REPAIR Strategies
The IELTS examiner will ask you a variety of questions designed to encourage you to demonstrate your speaking skills on a range of subjects. To show your full potential, you should be as forthcoming as possible; remember, you can't be graded on language you don't use! However, in any conversation, it's possible that one person doesn't hear properly, or needs a question or sentence clarifying. This happens in native speaker conversations too and if you know how to 'rescue' the situation, you will demonstrate your speaking abilities all the more.
Repair strategies include asking for repetition of a sentence, question or phrase that you haven't heard or understood, asking for or giving clarification, asking for or giving more information, paraphrasing (saying something in a different way) or simply indicating you need a little time to think. There are a variety of standard phrases which perform these functions.
Practice Task
Classify each phrase according to its purpose.
(1) Let me just think about that for a second.
- A. Asking for clarification
- B. Asking for repetition
- C. Clarifying or rephrasing something
- D. Giving yourself time to think (buying time)
- E. Not giving an opinion (hedging)
- F. Summing up
(2) Do you mean ...?
- A. Asking for clarification
- B. Asking for repetition
- C. Clarifying or rephrasing something
- D. Giving yourself time to think (buying time)
- E. Not giving an opinion (hedging)
- F. Summing up
(3) Could you explain what you mean by ...?
- A. Asking for clarification
- B. Asking for repetition
- C. Clarifying or rephrasing something
- D. Giving yourself time to think (buying time)
- E. Not giving an opinion (hedging)
- F. Summing up
(4) I can see both sides / both points of view.
- A. Asking for clarification
- B. Asking for repetition
- C. Clarifying or rephrasing something
- D. Giving yourself time to think (buying time)
- E. Not giving an opinion (hedging)
- F. Summing up
(5) In other words ...
- A. Asking for clarification
- B. Asking for repetition
- C. Clarifying or rephrasing something
- D. Giving yourself time to think (buying time)
- E. Not giving an opinion (hedging)
- F. Summing up
(6) Well, as a matter of fact, ...
- A. Asking for clarification
- B. Asking for repetition
- C. Clarifying or rephrasing something
- D. Giving yourself time to think (buying time)
- E. Not giving an opinion (hedging)
- F. Summing up
(7) Sorry, what was that?
- A. Asking for clarification
- B. Asking for repetition
- C. Clarifying or rephrasing something
- D. Giving yourself time to think (buying time)
- E. Not giving an opinion (hedging)
- F. Summing up
(8) What I'm trying to say is ...
- A. Asking for clarification
- B. Asking for repetition
- C. Clarifying or rephrasing something
- D. Giving yourself time to think (buying time)
- E. Not giving an opinion (hedging)
- F. Summing up
(9) Perhaps I could make that clearer by saying ...
- A. Asking for clarification
- B. Asking for repetition
- C. Clarifying or rephrasing something
- D. Giving yourself time to think (buying time)
- E. Not giving an opinion (hedging)
- F. Summing up
(10) To summarise, ...
- A. Asking for clarification
- B. Asking for repetition
- C. Clarifying or rephrasing something
- D. Giving yourself time to think (buying time)
- E. Not giving an opinion (hedging)
- F. Summing up
(11) I'm afraid I haven't really ever thought about that.
- A. Asking for clarification
- B. Asking for repetition
- C. Clarifying or rephrasing something
- D. Giving yourself time to think (buying time)
- E. Not giving an opinion (hedging)
- F. Summing up
(12) I'm sorry?
- A. Asking for clarification
- B. Asking for repetition
- C. Clarifying or rephrasing something
- D. Giving yourself time to think (buying time)
- E. Not giving an opinion (hedging)
- F. Summing up
(13) I'm not sure what you mean by that.
- A. Asking for clarification
- B. Asking for repetition
- C. Clarifying or rephrasing something
- D. Giving yourself time to think (buying time)
- E. Not giving an opinion (hedging)
- F. Summing up
(14) Would you mind repeating that?
- A. Asking for clarification
- B. Asking for repetition
- C. Clarifying or rephrasing something
- D. Giving yourself time to think (buying time)
- E. Not giving an opinion (hedging)
- F. Summing up
(15) To sum up, ...
- A. Asking for clarification
- B. Asking for repetition
- C. Clarifying or rephrasing something
- D. Giving yourself time to think (buying time)
- E. Not giving an opinion (hedging)
- F. Summing up
(16) Could you give me a minute to think about that?
- A. Asking for clarification
- B. Asking for repetition
- C. Clarifying or rephrasing something
- D. Giving yourself time to think (buying time)
- E. Not giving an opinion (hedging)
- F. Summing up
(17) Actually, I don't feel strongly either way about that.
- A. Asking for clarification
- B. Asking for repetition
- C. Clarifying or rephrasing something
- D. Giving yourself time to think (buying time)
- E. Not giving an opinion (hedging)
- F. Summing up
(18) Pardon?
- A. Asking for clarification
- B. Asking for repetition
- C. Clarifying or rephrasing something
- D. Giving yourself time to think (buying time)
- E. Not giving an opinion (hedging)
- F. Summing up
(19) When you say XXX, do you mean ...?
- A. Asking for clarification
- B. Asking for repetition
- C. Clarifying or rephrasing something
- D. Giving yourself time to think (buying time)
- E. Not giving an opinion (hedging)
- F. Summing up
(20) So basically, ...
- A. Asking for clarification
- B. Asking for repetition
- C. Clarifying or rephrasing something
- D. Giving yourself time to think (buying time)
- E. Not giving an opinion (hedging)
- F. Summing up
(21) I'm not really sure as I don't know much about that.
- A. Asking for clarification
- B. Asking for repetition
- C. Clarifying or rephrasing something
- D. Giving yourself time to think (buying time)
- E. Not giving an opinion (hedging)
- F. Summing up
(22) Could you repeat the question please?
- A. Asking for clarification
- B. Asking for repetition
- C. Clarifying or rephrasing something
- D. Giving yourself time to think (buying time)
- E. Not giving an opinion (hedging)
- F. Summing up
(23) What I mean is ...
- A. Asking for clarification
- B. Asking for repetition
- C. Clarifying or rephrasing something
- D. Giving yourself time to think (buying time)
- E. Not giving an opinion (hedging)
- F. Summing up
(24) In short, ...
- A. Asking for clarification
- B. Asking for repetition
- C. Clarifying or rephrasing something
- D. Giving yourself time to think (buying time)
- E. Not giving an opinion (hedging)
- F. Summing up
(25) I'm afraid I didn't catch your last remark.
- A. Asking for clarification
- B. Asking for repetition
- C. Clarifying or rephrasing something
- D. Giving yourself time to think (buying time)
- E. Not giving an opinion (hedging)
- F. Summing up
(26) Actually ...
- A. Asking for clarification
- B. Asking for repetition
- C. Clarifying or rephrasing something
- D. Giving yourself time to think (buying time)
- E. Not giving an opinion (hedging)
- F. Summing up
(27) Briefly, ...
- A. Asking for clarification
- B. Asking for repetition
- C. Clarifying or rephrasing something
- D. Giving yourself time to think (buying time)
- E. Not giving an opinion (hedging)
- F. Summing up