Preparing For Ielts

[Su Mcdowall]

IELTSpreparation involves understanding the test format, how it is marked and then making a plan to achieve your desired score. To do this, you will need to improve your English, practice test skills and join a preparation course to check your progress before registering for the test.

Quite simply, so much information is out there, and students do not know which sources they can trust. IELTS can take months (sometimes years!) of hard work and thousands of dollars in tuition and test fees, so there is a lot of pressure to get it right the first time.

IELTS is essentially an English language test; therefore, the higher your level of English, the better your score should be. Simply studying IELTS skills and doing practice tests will not be enough if your level of English is not high enough.

As mentioned above, there are many different approaches and strategies that you need to succeed in IELTS. For example, do you know how to write an effective introduction and conclusion? Do you know how to develop your answers in the speaking test? Do you know how to quickly locate the correction information in the reading test?

You can also combine learning English with the most common IELTS topics. Some topics, such as the environment, education, and technology, come up again and again. Reading and listening to these common topics is a very powerful technique that will help you improve your vocabulary and your ideas while improving your English.

The second thing I want to warn you about is not making these the only part of your IELTS preparation. Lots of students that I know do IELTS practice tests all day, every day, and most of them improve very little. They should only be used as a test of your current ability. You should spend most of your time improving your level of English and your IELTS skills.

This is probably the most important part of your IELTS preparation. If you do not know your weaknesses, you are wasting a lot of time because you have no idea what to focus on. You must focus on things you are not good at to improve.

The most effective strategy for IELTS preparation is to find out your weaknesses, go away and work on them and then come back and have your work assessed by an experienced IELTS teacher. They can then tell you if you have improved and advise you on what to focus on next.

I recommend sitting down with a calendar and filling out all of the days you want to study with the things you need to do above. This will help you stay organised and reduce your stress about preparing for the test. This will also give you an idea of how much work you will have to do each study day.

IELTS stands for 'International English Language Testing System' and is an English proficiency exam. This exam will test your reading, writing, speaking and listening skills. Click here to read our article that answers this question in more detail.

You need to book your exam through an official IELTS body (eg. IELTS, IDP or the British Council). The IELTS website also has a useful online tool that shows you where your nearest test centre is. Check it out here.

This depends on how new you are to IELTS. If you're completely new to IELTS, check out our article for IELTS beginners here. If you have a basic knowledge of the exam and need to organise your studies, check out our IELTS Preparation Guide here.

However, If I'm being honest, my most successful students share one key trait in common: the ability to create and follow a study plan. Doing so allowed them to set realistic goals, maintain a positive mindset and organise their studies in a controlled manner. You can find help with creating your own study plan in this article.

If you are an incoming student at LSE and you are not an English native speaker, you will probably need to sit an English language exam to prove your level! I am Italian and before passing the exam I had never studied for a long period in the UK. Here is some advice and information for those who are going to sit the exam.

Once you know which level of English you need to achieve, you can start preparing for the exam. You can decide to attend a course before sitting the IELTS. However, you can also decide to study independently, and this is what I did! I already had some knowledge of English and I found it practical to study by myself during the summer. Therefore, I decided to buy a specific IELTS book with exercises for the level I wanted to achieve. This kind of books can be quite useful as they contain exercises, solutions, mock exams and useful links for the preparation of the IELTS. Once you have your book, you can make a study plan and prepare for all four parts before the exam session.

If you do not have anyone to practice the speaking with, you can still train by yourself! You need to have a look at the different topics that might turn up at the speaking exam and prepare some answers to different questions in order to learn some useful vocabulary. In addition, the first part of the exam is about personal questions regarding topics such as family, hobbies and school. This is an easier part that you can prepare beforehand by yourself. Also, I think it is a good strategy to prepare in advance some vocabulary that can be used in different contexts, so you will be able to speak about anything. Usually, most students are more insecure about this task compared to the others, as you have to improvise in front of an examiner. However, there is nothing to be afraid of! Actually, most of the people I know had their highest grade in the speaking task.

I'm Sofia, an italian student at the LSE. Apart from being passionate about my MSc in Political Economy of Europe, I enjoy learning foreign languages, visiting new countries, and writing stories about my life as international student.

Get expert support preparing for the general or academic IELTS test through targeted classes with experienced IELTS Preparation instructors. Improve your listening, speaking, reading, writing, grammar and vocabulary, and get familiar with the exam through IELTS practise tests. Take IELTS courses anytime during a flexible English study program or take our focused IELTS Mastery program for intensive IELTS preparation.

For years, ILSC has been offering the official IELTS test, and IELTS preparation courses to help students achieve their target band score on the IELTS test and achieve their study, work and immigration goals.

Choose the level of preparation you need. Add IELTS core courses or skills electives to your flexible English study program or take our intensive IELTS mastery program and target specific band scores with other students focused on the same goal.

In Canada you can prepare for and take the test at the same school. ILSC runs official IELTS test centres in Vancouver, Toronto, Montral and surrounding areas, and we also operate test centres in the USA.

IELTS, the International English Language Testing System, is an internationally recognized test of English proficiency. IELTS test results are recognized by more than 9,000 organizations worldwide, including universities, immigration departments, government agencies and multinational companies.

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You will need to answer questions connected to the recordings ranging from multiple choice to matching information, headings, features and sentence endings, as well as sentence, summary, note, table, diagram or flow-chart completion. I will write a detailed article on separate parts individually if needed by anyone later on.

IELTS Reading Test: Welcome to the hardest part (according to the most candidates) of the exam! With the previous experience, some online researches and thoughtful study, I was able to earn 8 here (previously 7). Both the academic and general Reading Tests are made up of 3 long texts taken from current books, journals, magazines, newspapers, notices, advertisements etc. While the academic texts are related to topics you might face at an undergraduate/ postgraduate level or any purpose in an English-speaking environment, the general texts will be different. Section 1 in general test focuses at your Social survival skills (notices, advertisements, timetables etc); Section 2 concentrates on Workplace survival skills (job descriptions, contracts, manuals etc) and Section 3 talks about longer and more complex text on topics of general interests.

The most effective and shortcut to succeed here is mastering the Skimming and Scanning technique, following which, I was able to improve my score. Please note that the topics and questions are not massively difficult but answering all of those in time could be. Another technique is, reading the questions first so that you know what you are looking for. Skimming is reading fast to get a general summary of the material which I followed paragraph after paragraph to predict the location of the answer initially. After that, Scanning is reading comparatively slowly but in fast rate to find specific keywords related to my answer. While skimming tells you about general information within a section, scanning helps you locate the particular fact.

IELTS Writing Test: My marks for this parts were 7.5 and 6.5 respectively. Both the General and Academic Tests comprise of two tasks though the topics are different. For Academic Writing Task 1, you will be asked to summarize a visual information/ graph/ table/ chart/ diagram. I made sure to organize my response into three main parts; the introduction, an overview and the main features from the diagram.

In Academic task 2, you might be asked to agree or disagree with a point of view or argument, discuss two opposite views, or the reason of a problem and offer a solution from the topics ranging from the environment to immigration, culture and even technology.

In General Writing task 1, you will be asked to write a letter to suggest any improvement plan/ request information/ explain a situation. Examiners will check your ability to provide general and factual information about the task, express needs, wants, opinions, complaints etc.

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