IELTS preparation tips from winners

People are often pressed for time preparing for their IELTS tests. Here is one reason why: test takers find out they have a date by which they must get their target IELTS score. The date may be set by a government agency, a university where they would like to study or a potential employer. Then people are starting their IELTS preparation, and they often have 2-3 weeks to get their English and IELTS skills to the necessary level. This order of events is less than ideal, because the right way is working on your IELTS skills first, until you are reliably getting your target score at home in mock tests, and then booking a date for your test, to ensure you don’t take it more than once.

Reza, a test taker from Iran who got a Band 8 Overall score in IELTS, approached his exam the right way – he made sure he is able to get his target score in a mock test at home first, and then took the real test. He needed Band 7 in writing, and in order to get there he worked hard, wrote and submitted more than 30 essays to our writing correction service.

He followed our teachers’ suggestions and improved, and when he started getting Band 7 for his Writing Tasks 1 and 2, Reza knew he was ready. In the real test his Writing score was Band 7, and his Overall score – Band 8.

As a winner of our March round of IELTS Results Competition, Reza shared some advice that will help you prepare for IELTS the right way:

“Using IELTS-Blog.com writing correction service is highly recommended. It provides practical feedback which can effectively increase test takers’ scores. Furthermore, I ask everyone to read the past IELTS questions they publish on the website. It helps you get familiar with different topics that come up in Writing and Speaking.

As for the Listening and Reading – I did a test every day. It was very helpful in improving my concentration, pace and confidence. Cambridge IELTS books and many online sources can be used for these parts.

Thank you to IELTS-Blog.com for your incredible help and support. We all owe you big time.”

Congratulations to Reza Zaeri on achieving an Overall IELTS Band score of 8.0!

When people discuss ways to do well in IELTS, you often hear about techniques that may help, exercises that develop certain skills, etc. However, when when we asked Shiva, a native Nepali speaker who got an Overall Band 7.5 in IELTS with an amazing 8.5 in Speaking, he said there was one other, simple but very important, ingredient to his success. Can you guess what it is?

Let’s hear it from Shiva:

“First of all, I’d like to wholeheartedly thank you for giving me an opportunity to share my thoughts on your valuable platform. Needless to say, IELTS-Blog.com was a must-go site for me to improve and accelerate my language skills. On top of that, I used to practise the questions from across the world you put on the website. Writing essays and getting them corrected by your experts was a really helpful tool for improving my grammar.

I feel it is important to advise all the test takers to have faith in themselves and believe that they definitely know the language. Remember that the way you present it might make it look different. In your speaking test, just think of the leaders of non-English speaking nations who have to speak in International Assemblies, even if they don’t know English well. I used to think in my speaking test of the Prime Minister of Nepal whose English is poorer than mine, but who still delivered speeches in front of global leaders and media because he knows he has to speak! So, if your prime minister doesn’t lose confidence despite not knowing English well, why should you? Don’t worry about your accents and mistakes, but speak confidently on the speaking test.”