This is the rest of Zulquar’s IELTS tips; implementing these techniques helped him achieve overall band score of 8.0 – and he didn’t have any help. Great job, Zulquar!
Reading test
This is a bit too technical area that requires time management and lots of practice. This is all about reading comprehension so if you are an avid reader unlike me, it will pay off well.
For me is was a different case, so I had to get unconventional and so I was reading a lot of newspaper columns and translating it to my native language Hindi, word by word. This helped me to build the basics of comprehension and then I practiced the official IELTS materials given to me while registering to the exam. That helped me to get an idea of the time management that needed to done and helped me identify the one great loophole in the question set, that is the questions themselves.
Writing test
This is a portion where you are going to need an evaluator. So I would recommend looking for good study materials and teachers who understand the IELTS pattern. I prepared just by writing short essays and practicing graphs and tables and I still think that I could have done better at it.
Speaking test
Speaking will come easy if one can listen well. I tried the philosophy of staying confident at my word stock. I did a lot of work on accent as in India English is spoken too coarse to be understood.
I was literally speaking to myself every time I was alone. It became a habit of mine and it still is. I must say I graduated from Indian accent to others quite easy as I was able to modulate my mouth and tongue.
I then had to move from laymen speaker to a well spoken person so I started recording myself on my computer and listening to what I sounded like and what I was speaking I was able to see myself from the evaluators point of view. I targeted being more clear, topical and calm while speaking and doing all this I also tried to sound as natural as I could.
