (T3), b for v (T1), "already" (T4).
After: "Yes, I think we do. Filipinos spend a great deal of time on Facebook, and most of that time is scrolling rather than talking to the family abroad, which is the reason people give. Social media is useful for keeping in touch, but an hour a day would do that; four hours is a habit."
Notice that none of the "after" answers uses a rare word. Each one states a position, gives a reason, adds a concrete detail, and ends on a fall. That is what Band 7 and above sounds like in Part 3. Try the same question with our AI examiner in the full three-part mock, record it, and mark your own answer against the pair for your language.
A fourteen-day drill route for each language
Twenty minutes a day, in the order that changes how you sound fastest. Pick your language's column; the last two days are shared.
| Days | Vietnamese | Arabic | Tagalog |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 to 4 | Final consonants (V1): the release drill, the -ed and plural drills, two Part 1 answers a day checked for endings | Copula (A2): ten "is/are/am" sentences a day about city, family, job; then two Part 1 answers checked for a verb in every sentence | Position first (T3): four Part 3 questions a day with "I think X, for two reasons", no hedge until the last sentence |
| 5 to 8 | Rhythm (V2): chunk-and-stretch on the read-aloud tool; one Part 2 card a day with stressed syllables marked in the notes | p and b, v and f (A1) and clusters (A3): paper and throat drills, the cluster list, one Part 1 answer checked for both | p, f, b, v (T1) and vowel length (T4): mirror drills, the pair lists, one Part 1 answer checked for "bery" and "ship/sheep" |
| 9 to 12 | Tense (V3): a thirty-second past story a day with six irregular pasts; "since / for / have been" sentences | Pauses (A4): the eight-word-sentence drill, then extension with "because"; paraphrase practice for missing words | Register (T2, T4): record Part 1 answers, remove every "ma'am", "sir", "po" and sentence-final "already"; re-record |
| 13 | Part 3 from our Part 3 questions and answers: six questions, each with a position, two reasons, a detail and a falling final clause. | ||
| 14 | The full three-part AI mock with the real timings, then the criterion-by-criterion estimate; note which habits still appear and repeat that day's drill. | ||
With more than two weeks, the 30-day Band 7 plan in this module turns this into a full route, and our Band 8 article covers the step after that.
What is the same for all three, and where to go next
Three things hold across Vietnamese, Arabic and Tagalog speakers, and across the Indian languages on our other pages.
- The examiner is rating an average, not a worst moment. The descriptors PDF says so in its notes: "a candidate will be rated on their average performance across all parts of the test", and "a candidate must fully fit the positive features of the descriptor at a particular level". One "bark" for "park" is not a band. The same habit in every sentence is.
- Accent is not the target; clarity and rhythm are. Band 8 pronunciation is "can be easily understood throughout" with an accent that "has minimal effect on intelligibility". Every drill on this page serves one of those two lines.
- Position, reason, detail, fall. The Part 3 pattern in the three-voice example works in every language and is the quickest fluency and coherence gain available, because it fixes what the examiner can develop a conversation around.
Where to go next depends on your target. For the test itself, the test guide covers the day, and the format page in this module covers the three parts, the video call option where offered and what the examiner does. For questions, the Part 1 questions and answers and the Part 2 cue card guide are the starting points; the current-cycle pages in this module are written by TalkDrill and grouped by recurring topic family rather than presented as leaked cards. If your other three bands are fine and only Speaking is short, the One Skill Retake (per ielts.org: IELTS on Computer tests only, once per original test, sat within 60 days of your full test) lets you redo Speaking alone; the results and retake page in this module has the rules and who accepts it. The IELTS Speaking hub links everything in this module, and the official pages are listed with their verification dates on our official resources page there.