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May 2010

A common mistake in the IELTS Listening module – watch out!

In a couple of days’ time many of you will be sitting your IELTS exams and I thought this would be a good time to tell you about one common mistake that has been hurting the scores of other test takers.

As you know the Listening test consists of 4 sections. Before each section you will hear some instructions and there will be some time to look at the questions. Then the recording will begin playing and you will need to listen and write down your answers. You will be writing the answers right in the Listening booklet, next to the questions they belong to.

As you also know, at the end of the Listening test the answers must be written on the Answer Sheet. And here is the part you need to pay attention to: some people mistakenly choose to copy the answers to the Answer Sheet during the time they are given before each section begins. This is a BIG mistake, because that time is for you to concentrate on reading the questions about the new section (that is about to begin), it is the time to try and understand what’s coming – it should not be used for looking back or copying answers.

After the test you will be given 10 whole minutes to copy all your answers to the Answer Sheet and only then you need to be doing that. Any time spent on copying during the actual test is WASTED, it’s not doing you any good – in fact it distracts you and therefore harms your score.

Good luck with your exams, everybody!

IELTS tips from Daria, Band 8 in Academic Module

I’ve received tons of emails asking me the same question: “How did these people (our results competition winners) achieve such a good scores?”. And here is the answer – Daria Kurokhtina, who won the IELTS results competition in March with a jaw-dropping score of 8.0, shares her experience:

“My experience of IELTS preparation is not standard because I had only a week before exam for that.

I decided to use this restricted time frame for making myself familiar with the format of Reading and Listening parts. For that purpose I used IELTS past papers published by Cambridge University Press. I worked through all the available past papers, analysed my mistakes and thought about ways to avoid them in actual examination conditions.

As for Speaking and Writing parts, unfortunately I didn’t have any opportunities for practicing these skills with experienced IELTS tutors so I relied only on the techniques acquired when studying English at school and at the university.

My main piece of advice for candidates with limited time for preparation would be therefore to concentrate on the parts of the exam that they feel can be significantly improved in the short term.

Good luck to all the candidates! Best wishes to you and your extremely useful web-site!”