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IELTS Test Results competition

IELTS Preparation tips from Uli, Band 8 in General Training (part 1)

Uli Rantch is one of our Best IELTS Results Competition winners in May. Not only he scored a whooping overall Band 8, but also wanted to help other test takers by sharing his way of preparation. His tips will be posted in 2 portions, one today and the other tomorrow – there are many tips and I don’t want you to feel overwhelmed. Here is what Uli says:

“I really did not expect to be among the winners of the competition and actually participated ‘just for fun’. I’m pretty excited, thank you! Of course I’d be happy to give some advice to the other blog-readers.

In order to be well prepared for my IELTS test I started practicing well ahead of the actual test-date – five weeks to be precise. I imposed myself the obligation of learning at least 30-60 minutes a day and although this was not always easy it was one of the key-factors to success.

Internet forums and user ratings in online reviews helped me to determine which books had been useful to other learners before. I bought a bunch of five and worked through them one after the other and recognized that especially my scores in reading and listening improved day after day. While I could hardly understand anything at the beginning of my training I got much better by and by and finally scored 8 points in the listening section and even 9 in reading.

You simply have to get used to it by practicing it over and over again. Get yourself some good training-material to find out what to expect in these sections. It made me feel very comfortable to know the question-types and to know how to approach the reading-section. The training-material taught me how to skim and scan information in a text in order to quickly find the passage you need.

Tune in to English radio-broadcasts (via web), listen to English news on TV or concentrate on understanding song-texts to improve your listening skills and vocabulary. Read English online-newspapers or books to cope with the reading-section. I myself read the Australian Google News on a daily basis. It does not take more than 15 minutes but you get to know a lot of new vocabulary, you improve your reading skills and along the way you stay up to date ;).”

Stay tuned, more tips are coming tomorrow!

IELTS Results competition winners in May 2010

Today is the day we announce the winners of the IELTS results competition in May. I am happy to report that this month we had more participants than ever. No doubt this will be a great help to all the future test takers – the more winners we have, the more tips for success we may get from them!

As always, just a couple of words for the new IELTS-Blog members, who may not know why we hold this competition every month, where the best IELTS result wins. The reason is simple – to find people who prepared for IELTS successfully on their own and to ask them these questions:

“How did you study to get such a high score? What are the secrets of your success?”

And why should you care? Because you can learn from other people, just like you, who achieved a great IELTS score, by studying like they did. This is why I hope that today’s winners will write back to me and share their tips for every test takers’ sake.

And the winners are …

Academic Module – 1st place

  • Chhavi Srivastava from India, Band 8.5
  • Mahesh Pillai from India, Band 8.5

Academic Module – 2nd place

  • Ahmed Khalil from Egypt, Band 8.0
  • Hina Abdul Razzak from Pakistan, Band 8.0
  • Jim Xiang Lim from Malaysia, Band 8.0
  • Melvin Paul Singa Raj from Malaysia, Band 8.0
  • Nasreena Vaheed from Maldives, Band 8.0
  • Asya Ostroukh from Russia, Band 8.0
  • Pedro Figueira De Sousa from Portugal, Band 8.0

General Training Module – 1st place

  • Uli Rantch from Germany, Band 8.0
  • Sumit Sampat from India, Band 8.0

General Training Module – 2nd place

  • Benoy Korah from India, Band 7.5

Congratulations, my dear winners! Your special certificates – the evidence of your triumph – are on their way to your emails, and your results will be displayed in IELTS-Blog hall of fame.

We would love it if you shared your methods of studying that enabled you to achieve these remarkable Band scores. Please send us an email to IELTS-Blog and share.