I have mild hearing loss. Would I have trouble in IELTS Speaking

Hi All,

Just wanted to know if anyone else was in similar situation (Feels bit lonely being a deaf but not proper deaf).

I’m bit nervous for my IELTS speaking part as I have mild hearing loss. I don’t wear hearing aids so I don’t have medical certificate to prove it & get special arrangements.

I can hear very well with headphones, so listening part is not an issue. But when someone speaks in low pitch or whisper I cant hear. I’m nervous since wearing mask is compulsory so I can’t do lip reading & guess for words which I usually do in my normal life.
Another question is if I ask my examiner to speak louder will that have negative impact on me? I know if I ask them to keep repeating questions they might think I don’t understand english at all.

Please help!

Anyone else with this situation?

I will recommend that you email the test center about your situation. Do mention that your situation is a mild one and thus there’s no official certification. The speaking section is a one on one exercise and hopefully, they will always be accommodative. Good luck!
PS: Some centers conduct listening section via overhead speakers. You may want to check that as well with the individual centers.

Thank you abshk

I am a 100% sure you can ask them to repeat the question if you aren’t sure what they’ve said. Let them know as soon as you enter that you have mild hearing loss and would appreciate if they could speak louder. If it helps, here is my experience:

The speaking part didn’t go exactly as planned. I was nervous and focused on making sure that the content I was speaking about was 100% accurate. I ended up getting a 9 but was super stressed throughout the 10-11 minutes. What I strongly suggest you speak like you are talking to a friend. Keep it casual and keep talking. Don’t worry about the time. If you make a mistake, compose yourself and follow the sentence with “please let me rephrase that”. You can make up stories as you go but I didn’t feel the need to do so. Some of the questions that were asked:

Section 1 - Where are you from? Who is your favorite popstar? Would you like to be a popstar? Which popstar did you see during your first concert? Can you speak about a historical character that you look up to? What is the role of the media in disseminating historical information? (I’m terrible at answering on the spot so really what’s key here is to make up stuff and keep talking as if you would to a friend even if all of the content is made up).

Section 2- Can you speak at length about a vegetable, seed, flower or plant (I made notes about the plant I chose). One tip - Talk in details about the plant. Talk to this person as if she has never heard about it.

Section 3- Can you explain the importance of agriculture to the economy of a country? How do you see farming as a profession? What are some of the negatives of farming? Why is our environment important? What are some things we can do as individuals to protect our environment? (I was exhausted by this point but tried to keep calm and rambled on. No need to use any fancy words. Just focus on your delivery and keep talking).

Best of luck :slight_smile:

Thank you so much MissMapleFry. I’m so relieved after reading your response.

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Hi,
So my IELTS test went fine. My hearing disability didnt affect it much. I informed the examiner about it as soon as I entered the room and it was smooth from there on.
I followed the advice of talking as if talking to a friend but guess what it didnt work that well. I imagined of scoring atleast 8.5 but ended up scoring 7 for being chatty.
My Reading-9, listening-8.5, speaking-7 and writing-7. It just CLB -9 and I was hoping to score CLB-10. So I will repeat my test to pull 0.5 marks more in speaking and writing this time :slightly_frowning_face:

I’m so sorry to hear this. Have you looked up youtube videos on the speaking section? There are tons of them but I recommend ieltsliz and the videos on this channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRFEKvsw-vs&ab_channel=LearnEnglishwithEmma[engVid]