Tips and Tricks for Tackling IELTS in a Week
IELTS is a significant milestone that every PR applicant should achieve when applying to Canada. There are two IELTS exams offered by the IELTS authorised bodies.
- Academic IELTS
- General IELTS
When applying for PR, what you need is the General IELTS which is comparatively easier than Academic IELTS.
The IELTS exam consists of 4 subsections;
- Listening — The candidate will listen to some audio, and answer different types of questions based on this audio. This is around 20 minutes in duration.
- Reading — Comprehension based questions of different lengths. Around 60 minutes in duration.
- Speaking — A face to face speaking session with an IELTS examiner, for about about 10 minutes.
- Writing — A letter-writing and an essay to be completed in 60 minutes
A lot of people get stuck in this phase. In most of the cases that I have seen, people fail to get the required IELTS score by losing just 0.5 marks in some areas. Also, there are some instances where people need to brush up their knowledge to get through IELTS.
How can we improve the IELTS scores?
Can we do it on our own?
My spouse and I got ready for IELTS in a really short period. In the beginning, we were not aware of the online material that was available and thought of writing for the exam straight away.
We opted to sit for the computer-based IELTS exam as opposed to the written exam. This was because the computer-based exam provides the results faster, within a week. The computer-based exam was more convenient for us as well. In addition, you can simply backspace any mistakes you make, especially in the writing section, in the computer-based exam. It also provides the word count for the writing section. These may be small things but will count a lot when time is a crucial factor.
A week prior to the exam the test centre contacted us regarding the test material that we have not collected. From the test centre, we got to know about the following site which was a lifesaver for us.
ieltsonlinetests is a great site where you get tons of material to prepare for the IELTS. My spouse and my self did IELTS questions throughout the week. The best thing about the site is that it gives the marks as well so it would be easy to benchmark yourself.
Practising over and over again made us improve ourselves and the results got better and better. This led me and my spouse to archive 8.5 and 7 respectively in IELTS in the first try itself.
We would recommend this site for anyone who is planning to sit for IELTS. It would definitely come in handy, especially if you are not ready at all and want to get the best out of the time remaining.
ieltsonlinetests did not provide any hints for writing and speaking. To get an idea about those to areas we followed the YouTube links given below,
In this YouTube channel, Liz shares some great tips for all section of IELTS, but we mostly followed her tips for the speaking section. She gives good pointers on how to score well, and what we should avoid.
Writing is the segment where most of the people score the least, ourselves included. This might be because there is no one correct answer when it comes to an essay or a letter, it all depends on the examiner. E2 Learning had a lot of tips for writing which helped to get the structure of the essay and the letter. The key to scoring high in writing is to have a good structure for the essay and the letter and avoid any grammar and spelling mistakes. All this is explained in detail in this YouTube channel.
Using these links and practising on your own will definitely make you an expert in IELTS because it has a pattern that we should get used to. Once you grasp this pattern, IELTS would be a piece of cake.
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