IELTS-Blog

We can’t have too many free tasks samples, can we ? IELTS official site recently released some more free practice material.

They have added some Academic and General training reading passage and tasks, Academic and General Training writing tasks and one Speaking card for the 2-minute monologue. Too bad there are no correct answers given for the reading questions (and some listening samples would be nice to have too)!

So those of you who haven’t seen the free samples yet can find them here:

Academic Reading Sample

Academic Writing Sample

General Training Reading Sample

General Training Writing Sample

Speaking Card Sample

And we will do our best to publish the correct answers soon – so stay tuned!

Lately I was thinking a lot of IELTS-Blog and what I should add to it. So far, I’ve decided to continue posting Listening tips, but if you, guys, have better ideas – please let me know.

Anyway, here goes Listening tip # 5 (see the previous 4 under IELTS Preparation>>Listening tips section )

Know your clues

The answer is usually pronounced louder and clearer, it is easier to hear and understand. If you can’t hear something clearly (because the speaker swallows words or whispers), then probably the answer is not there. Practice and you’ll learn to tell the difference.

A good clue to answer is when you hear a repetition of a word, a word being spelled out (G A R F U N K E L) or a number dictated.

The following conversation is a classic example of repetition:

Mary-Joe: “These days there are many changes in our company policy”

Kathy:”Oh, what kind of changes?”

It is clear that the word “changes” is a clue of answer.