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IELTS preparation tips from winners

IELTS high achievers share their secrets

Simple, actionable, effective steps to Band 7 (or higher!)

If you have been planning to dedicate this weekend to nothing but IELTS preparation, it’s time for some inspiration to get you through it! Today’s post is going to equip you with IELTS tips from 3 high scorers who won in our IELTS results competition. Here is what they think you should do, to get a higher score in IELTS:

Abhimanyu (IELTS Band 8)

“All the advice I can give, is solve as many practice papers as you can before the test day! The mistake I made with my speaking test, was that I memorised answers (even though I know I’m not supposed to) and I spoke too quickly. Make sure you are calm and collected before the test and don’t make the same mistakes I did 🙂 I also referred to YouTube for guides on answering the test and it helped me a lot. Also download the IELTS app on your phone which gives question papers and solutions as well.”

Shivani (IELTS Band 7.5)

“All those who are preparing for IELTS exam best of luck, guys! I would say just be determined and work hard to achieve a marvelous band score. Speaking comes by speaking. So converse as much as you can with your friends, relatives and near and dear ones in the English language. Read as much as possible and pick up ideas from anything you come across. Practice makes perfect. So give your best shot, and again all the very best.”

Manpreet (IELTS Band 7.5)

“In order to do the Reading up to the mark one needs to be able to skim the whole passage in just 2-3 minutes. Skimming is often confused with looking over the whole passage logically, but that’s incorrect – skimming actually means just underlining the keywords like important dates, time, names, etc.

True/False/Not Given questions must be solved by breaking them up into parts and looking for the keywords that were observed in the given statements and then looking up for words/phrases with the same meaning in the passage, instead of those exact words as they are.

For matching headings to paragraphs the same technique is used and one should be able to analyse the statement and then correlate the main idea of a paragraph with the statement.

Furthermore, for listening in multiple choice questions the connectors like ‘but’, ‘however’, etc must be listened for carefully and the speakers’ intonation must be carefully observed.

For labelling the map in Listening you must be able to analyse the directions then instead of writing the option as it is the location’s name must be written in shorthand, to be quick.

In order to solve filling in the blanks, synonyms and keywords used in the blanks are the most important thing.

For Speaking a good hold of synonyms cam be very beneficial for gaining a good band score, and a correct response to the follow up questions is also required. Our way of doing the speaking exam also matters a lot – so be confident.

Please don’t be afraid of writing due to several myths – it can be the best and the highest scoring part.”

IELTS tips from high achievers: do this and watch your score climb up!

Today we’re sharing the advice from high achievers who got Bands 8 and 7 in their IELTS exams. We met them through our monthly IELTS results competition and here is what they said in response to our question,

“How did you score so high?”

Hellyben (IELTS Band 7, native Gujarati speaker)

Thank you so much… this means a lot! And I’m so Happy 🙂

The thing I want to recommend the students preparing for IELTS examination, they should definitely follow IELTS-Blog.com. It is a very useful source. I personally have learnt a lot from their sample essays.

Ramesh (IELTS Band 7.5, native Gujarati speaker)

It is my pleasure to share my experience with you guys. I would like to suggest the IELTS candidates to fully concentrate on what they are reading and listening to. Use more and more vocabulary in writing and speaking. Try to write essays with punctuation marks, and re-read your essay once you wrote one paragraph. I have just worked for 3 days [before the exam].

Rahul (IELTS Band 8, native Hindi speaker)

I will be more than happy to share my secrets of success with you. I am just your average next door software engineer with a dream to study abroad in a prestigious institution. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t anxious before my IELTS. This was my first attempt and I was terrified to shell out $200, more so when I was working over 55 hours a week! I gathered some courage and filled the British Council form.

Although English is my second language, I can’t say I had zero knowledge of English. Having done my studies (till high school) in a convent school, I definitely had an edge here. The preparation I went through wasn’t too much. I just completed the British Council handbook over 7 days and kept reading a lot. I believe if you read a lot, you will eventually start thinking in English and reading/writing/listening/speaking becomes eventually easier. I would also like to tell future candidates that the key to cracking IELTS is getting hold of your nerves. Yes you will be anxious and nervous, but once you get over it, the sky is the limit!

Tanishq (IELTS Band 8, native Gujarati speaker)

When I started, I was already pretty fluent in English because from a very young age I studied in an English medium school. As far as preparing particularly for IELTS was concerned, I focused the majority of my time on working on my listening and reading skills. And whatever free time I had at home, I spent it getting accustomed to the accents in the audio recordings. That really helped me understand the words better and faster.

Writing skills was something hard to prepare for, as the topic is given on the spot. So the main thing here is ideation. Once you have a steady stream of ideas, don’t directly write them down. First make a rough flow chart or diagram with a light pencil and after you think you have found your outline, only then write it down quickly. The same goes for speaking skills, as ideation is important. And the most important thing in speaking is confidence. No matter what kind of answer you give to a question asked, give it with confidence, and without pauses. You receive scores for fluency, not your opinion. These were the main things I kept in mind while practicing for IELTS. Hope they help someone else too.