And it is not their fault – the reason is simple.
They don’t know how to get started in IELTS and how to strategize for their required bands.IELTS is an International English Language Testing System. IELTS has three versions: IELTS Academic for students, IELTS General for Immigration and IELTS LifeSkills for Spouse Visa. IELTS has four modules:
Speaking Tips
IELTS is not a test of intelligence. The main purpose of IELTS Speaking is communication. They want to test your ability to communicate so they can band you accordingly. IELTS Examiners don’t want to test your knowledge, your intelligence, your accent, your personality or your educational level. Speak fluently without stop. Don’t worry about grammatical mistakes. Never give a short answer.
Listening Tips
Listening is the easiest part for most students. The first two parts are mainly focused on MicroListening which means they test your ability to understand specific items i.e. dates, names and spelling while the last two parts of Listening are focused more on MacroListening which means they test your ability to understand global aspect of listening, the main theme, situational chunk and what kind of information you can infer from the listening situation and how you can use it to answer the questions. The best way to improve listening is not to watch movies or listen to songs, the best way is to Listening to guided structured listening material that will improve critical listening skills in different aspects of the listening test. When the speaker says, “You have some time”, you must read the questions and make prediction on the recording information. This will greatly improve your understanding of IELTS Listening.
Reading Tips
IELTS Reading is the most difficult for most people. The best thing to do in IELTS Reading is not to read the passage first. You should read the questions first and circle the key words and find the relevant answers in the passage. Don’t try to understand the whole passage, you never can in 60 minutes. Don’t worry about vocabulary. IELTS Reading is built for keywords and synonyms. Improve your synonyms, not vocabulary.
Writing Tips:
Writing can be a challenging test. It is recommended that students should make some notes prior to writing their tasks. Most students jump into writing quickly so they end up differently. Planning in writing is crucial. Plan for 5 minutes in Task 1 and 10 Minutes in Task 2. Once you have your plan in hand, you can easily start writing and you can focus more on choice of words and sentence structure rather than coherence of ideas. Always revise your writing so you can correct any mistakes you made.