I wrote this blog post after an IELTS speaking class. I noticed they were making the same fluency mistake every time they talked.
Students think that they need to speak fast if they want a high score. In fact, speaking fast is HURTING your score!
Take a look at these famous speeches and learn from them. What do they have in common? Watch and learn!
1. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. ‘I Have A Dream’
Probably the most famous speech in the world – Mr King told the American people that he dreams of peace. His voice is slow and steady. His words ‘I have a dream’ followed by his vision of a united world hits the heart of every listener. But notice his pace. He speaks slow, and then fast, and this makes his speech continuously interesting.
You can do this too in the IELTS test.
Here is my top tip: Speak slowly when you’re not sure what to say. And speak fast when you’re sure about the vocabulary and grammar. Not everything you say has to be at the same speed. In fact, it’s much more interesting when you change the speed!
2. Winston Churchill ‘We Shall Never Surrender’
This is one of my favorite speeches. It was the speech that helped to win a war against the Germans in WW2. It might be the reason I am alive today, and my grandparents were not killed by German Nazis – if the Germans had won the war.
Why is this speech so good? And why can you learn from it? The main reason is the tone of his voice. It is not flat like a line.
It goes up ‘ We shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air!’
And it goes down ‘We shall defend our island’.
The result is passion. The result is memorable. The speech is so much more interesting to listen to. It makes your skin tingle. It makes you want to fight for freedom.
But can IELTS students do this too? Absolutely.
The lesson to learn here is vary your voice. Go up in some sentences. And go down in other sentences. Although this is a pronunciation feature rather than a fluency trick, you will sound more fluent and easy to listen to if you don’t sound like a robot!
3. Barack Obama ‘Values are Worth Fighting For’
In this speech, Obama teaches us how to use long pauses to give you time to think before speaking.
It’s obvious, when you compare it to his earlier speeches, that he is out of practice. He even says that he hasn’t spoken publicly for a long time. Compare this speech to his speech about ‘A More Perfect Union’. In this more recent speech, he is slower, he is less fluent, but his message is still strong. He often doesn’t know what to say next.
But… instead of saying uhhhh…. uhhhhh (like many IELTS students do) he takes his time. He leaves long pauses, and you can see that he is thinking about what to say next.
This is a lesson to all IELTS and language students who have low fluency – you don’t have to say uhhhh. You can just say nothing. And then use that time to think before continuing – even Barack Obama does it!
Conclusions
So what did these famous speeches have in common in fluency?
They don’t rush. They don’t speak too fast, or too slow. They leave pauses when they need to think. They don’t use ‘uhhhh’ to think. They just stay silent until their idea is ready to say. Then, when they do speak, it is strong and confident – because they had time to think!
Too many of my students speak too fast and use uhhh to fiill in the silence when they run out of things to say. Hopefully by watching these videos, you will listen to yourself and fix your fluency. And, one day, you will have the fluency and confidence to speak like a President!
If you want more fluency tips, my final advice is to get a teacher. When you speak with a real person, you can improve your fluency fast. You can listen to them speak and copy them. That’s how we learn when we are babies! It works when you are an adult too!
