IELTS Test Results competition

If you’ve been visiting IELTS-Blog.com for a while, you would have heard about the monthly IELTS results competition we have, where every winner gets a chance to explain his or her strategies and study methods.

Whether YOUR personal challenge in IELTS is writing, speaking or running out of time, try what these high scoring test takers did and see how it works!

Mohadese

Mohadese lives in Iran and speaks Farsi. She got an Overall Band 8 in IELTS, and told us this much about her exam preparation:

“I got familiar with this website while I was looking for a reliable person or website to assess my writing before the main exam. Plenty of my friends had experiences with IELTS-Blog.com, so I decided to send you what I was writing.

As getting a band score of 7 in writing has become really difficult in recent years, I was worried about it, but accurate assessment done by your website was undeniably beneficial to me.

In addition, I studied useful tips and samples on your website which were absolutely helpful.

In this way, I could improve my writing score from 6.5 to 7.

Apart from that, I should acknowledge my tutor, Mr. Hosseinzadeh, who provided me with great deal of valuable advice and helped me achieve my goal.

Thanks again to IELTS-blog for providing us with expert tutors.”

Mohammed

Mohamed got an overall IELTS Band score of 8, with a 9 in Reading and 8.5 in Listening. He has some good tips how to improve your speaking:

“I’d suggest other candidates to take up a lot of practice tests. Reading books, newspapers and business magazines helps. Engage in conversation with your friends, or at least speak to yourself in the mirror for some time to develop your speaking skills.

Use questions for speaking test sent by email from IELTS-Blog.com. Try not to repeat words such as “actually”, “like”, etc. while you speak. Be patient while speaking. Speak until you’re asked a different question.”

Jeffin

Jeffin lives in India and speaks Malayalam. He got Band 7 in Academic IELTS, and here is what he recommends that you do to increase your score:

“Practice boosts your self-confidence in all the 4 modules.

For the Speaking test, find a friend to practice speaking with IELTS sample cue cards.

For writing, be familiar with different types of questions. For example, how to approach agree/disagree questions or questions that ask to discuss both view points, and also try to read sample essays as well as graphs or charts available in IELTS-blog.com.

For reading and listening the only suggestion I can give is to practice Cambridge listening and reading samples as much as possible.

Time management is also very important for every module, practice daily with the help of a timer. Finally, dedicate at least 4 hours per day and practice for minimum one month prior to your test.”

Many thanks to our winners for sharing their tips, and congratulations once again on doing so well!

Dr. Mir Kant is an Indian citizen who works in Saudi Arabia at present. He recently took IELTS and got Band 8 overall, with 8.5 in Reading and Listening! This beautiful score secured him a winning 1st place in our monthly IELTS results competition, and in his winner’s interview Dr. Kant shared his best tips for success with all IELTS test takers out there, studying for their exams:

LISTENING

Practise listening to BBC Radio Programmes, IELTS Podcasts, Ted Talks and ask yourself questions based on IELTS Listening Practise tasks available online. Also try listening to different English accents such as British, American, Australian, etc to get familiar with all the various pronunciations.

READING

Get used to reading many different academic texts, especially newspaper editorials, for instance those from the Guardian (UK), Wall Street Journal, etc and then try to see how much you comprehend. Learn the techniques of skimming and scanning to increase your speed. Practise using mock tests.

WRITING

This is the most difficult part of the IELTS test and more time should be devoted to prepare for it. Practise Writing Task 1 and Task 2 separately, as these are different and need special skills to get a score of at least 7.

The key here is to practise writing as much as possible, download a mock answer booklet of the IELTS and write in pencil on it on the topic questions available online; use a timer to complete both the tasks in one hour only. Count the words also at the end to have an idea of your word count and writing speed.

Also, improve your vocabulary, use some less common words, work on grammar and punctuation. In the exam write in paragraphs and definitely do the Writing Task 2 first and only then Writing Task 1, as the former carries more marks. Also keep a goal of writing around 290 words for Task 2 and 180 words for Task 1.

SPEAKING

The more you speak in English, the more confident you will become. Try to speak only in English at home and at work. Speak in front of a mirror, when you practice answering IELTS Speaking questions, for instance introducing yourself, describing your job / studies, your hobbies etc. Practise with a friend as speaking partner (who may or may not have an IELTS test too). Listen to speeches from native English speakers on TV or podcasts and notice how your speaking is different from theirs, and try to correct that. Improve your pronunciation and accent, wherever possible. Confidence is the key here and try not to speak too fast or too slow.