IELTS Tips: How to Prepare for IELTS

hello my name's Liz and in this lesson I would like to show you how to prepare for your IELTS test there are many steps that you need to take if you're going to be successful in your IELTS test and in this lesson I'm going to talk you through the 15 most important steps that you must complete if you're going to do well in your test now let's start with the first one and the most obvious and that is to learn about the test of course you shouldn't enter the examination room until you know as much as you can about the test you need to learn about the content before different tests listening reading writing and speaking and you need to learn the format of each of those tests you need to know what is going to happen when you get in the test what the test is all about what problems you might have now recently a student contacted me because he went into the listening test and was very upset to find the recording was played only once well of course the recording is played only once that is part of the IELTS listening test now all this information should not be a surprise to you it is all available online and you need to read as much as you can so that you know exactly what will happen when you take your test now at the end of the lesson I will give you links so that you can learn as much as you can about IELTS and of course when you're learning about IELTS you also need to look at the timing if you're doing for example the reading and the writing then the timing is very much in your hands that means that you're given an hour to accomplish a certain number of tasks or passages and it's your choice how to manage your time so understanding the timing is very important and of course scoring you need to know how your band score is assessed now for listening and reading is very easy because you get points for every correct answer for speaking and writing is different because an examiner will assess you and the more you understand about the way you are assessed the better your results will be so I will give you links for that as well later on now FAQ means frequently asked questions the more you learn about the test often you start having more questions now if you look at the answers to frequently asked questions you will learn a lot about IELTS so I'll give you links to frequently asked questions about each skill in the IELTS test now moving on step number two once you understand what IELTS is it's time to look at the different IELTS tests there are two IELTS tests there's the academic test and the general training test now for listening and speaking there's only one test but for writing and reading you need to choose and it's very important that you know exactly which one you're going to do before you start preparing the academic test is mostly for university entrance and the general training test is if you're moving abroad so make sure you know which test you're going to take and you make sure you prepare properly for that again I will give you links at the end of the lesson now let's move on to step number three and I think this is one of the most important steps that you can take and that is about being realistic with your goals you need to have a fixed aim for IELTS what band score are you aiming for but you need to be realistic so let me explain a little bit more about this so being realistic now of course number one decide what band score you're aiming for are you aiming for 6.57 7.5 be very clear about the band score you really need and then have the level of your English checked now this is very important to do if the level of your English does not match the band score that you want then you're going to have problems if the level of your English is much lower then the band score you want it's going to be almost impossible to reach that band score if you only study IELTS skills you need to make sure that the level of your English is equal to the band score that you're aiming for now I have a lot of students asking me why can't they get band score 7 they've taken the test five times but still can't get 7 and what tips can I give them well there's one tip get your English checked if your English is too low you're not going to get 7 so to get the band score you want you need to have the right level of English so once you know your level of English then you can make a plan and you either have to study English fast to bring your level of English up to the right level or if your English level is already at the right level then you can just study your IELTS skills which basically means the skills for doing the exam or maybe your English is just a little bit below the appropriate level for your band score and so maybe you want to study English and IELTS together so this is very important about being realistic what band score can you realistically get with your level of English and of course that comes to the next point which is having a time frame this is all again about being realistic how much time will it take you to make sure your English is at the right level for the band score that you want and how long will it take you to learn your art skills I have many students asking me about how long it will take it is an impossible question to ask without meeting the student some students can learn exam skills very quickly and I have known students to prepare for that IELTS test in two weeks and get the bound score they want other students cannot understand the skills very well and they have problems with it and their level of English is not very strong so that means that their time frame is going to be much wider and so it could take them months so it really depends on the speed of your learning and on the level of your English so just make sure that you do have a realistic time frame and that you have enough time to actually get ready for your IELTS test so very important now let's have a look at the next one another very important step once you have decided your band score and you know the level of your English and you've already decided how you're going to study for IELTS you're going to do English or IELTS in English then you need to look more deeply at the band score that you've chosen you need to know the requirements of that band score now as I said earlier listening and reading it's very easy it's a point system but for speaking and writing this is quite different for speaking and writing the examiner is looking for specific things in your language and in your skills and you need to know exactly what the examiner is looking for for the band score that you want and when you understand more about the band score then you will start improving so I'll give you links again at the end of the lesson to help you understand about the band scores for speaking and writing let's move on to the next step step number five that is learning about the question types now it's very important that you do this for listening and reading in IELTS there are over 10 different types of questions that you can get in the test that's a lot now in the test you don't have time to look at a question and try to understand what you need to do it's very important that you know the types of questions before you enter the exam room and for step number six it's very important that you did develop the tips and techniques to deal with each type of question so that's very important and of course it's not just for listening and reading also for writing test to for your essay you're going to have to look at the different essay questions that you get there are different types and you have to prepare them I remember once I had a student who asked me to take a look at their writing so I said yes and they sent me a sample essay but the essay question wasn't an IELTS essay question so it was a complete waste of time IELTS have specific essay questions and you need to know what they are don't waste your time learning from any essay question there's a lot of information on the Internet and it can be confusing so it's very important that you do learn the right types of questions for these essays and IELTS and of course that's the same for speaking you're also going to have a range of questions and it's important you know what types of questions the examiner will ask you and how to deal with them successfully and for writing task 1 for the general training you'll have a letter and there are different types of letters for the academic task 1 is a chart and there are many there are about six different charts that you can get so you really need to look at each question type you've got to develop tips and techniques so that you can deal with them successfully in the test now let's have a look at step 7 step 7 is all about topics there are common topics that come in IELTS and you need to prepare them you need to prepare vocabulary to be able to talk about these topics now even if the level of your English is at the right level for the band score you want you still should prepare the common topics and vocabulary now this is particularly important in speaking because you need to give your answer directly all the vocabulary needs to be on the tip of your tongue which means ready to use without hesitation so preparing all these topics and vocabulary is essential the next point is to develop your ideas ideas and topics again and you can do this from a variety of sources it's very important if you have time for your IELTS preparation to have a look at documentaries take a look at the BBC and look at some new world issues have a look at the New Scientist and other interesting magazines that cover a range of topics listen to radio programs all of this will help you develop the right English and it will help you for listening reading writing and speaking so that's very important now at the end of the lesson I will give you a link to useful websites and that will include where to find these sources now if you don't have much time before your test if you only have a couple of weeks you probably don't have time to do that but if you do have time it is excellent way of preparing now another thing that students ask me is should they only listen to documentaries and radio programs that have British English and Australian English well the answer is no because IELTS is an international English language test so that means you can have a variety of accents in your listening first and even the examiners might have different accents they will not all be British or Australian so listening to documentaries and BBC news and radio is very important now let's move on to step number nine number nine you need to do practice tests to assess your listening and reading now you can do that very easily because you can check how many points you got right and what round score you've got so you will know exactly what band score you are looking at for listening and reading and you can do that at home now this is Cambridge IELTS nine now there are many practice tests on the internet and also there are many books with IELTS practice tests but these are the only books that are real IELTS exams these books these are books from 1 to 9 this is book 9 these books were published by IELTS and they contain a sample of old IELTS exam papers there are four tests in each book and you need to get them if you want to check your band score of course the other books are useful for practice but these are the real exam papers so please use them now let's have a look at step 10 for the next step and you need to take a look at getting your speaking and writing assessed now the listening and reading is very easy because you can do practice tests and calculate your own score but for speaking and writing it's very difficult to assess your own level so you need to find an experienced IELTS teacher if you can find an examiner or an ex examiner that's the best obviously because they can give you more accurate feedback but if you can't then at least try to find an experienced IELTS teacher and when you get your speaking and writing assessed don't just find out what band score you got try to find out where your weaknesses are and also how they assess your band score as well which are the points that are stronger or weaker number 11 is obviously to plan your development and practice now a lot of students ask me for a schedule for studying IELTS well it's almost impossible to give a schedule number one students have different strengths and different weaknesses and they have different amounts of time available the most important thing is that you do cover all aspects of the test before your exam so as long as you're getting all those question types prepared and you know exactly what's going to happen you've prepared your common topics vocabulary and ideas then really that's the most that you can do in a short time for your schedule but if you have more time available then of course what you can do is actually plan more development and that means looking at question types that are more difficult and improving your technique so that can be organized by you the moment you know where your weaknesses are so develop and practice number 12 and this is very important this is for reading and writing during your preparation for IELTS you will need to spend some time building speed now reading and writing have a very fixed time limit and it can be very difficult for students to actually finish all 40 questions in one hour or to write task one and task two in one hour so building speed and learning to manage your own time is very important and you should be practicing doing that at home checking how long it takes you to write or how long it takes you to skim read a passage or to scan and find answers so building speed very important if you want to do well so number 13 and that is to do a full practice test under exam conditions now it's not the same as this a lot of students use practice tests in order to just practice their skills or to find their band score but they don't actually do the full test under exam conditions so that means to do your listening your reading and your writing altogether it will take you 2 hours and 40 minutes during that time you will have no breaks and this will really give you an idea of how difficult and tiring the IELTS exam can be so this is a very important part of your preparation you should at least do one practice test under exam conditions before you do your real test I had a student recently who told me that one of the problems was he actually needed the toilet during the test and the toilet was quite far down the corridor so he lost a lot of time going to the toilet and coming back and he didn't quite finish all the reading questions so it's all these small details that you will understand when you start practicing under exam conditions so please make sure you do do that you can do it at home you don't have to pay to go into an a practice test in a school you can sit at home set your alarm clock and do listening reading and writing in 2 hours and 40 minutes right let's move on to the last two steps in your IELTS preparation step 14 of course is to get training if you can now obviously professional training is the best so if you can find a very good IELTS cool that is the place to go you've got the British Council you've got IDP both very good or you might just find a local school but the most important thing is you choose a school that really does know about IELTS and can support you and understand your aims for IELTS don't just chew is any school which claims to be the best make sure you choose wisely and of course if you can't afford to go to an IELTS school you can always look online for free training of course you can go visit my website www.realisticpencildrawing.com you

Channel: IELTS Liz

Views: 1,327,919

Rating: 4.9328561 out of 5

Keywords: IELTS Test, IELTS Tips, IELTS Preparation, IELTS Preparation Tips, IELTS Test Tips, Starting IELTS

Id: 2TAhwbB8GKM

Length: 21min 44sec (1304 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 28 2015