IELTS pronunciation practice

Practise one line now

Copy the first line

The exercise opens on one line from William McRaven’s talk at 0:28: “If you can't do the little things right, you'll never be able to do the big things right.” Listen to the whole line, notice where the speaker pauses, then say it after them in the same two chunks. Record your take and open Compare to play it beside the original. No account is needed, and recordings stay on your device.

What the Pronunciation descriptors ask for

From the Pronunciation column of the IELTS Speaking band descriptors, read on 9 October 2026. Band 7 has all the positive features of band 6 and some of band 8.

Sada is not connected with IELTS, the British Council, IDP or Cambridge. Its lines are not test items, and the words it recognised are not an IELTS score and do not predict a band. Only an examiner gives one.

What Sada can and cannot tell you

After each take, Compare marks the words it recognised and the ones it missed, so you can see at once which word you dropped or swallowed, even when you did not hear yourself do it. In After the speaker mode it also gives your pace against the speaker’s, for example “20% slower than the speaker”, so you can tell whether you stopped in the middle. For each feature in the table:

• Chunking and rhythm: partly. You hear your pauses beside the speaker’s, and Compare gives your pace against theirs.
• Sounds and intelligibility: roughly. A word Sada could not recognise is a sign that a listener might have to work harder on it.
• Stress, intonation and connected speech: no. You compare them by ear.

It does not grade individual sounds, word stress or intonation. For those, Compare gives you the speaker and your take one after the other or side by side, and the judging is yours: which words were strong, where the voice fell, which words ran together. A missed word can come from noise or a distant microphone, so play your take before judging it.

Six lines, one for each feature

Each line is a real sentence from a talk, chosen to show one feature from the table. Every one opens in After the speaker mode: hear it whole, then say it.

“If you can't do the little things right, you'll never be able to do the big things right.”

William McRaven · 0:28 · Practise this line →

Chunking: two halves, with one pause at the comma. Each half is said as one unit, not word by word.

“The pace of life is often frantic, our minds are always busy, and we're always doing something.”

Andy Puddicombe · 0:18 · Practise this line →

Rhythm: three short clauses with the same beat. The stressed words (“pace”, “frantic”, “minds”, “busy”, “always doing”) come at even intervals, and the small words squeeze between them.

“Older adults work hard to lose what middle-aged adults worked hard to gain.”

Dan Gilbert · 0:35 · Practise this line →

Stress for contrast: “older” against “middle-aged”, “lose” against “gain”. The meaning is carried by which words are strong.

“So, what is empathy and why is it VERY different than sympathy?”

Brené Brown · 0:09 · Practise this line →

Emphasis: the speaker leans on “very”, and “empathy” and “sympathy” are stressed on their first syllable.

“What keeps us healthy and happy as we go through life?”

Robert Waldinger · 0:12 · Practise this line →

Intonation: a “what” question usually falls at the end. Copy where the voice goes on “life”.

“Wait a minute. Let me get it in the right order here.”

Denzel Washington · 0:33 · Practise this line →

Connected speech: listen for how “wait a”, “let me” and “get it in” join into fewer, shorter sounds.

How to practise each line

1. Listen for one feature. Read the note under the line first, then hear the line and listen only for that.
2. Say it after the speaker. Copy the chunks and the strong words before you worry about single sounds.
3. Compare. Play your take beside the original: are your pauses in the same places, and your strong words the same?
4. Say it again in your own answer. Use the same pattern in a sentence about yourself, as you would in Part 1, and record that too.

Ten minutes a day is enough: one line in the morning, the same one in the evening, and once a week your first and newest takes in Compare’s “First try vs now”.

Keep going

For the whole Speaking test, with mock tests to shadow and a daily routine: shadowing for IELTS Speaking. For linking, weak forms and the quick T: connected speech practice. Taking TOEIC instead? It scores intonation and stress too: TOEIC Read a Text Aloud practice.