Tips to Improve IELTS Listening Through Connected Speech

Apr 4, 2022

Connected speech in IELTS listening is the spoken language that is in a successive or continuous sequence like in any normal conversation. There is a contrast in the way words are spoken in isolation and the way they are pronounced in the sense of related speech. In the case of IELTS listening, the connected speech, words, or syllables are linked together. But in the case of IELTS writing, the sentences are combined together, and words are stressed differently.

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Improving Connected Speech for IELTS Listening

Many IELTS aspirants are accustomed to empathetic teachers, who talk in a very evident and clear manner. They stress the importance of the individual word sound rather than putting it into a sentence and pronouncing it. Using the same word in a continuous sentence would be difficult for candidates. Some sounds might disappear while some maybe are added while pronouncing. Here are some tips that can be followed while appearing for the IELTS listening test.

Weakening of Vowels

Candidates have the tendency to pronounce many vowels that were earlier stressed in isolated words, and later become weakened and are replaced by the ‘schwa’.

For example: What are you doing?

Here it is seen from the example that the ‘you’ changes from /ju:/ to /jə/.

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Elision

Sometimes it is seen that few sounds vanish altogether when expressed in a sentence.

For example: Educators might teach their students that ‘probably’ sounds like /prɒlɪ/ when it occurs in any realistic sentence.

It is also a common error for the /t/ sound to disappear from the end of words.

For example, /neks/ instead of /nekst/ in the phrase ‘I’ll catch up with you next week’.

Assimilation

In many cases, it is seen that a lot of pronunciation is about efficiency and speakers. Candidates often modify their pronunciation in order to save effort.

For example: ‘Ten bikes’ sounds like ‘tem bikes’.

Candidates sometimes say both. Which is easier to say?

Catenation

Candidates are often seen to link the word whose last sound is a consonant and the next sound is a vowel. Using the same in the sentence would be naturally correct.

For example: Is it a boy or a girl?

Here it is seen that ‘Is’, ‘it’, and ‘a’ all these will link; as will ‘or’ and ‘a’.

Intrusion

Candidates sometimes get confused when any word sounds like a vowel in the last and the next sound is also a vowel. Here they need to add an extra sound which may be either / j /, / w / or / r /.

For example: Law(r)and order.

With regular IELTS listening practice, candidates will be able to identify a lot of words, and their listening skills will automatically improve.

*The article might have information for the previous academic years, please refer the official website of the exam.