The happy IELTS test taker this post is about, Shreyas, is a young man from India. He got an Overall IELTS Band Score of 8, with a perfect 9 in Listening. This beautiful score made him a winner of our IELTS results competition in October, and in his winner’s interview Shreyas wanted to share the following tips that can help you, too, increase your IELTS score.
“First of all let me clear the notion that IELTS is tough. It is a really simple and systematic test which can be cracked easily with good preparation. It suffices to say that by working on the weaker areas, a candidate can easily score a band of 6.5. The trickier part is to reach Band 8 and above. For this, a candidate needs to work on listening and reading sections, where the chances of scoring a 9 are very high.
LISTENING
Listening skills can be acquired only by practice. Listening to variety of NEWS channels from across the globe will greatly help. Avoid watching movies with subtitles. Have a piece of paper and pencil and write down unfamiliar words that you hear. This will help not only for listening, but also in the writing section where grammar is important and spelling errors will cost marks. Try variety of accents and watch popular shows where there are 3 or more speakers to improve on your listening skills.
WRITING
This section requires a bit of hard work, but isn’t tough to crack. Working on vocabulary, lexical resources and spelling will prep you up. Also browsing through some important topics online or reading the local English newspaper will help you a lot in the exam. Also, I would suggest to practice by writing long essays by referring the previous question papers and getting them corrected by a professional trainer or someone who is qualified.
SPEAKING
Speaking skills can be acquired only by practice. There are no shortcuts here. Try speaking aloud in front of a mirror. I would suggest you to record your voice and hear the recording to make note of how you speak. Continue till you feel confident about yourself and are able to speak confidently on any topic. During the last few trials, set up a timer and choose a random topic or a topic from a previous paper, and check for grammatical errors, accent, voice modulations and punctuation. This should suffice.
READING
This skill can be easily acquired if you show acumen towards writing. Browsing newspapers will help a lot. Set up a timer and work on previous papers. This should prep you up so that a band score of 8 is within your reach.
In the end I would like to stress the fact that IELTS can be easy and fun! Good preparation will see you through the test and anyone can ace the exam without any hassles. Just work on the basics and attempt as many papers as possible. BEST OF LUCK!”
