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All About IELTS

All there is to know about the IELTS test

An IELTS Giveaway – Get a Free IELTS Book

24 December Update: This giveaway is now closed.

Have you heard the word “giveaway” before? If you haven’t, it means that you get a chance to win some free stuff. With the holidays right around the corner I’ve been preparing some gifts for my loyal readers.

Here is what I came up with: this week 2 of you will win an IELTS book, shipped to your door, for free (no matter where you are in the world). The books you’ll win are two of my best-sellers, that will make your exam preparation SO much easier:

1. “Ace the IELTS” for General Training moduleAce the IELTS - How To Maximize Your IELTS score

Here’s a happy customer:

“I teach IELTS and own over ten IELTS books. This is one of my favourites because the author has delivered excellent information in a short, user-friendly book.

Importantly, it is written in plain English so it is easy to understand. It focusses on plenty of useful tips and tricks which can be of great benefit for anyone who is going to take the IELTS test.
D. Bottaro”.

2. “Target Band 7” for Academic Module of IELTS.Target Band 7 - How To Maximize Your IELTS score

People on Amazon.com say: “Its a very good book. I had very short time to prepare for IELTS, this book has so useful tips which helped me a lot to prepare in just 15 days.

Listening and reading sections have some useful tips which prepares you for the real exam and tells you how to manage the time as well. I improved my writing skills too.

Overall an excellent book, just go for it!
Amarvir Khangura.”

Here’s how to enter this giveaway

Please answer 3 simple questions:

1. What is your biggest problem in the IELTS preparation?

2. Why do you need to take the IELTS test?

3. What Band Score do you need to get and in what module (Academic / General)?

You can answer by

a) leaving a comment on this blog post (click here and scroll down to comments link),
b) using this contact form (click here) or
c) sending me an email to simone[at]ielts-blog.com.

Deadline: this giveaway will close on December 24, in exactly 3 days.

All the emails of people who answered the 3 questions above will be included in the lottery. We will randomly pick the 2 lucky winners. They will be notified via email and their names will be published on December 25th. Every winner will get to choose which book he / she would like to get, and once they provide a postal address, the books will be shipped immediately.

Looking forward to reading your answers!

Disappointed with your IELTS Result?

If you are disappointed with your IELTS result, you have 2 options:

1. Take the IELTS test again or
2. Ask for re-marking.

Many people were asking me about option # 2 and here is an explanation of what’s involved.

If you believe that you deserve a better score than you were awarded, you can ask for re-marking of your results. You can ask to re-mark the whole test or any part of it (Listening, Reading, Writing, or Speaking). Of course there is a fee, which is roughly a half of the normal IELTS test fee. If your result is changed to a higher score, the fee is refunded.

If you decided to go for remarking, here is what you need to do. Within 6 weeks of your test date, get a form called “IELTS Enquiry on Results Form” from your test center, fill in your name, address, the tests you want to have remarked, sign and date it. Pay the fee and expect your answer back within 6 weeks from the day they receive it at Cambridge.

Here is what happens next: your test paper, your writing or your tape recorded during the Speaking test will be re-marked by a different examiner – not the one in your local test center, but by a trained clerical marker (for Reading and Listening answers) or a Cambridge ESOL-appointed Examiner, employed by the British Council or IDP.

In my opinion, unless you are very sure they’ve misread your answers, in the Reading and Listening there isn’t much of a chance to get a higher score. On the other hand, in the Writing and Speaking your chances are much better, because the score does depend on who marks the work, to some extent.

Let me tell you a true story of A from Romania. She took the IELTS test and was very confident and positive about her results, however… the results arrived and she got only 6.5 in Speaking. A immediately appealed, because she was confident that she deserved more (and her scores in the other sections were also much higher, Bands 8 – 7.5).

Later on she got really pessimistic, after talking to people who assured her that IELTS folks will never give her a higher score because of some kind of conspiracy, that by giving her a higher score, IELTS organization will admit to their guilt and they are never going to do that.

Two month later, a very happy A wrote me a letter about her score being raised from 6.5 to 7 and her money was refunded. Apparently the examiner at Cambridge disagreed with the local Romanian examiner and thought A was a Band 7 candidate.