Today we continue and post the rest of Dr. Afroza’s tips for Band 8 in IELTS (read part 1 here).
Writing
1. This was my weakest part, I scored 6 – 6.5 constantly and couldn’t understand my mistakes. Many people suggested that I seek a teacher’s help, but that was expensive here in the UK. I started to look online and found a few services – all of them charged huge fees, even a few IELTS teachers asked for a lot of money to correct my tasks.
At that time I found IELTS-Blog’s writing correction service. Very affordable and very effective. Oh my God, after correcting my tasks I realised my weak points, what silly mistakes I made and I could not notice those unless my tasks have been corrected. Here I’d like to thank the IELTS blog writing service and Simone as a manager.
2. Many people focus on task 2 more than task 1. Everyone should give equal priority to both tasks. I practised both tasks and I achieved 7 in writing. I enriched my vocabulary and learned new sentence structures.
3. I found very authentic information and ideas for task 1 and task 2 in the book Target Band 7. Always I practiced recent IELTS questions and model answers from the IELTS-blog website. Those are really helpful.
Speaking
I scored 9!!! Oh my God, I could not believe, it was like a dream. Was it my luck? No was not my luck. My determination and proper practice helped me achieve that score.
1. I got a study partner. We started to practice just 1 month before my exam via skype. We practiced every question that we found on recent exam site of IELTS–blog, learned some vocabulary – not the difficult words, but the natural words. If you have no partner, don’t worry. You can do something else instead – record your answers, then try to find the problems.
2. I watched BBC news and tried to follow how the native speakers talk and what words they use frequently and made notes of that.
3. Another secret is using phrasal verbs, such as sit back, take off, look out, get on well with, come up with, figure out and so on.
4. I always give importance to tenses. One should not mix past with future tense, should be careful about gender, singular/plural form and the right pronunciation. Online there are many dictionaries available that can pronounce the words for you.
5. Cue Card is a very important part of the Speaking test. Maximum score depends on it. 1 to 2 min talk is enough. If you don’t have any idea what to say, don’t worry – just look at the question. Start to give answers one after another addressing each bullet point, and your answer will be more organized. Try to avoid talking off topic. Tenses in the cue card question must be analyzed correctly and you should answer questions using the right tense.
Finally, dear test takers, don’t sit back, wake up – don’t rely on your luck. Start practicing, and do it in an appropriate way. Try to find out your weak points and work on them. I’m giving you a guarantee your desired score will be at your door step.
Thanks and best of luck,
Afroza”