Crack the IELTS: Insider Tips, Strategies, and Guidance for Your Success.

In this modern time, I believe there is not a single person who does not want to migrate to another country. Guys like me specifically Bangladeshi students and even professional workers want to leave the country for prosperity and settle their life over there. IELTS is known to be the best option for doing that because all of the universities need some sort of English proficiency demonstration to get enrolled in it. We all know that there are 4 modules which are-

1. Listening.
2. Reading.
3. Writing.
4. Speaking.

More tips:

IELTS Listening.

IELTS Reading.

IELTS Writing.

IELTS Speaking.

First and foremost, let me me talk about the Listening section. You listen to recordings and there is going to be numerous question categories where you have to answer those given questions whereas we ought to see couple of dialogues and monologues. Pay attention to details, they might throw tricky stuff in your way.

Second of all, the Reading section – think of it as your playbook. Let me break it quite nicely for you; you got to read passages and depict your understanding of those questionaries by answering questions. It’s not just about words, it’s about getting the main ideas and finish it. I can not but help to utter that it is actually a vocabulary test.

Thirdly, let us move onto Writing. This is where you showcase your skills by understanding the topic and deliberate your response by adding various type of grammar and sentence making alongside coherencing your whole writing, for example, write essays and responses, stick to the topic, organize your thoughts, and use good grammar and vocabs; basically, it’s like scoring a goal – you want to make sure your shot hits the mark.

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Last but not least, Speaking. Here, you shine like a team captain during the post-game interview. As a matter of fact, its like having a conversation with an examiner about various topics. Confidence and fluency are key. Express yourself clearly and naturally.

Each section has its own time limits and scoring criteria, just like each quarter of the game. Understanding these is crucial.

Henceforth, just like a seasoned athlete studies the game before hitting the field, make sure you know the IELTS exam inside and out. And remember, developing your vocabulary is key to doing better in the IELTS. It helps make your answers more meaningful.

Now, I will demonstrate the whole preparation and strategies and give some tipes whre its relevant. No further ado, let us begin.

Therefore, I will give you Target- Band 7.5 or 8

Preparation time – 1 month

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What is IELTS?

IELTS test format.

About the exam: IELTS (International English Language Testing System), is a test designed to understand the level of proficiency in English of non-native English speakers. There are two forms of this test –

1. General Training
2. Academic

Level of difficulty: Perhaps, this may be the first thing on your mind before giving this exam. To be honest, the only thing you should worry about is ‘speaking’ (cause that you may not be able to improve over 2 weeks vastly). For the rest, take a chill pill, watch some YouTube videos, grab your materials and start practicing. Scoring 7+ in each section (LRW) is very easy. Although, you have to you practice daily and most importantly, efficiently how much bad is your English is. Motivate yourself to the fullest.

Open up those Cambridge text books. Give any test, without worrying about the final score. No matter how much you would have looked at the ‘section format’ and other stuff, get a real test experience so that this answer (and a few others on here) makes more sense. Again, even if you score a 2 or 3 – does not matter. Plenty of time to improve upon that. Right now, it’s just to get a feel of the paper and identify the section where you felt the most comfortable (for me, it was writing).

Schedule:

A. Day 1 – Day 10: Practice intensely from Cambridge IELRS book and taking an online test between 9 am – 12 pm (as these were the test timings I had mentioned for my official exam). The idea was to get into the practice of sitting 3 hours straight while looking at a monitor. My focus was mostly on the reading and listening sections. In addition, I maintained a schedule whereas I would note down all the points where I made a mistake because I heard a great guy once said, “Practice does not always make you perfect, its actually failure”. This was my mantra. I found that initially, the mistakes would be in (e.g. True, False, and Not Given) in reading passages or most unpredictable part section-2 precisely MCQs in listening). Noted everything down. What questions? Why? And how could I improve? During the rest of the day, I tried to find brief periods where I would go back to correct my mistakes. Took help from a variety of YT videos, especially the ones found on https://ieltsliz.com/. This is by far the most comprehensive IELTS study material you’ll find on the internet. Though I came across with many YouTube channels for my convenience in my preparation, its hour-long discussions on the Reading and Writing sections are very helpful and its worth checking out.

B. Day 11 – Day 20: Process remained the same, 9-12 am practice test – detailed analysis afterwards. Also, I started to focus a little more on the writing part. If you are not in the habit of writing essays or articles too often, this section may seem a little daunting. But eventually, I found, that around 15-20% of the passage you had to write was in a way, repetitive. Starting from paraphrasing the intro to conclusion, furthermore usage of vocabs, connective words, taking keywords by putting an underline a circle it might help. I went through each type of essay in parts 1 and 2 and made a generalized format for each and seek the help of the secret website call “Google Chrome”. Lol, I am just kidding.

Having a predefined structure in my head helped me to jumpstart my essay and kept my thoughts organized but the crucial aspect would be to read less and write more for me. Especially, if you don’t write that often like atleast one essay each from parts 1 and 2 every day. Afterwards, I used to copy my answers and paste them into a doc file and mark all my spelling and grammatical errors. It made me cognizant of certain words and sentence formations to avoid during the exam. IMO, it’s better to be conservative in your approach and avoid losing marks because of using expansive words you’re not sure about or complex sentences you don’t have much practice writing (something in retrospect I believe was also the reason for my average score in this section. Perhaps, I was ‘too’ conservative in my approach, and as someone who was aiming for an 8 in this section, 7 tbh was quite a surprise).

C. Day 20 – Day 30: The final push. Till then, I had given 15-30 mock tests and done a truckload of analyzing. Now, the focus was more on efficiency. Continued with the daily full-length mock tests but on top of that, attempted random section-wise tests on the side. Also, I kept reminding myself of the approach I’ll take for a particular type of question from time to time. e.g. Writing task – Part 2 – Opinion based question – Ok, paraphrase the question which state the given opinion. Subsequently, connectors to be used, furthermore, on the other hand, etc, what do I have to write in Para 1 and write a conclusion. Kept visualizing.

Key tips for the Listening, Writing, and Reading sections –

Listening:

Practice using a pair of earphones and DO NOT repeat the recording WHILE giving the test, moreover, try to simulate the real experience at your home as much as possible, perhaps one can even try to listen to the recordings at a lower volume to improve their auditory senses. Its helpful believe me.

We all ought to remember, a part of the answer would be given at the start of the sentence, which may seem like the answer but won’t be THE actual answer. Got it? Thus, you gotta try listening to the whole sentence before jotting something down and also, if you are confused between two options to a particular question and I do not know but I’ve always found that the thing mentioned in the later half is usually the correct one (don’t quote me on this though).

Subsequently, always keep in mind the next question and NEVER ponder over the previous question, consequently, it will create a snowball effect that would make it tough to catch up. If you missed a question, leave it. Focus on the next.

Reading:

Don’t match keywords from the question with what is given in the passage. IELTS will be a little less straightforward than that.

Use the highlighter which will help you not to get lost while reading the passage and later on while reviewing your answers.

Copy and paste the answers from the passage. This is to avoid writing the wrong spelling for an answer and loose marks.

Writing:

We have to remember Part 2 is more important than Part 1 (weightage-wise).

Write more and read less.

Tips from the exam center:

Bathroom breaks will be provided during the exam (just not in the last 10 minutes of each section).

2 sheets will be provided one after the other, containing your credentials. Only this can be used as a rough sheet. No additional sheet will be provided.

No need to carry water. There will be a small bottle kept on your desk.

Scan the question panel after you finish the reading and listening sections. Make sure you attempted all the questions.

Make sure you are not distracted by the sound of clicking and typing around you.

Well, this is the most I can think of to write. Please let me know if there is something else you would like me to discuss, moreover, I’ll try writing down my ‘speaking test’ experience in some other question.

Thanks for reading and ALL THE BEST!!!

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