IELTS preparation tips from winners

Today’s post is dedicated to the IELTS success of Yusuke, a Japanese cardiac surgeon. This lovely young man has been furthering his education in England for over a year now. Before coming to the UK the first score Yusuke got in IELTS was Band 7. Naturally, having spent a lot of time in an English-speaking country, he expected to get a better score in his next attempt. After getting again Band 7 in his second IELTS exam (in London), Yusuke was quite shocked to find that his English hasn’t improved as expected, although he’s been living in London for half a year already. As you would have guessed, this story has a happy ending – here is the letter Yusuke wrote to Simone a couple of months later (reprinted with permission):

“Hi Simone,

I would like to express my sincere gratitude for your help. I was able to achieve an overall score of 8.0 with no band score less than 7.0!

I am a Japanese cardiac surgeon and have been pursuing a Master’s degree in the UK since September 2014. Before coming to the UK, my score was as follows:

July 2014: Overall 7.0 (L 6.5, R 7.0, W 6.5, S 6.5)

The result of the next IELTS was
March 2015: Overall 7.0 (L 6.5, R 7.0, W 6.0, S 7.5)

I was quite shocked to find that my English had not been improved as expected although half a year had passed since I came to London. As I had intended to work as a surgeon in Australia from January 2016, I had no choice but to start tackling IELTS more seriously. The minimum requirement for the job application was an overall score of 7.0 with no band score lower than 7.0. I resumed the study for IELTS on 4th June in 2015 after finishing school exams, and had to achieve the score by the early August, when the job application would close. I was really nervous…

However, fortunately I happened to come across the book, “Target Band 7”. The book taught me very useful skills to get higher scores by making the most of my current English ability. In addition, I was able to utilize the Writing Correction Service at ielts-blog.com, which also really helped me improve my writing skills efficiently. I should have known about this book and service earlier on. As a consequence of just 1 month of preparation with these tools, my scores soared.

4th July 2015: Overall 7.5 (L 8.5, R 7.0, W 7.5, S 7.0)
11th July 2015: Overall 7.5 (L 7.5, R 6.5, W 7.5, S 7.5)
25th July 2015: Overall 8.0 (L 8.0, R 8.5, W 7.0, S 7.5)

I sat three exams within a month just in case, but in most modules I was able to achieve band scores greater than 7.0, which means that the effects of the book and correction service are fully trustable. I am very satisfied with the result and have successfully applied for the jobs in hospitals in Australia. I cannot thank Simone and the colleagues enough.

Many thanks,
Yusuke”

Congratulations to Yusuke! We’re very happy for you, and that now you can continue saving lives in Australia!

Today we are delighted to introduce to you Navneet Gridhar – a lovely young lady from India, whose mother tongue is Hindi. Navneet won in our recent IELTS results competition, scoring Band 8.5 overall with two perfect 9’s for the Listening and Reading.

In our traditional winner’s interview, Navneet shared some very useful IELTS tips that may help you improve your own exam performance and achieve better results – so read closely what she did.

Navneet said:

“I would like to thank IELTS-Blog.com for the support and resources it provides to the IELTS candidates for all four sections of the test. I prepared for four weeks and my main focus was on writing hence I practiced writing and re-read all the essays on the blog many times. This exercise really helped me understand, what an examiner expects in a band 7 or a band 8 essay. Every day I took one complete test of all four modules.

For listening the focus is utmost important and practice is the key under real examination conditions to get a good score. Even by looking at the questions one can get an idea about the kind of answer it’s going to be, like if a number, a word, two words or a combination of both would come. It is a good idea to underline key words in the questions for the better grasp of the audio.

I read lots of e-books so reading section was not very difficult for me, however, building some strategies is critical to this section too. Taking a look at the questions before hand will make you aware of the main content in the given passage and just like in the listening section underline the key words in the question so that while skimming through the text you can find the answers easily. Do not jump the gun – do not decide on the answer just by looking at the key words – sometimes the questions are tricky. Read every question carefully to find out the exact information asked.

Writing section requires basic understanding of academic writing such as grammar, vocabulary and essay structure. For writing it is important to have one’s own opinion about general topics related to politics, education, society, nature and science to name a few, so read newspapers and familiarize yourself with all these important aspects which affect us. Develop your own opinion because it is asked in the test. Read good essays to understand the structure of the essay. Write on any given topic and get it checked by an expert.

Speaking again involves individual opinion so while preparing topics for writing prepares you for the speaking as well. Read topics from the blog and practice live with the help of someone by keeping in mind the timelines. For non-native speakers it is good to converse more in English to prepare better for the test.

I think even before start preparing for the test, it is important to analyse your own strengths and weaknesses in all four modules of the test. For example, if one has a good vocabulary then it would benefit in writing and speaking section and they would not have to put too much of effort to build it up for the test. So the focus could be shifted to other parts of the test and based on that, the method of study and time allocation could be decided upon.”