IELTS Preparation is really important because if you get it wrong,
you're gonna have to the whole process of
studying for the exam,
paying the $300,
setting aside the time,
and not to mention the humiliation and embarrassment from failure.
So my personal advice is get it right the first time.
These tips are all exam-specific and they'll help you a lot.
Okay?
Let's go.
Hi there!
My name is Ben Worthington from ieltspodcast.com.
In this video, I'm going to take you through the 4 different sections and how I suggest
to my students that they prepare for these sections.
Okay?
Let's start with the reading one.
This is quite a common part, a common section of the exam, students have difficulty with.
Now, my advice is that of course you could do practice tests.
You get familiar with the exam.
Okay?
And by the way, scribd.com has lots of practice reading tests.
And what you can do is get your reading tests,
do lots of them,
and then analyze in which section you're actually losing points.
Okay?
And then what you do is you focus on that specific section (on that skill).
So instead of doing 4, 5 complete reading test,
you do 5 more reading test which just focus on that section,
get that skill completely under control,
and measure your performance,
put it on a graph,
and you'll see that just by focusing on that area,
you can increase your overall reading score.
Okay?
But the key here is just to identify the area you're having difficulty with.
Okay?
Another tip: It gets progressively harder.
So if you're aiming for Band 9, Band 8,
you want to (of course) focus on everything on that.
But if you're going for the lower ones, the lower band...
If you're going for a Band 7, 7.5 then you don't have to be as concerned at the end questions
as the middle and middle-to-end ones.
Okay?
So that's one tip for the reading.
Now, for the listening
exactly the same.
Look at the sections that you're losing the points on and get it under control.
Now, another tip for the actual exam (for exam day), and for your preparation of course,
is get into the habit of predicting what type of vocabulary you expect to hear.
So if you can see on the listening exam that you're going to listen to something regarding
education,
then make sure that you've got the vocabulary ready.
And that you've researched that kind of...
That you've got it ready.
Okay?
For example,
"tuition"
"tuition fees"
"professor"
"teacher"
all this kind of vocabulary.
Try and anticipate that, okay?
Also, if you see on the paper that it's a transport situation, and maybe it's a dialogue
well, you're probably going to expect some times, some dates, and transport vocabulary
"train"
"transport"
"logistics"
whatever.
So the true function is to hear.
It's to get ready and anticipate the kind of vocabulary and the kind of answers you're
going to be hearing.
Okay?
So we've done the reading, we've done the listening.
Let's go into the active skills now.
Now, for the speaking perhaps the best advice I can give you is to get confident with this.
Okay?
Increase your own confidence.
And the way you increase your confidence...
And I'm saying "Go for confidence" because I've seen incredible results by students who
have managed to get their confidence completely under control.
And it make such a difference.
It shouldn't, though.
But...
I mean...
I'm not gonna get into that...
But it makes such a difference if you're confident, come exam day.
Okay?
Now for your speaking, how to get confident?
Well, you can imagine yourself in the speaking exam.
You can do role plays with your friend.
You can be the examiner, or she can be the examiner and you can be the student.
And just increase your familiarity with it.
And once again, identify the areas where you might be tripping up.
Is it the section 3 where you've got the presentation?
Or section 2 where you got the mini-talk?
Or is it section 3 where you've got the kind of like interview?
Okay?
But just get familiar with it.
Now, for the writing...
What I would do for the writing is look at model answers.
Go to google, put "sample band 9 essays," "sample band essays, IELTS."
You can do a few things here.
You can copy them out word for word, in pen and paper.
Do a couple of those.
Or you can also look, cover, write.
This is going to increase your memory.
You're going to look at the structures, memorize them, write them down.
Then when it comes to writing your own essay, it'll be much easier.
Now, another thing you can do for the writing is also practice formulating ideas.
Okay?
So you look at the question and just write the ideas down.
Go to the next question, write your ideas down.
And get an examiner to look at them.
Or you could send them to me if you're doing the Sentence Guide program.
Okay?
And doing this gets your brain into the habit and gets it used to formulating ideas on the
spot.
Alright?
Now another thing (which is very important) for the writing, is that you get somebody
to look at your writing.
And someone who can say,
"Okay, this is wrong."
"This is right."
"This wonderful."
"This is terrible."
"This is amazing."
And they can give you feedback.
This way, you can identify the errors and you can focus.
For example, if you've got a problem with articles you can start doing online exercises,
you can start practicing
and you can get that area of your writing under control.
And then come exam day, you're less likely to commit that mistake.
One final tip, is that once you are into the habit of writing essays what you should do
after you got your essay checked,
and you've identified the mistakes that you are making
what you should do once you've finished writing
is check for the mistakes that you've made in previous essays.
Doing this is going to boost your score significantly
because you're going to be doing the corrections.
This way, the examiner won't do, and you're increasing your grammatical range and accuracy.
Or accuracy, to be more precise.
Okay?
You're increasing your accuracy score a lot.
So those are my tips for improving your IELTS preparation.
If you want more advice and if you've got a problem that's really just going around
in your head and you're getting really worked up about it,
go to ieltspodcast.com,
sign up,
you'll get my email address,
and you send your question to me and I'll answer.
Okay?
All
the best.