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IELTS Preparation tips

IELTS band 8.5 achiever shares tips for success

I asked the winner of our IELTS results competition, Saiyeda Patel, what would be her best advice to the other students aiming to improve their score and she has kindly shared the secrets of her success. Here they are:

“I seriously believe that you need to have at least some command of the language to do well in your IELTS test. One can’t achieve a band score of 7 (which is the least a good University will expect you to have) overnight with just a brief period of practice. Developing a habit of reading books in English, conversing with friends and family in English, watching English media and using proper grammar and vocabulary while writing just about anything is very important.

Practicing for IELTS is then the next step to achieve a good band score. I was given some preparatory material (a book with various exercises) by IELTS test center. I practiced in solving the exercises from that book for about 30 minutes a day for 25 days.

I especially concentrated on the Listening tasks while solving those with my headphones on. I am not an attentive person, so losing track of what was being said was fairly common while practicing. I tried to tackle this weakness of mine by concentrating really hard.

As for the Speaking test, it is not the same as chatting with your friend. In IELTS, you are supposed to sound intelligible while framing answers to questions while using your vocabulary properly and being grammatically correct at the same time. Tough task! Therefore, asking a friend or family member to interview you regularly before the Test using the sample questions in your practice book will definitely help.

For the Reading Test I didn’t do much except for solving the exercises in my book and making mental notes about where and why I have made mistakes so that I won’t repeat those again, especially not in my IELTS Test.

Lastly, the Writing Test: I read the solved essays at the end of the book to understand the criteria of what constitutes a good essay – length, clarity, flow, etc. and tried to model my essays on those lines.”

Some typical mistakes in the IELTS test I’ve seen this week

This week I have noticed some very common mistakes that students made and wrote to tell me about. I also know that many students have their exam coming on 21st of February and this little warning can (hopefully) save them some marks.

Firstly, many people shift the answers on the Answer Sheet. In a rush it can easily happen and it means that all of your hard work goes down the drain. If the answer to the question 24 is written in the box of the question 25, you get 0 marks for it, plain and simple. This brings me to another point: try practicing at home copying answers to the Answer Sheet – that way you won’t get confused during your exam.

Secondly, many people don’t make the essay/letter/report long enough. Guys, that can cost a whole Band (I don’t know exactly how much they deduct but that is my guess). Counting words is easy and you don’t have to count every single word to get a very close estimate of how many words you’ve written.

Statistically speaking, a hand-written line has about 9 words. If you need proof, have a look at any of your essays and count how many words per line you write. The requirement for an essay is at least 250 words, which equals 28 lines and you should count the lines, not the words. Any letter or report should be at least 150 words long, that’s 17 lines.

That’s it for today, good luck to everyone, go hit the books!