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"Filler Words in IELTS Speaking: What Is Natural, What Costs Marks"

IELTS Speaking29 August 2026 · 7 min read · WiderAI Team

Filler words do not automatically lower your IELTS Speaking score. Examiners are trained to distinguish between two very different things: the natural sounds every fluent speaker makes while organising a thought, and hesitation caused by searching for language. The first is harmless. The second is one of the clearest signals that pulls a Fluency and Coherence score down.

Here is the distinction in practice. If you say "Well, um, I'd probably say my hometown has changed a lot" and then keep going smoothly, that "um" costs you nothing — native speakers produce fillers like this constantly. But if you say "My hometown is... um... er... how to say... famous for...", the examiner hears you hunting for words, and that pattern, repeated across the test, caps your fluency band. The filler itself is not the problem; what it reveals is.

So the goal is not to eliminate fillers. It is to make sure your pauses and fillers happen for the right reason — thinking about ideas, not grammar or vocabulary — and to build a small set of natural English fillers that replace silence, translation pauses, and fillers borrowed from your first language.

Why do examiners care about fillers at all?

Fluency and Coherence is one of the four equally weighted criteria in IELTS Speaking, and hesitation sits at its centre. In plain terms, the examiner is listening for whether you can keep talking at a comfortable pace without noticeable effort, and whether your pauses happen at natural points — between ideas — or in the middle of sentences where you are clearly stuck on a word.

A candidate who speaks slowly but steadily, pausing briefly between complete thoughts, sounds more fluent than a candidate who speaks in fast bursts broken by "um... er... um" mid-sentence. Speed is not fluency. Continuity is.

There is a second, less obvious cost. Fillers that carry over from your first language — for Uzbek and Russian speakers this is often a drawn-out "eeee" or "mmm", or clicking sounds — mark your speech as hesitant even when you are not. They are also harder for the examiner to interpret as natural English behaviour, so they read purely as breakdown.

Record one minute of yourself answering a Part 1 question, then count your fillers. Most candidates are shocked: awareness alone typically cuts filler use in half within a week.

Which fillers sound natural in English?

Some fillers are genuinely part of fluent English and, used in moderation, make you sound more natural rather than less. The useful ones fall into three groups.

Softeners that start an answer. These buy you half a second while signalling engagement, not confusion:

Thinking phrases for a genuinely hard question. Part 3 questions are meant to be challenging, and examiners expect real-time thinking. Saying so in English is far better than silence:

Mid-sentence smoothers. Small words like "you know", "I mean", and "sort of" appear in every natural conversation. One or two per answer is invisible; one per sentence becomes a verbal tic the examiner will notice.

The pattern across all three groups: a natural filler is a word or phrase, delivered at normal volume, at a sensible point in the sentence. An unnatural filler is a sound — "um", "er", "uh" — stretched out, repeated, or dropped into the middle of a clause.

When do filler words actually cost marks?

Fillers start damaging your score when they show one of these patterns:

  1. Frequency. An "um" every few sentences is human. Several per sentence tells the examiner that producing English takes visible effort, which is precisely what the middle bands of Fluency and Coherence describe.
  2. Position. Pausing between sentences is planning; pausing before a noun or verb is word-searching. "I really enjoy... um... er... hiking" flags a vocabulary gap more loudly than simply saying a simpler word would.
  3. Repair chains. "It's very... how can I say... it's like... you know what I mean..." — strings of fillers that never arrive at the word. One honest paraphrase ("I don't know the exact word, but it means...") scores better than three fillers circling the gap.
  4. Same filler every time. If your only thinking phrase is "you know", the examiner hears it as a crutch by minute three. Variety is part of what makes fillers invisible.

Note what is not on this list: pausing itself. A silent beat of one second at a natural break is completely fine, and better than filling every gap with sound.

When you feel a word-search coming, do not slow down and hunt. Commit to a simpler word immediately and keep the sentence moving — flow beats precision in the fluency criterion.

How can you reduce fillers before test day?

You cannot think your way out of a filler habit during the exam; the fix happens in practice. Three methods work reliably.

Replace, do not suppress

Trying to say nothing instead of "um" creates tense, unnatural silence. Instead, pick three English phrases from the lists above and drill them until they are automatic. When your brain reaches for "eeee", the trained phrase comes out instead. This is substitution, and it is far easier than suppression.

Practise with a delayed-repeat drill

Answer a Part 2 topic for one minute. Then immediately answer the same topic again. The second attempt is always smoother because the ideas are already assembled — which proves to you that your fillers come from idea-planning, not English ability. Over weeks, this drill teaches you to plan ideas faster, which is where most hesitation actually starts.

Get feedback on your real patterns

Most candidates cannot hear their own fillers. A recording helps; targeted feedback helps more. A full IELTS speaking mock test that scores Fluency and Coherence separately will show you whether hesitation is genuinely your weak criterion or whether you are worrying about the wrong thing. Many candidates who fixate on fillers are actually losing more marks on grammatical range.

In the week before your test, stop trying to remove fillers entirely. Aim only to keep them out of the middle of sentences — that single change moves how your fluency is perceived more than anything else.

What should you do in the exam itself?

Keep it simple. Open answers with a softener, not a sound. If a Part 3 question stops you cold, say a thinking phrase out loud and then commit to any reasonable position — the examiner scores your language, not the quality of your opinion. If you lose a word mid-sentence, paraphrase in one move and continue. And if you catch yourself saying "um", do not apologise or restart the sentence; just carry on. One filler noticed and recovered from is a non-event. A candidate visibly panicking about a filler is not.

Fillers are a symptom, never the disease. Fix idea-planning speed and vocabulary flexibility, and the fillers largely fix themselves.

Practice IELTS Speaking with an AI examiner — full mock test, instant band score and feedback on all four criteria.

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Frequently asked questions

Do filler words like "um" and "uh" lower your IELTS Speaking score?

Not by themselves. Examiners penalise the hesitation pattern behind them, not the sounds. Occasional fillers at natural points cost nothing; frequent mid-sentence fillers that show you searching for words pull down Fluency and Coherence.

Which filler words are acceptable in IELTS Speaking?

Natural English phrases such as "well", "actually", "to be honest", "let me think", and occasional uses of "you know" or "I mean" all sound fluent in moderation. They work because they are words delivered at natural points, not stretched-out sounds in the middle of a clause.

Is it better to pause silently or use a filler word?

A short silent pause at a natural break between ideas is perfectly fine and often sounds more controlled than filling every gap. For a longer thinking moment, especially in Part 3, a spoken phrase like "that's a tricky one — let me think" is better than extended silence, because it keeps the interaction alive.

How do I stop using fillers from my own language in the exam?

Substitution beats suppression. Drill two or three English thinking phrases until they are automatic, so they come out instead of "eeee" or "mmm" under pressure. Recording your practice answers and counting first-language fillers makes you aware of the habit, which is most of the battle.

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