IELTS Speaking: it's ok to lie!

Students often ask me whether it's ok to lie or invent an answer in the speaking test. My advice is that it's usually easier to tell the truth; however, sometimes your only option is to make something up (to lie). Take this part 2 question for example:

"Describe a team project that you worked on"

If your job involves working in a team, this might be an easy question. But if you're still a student, or you work alone, you might be stuck for ideas. You might need to invent something!

Here's how you could adapt to the question above:

• Talk about a project or piece of work that you did alone, and pretend that other people were involved.
• Go back to your school days and talk about something you studied, pretending that it was a group project.
• Talk about an English lesson - most English teachers put their students in groups from time to time.

Comments

[Neda]

Hi Simon & everyone,
Sorry if my comment is irrelevant to this post..
could you please help me with my introduction for this question:

Some say that students should concentrate on the subjects that they like, others suggest that they should focus on all schools subjects. Discuss both views and give your opinion.

i wrote:
People have different views about what students should focus on, only the subjects they are interested in or all those presented in school curriculum.

i will take the exam on 9th March plz help me. i'm sooooo stressed out.

[Neda]

Sorry i forgot to type the rest of intro

here it is:

People have different views about what students should focus on, only the subjects they are interested in or all those presented in school curriculum. In my opinion, it is important for students to study different range of subjects.

[Ahda]

Hi Simon and everyone..
please give correction for the ideas below!

In this occasion, I would like to tell you about a research project that I have done with my team. It was a task from our lecturer to search language acquisition in children. I was as a member of the team has responsibility to identify children' language from 1 - 2 years, while two other friends do research from 0- 1 year. we got difficulties how to get the data so much from our subjects. some children may cooperate with us and others do not. we need patient and some strategies to handle them.

[Parisa]

I remember that once when I was a student in the school of pharmacy we had to prepare a presentation about the novel methods of drug therapy. Our team included me and three other students. So, as the first step, all four of us did some research in order to find an interesting topic. After a few days we had a meeting and we discussed about different ideas and possible subjects for our project and we finally chose one. Then each of us was assigned to perform some specific tasks and we all concentrated on our duties and worked really hard on them for the following weeks. According to my previous experiences using audiovisual materials, I became responsible for preparing the presentation in Powerpoint software and also presenting it. We had six weeks to finish our project. So every week we had a meeting to review the collected data. At the end of the fourth week my team-mates explained me everything that was supposed to be presented. At last, our project was among the best ones in our class. My team-mates used to be just my classmates before working on that project but after that teamwork experience we all became good friends.

[Abdul]

In the speaking section, the examiner asked me :

- what was your first use of the internet ?

I really don't remember, but i decided to talk about one of my early uses which was : tutorials for Adobe Photoshop ( graphical design ), it was not my first use but i have something to talk about with the examiner.

[Arzu]

HELLO DEAR SİMON THANK YOU FOR YOUR ADVİCE İ NEED ONE MORE
hOW MUCH TIME WE (OR EACH STUDENT) SHOULD SPEND FOR PREPAATION IELTS EXAM EACH DAY

THANKS IN ADVANCE

[Christy]

Hello Simon,

First, I would like to say thank you for uploading tremendous useful tips for ielts test takers. I find you website is very valuable with all the practical tips.

So thank you so much for your effort without asking anything in return, I am really appreciate what you try to do, and I also believe that many others do the same.

[Simon]

FROM SIMON:

I'm afraid I no longer have time to answer everyone's questions individually. However, I do still read them all, and I try to answer some questions in a lesson once a week.

PS. Thanks Christy! It's nice of you to say that.

[Prince Panda]

Hi Simon, Can you please provide me your email address? I think it is sometimes better to use email instead of comment here~
Thank you in advance!

[Ielts_Soha]

Hi Parisa

Your speach looks natural .Very good one

Regards,
Soha