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IELTS Speaking · Pronunciation

Pronunciation in IELTS Speaking

Pronunciation is one of the four equally weighted IELTS Speaking criteria, so it is worth a quarter of your Speaking band on its own. It is not marked as an accent: examiners mark how much effort a listener has to make. Four things drive that — individual sounds, word stress, sentence rhythm, and intonation — and all four are things you can hear in your own recording.
  • Measured here from your audio
  • One quarter of your band
  • Free scored take

Hear it in your own voice.

Ready·IELTS PART 1

How do you practise speaking English?

00:0045s

Press record, answer out loud, then press again.

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The detail

What actually moves pronunciation

Sounds you replace with the nearest one you have

Every learner substitutes: /θ/ becomes t or s, /v/ becomes w or b, /ɪ/ and /iː/ merge into one vowel. A substitution only costs marks when it changes which word you said, so find the ones that create real confusions and fix those first.

Word stress

English hangs meaning on the strong syllable. Stress the wrong one and the listener searches for a different word — which is why a single misplaced stress costs more than several slightly-off vowels.

The weak vowel

Unstressed syllables in English collapse to a short neutral vowel. Pronouncing every syllable at full value is the single biggest reason a technically-accurate speaker still sounds flat and hard to follow.

Word endings

Final consonants carry tense, number and possession. When speed drops them, the grammar goes with them — and that is heard by the examiner marking a different criterion.

This week

Four drills that work

  1. 1Record forty-five seconds, then read the per-sound breakdown and write down only the sounds marked unclear more than twice.
  2. 2Take one of those sounds and say six words containing it in different positions — start, middle, end.
  3. 3Say the same sentence three times: normal, slow, then fast. The fast run is where the ending disappears; that is the one to fix.
  4. 4Re-record the original question and compare the two breakdowns side by side.
Questions

Straight answers

Do I need a British or American accent for IELTS?

No. Examiners are trained on a wide range of accents and mark intelligibility, not nationality. A clear Indian, Nigerian or Brazilian accent scores as well as any other.

Does sayit mark pronunciation the way an examiner does?

It measures the observable half: every sound against its target in IPA, word stress, pace and pitch range. It does not hear vocabulary or grammar, and the band it shows is an estimate from fluency and pronunciation only.

Which sounds should I fix first?

The ones that change words. If your think sounds like sink, that is worth more attention than a vowel that is merely a little short.

Practise this question

Hear your own pronunciation

Record one answer and read the full analysis: pace, pauses, filler count and every sound against its target. Free, no card, nothing blurred.

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More reading: the pronunciation habits that hold a candidate at 6.5