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Recent IELTS exams

Real students tell about their recent IELTS exams: IELTS questions, topics, tasks, answers.

Update from General IELTS exam, Ireland

This is what our friend T from Ireland remembers about his IELTS exam – thanks, T!
IELTS test in Ireland
Listening

The listening test was not difficult as I thought it would be. There were four sections:
1) The first was regarding a filling a form.
2) Section two was to fill a map.
3) Third was a conversation
4) The final section was a speech given in a university.

Reading

The reading paper was a bit different from what I expected.
1) The first section was to write true or false.
2) The second section was regarding a description of five buildings The task was to match a sentence with a passage.
3) Third was to write answers
4) The fourth, a bit difficult, was regarding New Zealand’s natural power resources. The questions were bases on selecting the correct answer, matching the names of persons relating to the statements from the passages. It was not too difficult but you had to know the passage very well to answers the questions.

Writing

Task 1 (Letter)
Write a complaint letter about an incident that happened in the airport.

Task 2 (Essay)
The essay was regarding the old people, what is the better way for old people to live, with their family or separately or with the same old aged people.

The IELTS-blog helped me a lot with my writing. The sample essays gave me a good idea how to build up my ideas. As I mentioned before I am not good in my writing. The only problem was how to plan out the structure. But after I read what other people had written, it helped to me to think and to write.

Update from an Academic IELTS exam, France

Special thanks to our French friend G. who told us what his Academic exam was like:

IELTS test in France

Listening test

Section 1. A real-estate information form to fill (with phone numbers and name spelling).
Section 2. Sport venue locations to find on a map and a table completion task on them.
Section 3. A filling-in-the-gaps exercise about requirements for a master degree for South-American students (quite hard as they were speaking fast).

Reading test

Passage 1. Cow manure-made water filters (I found the text: click here to read), task type: a gap-fills exercise.
Passage 2. About Pioneer 10 & 11 satellites going astray, task type: headings matching.
Passage 3. Prehistoric research struggles of the scientists in Australia, task type: multiple choice questions.

Writing test

Writing Task 1 (a report)

We were given a table showing visits to London in 1996 and 2001 by UK-residents and overseas visitors. Visitors were sorted by categories (business, family, holidays, other).

Writing Task 2 (an essay)

Machines are becoming very sophisticated and workers are benefiting from that. Discuss to what extent advantages of machines outweigh the disadvantages.

Speaking test

Interview

Discussion of bicycle.

Cue Card

Talk about a good advice you were once given.

Discussion

How to give advice to others and in particular to children and teenagers.