Major Points & Hints to Know Before the IELTS Exam
MAIN Topics You Have to Pay attention for to Get High Score in
MAIN Topics You Have to Pay attention for to Get High Score in
IELTS Exam
FOLLOW A CONSISTENT STUDY PLAN
The secret of success is to work towards your goal slowly, steadily and regularly
Set aside the maximum number of hours you can study each day to English for all four branches
. Do not concentrate only on your weakest areas. Be regular in your practice, and give yourself
a rest between tasks.
Take at least one day out of your week to rest and forget the test completely.
Take every opportunity to listen to English whenever and wherever you can. Watch TV programmes
and movies, listen to radio programmes and English language tapes - even songs in English on tape.
Have as many conversations with native English speakers as you can, and practise in English as often
as possible with your non-native English-speaking friends.
Try to read articles in English at least once every day. You should always be in the process of reading
a book in English - a page or two each night before you sleep is an excellent plan. Read newspapers,
magazines, and novels written for your English level (available from good language bookshops).
Academic Module candidates should obtain academic articles, if possible. Always carry English
texts with you, so you can read when you have spare time that would otherwise be wasted.
Do not worry about understanding each word. Read some articles in detail and some for speed.
ENHANCE THE PERSONAL SPEED
The official IELTS Band Scores you receive are extremely accurate, since each test is trialed
extensively to achieve standardized scores for candidates at all English levels. Nonetheless, there
are certainly more things you could do, before and on the day of the exam, to help maximize the use of your time and give yourself the best chance of success.
In the IELTS test, time is your enemy. Candidates who have taken the test and did not perform as
well as they had hoped often complain that they were unable to give all the answers in the Listening
Test because the tape was too fast, and that they ran out of time in the Reading Test.
To begin with, do not worry if you do not finish the tests. Remember, the test is designed to measure
candidates over a range of scores from 0 to 9 (0 indicates the test was not attempted). Candidates
whose English is near perfect can expect to score 9, but even native English-speaking people would
be unlikely to complete every Listening Test answer perfectly or finish the Reading Test a long time
before the examination ends. Remember, the test is meant to be challenging.
The IELTS test measures many aspects of your English ability including the speed at which you
listen, read, write, speak, and think in English. Your personal speed is not something which changes
a great deal from day to day, but does change considerably over a longer period of time, as a direct
result of practice in working with the English language.
Your personal speed and ability in the 5 areas previously mentioned is pretty well fixed at any given
time. An expert racing car driver will:
(before the race) ... spend a great deal of time practising at the wheel before race day
... visit the track so that he or she knows where to go and what to expect
... get enough sleep before the day of the big race
... eat a good breakfast on race day morning;
(during the race) ... check his or her watch constantly to monitor the car's progress
... keep moving along the track and not get stuck on a bad corner
... breathe long and deeply to relax and keep the oxygen going to the brain
... drink water (but not too much!) when the car is at the pit-stop.
The Listening, Reading, and Writing Tests are given in that order, and are usually held on a single
morning. The combined length of those three tests is 2 hours and 30 minutes. (The Speaking Test
is conducted at an appointed time in the afternoon.) Only one short break is given between the
Reading and Writing Tests, so you need to be at your best for a long period of time, which is why
you must sleep and eat well before the test. The hints and guidelines in this book should help you
achieve your "maximum speed". The more effort you put in, the faster your personal speed will be
on the day
INCREASE YOUR SENTENCE READING SPEED
The faster and more accurately you read, the more questions you will be able to answer. In all the
tests, the instructions, the example, and the questions themselves need to be read quickly, and must
be well understood in order for you to have more time to find the answers. It pays to increase your
overall reading speed. To increase your reading speed, you must learn to read in groups of words that form logical units
of thought within sentences. Look at the following sentence:
Britain has been a popular choice for thousands of international students over many years.
Notice how you can think of the sentence as being made up of 3 main parts:
1. Britain has been a popular choice (What and where?)
2. ... for thousands of international students (Who for?)
3. ... over many years. (When?)
Note also, that in this case (and many others) all the phrases answer wh/how questions. It may be
helpful at first to think of why/how questions when trying to read in phrases.
If you read each word in a sentence one at a time, you will read very slowly and most likely
misunderstand the meaning of much of what you read. So read your sentences in phrases by
considering all the words of a phrase as a single unit.
Notice how much quicker it is to read the sentence, and how the meaning of what you say is more
clear. Practice reading in phrases everyday. Look ahead on the page as you read, and always aim
to find logical places in the sentences where phrases begin and end. Note also that there is often more
than one solution as to where the logical breaks between phrases occur within sentences.
Read faster by reading words in groups that form logical units of thought
SUPERSIZE YOUR MEMORY
The main point for passing the IELTS test is to memorize all the vocabularies you had learnt and to memorize also the speech inside the voice conversation that you will lessen during the exam.
for the Reading Test, it pays to memorize as much as you can of what you have just read, but at least
the words could be read again. Anyway, in the Listening Test you can not go back, and the tape is only played once. If the answer comes before the keyword/phrase, your memory of what you have just
heard is even more vital. Nevertheless, the answer usually follows the keywords/phrases that
you hear, and is close in time to the main keyword/phrase you are listening for.
