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October 2008

IELTS exam in Singapore – October 2008 (Academic)

So what your IELTS exam was like? Please share, It’s easy – click here and fill your story in. Thanks, your help is much appreciated!

Here is what K. from Singapore just told me about her exam:

Listening

Section one: A man inquires about music class for his son.
Section 2 and 3 – can’t remember.
Section 4: something about food and learning abilities.

Reading

1) Passage one was the most difficult article that I’ve ever read, it was about seeds conservation.
2) Scientific research in Antarctica. In this 2nd reading, there were so many T/F/NG questions.
3) Fire in Netherlands, again skills tested on looking for specific information.

Writing

Task 1 (Report)
The two pie charts show the number of employees taking different courses which are provided by their company and the reasons why they want to enroll in a particular course.

Task 2 (Essay)
A society is based on laws and rules. The individuals who want freedom would face problems in this society. To what extent do you agree with this statement?

Speaking

Interview
Question about work, art and museums, about a garden

Card
Describe something that you want to learn

Discussion

  • Why young people are able to learn things faster than older people?
  • Advantages of having computers in the education
  • How can a person learn his/her studies effectively with a computer?

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    How to get ideas for an IELTS essay

    You guys often ask me this question in the emails: “How do I get ideas for an IELTS essay, when I don’t understand the topic?”. And you’re right, it is extremely hard to write about something you don’t understand.

    So here’s what you can do to solve this problem:

  • Work on your vocabulary and learn new words, to make sure you will be able to understand the topic or at least take a very good guess.
  • Read as many IELTS essays as you can. You can find many sample essays here. Reading other people’s essays helps with the ideas, if you don’t have any of your own – “borrow” from others.
  • Read as much IELTS essay topics, as possible. You can find essay topics in every post in the Recent exams category. Why should you do it? Simply because sometimes the topics repeat in the future exams 🙂

    • Important! Don’t try to memorize essays. IELTS examiners are trained to look for memorized essays and they will disqualify your work on the spot.