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IELTS Preparation tips

The best ways to study for the four IELTS sub-tests: Listening, Reading, Writing and Speaking

Never assume you’ve failed in the IELTS test

We have discussed in the past how important it is to be psychologically prepared for the IELTS test and I’d like to go back to that discussion. It happens to many people during their exams that something unexpected happens and they panic. Some test takers assume they have failed (without even knowing it for sure) and naturally that affects their performance.

Here are a couple of a real life examples (the names are not real, but the stories are).

Alan wrote me a letter and asked: “I was in the middle of my Speaking exam, answering the Cue card and after I have talked for what felt to me like 2 minutes, I stopped. I was sitting there in silence until the examiner gave me a sign to continue because obviously he wanted me to keep going. Do you think that will significantly affect my score?”

I thought that this incident shouldn’t affect the score because Alan picked up right after the examiner asked him to continue. To verify my guess Alan and I agreed that when he gets his score, he’ll let me know. Alan got 8 in the Speaking test (no, he is not a native speaker)! If he had panicked and messed up the rest of his test, there is no way his score would have been anywhere near Band 8.

Sandra sent me an email and asked: “I have written an off-topic essay. I misunderstood the topic and wrote about something related, but different. Have I failed, how much marks will I lose?”.

I do know that writing off-topic is penalized, but have no idea how many marks exactly are deducted. Sandra and I decided to conduct a little experiment, I asked how much does she think the essay would get assuming it was on topic, she said 6.5 – 7 and agreed to let me know her score when it arrives. Her Writing score was Band 6, which probably means that the assessor deducted between 0.5 and 1 Band for the off-topic penalty.

What I’m trying to say here is this: it’s not over until it’s over. There are parts of the IELTS assessment that are confidential and in many cases we may think that something will ruin our score when in fact it may affect it a little or not at all.

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.