How to Stop Saying Um in IELTS Speaking: Replace Fillers with Confident Thinking Phrases

The most common piece of advice about filler words in IELTS Speaking is “just stop saying um.” Candidates who follow it tend to replace their fillers with long, awkward silences. Knowing you should stop saying um in IELTS Speaking does not give you anything to say instead, and silence without purpose reads the same way to an examiner as a chain of repeated fillers.

This article covers what the band descriptors actually say about hesitation, specific replacement techniques for Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3, and a four-stage drill sequence that builds the habit before test day.

Under exam pressure, working memory divides between accessing content and monitoring language production at the same time. For candidates speaking in a second language, this cognitive load is higher than in everyday conversation, and the planning time needed at each sentence boundary tends to be filled by vocalised pauses. Filled pauses also serve a social function: they signal to the listener that the speaker intends to continue rather than handing over the turn. In the IELTS exam, this mechanism still operates, but frequent fillers give the impression of a candidate searching for language rather than ideas, which is precisely the distinction the Fluency and Coherence band descriptors capture.

What Fluency Means in IELTS Speaking and Why Hesitation Is Part of the Assessment

Fluency and Coherence is one of four equally weighted criteria in the IELTS Speaking test. The band descriptors, published jointly by Cambridge Assessment English, IDP: IELTS Australia, and the British Council at ielts.org, describe Band 5 performance as showing “frequent repetition and self-correction” with hesitation that impedes communication. At Band 7, the descriptors say the candidate shows “some hesitation” that is “rarely significant” and that speech remains ready throughout.

Fluency is not about speaking without pausing. It is about maintaining the flow of speech so the examiner can follow your meaning without difficulty. Hesitation appears in the assessment criteria because repeated filled pauses interrupt that flow and signal to the examiner that the candidate is searching for language rather than ideas. An occasional pause does not produce the same effect. For a full breakdown of how all four Speaking criteria work together, see this IELTS Speaking band descriptors guide.

When Does a Pause Become a Penalty? What the Band Descriptors Say About Hesitation

The band descriptors do not treat every filler word as a penalty. At Band 6, the Fluency and Coherence descriptor acknowledges hesitation used “to search for language,” recognising that pausing briefly to find a word is normal in spoken English. What limits a Band 5 score is the pattern of “frequent repetition and self-correction”: a chain of fillers sustained long enough to interrupt the flow of communication, not a single slip before a well-formed sentence.

Linguists Herbert Clark and Jean Fox Tree, writing in Cognition (2002), found that filled pauses signal a significant upcoming delay to the listener, while an unfilled pause of similar length reads as natural reflection. A candidate who pauses silently for one or two seconds between sentences is perceived as collecting thoughts; one who fills five seconds with “um… so… um… I mean…” is heard as struggling to continue. The test for whether a pause damages a score is not its length but its content: a brief silence reads very differently from a chain of repeated sounds. The distinction the descriptors draw is one of frequency and pattern, not individual occurrence. This aligns directly with the linguistic evidence above.

The Biggest Mistake Candidates Make When Trying to Stop Saying Um in IELTS Speaking

Brief silence is not the problem. As the previous section explains, a one or two-second pause reads as natural reflection to the examiner. The biggest mistake is misreading that tolerance: candidates who stop using fillers sometimes replace a short vocalised pause with a five or ten-second silence, letting the gap extend well beyond what signals reflection. A silence that runs on for too long is just as disruptive to the flow of communication as a chain of repeated fillers. The band descriptors do not penalise all hesitation; they assess its frequency and its effect on communication.

The second mistake is practising in low-pressure settings without simulating exam conditions. Fillers that disappear during home practice return the moment the stress of the real test reappears. Elimination without substitution does not transfer under pressure. The solution is substitution: replacing empty filler words with phrases that buy thinking time and carry meaning at the same time. The following three sections offer those phrases, matched to each part of the Speaking test.

What to Say Instead in Part 1 When You Need Thinking Time

Part 1 answers are conversational and short, typically two to three sentences. The thinking-time phrases that work best are ones you would use in a genuine conversation, not ones that signal a rehearsed routine:

• “Honestly, I would say…” works for opinion questions; it signals a real view is coming.
• “Well, it depends on the situation…” works for context-specific questions; it acknowledges nuance and then commits.
• “In my experience…” works for personal or factual-recall questions; it signals reflection rather than stalling.
• “Off the top of my head…” works for list-type questions; it acknowledges quick-thinking naturally.

Each of these phrases functions as the beginning of the answer, not a delay before it. Avoid “That is a very interesting question”: examiners hear this phrase dozens of times per session and it reads as a practised stall, not a natural opener.

How to Keep Talking in Part 2 When Content Runs Dry

Part 2 asks you to speak for one to two minutes on a topic card with only one minute of preparation. Running out of content mid-answer is the most common reason filler chains appear in this part. For more on how Part 2 is assessed, see this IELTS Speaking Part 2 guide.

When content runs dry, content-generating phrases work better than thinking-time phrases:

• “Another aspect of this that comes to mind is…” opens a new sub-topic.
• “For example, I remember when…” switches from abstract to specific and buys time naturally.
• “What I find most interesting about this is…” invites evaluation rather than requiring more facts.
• “On the other hand, some people might say…” introduces a contrasting view and extends the response.

These phrases generate new content rather than filling silence with non-content. An examiner who hears a confident pivot to a new sub-topic sees a candidate managing the task effectively.

Part 3 Hedging Phrases That Signal Thought, Not Hesitation

Part 3 presents abstract, opinion-based questions where you are expected to take and defend a position. Hedging phrases serve two functions: they signal you are acknowledging complexity (a positive marker for both Fluency and Coherence and Lexical Resource) and they give the brain a moment to organise the answer before committing to it.

Effective Part 3 openers:

• “I think the most important factor here is…” signals that a clear position follows.
• “It is hard to generalise, but in most cases…” acknowledges complexity and then commits.
• “From my perspective…” is a compact, natural opinion marker.
• “That depends on a number of things, but if I had to choose, I would say…” signals nuance and then commits.

These phrases begin the answer rather than delay it. For more techniques on handling Part 3 abstract questions, see this IELTS Speaking Part 3 guide.

A Four-Stage Drill Sequence That Reduces Filler Words Long-Term

Surface reminders and mental notes do not produce lasting improvement under exam pressure. This four-stage sequence builds the substitution habit at a deeper level, moving from awareness through to automatic production.

Stage 1: Awareness drill. Record a 1-minute answer to an IELTS Part 1 question. Transcribe the full response word for word and count every filler occurrence. Most speakers are surprised: the actual count is higher than recalled. Transcription forces confrontation with the real frequency, not the perceived one.

Stage 2: Substitution drill. Re-answer the same question slowly, replacing each filler with either a natural pause or a thinking-time phrase from the sections above. This is deliberate, slow practice; speed is not the goal at this stage.

Stage 3: Integration drill. Answer new Part 1 questions at a natural pace, rotating one substitution technique at a time across weeks. Ten minutes daily over two weeks per technique lets the substitution become automatic before combining them.

Stage 4: Timed simulation. Complete a full Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 session under real exam timing. Review the recording only for filler count reduction compared with your Stage 1 baseline.

How to Measure Whether Your Hesitation Habit Is Actually Improving

Three measurable indicators tell you whether progress is real before test day.

Filler count trend. If you averaged twelve fillers per minute-long answer in week one and average five in week three, the reduction is real. Count from recordings, not from memory. Memory consistently underestimates frequency.

Pause duration. Shorter unfilled pauses replacing longer filled ones indicate the brain is accessing content more quickly. The shift from “um… um… I think…” to a clean two-second pause before a full sentence is a meaningful change in fluency.

Replacement phrase naturalness. If your substitution phrases sound natural in playback rather than rehearsed, the integration stage is working.

One limit of self-assessment is that filler words you believe you have stopped using often persist in recordings because you no longer notice them. An objective measure tied to the IELTS Speaking rubric gives the feedback that self-listening misses.

Speechful’s IELTS Speaking AI grader scores your spoken responses against the four official IELTS Speaking criteria, including Fluency and Coherence, where filler-word patterns register directly. Practise at speechful.ai/ielts-speaking-ai-grader to find out whether your hesitation has genuinely reduced, not just whether it feels like it has.