How can you prepare learners for speaking exams without memorised answers?
Practise choosing relevant ideas, making brief notes and developing an answer in the learner’s own words. Use examples to notice what makes a response clear, then give learners a new opportunity to speak with focused feedback. The preparation should help them respond to the task they receive.
In S07E20 of How to English TEFL Podcast, Gav gives Em an unrehearsed IELTS-style speaking task about someone who helped her. Her notes, answer and reaction give us a useful teaching example: even a confident speaker can feel nervous, but a few key details can support a story without becoming a script.
👇 Scroll down for Gav and Em’s keyword-planning activity at the bottom of this page.
👇 Watch Gav and Em discuss IELTS Speaking Part 2 preparation in this extract from S07E20.
By Gav & Em
Give practice a purpose beyond repeating the answer
Em recommends varied practice, including looking at sample tasks and analysing speaking examples. Her useful sequence is to consider what worked, identify what could improve and then ask learners to produce their own answers.
Choose a short example and give listeners something specific to notice. Can they identify who the speaker is talking about? Do they understand what happened and why it mattered? This keeps the discussion connected to communication rather than a general verdict that an answer was good or bad.
Afterwards, change the person or experience. Learners can borrow the organisational idea while supplying their own details. Repeating useful language is part of learning; the problem arises when a prepared speech takes over and the learner stops responding to the actual question.
Use the preparation minute to collect ideas
Gav asks Em to describe a person who helped her, including who the person is, how and when they helped, and why that help mattered. Em describes writing a name, key words, dates, places and short phrases. She does not attempt to compose the whole answer.
Official IELTS format guidance confirms that Part 2 includes one minute to prepare and make notes before the long turn. Practise working towards a two-minute talk. These timings belong to IELTS Part 2; other speaking exams have different tasks and arrangements.
A classroom note plan might be: ‘trainer / a few years ago / progress slow / technique + plan / confidence’. This is an illustrative reconstruction from Em’s answer, not a copy of her actual notes. Each item gives her something to explain. It leaves the sentences to be produced as she speaks.
Ask learners to check whether their notes contain ideas or a miniature essay. If they are writing complete sentences, demonstrate how to reduce one sentence to a few prompts. Then let them decide which details they need to remember.
Show how one ordinary experience becomes a story
Em chooses her personal trainer. She explains that she started attending gym classes but felt she was not making much progress. She then sought individual help. The trainer offered techniques, encouragement and a plan, and the experience increased her confidence.
Gav notices a clear progression: a starting situation, a difficulty, some help and a reflection. That is a useful framework for this particular question. Learners do not need an extraordinary event; they need enough relevant detail for the listener to follow what happened.
For another task, the structure may change. Describing a place could involve its location, features and personal significance. Encourage learners to follow their task card rather than squeeze every answer into the trainer’s story.
Make feedback accurate before making it ambitious
Gav praises Em’s relevance, organisation and use of connectors such as ‘so’ and ‘because’. He then suggests more varied vocabulary and grammar. Those are possible areas for development, but the examples need careful interpretation before we use them as classroom advice.
Em begins with a present-tense reflection about the person she thinks of, then describes past events. That combination can be entirely natural. A past experience does not require every verb in the answer to be past tense. Check whether a time reference is unclear before correcting it.
Gav also proposes a conditional reflection, while Em suggests a future achievement. Either could add meaning if it belongs in the answer. Neither is a compulsory ingredient. Official IELTS assessment includes grammatical range and accuracy alongside vocabulary, fluency and coherence, and pronunciation; it does not prescribe a third conditional in every response.
Likewise, a longer expression is not automatically a better replacement for a clear verb. Help learners express something more precisely, rather than turn ‘helped me’ into an elaborate phrase they cannot comfortably use. Choose one useful improvement and let them try it.
If the learner freezes, reduce one demand
After the demonstration, Em says the experience was frightening and helped her see the task from a student’s perspective. That is worth remembering when we introduce timed practice. Familiarity with the exam format and comfort speaking under pressure are different things.
If a learner cannot begin, first establish whether they lack an example, the language to describe it or enough planning time. Offer a choice of ordinary experiences, build a short phrase together or allow longer preparation. For classroom practice, a fictional person is also an option when personal disclosure would be uncomfortable.
You might begin with a shorter speaking turn, then gradually move towards the target timing. Label that as supported practice, rather than a full exam simulation. When learners can organise their ideas, restore the preparation and speaking conditions of the exam they are taking.
Check whether the preparation transfers
A smoother second version of the same answer can show that feedback helped. It does not yet show that the learner can respond to a different prompt. Follow the supported retry with a fresh task on another occasion.
Listen for a transferable ability: choosing a relevant example, adding an explanation or using notes without reading full sentences. Keep the feedback manageable. The aim is for learners to have something to say and a way to organise it when the next question arrives.
Gav and Em suggest: notes, a story and another attempt
A suggested classroom adaptation of the S07E20 demonstration. The new task below is practice material, not an official IELTS question.
Practice task: Describe a time someone helped you learn something. Say who helped you, what you were learning, what they did and why it was useful. Choose an everyday example. For classroom practice, you may use a fictional situation.
Prepare: Give learners one minute to note key words for the person, situation, help and result. Use longer preparation initially if needed. Notes should prompt ideas rather than provide complete sentences.
Speak and listen: Learner A speaks for up to two minutes. Learner B listens without interrupting and notes one clear detail and one point they wanted explained further. Swap roles. In a one-to-one lesson, the teacher is the listener.
Useful contrast: ‘She explained it’ gives little detail. ‘She showed me how to change a tyre, then watched while I tried’ explains the help. These are newly written practice examples.
Quick check: Must the whole answer be in the past tense? No. Past events can sit alongside present facts or reflections. Must it include a conditional? No. Choose forms that express the intended meaning accurately.
Feedback and retry: Ask whether the listener understood the situation, the help and its value. There is no single correct story. Help each speaker improve one unclear detail or expression, then repeat from short notes. Avoid assigning an exam band from this brief peer activity.
Fresh task: Next time, describe something useful you learnt by yourself: what it was, how you learnt it, what was difficult and why it mattered. Check whether learners can organise a new answer without recycling the previous speech.
📚 Take a Look at More Related Articles on Business English, One-to-One Teaching, Exams & ESP
Explore the complete S07E20 episode guide and transcription 🔊