Ielts speaking--how to improve your bandscore

How can you improve your English pronunciation?
Pronunciation practice is not done a week or a month before the IELTS exam. It
should be months before. When you speak in English, it is not easy to break the
old habit of not producing the right sound and to learn the right one.
Listen to spoken English as much as possible and imitate how the words are
uttered. Follow the way a native speaker utters a word.
Learn the phonetic transcription of words through a dictionary. When you learn
new vocabulary, do not just know the meaning but also the pronunciation. This

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can be done by having a list of IELTS items of vocabulary for speaking with
their transcriptions. Make sure that you know how to read each phonetic symbol
(see http://www.stuff.co.uk/calcul_nd.htm).
Learn how to stress words correctly. Every word has its own stress. For example,
the word conduct, which is a noun, has its stress on the first syllable con, while
the verb form has its stress on the second. Stress is very important. A wrong
word stress is more often the cause of misunderstanding than the wrong
pronunciation of words. In your dictionary, you will see an apostrophe (’) before
the syllable to be stressed. Take for instance: be’lieve. The apostrophe is before
the syllable lieve; therefore, this should be stressed. A stressed syllable should be
read emphatically.

Know which sound gives you difficulty in speaking English. Practise the sound
that you have difficulty enunciating. You can use minimal pairs to distinguish
the difference between sounds. You may have difficulty distinguishing /p/ and
/f/, /b/ and /v/, /r/ and/l/, among others. For Mandarin speakers, work on the
voiced /th/, Koreans with /r/ and /l/ and /p/ and /f/, and the same case goes for
the Japanese. Arabic speakers have difficulties in /p/ and /b/ sounds (see
http://www.shiporsheep.com/).
Know intonation and sentence stress. It is common knowledge that our voice
goes up at the end in a question and down in a statement. With sentence stress,
you have to remember that not all the words are stressed. Stressed words are
those content words—verbs and nouns. Unstressed words such as pronouns,
connectors, and prepositions don’t carry weight, and they are short in length.
This means that uttering them need not be long or lengthy.
Be familiar with spelling patterns. Words with ough must have an /f/ sound, as in
the words tough, enough, and rough; oh for the words dough and even though;
and ot for bought and thought.