hi there it's asiya and today i'd like to talk to you about four major mistakes in the ielts exam
that can greatly affect your score and how you can avoid them without further ado let's get started
the first mistake is in ielts listening and that is trying to read questions while
listening to the recording i know it may seem like that's what you're expected to do
because simply there is not enough time to read everything before the recording starts
let me show you i'm gonna play the beginning of part three of the listening section you'll
see questions on the screen and you'll hear instructions follow those instructions and
try to read everything all the questions and all the options ready here you go section three
you will hear two urban planning students called carla and rob discussing their presentation
on cities built by the sea following instructions from their tutor first
you have some time to look at questions 21 to 25.
i
now listen carefully and answer questions 21 to 25 could you read everything i couldn't and i know
that if i haven't read all the options in advance i will struggle doing that while listening to the
recording and it's very likely that i will miss something but if i use my technique i never miss
an answer and in my previous exams i always called by nine and i was listening so at the end of part
two you are given 30 seconds to review your answers it would sound like that that is the end
of section two you now have half a minute to check your answers including the instructions themselves
that's extra 45 seconds quite enough time to finish reading and even to highlight keywords
in a paper-based exam i really encourage you to highlight keywords in questions and in long
options but if you take a paper-based exam i personally find it too distracting you have this
function but there is so much clicking involved and it's a bit time consuming so i don't really
do that but you can try it for yourself because this practice test is available on the idp website
and all the links to free official practice tests are in my ielts study plan in the description
there is another benefit of reading everything in advance you know sometimes if you miss one answer
you lose where you are and you miss several more answers that's a real danger but if you
know what the next question is it's much easier for you to spot and switch quickly
generally i would say try to keep an eye on two questions your question and the next question
just in case you need to switch now let's talk about ielts reading and a major mistake
here is reading your passage first and then looking for your answers unless your english is
fluent it's just too time consuming how long is it going to take you to read three passages like that
no really let's make an experiment this is a task from british council and i'm going to leave a link
in the video description box below go there read it and time yourself until and tell me in comments
how long did it take you and if you've already taken the ielts
what was your result i've timed myself it took me five minutes to read it
relatively attentively um without memorizing everything but not just scheming through either
and after that when i tried to answer questions i could just answer a few straight away and
for most i still had to go back to the passage and look for this information
just scanning isn't going to work either because in ielts all correct options are deliberately
paraphrased words are not repeated of course in some questions you have either a surname
or a date and in this case you can find it in your text quickly particularly if you highlight
keywords as you go but for most it takes quite a lot of time to locate the correct place again
and i've tried both ways starting with the text and starting with questions and i finish
more quickly every time if i start with questions here is what i usually do i read the title
helen's future up in the air okay then i know what this passage is about that's
about the gas called helium and then i look at my questions and depending on the question type
i decide what i do next many questions come in order it means you can read the first question
find the answer read the next question find the answer and so on in this case you don't have to
read all the text quite as attentively you can read quite quickly until you feel that the answer
is somewhere there and then you slow down you read it carefully and then you read the next question
and move on you can't just skim through the text without really understanding what
what it's all about because probably you will miss the answer but you don't have to read as slowly
okay such questions as true false not given yes no not given multiple choice questions
filling the gap questions they usually come in order matching questions don't matching headings
or matching paragraphs if i have matching headings you usually you have one then i'll read the first
paragraph match it to the correct heading read the second paragraph match it and so on
several questions at the last of the third section are usually not know them
but hopefully you will save enough time to find answers to those too before we continue let me
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and now let's talk about ielts writing a major mistake in ielts writing is not developing your
ideas and right now i want to show you a simple paragraph that is task two and you think if it's
a strong body paragraph or not first of all let's have a look at the task not enough students around
the world choose to study science subjects at university what are the reasons for this
what impact does this issue have on society that's our task and now the body paragraph
reasons for young people choosing not to study science after school are caused by outdated
preconceptions first certain subjects are regarded as better suited for men than women secondly
scientists are paid significantly less than professionals in other areas such as business and
law finally the job of a scientist at a laboratory seems boring and undesirable to outsiders is it
a strong body paragraph do we have three relevant ideas here the answer is no the vocabulary is good
the grammar is good but ideas are not developed they are simply named one after another
and if you want to get a strong score you must develop your ideas you must explain them in depth
give supporting points give examples and actually you don't need that many ideas to do that
let's take the first idea from this body paragraph which is certain subjects are regarded as better
suited for men than women and develop it in the first version of the paragraph the first sentence
the topic sentence was about preconceptions outdated preconceptions but actually now i'm
only going to talk about one of them that's why i want to move this into the introduction of dancing
so there will be like a short introductory sentence then the number of students studying
relevant subjects is well below the required level that's a statement from the task this problem
seems to be caused by outdated preconceptions which determine young people's choices today
and this sentence in the introduction shows that i'm gonna talk about several outdated
preconceptions and the body paragraph starts like that one of those preconceptions is that certain
subjects are better suited for men and this is the topic sentence so the whole body paragraph
will be about this idea examples of these include mathematics computer science technologies and
other fields of knowledge which are totally dominated by males so i've given some examples
in recent decades a noticeable progress has been achieved by many countries in acknowledging
that men and women are equally capable in science so this sentence explains why this gap
should narrow and now i'm actually gonna look at the second question in the task
what impact does this issue have on society and i'm gonna explain it right here
despite this big step towards equality female employees may still feel unwelcome
and in some instances face evident discrimination in male dominated work environments
as a result many women with a natural inclination to science settle on studying humanities or social
science at university depriving society of their main talent this last sentence explains what
impact this issue has on society and directly answers the second question
this paragraph is quite complex because the is complex but if you need to achieve band 7
your words can be a little bit simpler but you do need to develop your ideas to explain
them in depth in order to achieve a high score for your task response
as for this essay you can find the full essay and the full explanation of how it was written in this
video here linked in the description box below what about ielts speaking a major problem here is
overthinking that's when you're trying to control your speech so much to achieve your best score
you may be trying to sound smart and formal to really show your english skills or you're
trying to control your every word not to make any mistakes the problem is when you
put too much pressure on yourself you will not be able to say anything at all i tried
i tried to be smart and formal it was a mock exam but my score fell from my usual 8.5 to just 7.5
and i know that some sample answers you might have heard are very very formal too let me give
you an example i delight in expanding my knowledge through reading biographies of
famous scientists and politicians i dedicate at least one hour daily to this activity
i would say that this answer is so formal that it sounds unnatural people don't talk like that
your answers can be simpler i could say i'm really fond of reading biographies of famous people and i
try to spend at least half an hour a day reading but to be honest i fail more often than i don't
this answer is more natural in higher speaking you're not required to have any specific knowledge
of a subject or to have smart opinions those are not assessed as examiners assess how well
you can communicate in english and most people naturally speak quite simply so do that too as
for your mistakes of course ielts examiners pay attention to all your mistakes but you should
still allow yourself to speak and actually if you make a mistake you should just keep on talking
that's because if you constantly interrupt yourself if you repeat sentences in order to
correct mistakes it's quite difficult to understand what you actually want to say
if you just hesitate and pause all the time to avoid mistakes that harms your fluency score too
in case you notice your error straightaway you may correct yourself something like
a number of students has have decided to postpone their studies abroad you can do that no problem
but don't repeat the whole sentence just keep on talking you will get a better fluency score
i know that passing your ielts exam may be challenging but i hope that my today's advice
will help you voice some major mistakes if you download the ielts study plan you get the links to
all the free practice materials and in this video you can see the full essay we discussed today
thank you for watching me and good luck with your preparation and your exam bye