IELTS preparation tips from winners

Hi everyone, this is Simone and here is the inspiring success story I am excited to share with you today. The story is about a person who prepared for IELTS while working full time, on his own, and in just one month developed and polished his skills enough to get top scores in Listening and Reading.

Divyansh Sharma lives in India and speaks Hindi. Earlier this year he took the IELTS test and got an Overall Band 8 with two straight 9’s for Listening and Reading. This amazing score secured him the first place in our monthly IELTS Results Competition, and in his winner’s interview he revealed what he attributes his success to. Here is how his journey to Band 8 started, in his own words:

“I followed your High Scorer’s Choice Series for my preparation. In one month, I managed to build up my level as the tests prepared my brain to handle difficult questions in the reading and listening section.

I mostly practiced at home alongside my 9 to 5 job. After two weeks, I was confident in my aptitude and decided to register for my exam.

My tips for achieving a high score in IELTS would be to understand the question and the text rather than relying on tips and tricks on YouTube. Many of the videos offer false guidance and incorrect methods towards the question.

I also advise test takers to follow the news for idea generation. You could read Business Insider and Fox News for your daily digest.”

Truly proud of your success, Divyansh Sharma, well done on that Overall Band 8!

We are so very proud to share with you today the success story of Chloe, our VIP Club member from Taiwan. Chloe joined us a few weeks ago and since then has been using the resources available to VIP members – the model answers that we send out every day, IELTS Online Prep platform and writing correction service.

Chloe did amazingly well in her IELTS exam with an Overall Band 8 and two 9’s for Listening and Reading. When she reached out to us, eager to share some killer prep advice, we knew it’d be gold for anyone reading this blog. As a winner of our IELTS Results Competition, Chloe wanted to pay it forward and help fellow test-takers ace the IELTS challenge. Here are her top tips, straight from her own IELTS prep journey:

Chloe said, “I think the most important thing is to do mock exams as much as possible 🙂 I practiced the ones on your website and I went from I believe 7 to 9 in listening and reading.

For listening, I suggest listening to the recording at a normal speed first and then reading the transcript, then listening to the recording again at a slower speed again. Being consistent is the most important. What I did is, after finishing the listening test, I would re-listen to it again at least 2-3 times, to get more familiar with different contexts. For example, If I got 2 questions wrong in Section 2, then I would record the playback on my phone and slow it down to around 0.8x speed whilst reading the dialogue’s transcript and make sure I heard every word clearly. Then I would listen to the listening section again to see if I still misheard anything.

Another thing I did to help myself was actually redo past mock exam papers! If I did a mock test around 1-2 weeks ago, I would redo it again to make sure I fully understood the questions being asked, and to see if I would make new mistakes or make the same old ones.”

Congratulations to Chloe Cheng on achieving an Overall IELTS Band score of 8.0!