Welcome
to 'Step 1 Online' which supports the exercises in your 'Roadmap
to IELTS Speaking Success' 
ebook. If you've downloaded the ebook successfully and started the programme,
you have hopefully covered your walls at home with stickers to remind yourself
to speak English!
We want to help you with your preparation and aim to make this website THE place on the web for IELTS Speaking practice. We'll be adding new content over the coming weeks including a grammar test, pronunciation help and much more!
But there's no need to wait for practice opportunities; we already have lots of information and exercises to help you with your Speaking practice and in 'Step 1 Online' we'll show you what's available now.
The Exam
If
you're new to the IELTS Speaking exam and know very little about the format of
the test, head straight for our 'Exam' section. You'll find an overview of the
exam, details of what you have to do in each section and lots of tips about how
to perform at your best in each part. You'll also find a video showing a full
IELTS Speaking test to give you a clear idea of what it's all about. We'll be
using the 'Exam' section in Step 2.
>>
Visit the Exam section
Your Questions Answered (FAQs)
Our
regularly-updated FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions) section is aimed at making
the IELTS Speaking exam as clear as possible. You'll find information about the
exam, tips for effective preparation, help finding tutors and much, much more.
In fact, if you have a question about the exam or about your studies why not send
it in to us now? We'll try to answer it and feature it on the website when we
next update the FAQs section. Useful for Step 2.
>>
Visit the FAQs section
IELTS Vocabulary
Learn
IELTS topic vocabulary the easy way, in the context of IELTS-style Speaking tasks.
We have a list of lessons containing topic vocabulary presented in the style of
IELTS sample answers. When you’ve completed each lesson, you can try using
the vocabulary in an IELTS-style practice test. You'll find lessons on common
topics such as education, work, sport and food, each one with lots of common 'chunks'
or set expressions - extremely useful for the exam! We'll be looking at this section
in Step 5 and Step 7.
>>
Visit the Vocabulary section
5-Minute Functions
The
'Roadmap to IELTS Speaking Success' ebook makes frequent reference to the importance
of learning set expressions or 'chunks'. Functions are one category of set expressions
that can help you improve your level of fluency and give you a basis from which
to identify areas for grammar revision. Our '5-minute Functions' section contains
video lessons teaching some of the common functional expressions you'll need in
the Speaking exam. We'll be using these videos in Step 6 and Step 7.
>>
Visit the 5-Minute Functions section
Practice Tests
We
have a growing number of recordings featuring students who have tried our free,
online practice tests. These recordings are very useful learning opportunities
if you’re preparing for the IELTS Speaking exam. Use them to practise answering
IELTS-style questions and get feedback from your friends. Listen to the recordings
of other students and decide which of the speakers are better in each of the IELTS
assessment criteria: Fluency and Coherence, Lexical Resource , Grammatical Range
and Accuracy, Pronunciation. We'll be using this section in Step 6.
>>
Visit the Practice Tests section
IELTS Language Lab
The
'IELTS Language Lab' contains downloadable lessons with feedback on student recordings.
A teacher assesses the student's performace based on the IELTS assessment criteria.
These lessons are excellent opportunities to develop your own use of English;
you'll get the chance to listen to advanced students attempting the test and you'll
hear the kind of mistakes often made at advanced level. We use this section in
Step 3 and Step 6.
>>
Visit the IELTS Language Lab section
IELTS Speaking Task Sheets
Each
week we publish a printable task sheet that includes the latest unit from the
website. Teachers are invited to use the task sheet in class with their students
(feel free to photocopy). Students can use it for Speaking practice in face-to-face
meetups or online with speaking partners through social networks like our Facebook
Page. The Speaking Task Sheets will be very useful in Step 9.
>>
Visit the IELTS Speaking Task Sheets section
Splendid Expressions
Would
you like to be able to understand the everyday expressions used by native speakers
of English? Do you need to speak and express yourself more confidently, in the
knowledge that you've taken your language to the next level? Every day (Monday-Friday)
we publish a 'Splendid Expressions' quiz, our three-stage approach to learning
idiomatic expressions. You'll find this section useful when looking at vocabulary
in Step 5.
>>
Visit the Splendid Expressions page
Look out for the Step 2 email
In 4 days time we'll send you the second of our emails when we look at the answers to the Speaking Quiz from Step 2.