IELTS made Simple

Most learners think listening to an audio repeatedly helps in getting most/all answers right.

Why is this not a great idea?

- in the exam the audio is played only once.
- the candidate does not have any control of the audio.

What can work?
- get used to listening to various English accents. An effective way to do this is to listen to podcasts such as https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02nq0gn/episodes/downloads

- while practicing, listen to the audio only once

- read questions carefully to predict information

- read the instruction for each question to understand in how many words the answer is to be written.

- pay attention to spelling, grammar

Practice, practice and more practice guarantees a good score in the IELTS exam - almost all learners say this.

I would like to disagree with this view. Practice without analysing the areas of improvement or understanding the remedial action required to do a task does not yield required results.

What works?

- Familiarize yourself with the types of task
- Understand the strategies to approach the task
- Work on the task, make a list of common mistakes one could make on the task
- Unlearn a few assumptions
- Now, practice until you are consistent I getting the answers right within the given time
- Invest time and effort in getting the right guidance.

Avoid practice, practice, practice (PPP)
Instead follow guidance, practice, review (GPR)

A simple tip to increase scores in the listening test is to read the questions carefully, to predict the answers, before listening to the audio.

This works effectively for most questions except multiple choice tasks.

Try predicting answers for any gap fill task - Cambridge book 12 listening test page 30

A very easy tip to avoid silly mistakes in both the Listening and the Reading tests is to read the question carefully and check in 'how many words and/or a number' we need to answer.

To understand this better:

a. the passage might state "animals and birds", which we are to choose as the answer, however the question might instruct that we do no write more than two words; the answer can simply be written as 'animals, birds". Separating the two words with a comma does it.

b. This also does not mean that it is mandatory for any one answer of the given section to have the specified number of words. For instance, the question instructs us to write "no more than three words"; some of us try hard to fit 3 words for at least one answer in the given section, thus wasting time. Reason being, if the answer is "Tower of London:, it could also be written as "London Tower" and both forms of answers are correct.
It is important to check if we got the answer right, furthermore to check if we do not exceed the number of words as specified in the instruction, not necessary to fit in 'the number of words'.

Most of us are tempted to buy clothes that are in trend - the latest fashion, which of course never see the light of the day - deeply buried in our closet. Seems familiar?
Similarly, most of us tend to pick up words at random from the newspaper or a blog or a book, because the word seems new, flashy and 'great vocabulary'. We tend to make a list of such words with their synonyms, may be memorize them so we could use them to score more marks. Like the clothes buried in the closet, some of these words stay unused, thus fading out of our memory.

What is the best way then to learn new words or enrich our vocabulary?

It's simple - buy clothes that we could use, suitable to the occasion, that we are comfortable in -In the same way,it is important to learn words in a given context, for example - choose a context such as vacation and make a list of all the words that you could think of in this context - making sub headings could help-
- synonyms for vacation
- what do we do on a vacation usually? - enjoy, relax, see around, shop, sun bath, get a tan,
- where could we go? (not the names of places - but words like hill stations, trekking, etc..)
- who do we go with? family, friends, colleagues
- how do we go? - flight, train, cruise
- how do I feel on a vacation? rejuvenated, excited,
- How long is the vacation ? - long, short holiday

Making such a list below a head word helps us to remember words in a context, so we remember them and use them often in speaking and writing.

Therefore let us learn words to suit the context.

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A very useful podcast

IELTS Speaking Band 7 - Lexical Resource - IELTS Podcast In this tutorial you will learn: How to use complex (less common, idiomatic) vocabulary and paraphrase to achieve Band 7 in Lexical Resource in the Speaking exam This will help you in your IELTS Speaking exam because: The use of less common, idiomatic vocabulary, collocation and choosing style well....

Don't we often feel stressed that we are unable to generate ideas, hence not able to write essays/letters?

Remember, IELTS is not a general knowledge test, it is a language test - all that we need is just one or two ideas, which have to be explained well. It is not difficult to come up with an idea or two to substantiate our ideas.

For example - if the question asks us to propose a few solutions - DO NOT MERELY STATE A LIST OF SOLUTIONS; instead mention a solution - expand it by stating - what is it?
- who should implement it?
- to whom?
- when?
- how would this change the situation?

I hear candidates often say that "they spoke non stop, spoke at length" until the examiner interrupted them, yet they did not get the required band score in speaking.

It is a common misconception that speaking until the examiner interrupts is the key to success. Being relevant to the context of the question is more important than the duration.

Ask yourself;
Was my answer relevant to the question?
Did I give a reason for my opinion? (Why do I feel/think so)
Did I explain my stand?