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January 2009

Free IELTS Listening, Reading, Writing and Speaking exercises

Today I’ve got more free IELTS exercises for you. If you haven’t heard so far about IELTSontrack.com, let me introduce it to you. The nice people in charge of this website belong to the Centre of English Language of the University of South Australia.

Here is what they have made available for free:

IELTS Listening mini-test

There are 8 questions and it takes 6 minutes. You can listen with or without a transcript. When answering questions, make sure you scroll down to see all the questions – I didn’t and missed some questions. Answer by selecting the answer, when finished, click “Submit”. The correct answers will show up marked with a “V” and the incorrect marked with an “X”.

Click here for the listening test

IELTS reading test

There are passages of both General Training and Academic Module difficulty, the Academic text comes with 13 questions and the General Training with 7 questions. Choose the desired module (Academic or General) and hit “Start”. When you’re answering questions, don’t forget to scroll down to see all of them. Oh, and one more thing – it didn’t work for me in the Internet Explorer 6, I had to use Firefox.

Click here for the reading test

IELTS Writing test

I think this writing test is very useful. First, there are 3 tasks: an Academic Task 1, a General Training task 1, and a Task 2 (essay). For every task there is planning help where they explain how to approach writing a report, a letter or an essay and then there are sample answers. Excellent practice, I am sure you’ll find it helpful.

Click here for the writing test

IELTS Speaking test

You get to practice by listening to the recording of an interview (where a student answers the examiner’s questions) and then answering the questions that you hear yourself. There is a transcript that you can use if something is not clear to you in the recording. After you’ve started the test by hitting the “Start” button, you will see the list of questions and the examiner’s comments on the recorded student’s performance.

Click here for the speaking test

If you’ve found more free IELTS exercises, please share with the rest of us.

IELTS exam in Utrecht, Netherlands – January 2009 (Academic Module)

Ive just heard from N who recently took an Academic IELTS exam in Utrecht in the Netherlands and she wasnt happy about it.

There was nothing about the exam that she found too difficult, but the way that exam was administered and the interruptions from the test centre staff were really annoying and harmed her performance. Heres what she says:

“We had to wait outside for longer than 30 minutes in the cold (-10C) before they were able to get the keys of the building. We started the test more than 40 min late.

Listening test

The Listening went well, but during the test the supervisor started to fiddle with the blinds and I could not hear a surname and a telephone number.

Reading test

When we took the Reading test I found it difficult to really concentrate as the supervisor from the other group came into our class to ask our supervisor some questions. This happened a few times!!! Our supervisor left the classroom with the door wide open while the other class was still busy with the listening test. At this moment I’m not very positive and feel that we didn’t get a fair chance

Writing test

Task 1 (report)
Table about adults enrolling for educational classes in the UK over a period of 4 years.

Task 2 (essay)
The topic was about the influence of higher living standards in cities (your experience and what problems this might lead to).

Speaking test

The lady who did the interview read every question from a piece of paper and I didn’t feel that she was interested in what I had to say. She was to busy with her papers to really listen to what I said.
The questions were about the Internet and things I would like to change in my life.”