IELTS preparation tips from winners

This post is dedicated to IELTS success of a lovely young lady from India. Palak is a 24 year-old native Hindi speaker, who took her Academic IELTS in November and got an Overall Band 7.5. When she was declared a winner of our monthly IELTS results competition, we asked how she prepared for the exam, and Palak said:

“As an advice for others who are looking forward to attempting IELTS in the near future, the idea is to practice as much as possible. I referred to ‘Target Band 7’ book to achieve the best possible. The book has very good content and definitely helped me a lot.

For speaking and writing the idea is to read through various examples and essays/questions mentioned in the book. The content in the book is more than enough for one to prepare before finally taking IELTS.

For reading, one should read newspapers/novels of their interest. While practicing try and time yourself and complete the questions in time with maximum accuracy.

For listening, I would suggest you to do as many practice tests as possible, because certain tricks of catching the answers will only come with adequate practice.

Apart from this, IELTS-Blog.com is the one platform I used to be up to date with the latest questions being asked! Which definitely served me well in preparing for what could be in my kitty too, since certain questions and patterns are bound to repeat.

I would like to thank IELTS-Blog.com for helping me achieve a decent score, which will definitely help in my further career growth.”

Today we are delighted to introduce to you Ronik – a winner of our monthly IELTS results competition, a successful Canada visa applicant and the vice President of “The Wishing Factory” (a non-profit for kids with Thalassemia). When we asked Ronik what his advice would be to test takers aiming for a high IELTS score, he said:

“The most fascinating thing about a language is that it makes its own way. The need is to accept it with courage and trust. Majority of the people I have known are facing difficulties expressing themselves in English are people who never try to do so in their routine life, fearing they will end up being a joke in front of others. But, the bottom line remains, you never make it until you start.

To improve the score in Reading, I would suggest everyone to start reading books of their interest or at least the daily newspaper so that they can understand what the clear meaning of a text is. Many people lose their marks when it comes to question type ‘Yes/No/Na’ or ‘True/False/Not Given’. For them, it is very important to understand whether or not the meaning of the statement asked is clearly mentioned or implied in the text. Also, daily reading helps even to grasp the underlying meaning faster than others. For a person with a habit of daily reading, time never bothers and they never ends up hastening themselves to finish up the task.

When it comes to Listening, watching English movies and/or series helps a lot. But do watch them with subtitles. This helps to improve the ability to grasp the accent even without actually trying. This is an example how you can learn and be entertained at the same time. Another thing a person needs to be confident about is their spelling, to avoid losing marks because of spelling errors (I remember how confused I was about the spelling of a simple routine word such as ‘mirror’).

In case of Writing, one can start by expressing himself through writing a dairy or reviews related to objects of their field of interest. Let us just say, I like tennis a lot and so, I started writing about famous tennis players and how they inspire me through their life stories. In a way, a person begins to think about something, thus helping to brainstorm their idea more effectively and in a timely manner. This practice, even if done every other day, helps a lot! One can then gradually increase the number of words they use in a piece of daily writing.

Speaking is an art to begin with. One must not worry about how their language might be received by the audience. The factors that give you extra points here are your confidence while conveying your thoughts and your facial expressions / body language (because they show whether a person can to relate to what they are saying). “