IELTS Speaking | Can I use contractions?

Short answer: Yes, you can.

Long answer: The post below shows the most commonly used contractions in spoken English. Use these in your speech to sound more like a native speaker, but don’t use them in essays and other types of formal written English. I recommend using all of these in IELTS Speaking.

Contracting To Be – Present Tense

The following table shows the standard form of to be (what you should be using in IELTS Writing Task 2) on the left, with the contracted forms on the right. Although both are used in spoken English, the contracted forms are more common.

Simply replace the standard form with the contracted form in your spoken sentences:

In addition to this, one pronunciation feature I rarely hear from non-native speakers is the use of ‘s instead of is after a non-pronoun. This is a common pronunciation feature in native English, and I strongly recommend using it.

Contracting To Be – Negatives & Past Tense

If you want to contract negative forms of the verb to be, for all of them apart from am, you have two options:

So there are actually three different ways you can use the present tense of to be negatively for all but the first person singular. These sentences all mean the same thing:

He is not my boyfriend.
He’s not my boyfriend.
He isn’t my boyfriend.

Although the past tense of to be isn’t typically contracted (some native speakers do shorten it phonetically, but it’s not seen as ‘good’ English, and I wouldn’t recommend it in an exam), it can be contracted when used negatively.

It would be remiss of me not to add some examples for the negatives, so:

Contracting To Have – Present Tense & Past Participle

Another verb that is often contracted is to have, but this is a weird one. When contracting to have in British English, we usually add got afterwards, which kind of negates the time savings we make from the contraction!

So these ‘contracted’ forms are used as a simple replacement for to have. For example:

Note that in American English, it is often possible to leave out the word got when contracting to have. This has a whole other set of complicated rules, though, so I’m going to recommend that you stick with British English as above.

I have written got in brackets. I’ve written got in brackets. This is to denote that to have isn’t always followed by got. Note that when we use to have within the past participle, we can still shorten it as above but without the word got. For example:

Contracting To Have – Present Tense Negatives

This one is fairly simple. All you need to do is add n’t to the verb and add got afterwards. In American English, gotten can also be used. There are two contracted forms that you can use.

Note that when negative, the standard form in both American and British English needs got, just like the contracted form.

Again, these contractions (minus got) can also be used when to have is present within past participles.

Contracting To Have – Past Tense & Negative

When contracting the past tense of to have, we add ‘d to the end of the subject and got. Note that when using the past participle, we

Here are some examples of the past tense of to have being contracted:

And here are some examples of the past participle of to have being contracted:

Contracting To Do – Present Tense Negatives

To do is a strange one, in that we only contract the negative forms. For the present tense, do not becomes don’t and does not becomes doesn’t.

Examples:

Contracting To Do – Past Tense Negatives

These are nice and simple. Didn’t is used for all subjects.

Examples:

Contracting Would

Would is a rare example of a modal verb that can be contracted in the present tense when not being used negatively:

Examples:

Contracting Negative Modal Verbs

The following modal verbs can all be contracted when used negatively. The contracted form is the same, no matter what the subject is. For all of them apart from cannot and shall not, n’t is simply added to the end of the modal verb.

As discussed above, the contracted form remains the same, irrespective of the subject. For this reason, we will only look at one example for each of these modal verbs.

Contracting The Future Tense

Native speakers also contract will when using the future tense. The same ‘ll contraction is used for all verbs.

Examples:

Note that – as with other contractions – ‘ll can be used with non-pronouns.

The future tense can also be contracted when using negatives. In this instance, will not is simply shortened to won’t regardless of the subject.

Examples:

Contracting Going To & Want To – Gonna & Wanna

Two more common contractions used by native English speakers are:

Be warned that some old-fashioned people don’t like these contractions and see them as ‘bad English’. Personally, I would avoid using these in a formal meeting such as a job interview, but I use these contractions daily when speaking with people I know. Ultimately, though, they are part of spoken English, so they are fine to use in IELTS Speaking as demonstrated in the following examples:

As with all informal language, NEVER EVER use this in a written exam!