IELTS preparation tips from winners

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!”

Today I have some tips for you, coming from the IELTS results competition winners. Here is what Deeksha and Rishi, who achieved Band 8.5 in Academic IELTS test, wanted to share:

“The best advice for students preparing for IELTS, especially for the speaking section, would be to be yourself and keep it simple. If you try to learn your answers beforehand, you will lose marks as the examiners pick that up immediately. Speaking in short simple sentences does the trick. Speak slowly so that you are well understood. This is very important as we may have very different accents. Practice speaking with friends to get the natural flow.

Reading, Writing and Listening skills can be practiced with the help of IELTS materials available online. There are a lot of websites providing free samples which are worth going through.

Last but not the least, believe in yourself and have a good rest before the exam. It will be hard to concentrate especially on the listening part if your mind is not fresh.

Good Luck everyone!”

And here is what Aqrar Khan, Band 8.5 in General Training module, said when I asked him how he got this beautiful score:

“It was a result of thorough understanding of the format of the test, practice and advice and sharing of “lessons learnt” through IELTS-blog.

I would recommend that all the potential IELTS test takers get the speaking tests samples analyzed by your experts.

I would advise all potential IELTS test takers not to to take the test “lightly” and invest some time in preparation through self-study books, IELTS-blog, etc.”