IELTS preparation tips from winners

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.”

Some people think that personal trial and error is the best way to learn – but we at IELTS-Blog.com are great believers in learning from other people’s experiences.

Everyone, meet Leonardo and Shahrzad. Leonardo lives in Italy and speaks Italian, Shahrzad lives in Iran and speaks Farsi, and it it weren’t for IELTS, their names would probably never appear in the same article. But they had to take IELTS and they did really well, scoring Band 7.5! We are very lucky to be able to share their best tips with you today:

Leonardo said,

“First, try to do some full IELTS tests to see which of your skills are better and which are worse. Then work on your weaknesses to try and turn them into your strengths by doing Writing, Speaking, Listening or Reading tests separately, as mini-tests. Have fun and don’t forget to enlarge your vocabulary.”

Shahrzad said,

“It is necessary to take Reading and Listening tests every day to boost your knowledge in these fields and also learn to manage your time in your exam.

Another useful tip would be writing essays, as many as possible, since the more you write, the more you hone your writing skills. Also try to use a wide variety of sentence structures because it helps you raise your writing score above Band 6.5.

Finally, for Speaking use IELTS-blog’s latest speaking questions that they share kindly in their emails.

Last but not least, I would like to thank my kind-hearted teacher, Ms. Badiozaman, who helped me a lot to succeed. Without her dedication, determination, and discipline I wouldn’t have achieved this score. I wish all IELTS candidates to get their desired score as soon as possible.”