Guide to studying for IELTS
Many of us suffer from extreme anxiety when it comes to taking the IELTS test. For many beginners from non-English speaking countries, IELTS gives them nightmares, take away their hope and encourage them…to give up. But according to my experience with IELTS, I think the source of their fear is because they know too much.
It’s like when there’s a spider next to you. At first, you don’t feel scared at all, because you didn’t know it is sitting next to you. But then you instantly run out of the room when it enters your view. The same thing happens with IELTS takers, they know too much about the IELTS test, how people failed to get the score that they want or how they studied for 14 hours per day but still come up short.
To get started with IELTS you must first calm yourself, pull yourself together and keep 1 simple idea in mind: “IELTS is easy”.
Lit up the inner fire
Let’s face it, learning is boring as hell and if you’re like me you’ll understand that I can’t learn anything if I’m bored. In fact, I only spend 1 to 2 hours per day to study for IELTS. So in order to cope with this problem, I invented a technique called “Lit up the inner fire”. The solution is simple, you listen to some awesome movie soundtracks until you feel like your “inner” energy has taken over your body. I have just recently created a playlist containing all the tracks that I use to boost up my energy (Most of them are anime soundtracks 😅 that’s what I listen to, don’t judge me 😄).
Listening test
This is the test that I got the highest score (8.5). But did you know about a month before I took the actual IELTS test, I only got band 5 on the listening test in a mock test? When I took the mock test at an English-teaching center. Somehow the recording for that test is so fast that I couldn’t make out what people in the recording is talking about.
It was a month before the real IELTS test, I’m stressed.
“I’ve done numerous listening tests online and got scores from 7 to 8 and that’s still not enough?” — I asked myself.
However, I still decided to not postpone my judgment day. 1 month later, I bring that stress, that fear into the test room. I can’t forget the feeling of not knowing what the recording is saying. So I turn the headphone volume to about 80/100 and hope that I can survive the test. I finished the test without knowing that I have finished it, it was too easy, a lot easier than the test I took at that English-teaching center. I got the score of 8.5 and know exactly what I did wrong. For that reason, remember “IELTS is easy and trust your instinct”.
Enough with the story, let’s jump into my methods of studying for IELTS listening test.
Watch short movie scene
I really don’t have time to watch the entire movie every day so instead, I watch short movie scenes on youtube. For example, I really love a small scene in the famous movie “Silence of the Lambs”. By watching it over and over again I can know how the sound of each sentence will change according to the situation. This is very useful because it helps you identify how native English speakers pronounce a certain word differently in each situation.
(Warning, the content of the video may be disturbing to some viewers)
A very interesting channel that I found is Movieclips. They have a large number of short scenes for each movie.
Watch sitcom, stand up comedy
Sitcoms like HIMYM (How I Met Your Mother) or Friends are great sitcoms to watch when you first get started to learn English. But when you’re ready to dive deeper into the English language I recommend watching sitcoms with advanced vocabulary or complex jokes like The Big Bang Theory or 2 Broke Girls. Another way to level up your English-understanding skill is to watch stand up comedy, by listen to stand up comedy, you can have the chance to listen to different accents. These are some comedians that I like to watch:
- Dave Chappelle
- Noah Trevor
- Russell Peters
- Michael McIntyre
- Gabriel Iglesias
Practice with online tests
The only website that I use to practice my listening skill is https://ieltsonlinetests.com/
There’s a huge number of tests for you to take but remember not to take too many tests because you can run out of tests to take. Taking tests every day doesn’t make you get better at the test, instead, it makes you feel bad about yourself because the score you get won’t increase after each test. I recommend taking 1 to 2 tests per week and the rest of the time, try all the methods above.
Reading
I got 7.5 for the reading test which is not the best that I can do. As I mentioned before, on the test day, I brought my fear into the room and force everything I got into the listening test. I feel relief after the listening test and my “inner fire” has stopped rising. Thus, I can’t really focus on the reading test and that score is what I get for worrying too much about the test. That’s why you need to stop worrying and keep the idea “IELTS is easy”.
Practicing reading is not just about learning how to read. It’s about identifying what the question wants us to answer. You can spend your time reading the whole reading test passage if you have the ability to quickly analyze the meaning of the content. However, I’ve read many books and never know how they ended. I’ll have a very good sleep if I read the whole reading passage during the test, so instead of doing that I just skim through the test and use my deduction skill to answer the question.
Tips: While reading articles, try read it out lound to improve your pronunciation
My methods for practicing reading is kinda “old school”. Besides reading everything I can in English, I also try to do some online test.
Read Medium articles
Reading medium article is a great way to improve your reading skill. If you first try to read the online newspaper and quickly switch to Youtube then reading Medium articles can help you cope with that problem.
Medium has a wide range of topics for you to choose from. If you like sport, read about sport, you like programming read about programming. The problem with reading the newspaper is that you don’t care about the news, you don’t care about how those politicians manipulate the world. If you don’t care about it then why bother reading it? (Although you should try to read it sometimes because it will affect your life)
You can access the list of Medium topics here: https://medium.com/topics
Do some online test
Again, https://ieltsonlinetests.com have a large number of reading tests for you to practice. Besides trying my methods, do try some other methods as well because each person has different types of method that they see fit.
Writing
I think this is the hardest part of the test. I’m a programmer, I work with the computer all day, meaning I keep smashing the keyboard until something good appears. That’s why I don’t really know how to hold a pen anymore.
At 5 PM every day before the test, I’ll try to do a writing test regardless of the situation. So next time, if you find a programmer with a red swollen middle finger, there’s a high chance that he’s also studying for IELTS too 😄.
My method of practicing IELTS writing is to write about everything. By writing about everything, I’m not saying you should only write on paper. The purpose of writing about everything is to practice using different types of tense and structure. To fulfill that purpose, you can also write stuff on the computer too. This is a great chance for you to start your own blog. When you write about something on your blog, you often are very fastidious about what you write, because how you write your blog can affect how people perceive you. Thus, you will have to constantly improve your blog post, which will make you better at writing.
Besides writing on the computer, you should also try to write on paper. (That’s what we do in IELTS test so…duh). I usually take the IELTS writing questions from these 2 websites:
Speaking
This is where things get a little tricky 😄. Most IELTS learners in my country decided that they should organize a group and stop random western-looking people to ask them to speak English with them. That’s maybe fine for you guys but I can never do that, I always have the feeling that I’m bothering them when I ask them to stop and speak English with me. They’re having a good time of their life and some random Asian dude stop them and ask them to speak their mother tongue with him? It feel weird and awkward.
So how do I practice English without talking to anyone? I speak to myself…like an idiot. I usually talk to myself in the bathroom, in front of the mirror or just in my head. The key to speaking fluent English is to think in English. Most people translate their thought from their first language into English before they can say anything. That’s a very time-consuming task and must be avoided at all cost. But how can you speak without translating it first? The answer is YOU DON’T. In order to speak without translating, you must learn everything in English (like a native English speaker). The only problem you will have after learning that way is that you can’t translate English into your first language any more or it will take a long time for you to translate it. I still have problems translating English words into Vietnamese because I studied that way. For example, I know the pan is the black thing that you use to fry your food but I can’t think of the word in my language for that thing in 1 or 2 seconds. I completely cut off the connection between English and Vietnamese; therefore, I can speak English almost-fluently but I failed to translate English into Vietnamese in a short amount of time.
Another trick that I used is to mimic how actors and actresses say a sentence. A great way to practice that is to…watch short movie scene 😄.
I also created a website for practicing IELTS speaking test here: https://ispeakalone.herokuapp.com/#/. It helps me a lot during my time studying for IELTS without having a speaking partner 😢.
That’s the end!
This is the end of my guide to study for IELTS. Remember, IELTS is easy and my guide is just one of many other guides. You can try other people guides or create one for your own, the important thing is to keep your mind clear and be ready for what’s coming not afraid for what’s coming.
Good luck and goodbye!
