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Today’s IELTS – live report

Today’s IELTS – live report

A student of mine took his IELTS (General Training) exam today, and below is what he said about it. More recent IELTS exams are here.

1) The Listening was difficult, in one task they gave us a diagram and I had to understand directions on it. The easiest part was about archeological excavations of some sort of bones. I didn’t do too good.

2) The Reading was much better, I even had 7 minutes at the end to check myself. I remember 2 passages. There was a really long passage (2.5 pages) divided into 3 sub-sections and I had to be careful not to mix questions of different sub-sections. Its topic was distant learning, its advantages and disadvantages. The last passage was about traveling in Australia, how much money it brings to the Australian government, how much different kinds of travelers (single men, couples, etc) spend on vacations of different types.

I wrote my answers on the Answer Sheet and in the booklet – it really saved me time when I had to check myself at the end of Reading section.

3) Writing:
Letter topic – Write a letter to a book shop manager about a book you’re looking for, ask him to find the book and send it to you. I finished it in 17 minutes and managed to check myself in the remaining 3.
Essay topic – Today the majority of children are raised by their grand parents, due to the fact that their parents are busy working. To what extent do you think it affects the whole family? I wrote an essay with 5 paragraphs – Introduction, 1 paragraph against and 2 paragraphs in favor of grandparents raising the children and, of course, the conclusion paragraph with my own opinion. I managed to finish it in 35 minutes and 5 more were left to correct spelling errors.

4) Speaking:
I messed up and gave my passport to the examiner before she asked for it. She returned it to me, switched the tape on, asked for it so the tape would record the question and then I gave it to her again, saying: “Here is my passport, please”. The whole process has to be recorded on tape.
Interview questions: Name, job, current place of living, describe apartment.
Card – Describe the apartment where you lived in the past, when, where, with whom, what did it look like.
Discussion : What has changed in our living arrangements today compared to the past.

That’s all, I hope it helps!

Listening – a skill, not a gift!

Often Listening can be your biggest problem. I know it because almost all my IELTS-taking friends had trouble there. Your Listening ability in many cases is not developed enough. But the good news is that Listening is a skill, not a gift, which means anyone can learn how to listen and understand (almost :)) every word. My friends and I came up with this technique that worked for us.

What usually happens:

You listen and hear a “Blablablablabla”, which you can’t to break into words, and for that reason it makes no sense to you. There is a big difference between seeing a word printed on paper when you read and hearing it. If you saw a word, it doesn’t mean you will recognize it when you hear it. Every word you have read, you need to hear at least once.

What can be done about it:

You need to teach yourself the words

How do you do it:

When training, take a recording of the news, a lecture, a television program, a movie or an actual IELTS Listening test and work with it.

Listening Tip # 1 – use a transcript.

Use an IELTS Listening test – just choose from all the links in the right sidebar. You need a test that has a transcript, so I suggest Listening test # 1 (be patient, their site is slow).
First try just listening, to get used to the accent. Then start working with a recording and a transcript: go over the recording, stop it after every sentence and use the transcript to make sure you understand every word.

Listening Tip # 2 – repeat phrases

You can use any recording. First, listen, remember what you heard and stop the recording after each phrase. Even if you didn’t understand the phrase, play it in your head a couple of times, like a broken record “Tonight we have a special guest”, “Tonight we have a special guest”, “Tonight we have a special guest”.
Then say it out loud. If you understood that phrase at first, this exercise will improve your pronunciation. If you didn’t understand the phrase for the first time, this repetition will give you more time to hear it better, break it into words and make sense out of them. And if it is still difficult, you can always rewind and hear the phrase again.