IELTS-Blog

It really makes me happy to see how more institutions start helping people prepare for IELTS, for free. Today I discovered another great service that British Council in Sri Lanka has launched for IELTS test takers. Recently I wrote about free IELTS preparation in India and today I found similar help in Sri Lanka.

Here’s the deal: anyone (not just people already registered for the exam) can attend a free 90-minute IELTS seminar. Well, it’s more like an orientation session, because they don’t coach students and help them with the actual preparation, but answer the basic questions, such as what’s in the exam, how it is scored, etc - including your own questions about IELTS.

The registration is online (click here to register) and the seminars are held every month once a month.

Nice, right? Hold on, it’s getting better - there are free practice sessions for registered test takers. If you’re in Colombo or Kandy, come to the British Council library, show your IELTS exam fee receipt and you will get access to all the practice materials you need for IELTS.

They have study books, test papers and tapes for the Listening test, come any day of the week and practice at the library - if you ask me, things don’t get any better than that. For any questions call (011) 4521592 in Colombo and (081) 4473543 in Kandy. More details about working days and hours are here.

I will keep on posting about similar services in other countries as I find them. Let’s hope it’s a new trend!

Today I have more free Listening resources for you. I’ve had several requests this week to find and publish links to some Listening practice tests. This is the list I’ve compiled, feel free to let me know if you’ve found additional resources - every little bit helps.

1. Here you will find a short listening sample (mp3) with 5 questions, the correct answers are provided too. Click here to proceed to the test.

2. This test is prepared by the British Council, and I think it’s great. On that page you will find 15 short recordings and questions, five for each recording. The beauty of the thing is that you can set the speed of the recording to fast, medium and slow, depending on your listening skills. I think that this speed-tuning option is very useful.

The answers are of multiple choice style, you have three options and need to select the correct one. To find out whether or not your answer is correct, look at the bottom of the window, it will say “Correct” or “Incorrect”. The topics are about a magazine, a camping trip, a house explosion, a robbery, a train station, banking, difficulties of having a car, helpline, post office, a language school, making a hat, making a pizza, student interview, weather report, work problems.

Click here for the practice exercises.

3. Another useful piece of software is the IELTS Listening Conqueror 2.0.

It’s a program that you need to download and install on your computer (some will see this as a downside). It allows you to run 4 full listening tests for free (there are many more in the full version but it costs some money), and the transcript is displayed as you listen, sentence by sentence.

You also have the option of typing as you listen (they call it the method of dictation). The speed is adjustable and you can set the software to repeat every phrase as many times as you like. I have tried it, the quality of the recordings is not bad and the software is pretty easy to use.

The file size is 7 Mbytes, not an issue for any broadband users, people with dial-up will have to take a coffee break while the file is downloading.

That’s all for today, enjoy!