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IELTS Success Formula Challenge Day 4

IELTS Success Formula Challenge Day 4

Welcome to IELTS Success Formula Challenge Day 4. If you’ve just joined IELTS-Blog today, read about the Challenge here.

IELTS Success Formula Challenge AdrianoToday we’re going to handle the issue that Adriano from Brazil is struggling with. He plans to immigrate to Australia and needs an Overall Band 7 with a 7 in every sub-test for his permanent residency visa.

Here’s what Adriano finds difficult in IELTS preparation:

“First and foremost, my biggest issue is Portuguese. It’s difficult to use English in my country even though I work in IT and use English technical terms. I noticed my English behaves like a “roller coaster”. In my good weeks I write and speak like a native because I used English a lot, but in my bad weeks my English seems to disappear. Trying to overcome this situation I’m planning to do some classes (they are expensive in Brazil).

Second, prepositions… I hate them… It’s likely that in this e-mail I wrote lots of them wrong. I imagine prepositions are important in all IELTS tasks; however, I don’t have a good plan how to fix my errors.

Finally, the use of adjectives and adverbs – I know that it’s ‘extremely important’ to use them in essays and perhaps in the Speaking sub-test, but I don’t have a good range of them. Actually, I’ve never seen a GOOD list of “Adjectives and adverbs you should use in IELTS”… I don’t know if it exists.”

How IELTS Success Formula can solve Adriano’s Writing problem

IELTS Success Formula AcademicIt looks like Adriano has a good plan in place to practice using English and keep it at a consistent level – so what I am going to address here are his problems with grammar.

Prepositions

Adriano, you’re having problems with prepositions because the ones used in your native language are different from the ones used in English. And I can safely say the same about ANY language. This is why we have ‘IELTS Writing Doctor’ – a full chapter in our book that tells you everything you need to know about IELTS-specific grammar and vocabulary (not just prepositions). You wanted a good list of adjectives and adverbs to use in IELTS… well, guess what – we have it!

You can avoid using the wrong prepositions only if you know what the right ones are. And learning prepositions that go with all the verbs in English is not an easy task, it can take months. But if you know the verbs and expressions you’re most likely to use in IELTS writing, you can learn the frequently used prepositions and achieve a huge improvement in your writing score.

Click here to view a few pages on prepositions from IELTS Success Formula (this is just a sample). We cover a lot in this section: how to use prepositions in time expressions, prepositions in statistics, groups/categories, location, common verb forms + prepositions, useful adjectives and prepositions that go with them, and more.

Vocabulary

The ‘IELTS Writing Doctor’ chapter also covers vocabulary, in particular expressions that help you produce a good Writing Task 1 (view sample here). We suggest a list of expressions to use so your report has the right, formal tone – and we also show the expressions to avoid, if you don’t want to sound unprofessional or babyish.

Writing Task 2 is a topic we spend lots of time on in IELTS Success Formula. We give you the vocabulary for all parts of an essay, and we cover all essay types. Using the options from the book you can write a beautiful response that any native English speaker would be proud of (click here to view).

Last but not least, we compiled a whole vocabulary on typical IELTS Writing topics, which you can use to achieve a higher vocabulary score – have a look here.

IELTS Success Formula Challenge Day 3

Welcome to IELTS Success Formula Challenge Day 3. If you’ve just joined IELTS-Blog today, read about the Challenge here.

IELTS Success Formula Challenge RaminderToday we’re going to deal with a problem that troubles Raminder from India. He must have it solved to be able to further his studies in Australia:

“I have a few problems with the Reading sub test. I usually get confused with question types like True/False/Not Given, matching information and completion type of questions. Time management is also a problem, I have never been able to answer all the 40 questions in one hour.”

How IELTS Success Formula can solve Raminder’s Reading problem

IELTS Success Formula AcademicLet me begin by saying that it’s not just Raminder’s problem – our research shows that the majority of IELTS test takers have difficulties with time management in the Reading sub test.

This is why we devoted a lot of attention to this issue in IELTS Success Formula – and I quote:

“Question. What if I’m almost out of time, and I still haven’t answered all the questions?

Answer. This can (and probably will) happen to you during the first practice sessions. The IELTS Reading test is time-intensive, meaning there is a lot of reading and answering in the 60 minutes, and anyone who doesn’t manage their time can end up in this situation. While it’s OK to run out of time at home, in the initial stages of your preparation, try not to let it happen to you during the actual exam. Proper time management will help you avoid such scary moments – please refer to
‘7 Fundamentals to Make Your Reading Test a Success’ on page 48.”

I will briefly mention here the 7 Fundamentals (because explaining these principles takes quite a few pages in the book):

1. Skim and scan instead of reading word by word
Did you know? ‘Skimming’ means reading fast to get the general idea and ‘scanning’ means looking for particular information. In the book we explain in detail which question types require skimming, and which require scanning, and then direct you to fitness activities to practice.

2. Use the text to guide you to the answers
This fundamental is talking about a few particular question types that appear in a sequential order in the text. You can save time if you know when you won’t have to go back in the text to find the next answer, you will always be moving forward.

3. Use words from the text
There are particular question types that require copying words from the text “as is”, which is a great – because you don’t even have to worry about spelling or grammar.

4. Read in detail only if you have to
When you know which question types don’t require reading in detail you can save time by scanning.

5. Pay close attention to task instructions in the test paper
If you write correct answers in more words than allowed, you will lose marks.

6. Know when to move on
Some questions are just harder than others. Don’t get stuck on a hard question, move on and keep answering the following ones – your score will benefit from this approach.

7. Manage your time

To manage your time well in the Academic Reading sub test you basically need to do two things:

1. Allocate a certain amount of time to each passage. Since the first passage is normally the easiest it makes sense to allocate the least time to it, then a bit more time to Passage 2, and even more time to Passage 3.

Note: this strategy will work better for people with stronger reading skills, but in the book we also offer an alternative strategy for those who have weaker reading skills.

2. Answer the questions on each passage in the most efficient and accurate way to save time. Because this is important, in IELTS Success Formula we give you techniques for answering the difficult question types quickly and accurately.

For example, Raminder mentioned True/False/Not Given questions confusing him. Here’s how we suggest to approach this question type.

The basic rule is that that if the statement clearly agrees with text, the answer is True, if the statement explicitly contradicts the text, the answer is False, and if the statement says something that the text doesn’t say, it’s Not Given. It works in a very similar way with Yes/No/Not Given.

Also, keep in mind that the answers to True/False/Not Given and Yes/No/Not Given questions appear sequentially in the passage. This narrows down the search for you, because once you’ve found the answer to question 1, the answer to question 2 will be somewhere in the sentences that follow, not in the preceding part of the text.

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