Grammar in IELTS Speaking
in IELTS there’s a distinct possibility. This means a very good chance that you will be asked questions about where you live.
Do you live in a house or flat?
The natural answer is I live in a flat.
Is this a good answer? No, because there is no complex grammar just repeated words from a question. There are no discourse markers so there’s nothing there that I’ll say the examiner can give you a high school for. That’s a perfectly good answer to the question. But all the time you need to be thinking about those band scores and how they can get into the higher boxes on the bounce.
So you need to use different tenses present continuous, present perfect continuous, or past continuous will really add to your grammatical range and IELTS examiners love hearing continuous tenses because not many students use them. So let’s take a look at how you can use these tenses.
Do you live in a house or flat?
Currently, I’m living in a three-bedroom apartment.
(better) Currently, I’m living in a three-bedroom apartment. I have been living there for about six years.
This is a tense called the present perfect continuous. And it’s used to describe an action that started in the past and continues in the present.
What have you been doing today?
- I’ve been cooking.
- I’ve been reading.
- I’ve been working on my computer.
- I’ve been studying.
- I’ve been preparing for the IELTS exam.
Write some sentences that you think would be useful for you and the truth about you and just practice saying them and then try to include them when you do your IELTS Test.