IELTS Speaking Part 2: Structure + How to Add Grammar and Vocabulary: Describe an Old Man

You need to structure your speech and this lesson explains why. And this lesson shows that structure put into practice. But practising once isn’t enough, so, let’s try it again.

First, here is a speech from one of my students:

I would like to talk about my tutor when I was a post grad student.

He is an old man, around 55 years old now. He’s been teaching in NTUST for 30 years. It took him only 3 years to get both his Master’s degree and his PHD in the USA. Because of that he became the youngest ever professor in our university. And he always encouraged us to study abroad and broaden our horizons after graduation. So that’s the reason why I’m here participating in IELTS and going to study abroad this year. Anyway, he thought taught me a lot at that time. And not only in our my academic discipline, but also a lot of tips on how to deal with people well. I appreciated him a lot.

The speech isn’t bad, but it needs a lot of work to make it better. Let’s start with structure. We can use the same pattern as before, which includes linking words, sign-posts, and natural speech (conversation phrases)

I know several elderly people well, but the one I’m going to talk about now is my tutor when I was a post-grad student, who’s called Professor Chen.

First, who he is? Well, as I’ve just mentioned, he’s called Professor Chen and …

Second, his occupation? As far as I know, Professor Chen does …

Moving on to the traits in him that I admire. To be perfectly frank about it, …

And finally, as for how he has inspired me. I don’t want to exaggerate, but …

Once you have the structure, you can concentrate on vocabulary and grammar patterns.

As an example of how to do this, let’s take one of the sentences in my student’s speech:

It took him only 3 years to get both his Master’s degree and his PHD in the USA. Because of that he became the youngest ever professor in our university.

Vocabulary:

a genius / a prodigy / diligent /  scholar /  pursue further studies / academic career / go overseas / embark on

Grammar patterns:

not only … but also …

having done … , …

… (a place), where …

doing something … , he …

Now let’s make it better:

Professor Chen was something of a genius; and having graduated in Taiwan, he pursued further studies in America, where he not only obtained a master’s degree, but also a Ph.D — all in three short years! Returning to Taiwan, he embarked on his academic career by becoming the youngest professor at NTUST.

Advice

• When describing people, give them names, so that it’s easier to refer to them again later in the speech.
• Fill the speech with fancy vocabulary (collocations and idioms)
• Use synonyms and paraphrasing for things on the cue-card and things you’ve already mentioned once.
• You must show a wide range of grammar patterns.