The Busy Professional's IELTS Speaking Playbook

Carpino Gia is a language acquisition specialist and IELTS preparation consultant who has helped over three thousand professionals achieve Band 7 or higher on the IELTS Speaking test. With a Master's degree in Applied Linguistics from the University of Cambridge and a postgraduate certificate in Language Assessment from the University of Melbourne, Carpino brings both academic rigour and practical teaching experience to every resource she creates.

Carpino began her career as an English language instructor at the British Council in Rome, where she taught general English and exam preparation classes to adult learners from professional backgrounds. She observed that working professionals consistently outperformed full-time students in reading and listening sections but struggled disproportionately with speaking, not due to a lack of English ability, but due to a lack of structured, time-efficient speaking practice. This observation led her to develop the micro-drill methodology that forms the foundation of her teaching.

Over the past twelve years, Carpino has designed and delivered Speaking preparation programmes for corporate clients including Deloitte, McKinsey & Company, the European Central Bank, and the United Nations Development Programme. Her workshops have been conducted in twelve countries across Europe, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia. She is a frequent speaker at international language testing conferences, where she advocates for evidence-based, learner-centred approaches to speaking assessment preparation.

Carpino is the author of five IELTS preparation titles, including *The Part 2 Blueprint: Structuring Your Long Turn for Band 7+* and *Lexical Resource Unlocked: Building the Vocabulary Examiners Reward*. She also publishes the weekly newsletter *Fifteen Minutes to Fluency*, which provides free micro-drills and speaking strategies to over twenty-five thousand subscribers worldwide.

When she is not developing curriculum or coaching professionals, Carpino continues her research on spoken language assessment at the University of Edinburgh's Centre for Applied Linguistics, where she is a visiting fellow studying the role of fluency development in high-stakes speaking tests. She lives in Edinburgh, Scotland, with her family and an ever-growing collection of specialty loose-leaf teas.