Skip to content

October 2017

IELTS test in Manchester, UK – October 2017 (Academic Module)

Our friend D took the IELTS test in the UK recently and remembered the following Writing and Speaking questions:

Writing testIELTS test in the UK

Writing task 1 (a report)

We were given two pie charts showing the reasons to migrate from and to a European country in 2009. All charts had the figures as percentages.

Writing task 2 (an essay)

Some believe that young people should have a university education, because this will bring benefits to the society in the future. Others, however, think it will lead to graduate unemployment. Discuss both views and give your opinion.

Speaking test

Interview

– What is your full name?
– Can I see your ID?
– Where are you from?
– Do you work or study?
– What subject are you studying?
– Why did you choose this subject?
– Do you like reading books?
– What type of books do you read?

Cue Card

Talk about a place that is unknown to most tourists in your country. Please say

– What is this place?
– Why is it unknown?
– What can people see there?

Discussion

– Have you been to that place?
– Who did you go there with?
– Why did you go there?
– Did you like it?
– What is so special about this place?

IELTS prep tips from Band 8 candidate, competition winner

This post is dedicated to the success of Surendran, our IELTS results competition winner who scored Band 8. Surendran lives in India, he took the General Training IELTS test after preparing on his own. His Overall Band Score was 8.0 with the highest individual scores being Band 8.5 in Listening and Band 9 in Reading!

Band 9 in IELTS
Here are some tips he shared that can help you do better in the exam:

“Listening:
Only practice helps here, take a lot of listening tests with clock timer set up. Mark the words that are important and when audio plays note down the answers directly.

Reading:
Read the questions carefully and highlight words that are important, then read quickly through the paragraph. With practice you can skim and quickly complete paragraphs. Take close to 20 tests. I used IELTS Cambridge books 8,9,10 and 11 and they really helped me.

Writing:
I read through internet topics on a lot of questions that were asked in the last year. Got questions from IELTS-Blog.com daily emails, and IELTS Books. It would be good if you had a tutor to correct your work, which I didn’t have – so could only manage to get 7 in Writing.

Speaking:
Use timer and practice speaking aloud in your room, for the cue card task 3-minute timers are useful. For the first minute note down points to talk about, and after that timer beeps start talking answering all question until the 2nd (2-minute) timer.

This helped me mentally prepare to extend my ability to speak at length, as I wasn’t able to go over 1.5 minutes initially. A lot of topics are available on IELTS-blog.com, the last 6 months should give a good idea on how the test questions will come up.”