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IELTS preparation tips from winners

IELTS high achievers share their secrets

Targeting IELTS Band 7.5 to 8.5? Learn from these high scorers!

If your target IELTS score is in the range of Band 7.5 to 8.5, today’s post may be especially helpful, because we have quite a line up of IELTS high scorers sharing their best tips. Nothing beats learning from people who have been where you are and achieved what you are striving for!

Let’s start with Radhika, a young lady from India who got Band 7.5 in IELTS. Radhika said:

Band 7.5 in IELTS– My suggestion would be to practise as much as you can. Once you become familiar with the accents in the Listening test then gets much easier. For Reading try to practise with a timer on. Your aim should be to finish in 50 mins rather than 60. For Speaking find a partner, and if you don’t have one then make a mirror your best friend. Focus on your pace, vocabulary, eye contact and content. Writing was a bit hard for me. I had practised all the questions from our IELTS-Blog. If possible, first write your own answer and only then read other answers online to the same questions. They will give you new viewpoints, vocabulary and a better structure for your own answer.

Next we’d like to give the stage to Saika, a mechanical engineer from Bangladesh. Saika is a native Bengali speaker and got Band 8 in IELTS. She said:

– For my success, I am grateful to IELTS-Blog.com. This website helped me reach my desired band score in academic module. I subscribed to this website and got regular email notifications regarding most recent IELTS exam questions (specially for speaking and writing tests) and these made me prepared accordingly.

I would also like to thank Mrs. Simone Braverman for her stunning tips and techniques to conquer IELTS exam. I highly recommend this as a beneficial resource to all other students around the world.

And finally, our highest scorer and the winner of IELTS Results competition, Tam Nguyen from Vietnam. Tam is a doctor, and his IELTS score is the near-perfect Band 8.5! He has advice for you on each of the four IELTS sub-tests:

Band 8.5 in IELTSSpeaking: one advantage is that most questions are predictable, so preparation is recommended. You can use free text-to-speech websites to practice your pronunciation.

Listening: the first step is trying to be able to understand much of the conversation. When you get there, it means that your listening ability is good enough. Then you can practice IELTS listening samples to hone your exam skills such as taking notes, recognizing keywords, understanding paraphrasing. For multiple choice questions, it is advisable that you take notes when you listen.

Reading: reading techniques are widely available, so it is useful to apply them. However, reading is about testing your comprehension, so a larger vocabulary will lead to a better understanding and eventually a higher score. Therefore it comes down to learning as many new words as possible, which takes time.

Writing: make sure you know how essays are marked so you invest your energy in the right places. Your writing should be checked by someone else. Samples are easy to find on the Internet, but not all samples advertised as “band 9 essays” live up to their promises, so please choose your resources carefully.

Simple, actionable, effective steps to Band 7 (or higher!)

If you have been planning to dedicate this weekend to nothing but IELTS preparation, it’s time for some inspiration to get you through it! Today’s post is going to equip you with IELTS tips from 3 high scorers who won in our IELTS results competition. Here is what they think you should do, to get a higher score in IELTS:

Abhimanyu (IELTS Band 8)

“All the advice I can give, is solve as many practice papers as you can before the test day! The mistake I made with my speaking test, was that I memorised answers (even though I know I’m not supposed to) and I spoke too quickly. Make sure you are calm and collected before the test and don’t make the same mistakes I did 🙂 I also referred to YouTube for guides on answering the test and it helped me a lot. Also download the IELTS app on your phone which gives question papers and solutions as well.”

Shivani (IELTS Band 7.5)

“All those who are preparing for IELTS exam best of luck, guys! I would say just be determined and work hard to achieve a marvelous band score. Speaking comes by speaking. So converse as much as you can with your friends, relatives and near and dear ones in the English language. Read as much as possible and pick up ideas from anything you come across. Practice makes perfect. So give your best shot, and again all the very best.”

Manpreet (IELTS Band 7.5)

“In order to do the Reading up to the mark one needs to be able to skim the whole passage in just 2-3 minutes. Skimming is often confused with looking over the whole passage logically, but that’s incorrect – skimming actually means just underlining the keywords like important dates, time, names, etc.

True/False/Not Given questions must be solved by breaking them up into parts and looking for the keywords that were observed in the given statements and then looking up for words/phrases with the same meaning in the passage, instead of those exact words as they are.

For matching headings to paragraphs the same technique is used and one should be able to analyse the statement and then correlate the main idea of a paragraph with the statement.

Furthermore, for listening in multiple choice questions the connectors like ‘but’, ‘however’, etc must be listened for carefully and the speakers’ intonation must be carefully observed.

For labelling the map in Listening you must be able to analyse the directions then instead of writing the option as it is the location’s name must be written in shorthand, to be quick.

In order to solve filling in the blanks, synonyms and keywords used in the blanks are the most important thing.

For Speaking a good hold of synonyms cam be very beneficial for gaining a good band score, and a correct response to the follow up questions is also required. Our way of doing the speaking exam also matters a lot – so be confident.

Please don’t be afraid of writing due to several myths – it can be the best and the highest scoring part.”