IELTS Premium Tips and Experts

If you seriously want to improve your IELTS score and achieve your exam targets, then you need make effort. Your first practice/diagnostic test should give you a good idea of where you are in terms of your language ability and test skills. You should then be able to predict how much training and studying you need to do to achieve your aims.

After your practice and diagnostic tests (listening, reading, writing, and speaking), you should have a good idea of what you need to improve. Your teachers will also have an idea of your weak points and will suggest activities for relevant additional practice. They will help you to prioritise the points you need to focus on.

You can use any 1-minute and 30-second gaps in IELTS listening recordings to preview listening questions. This should help you get some idea of what you need to listen for. Identifying the topic and context of the recording as well as checking the co-text (text that surrounds the answer) and keywords used in the question prompts can help you  make some predictions about the answers and, therefore, increase your chances of getting more of them right. For example:

The professor and student agree to have their next tutorial on ____________ at 5PM.  

The context, tutorial and co-text, on and at 5PM, suggest that the missing word is either a date or a day.

In addition, you need to be careful not to mistake a distractor for the correct answer while listening. A distractor is some information that appears to be the correct answer, but it is not it. For example, a speaker in the recording may say "So, let's have our next tutorial on Tuesday! Or no … wait … sorry! I meant to say Thursday." You may get distracted by "Tuesday" and, as you are writing your answer, not pay attention to the correct answer, which is "Thursday".

Did you know that passages in the Academic Reading Test are not meant to be read word-for-word? With sixty minutes given to answer forty questions, you are expected to skim, scan and then, depending on the question type, selectively read for detail in order to complete your reading tasks in time. We use skimming and scanning quite frequently in our daily and academic lives. The same is true for the IELTS Reading Test. Skimming means sampling parts of a text in order to, for example, achieve a general understanding of its meaning. Skimming may involve a range of activities such as, for example, looking at the first and last sentence of a paragraph. Scanning means locating a particular piece of information without necessarily understanding the rest of the text. Scanning, like skimming, involves a range of activities. Both of them can be used in combination with each other for various reading purposes.

Remember that time is critical in the IELTS test, and you should always train and practice for it in timed conditions. These time pressures are especially important in the reading and writing tests. You only have 60 minutes to answer 40 questions about three large passages in the reading test and the same time to write over 400 words (150 for Task 1 and 250 for Task2) in the writing test. If you do not manage the time you have well, you will not be able to answer all the questions in the reading test and may be unable to produce essays of the required length in the writing test.

Information in written texts needs to be organized. When writing about a diagram, you should have an introduction, body, and an overview in your report, and, when writing an essay, you should present your information and arguments as text with an introduction, body and conclusion.

Most of your writing tasks will be given as homework. Make sure to do them and submit them on time in order to receive your feedback from your teachers(s).

In Speaking Part 1, you will be asked fairly simple questions about basic things. This does not mean, however, that your answers should be short. If there is time, you should always try to provide more relevant detail and explain the reasons for your answers. On the other hand, your answers should not too long either. Compare the following examples: 

Example:

Examiner: How often do you read newspapers? 

Student: Sometimes.

Better response: I'd say … sometimes, or not regularly. We no longer have any newspapers on paper per se. So, most of this reading is done online. Sometimes, I do need to find out more about any local and or international events I am interested in. So, I go online and go through several news agency sites to read up on those events. I like to compare what different agencies say and, most importantly, how they say it.

Even for general (i.e. yes-or-no) questions, you should still try extending your answers, but the information you provide needs to be relevant to the question.

Example:

Examiner: Do you have job? 

Student : Nope.

Better response: Not at this moment, no. I used to have a job, but now I have to focus entirely on my degree. So, I quit last year and started studying fulltime. I hope to finish by the end of this year and then apply for the same or a different job abroad.

It is important to practice as often as you can. But your practice should never focus on exam skills only. It is also important to focus on and develop all the other relevant skills and language. Effective training is about combining both intensive and extensive language and skill practice based on your needs. This is where our teachers and exam trainers can help you immensely. Our highly-qualified exam experts can help you identify your strengths and areas that need development using our cutting edge diagnostic tools, work with you to identify your learning priorities and create an effective study plan, which includes resources and strategies, and then monitor your progress and help you deal with your emergent needs.