Shadowing practice: Stop Saying MAYBE in IELTS Speaking: Build your Vocabulary

This clip is an IELTS speaking lesson from English Speaking Success, built around a grammar point that trips up B1 learners in every exam: the difference between the adverb maybe and the modal verb may be. The teacher opens with three IELTS style questions, answers each one with a flat maybe, then spends the rest of the clip showing how to sound less repetitive and more fluent.

The accent is British, the pace sits at 163 words per minute, and the delivery mixes two registers: a fast, punchy question and answer opening, then a slower, deliberate explanation once the grammar point is introduced. That contrast is exactly what makes it worth practising out loud rather than just reading. A short mock classroom skit is dropped in the middle, so you also get a burst of quick, clipped dialogue between the two exchanges of explanation.

If you are preparing for the exam, this is the kind of line an examiner rewards: it directly targets ielts speaking practice and the vocabulary flexibility that separates a mid score from band 9.

Start with the three opening questions. They are short, evenly stressed, and give you a clean pattern to repeat before the lesson speeds up:

• "Do you think online shopping is dangerous?" Practise the rising question intonation and the stress on dangerous.
• "Should the government regulate online shopping?" Notice how government and regulate both carry weight, so the sentence never flattens into a monotone.
• "Maybe is an adverb of possibility and maybe, two different words, is a modal verb of possibility." This is the core sentence of the whole lesson. Say it slowly first, then at the teacher's own speed, matching where he pauses between adverb and modal verb.
• "The point is may goes before the main verb." A short, plain summary line, good for practising a confident, declarative tone rather than a question tone.
• "No, you cannot go to the toilet." From the classroom skit: clipped, stern, and a useful contrast in rhythm to the explanatory lines around it.

Work the clip in the order it was recorded rather than jumping to the grammar rule first. The structure does the teaching for you.

• Shadow the three opening questions and their maybe answers back to back, so the flat repetition of maybe becomes obvious to your own ear before the teacher explains why it is a problem.
• Repeat the line "Let's find out so that you can become a more confident English speaker" and hold the stress on confident, since that word carries the sentence's purpose.
• Slow down for "Maybe is an adverb of possibility and maybe, two different words, is a modal verb of possibility" and say it in two halves, one per maybe, before joining them back into one breath.
• Practise "Now, may be is a modal verb" and "The point is may goes before the main verb" as a pair. Saying them together in this english shadowing practice drills the word order that IELTS examiners listen for.
• Run the short classroom skit lines separately, since the register shift is itself good speaking practice: a stern teacher voice is a different pitch and pace from the calm explanation either side of it.
• Once the individual lines feel steady, repeat the section start to finish at the recording's own 163 words per minute to build up general english speaking practice at exam pace, not just at a slowed down one.