Simple, actionable, effective steps to Band 7 (or higher!)
If you have been planning to dedicate this weekend to nothing but IELTS preparation, it’s time for some inspiration to get you through it! Today’s post is going to equip you with IELTS tips from 3 high scorers who won in our IELTS results competition. Here is what they think you should do, to get a higher score in IELTS:
Abhimanyu (IELTS Band 8)
“All the advice I can give, is solve as many practice papers as you can before the test day! The mistake I made with my speaking test, was that I memorised answers (even though I know I’m not supposed to) and I spoke too quickly. Make sure you are calm and collected before the test and don’t make the same mistakes I did 🙂 I also referred to YouTube for guides on answering the test and it helped me a lot. Also download the IELTS app on your phone which gives question papers and solutions as well.”
Shivani (IELTS Band 7.5)
“All those who are preparing for IELTS exam best of luck, guys! I would say just be determined and work hard to achieve a marvelous band score. Speaking comes by speaking. So converse as much as you can with your friends, relatives and near and dear ones in the English language. Read as much as possible and pick up ideas from anything you come across. Practice makes perfect. So give your best shot, and again all the very best.”
Manpreet (IELTS Band 7.5)
“In order to do the Reading up to the mark one needs to be able to skim the whole passage in just 2-3 minutes. Skimming is often confused with looking over the whole passage logically, but that’s incorrect – skimming actually means just underlining the keywords like important dates, time, names, etc.
True/False/Not Given questions must be solved by breaking them up into parts and looking for the keywords that were observed in the given statements and then looking up for words/phrases with the same meaning in the passage, instead of those exact words as they are.
For matching headings to paragraphs the same technique is used and one should be able to analyse the statement and then correlate the main idea of a paragraph with the statement.
Furthermore, for listening in multiple choice questions the connectors like ‘but’, ‘however’, etc must be listened for carefully and the speakers’ intonation must be carefully observed.
For labelling the map in Listening you must be able to analyse the directions then instead of writing the option as it is the location’s name must be written in shorthand, to be quick.
In order to solve filling in the blanks, synonyms and keywords used in the blanks are the most important thing.
For Speaking a good hold of synonyms cam be very beneficial for gaining a good band score, and a correct response to the follow up questions is also required. Our way of doing the speaking exam also matters a lot – so be confident.
Please don’t be afraid of writing due to several myths – it can be the best and the highest scoring part.”
