IELTS preparation tips from winners

It’s always useful to be able to learn from the experience of others who’ve been where you want to be, and done what you want to do. So, if your goal is an IELTS score of 7.5 or higher, this is your chance to get great tips from two such IELTS candidates. They won in our monthly IELTS results competition and when we interviewed them about their success, they shared some interesting and useful advice.

Mino Bartolini is a 31 year-old Italian, who got Band 7.5 in Academic IELTS (with 8.5 in Reading), in order to study in a university abroad. Mino said:

“From my personal experience, I’d recommend to keep on studying regularly and never give up. I found it very useful to dedicate 4 hours a day to the study of English, with a focus particularly on the IELTS test structure.

Needless to say, you may know perfectly well the English language, but you need to know the structure of the IELTS test on the day of the exam. For doing so, I bought two books, with a lot of exercises, tailored for the IELTS test: the first one to broaden my vocabulary and the second one to refresh my knowledge of the grammar rules.

After three months the hard work paid off because I scored a remarkable 7.5 overall, which made me feel so proud and also allowed me to receive an unconditional offer from the University I had chosen. I hope that my experience could be useful and I wish the best of luck to everyone who is planning to sit the IELTS test.”

Our other winner, Sachin Miskin, is 36 years old and lives in India. He got Band 8 in General Training IELTS with 8.5 in Reading and Listening. Sachin said:

“Some tips now that I have cracked both IELTS and PTE-A:

1. Commitment towards studies: ensure you dedicate 2 to 3 hours daily to theory and practice.

2. The format of the exam should be memorized so well that you should know what type of question to expect next.

3. Always time yourself during practice, it helps a lot.

4. For the IELTS Speaking, try to neutralize your accent and use varied vocabulary. Also, note that Speaking doesn’t mean blabbering, you should have ideas and thoughts to talk about.

5. In the Listening section guess the words even before you hear the speech. If your English is good, you will more or less figure out the missing words more easily.

6. For the Writing section, ensure the complex and compound complex sentences are used often with appropriate words, phrases and grammar.”

Today we are delighted to introduce to you one of our IELTS Results competition winners from February, because these are the exact people to learn from – they obviously did something right! Nahid is a lovely lady from Iran, her first language is Farsi. As a child she lived in England, which would explain her perfect 9 in Speaking. Her overall IELTS score was Band 8, and when we asked how she got that, Nahid said it was “50% knowledge and 50% test-taking skills”.

So what exactly are these test taking skills, and how can they help you do better in IELTS?

Nahid recommends the following:

“1. Interact with native speakers as much as possible and listen to how they talk and the way they use words and phrases.

2. Listen carefully and write down new words you hear (ie. in the news) and check the pronunciation and articulation. Use them for your Speaking and Writing tests.

3. Expand your vocabulary as much as you can. Don’t rely on simple and basic words. Use complex words and phrases especially in your Speaking test.

4. Take the hardest tests you can find online or in books; it’ll make any questions you encounter in the real test seem easy.

5. Familiarize yourself with different accents, especially British, American and Australian. My speaking examiner had an Australian accent and as I was familiar with the accent from childhood it didn’t stop me from getting a 9 in Speaking.

6. Don’t let the blank expression of the examiner’s face fool you, just be sure to do your best.

7. Everybody knows their weaknesses. I worked on my strengths, knowing I had a better chance in increasing my score in the fields I was already good at. There’s usually not that much time to work on core issues.

8. Take advantage of YouTube videos. There are videos for every aspect of the exam. Many of them have good information. If they sound too easy, move on to the harder ones.

9. I used IELTS-Blog.com a lot! I read other people’s tips, the exam questions and all tips and tricks in general. I can say it all helped me significantly.

10. Learning is a life-long process. I’m even more eager to expand my knowledge in English, having already taken the exam.

11. Learn as much as you can by listening and reading about subjects you enjoy. It’ll make everything so much more fun and pleasurable.

I hope everybody does their best in the exam. It’s 50% knowledge and 50% test-taking skills!

Good luck to all my dear friends.”