All About IELTS

Today is the day we announce the winners of IELTS Success Formula Challenge. Thank you everyone for the overwhelming response – over 80 test takers participated and wrote to us about their problems in IELTS. As much as we tried, it was impossible to cover all of them in two weeks considering our already busy schedule… which is why we decided to DOUBLE the number of winners.

Yes, today we’re going to announce 10 winners, instead of the originally intended 5. No doubt every one of them will benefit from IELTS Success Formula. They struggled with IELTS long enough and, I’m sure, have a burning desire to put this exam behind them. So now they only need to apply the Formula and Success will follow!

Here are the 10 lucky winnerswhose names came up in the draw:

1. Hong Phuc from Vietnam, who’s taking IELTS to be a postgraduate student.

She said: “I have a problem with collecting new vocabulary including idioms, collocations, phrasal verbs, etc. When it comes to jotting them down, it really baffles me how to organize them all correctly, easy for learning, easy for finding and reviewing as well. Besides, arranging a suitable timetable for learning IELTS is quite challenging and confuses me a lots. It requires good timing and an extreme concentration, for which I do not know how to prepare and schedule, since I always lose control of myself and become absent minded.”

2. SungKyung Choi from Korea, who’s taking IELTS for her nursing registration in New Zealand.

She said: “I need to get band score 7 before August this year. I came to New Zealand two years ago with my son and husband. I was brave enough to spend my money to do the IELTS test 2 years ago. After that I realized I do need proper preparation to get band 7, but my big problem is I don’t have any resources. Also, I don’t have much time and money to spend and I find myself too distracted after work to study.”

3. Ernest Mba from Nigeria, who’s taking IELTS to apply for Canadian Skilled Workers Program.

He said: “I wrote IELTS two times last year but I could not get the required score for Canadian Federal Skilled Workers Program (7.5 in listening, 7 in reading, 7 in writing and 7 in speaking). That was before I discovered IELTS-Blog.com. So in my IELTS preparation this year I have already planned to make use of your materials. My main problems in IELTS preparation are with Listening and Reading. I am unable to listen, understand and at the same time write. Also, I find it difficult to understand some statements because of the ascent of the people talking. My worst problems in reading are the inability to finish answering questions in the time allowed and dealing with filling in blanks.”

4. Melniko Quintos from the Philippines, who said:

“I have a problem with time in the Reading test where you really need to read a lengthy passage to get your answer especially if you need to match each passage with a certain topic sentence, and also with True/False/Not Given questions which are confusing. In writing, I’m still struggling with gathering my thoughts on Writing Task 1 topics. The same goes for Writing Task 2, because 40 minutes is really hard to manage. In Listening I have hard time with maps and sometimes struggle to understand the accent. In Speaking the cue card talk makes me nervous.”

5. Jincy Joseph from India, who is a nurse and needs an IELTS score for professional certification.

She said: “I have been preparing for IELTS for a few months. I have taken a test two months ago but couldn’t score well. I have problems mainly with writing and speaking and there’s nobody to correct and guide me.”

6. Mike from China, who’s taking IELTS to apply for an English Master’s degree in German universities.

He said: “In Reading I really find it is hard to distinguish between ‘False’ and ‘Not Given’, it always confuses me. It is very hard for me to persuade myself to believe in the right answer even when I read the passage over and over again. I would say my reading score mostly depends on how lucky I am, as sometimes if I can understand the main ideas of the passages, then I can make less than 3 mistakes, but most of the time I will have made 8-11 mistakes in the Reading section.”

7. Srinivas Lakshman from India, who needs Band 7 in IELTS to be able to immigrate to Australia.

He said: “I have a problem with writing and I wonder whether it’s caused by my poor lexical and vocabulary skills. Perhaps I need to improve these to cross Band 7. I have taken IELTS twice before and ended up scoring 6.5 in Writing both times.”

8. Andrew Naguib from Egypt, who needs an IELTS score to apply for immigration to New Zealand.

He said: “My IELTS story began one year ago. I took the test 5 times and I can’t reach my target score, Overall Band 6.5. My big problem is that I can’t develop all of my skills well. For example my reading score stayed at Band 5 in all the exams so far. I start to get disappointed in this test and think I can’t do it.”

9. Syed Ovais Hashmi from Pakistan, who’s taking IELTS to immigrate to Australia.

He said: “My biggest problems are with Writing and Speaking. In writing, I face problems in organizing the matter. Also, I am not familiar with a less common vocabulary. In Speaking, I think I have fear of speaking in front of the examiner. I took IELTS 5 months ago and scored 6.0 in Writing and Speaking, but I need at least 7.0 in each of these skills.”

10. Teofana from Romania (currently living in Italy), who is taking IELTS to immigrate to Australia.

She said: “I tried the academic module 2 months ago and got 5.5 in Writing. As you can see I have a big problem in the Writing module, I know what I have to write, but I am unable to link my ideas.”

Congratulations to all the winners! We will contact you shortly via email to deliver your prizes – digital packages consisting of IELTS Success Formula and five full practice tests with answers.

Good luck with your exam preparation, and please keep us informed about your progress!

Welcome to IELTS Success Formula Challenge Day 7. If you’ve just joined IELTS-Blog today, read about the Challenge here.

Today we’re going to deal with a problem that troubles a whole group of our readers.

Srinivas L. from India needs Band 7 in Writing to be able to immigrate to Australia (he already got 7’s for his other skills).

Srinivas says: “I have a problem with writing and I wonder whether it’s caused by my poor lexical and vocabulary skills. Perhaps I need to improve these to cross Band 7. I have taken IELTS twice before and ended up scoring 6.5 in Writing both times.”

Hazar T. from Syria needs at least Band 7 in Writing and an Overall Band 7.5 by August. She keeps scoring 6.5 in Writing and has no idea why, or how to improve.

Hazar says: “I took Academic IELTS 3 times, in 2005, 2013 and 2014, I got scores ranging from Band 7.5 to 8 for Speaking, from 7 to 7.5 for Listening, but only 6.5 for Writing”.

Mohamad T. from Indonesia is in the military service and needs Band 7 for his Command and Staff course, and also for his Master’s degree.

He says: “I have just received my IELTS Result and I got 5.5 in writing. I am really curious is this because my writing method is unacceptable in IELTS or due to some other reason? I really need you advice.”

Erika A. from the Philippines is an International Educated Nurse, currently living in Canada and trying to complete her professional registration in the new country.

She says: “I’ve been struggling to achieve the required IELTS score. I tried IELTS twice already but still I can’t reach the target score. I feel so frustrated about it, and I need your help. My scores are acceptable in Listening and Reading but I always had a hard time in Writing and Speaking where I should get Band 7 for each, but I only got 6/6.5. I need to know more tips and strategies and more practice.”

Alyona T. from Uzbekistan needs Band 7 in IELTS to do a Master’s degree in the university she has chosen.

Alyona says: “I have been studying for more than half a year, and finally I got Band 6 in Academic IELTS which is OK, but not enough for my aim and my satisfaction. …It’s quite hard for me to differentiate between essays of Band 6, Band 7 and Band 8”

The one thing these test takers have in common is – they don’t know how to respond to IELTS writing tasks in order to get their target score. They need to understand what exactly they should change in their writing to get a higher score.

How IELTS Success Formula can solve their problems with Writing

Anyone who wants to improve their writing needs to understand first what is wrong with the way they are writing at present, so that they can do better in the future.

This is why in IELTS Success Formula we take a Writing Task 1 that would score about 5.5 or 6 in a real exam, and explain why it would get such a score. But instead of looking only at the Overall Writing score we go over the four criteria (Task Achievement, Coherence and Cohesion, Lexical Resource, and Grammatical Range and Accuracy) and explain what score this task would get for each criteria, and why. Look at this sample and you will see how that’s done.

And we don’t stop there – we take this Writing Task 1 response (that would score no more than 6 in its current form), and we re-write it for Band 7. Is that it? No 🙂 we take it to the next level and rewrite it to get Band 8 (see a sample here).

But what about an essay, the more important Writing task? We go through the same stages, completely analyzing a sample essay and explaining why it would score Band 6.5 in its current form. Then we rewrite it to score Band 7, and once again for Band 8.

After you’ve gone through this explanation in the book and understood how your Writing is being marked in IELTS – you will know what kind of writing to aim for, if you need Band 7 or 8.

To learn more visit the IELTS Success Formula webpage and download a free trial copy (scroll down and look for the download link).