hi there it's asiya and the question for today is what can you do to give yourself the best
chance of passing your ielts exam the very first time i took it was about 10 years ago i lived in
kazakhstan and i needed this certificate to study for my master's degree in london
and i managed to pass a test with less than two weeks of preparation i completed my master's
today i live in london and my score is 8.5 i regularly retake the ielts test and i can tell you
it's still quite an intense experience today i'd like to talk to you about the main challenges
you're likely to face in your exam and the main strategies you can use to overcome them
i also have a study plan for you to download okay let's get started
i retake my ielts exam every year and today my english is so much better than it used to be
10 years ago but you know every time it's such a challenge i feel all this pressure from the exam
and i feel like i'm running out of time all the time and i think
it's quite likely you're gonna feel the same so let's talk about each section and what you can do
in ielts listening time pressure is a big big challenge
if you listen to the recording without any pressure it's not that difficult if you look
at the questions they're quite all right it's when it all comes together that it becomes challenging
so i think in ielts listening a big advantage is knowing what questions are coming before
the recording begins and in the test they don't give you enough time to read all the questions
of course at the beginning of each section you will hear and now please read questions
from number one to number eight and at the beginning you may be able to do that but
later in the test questions are long options are long and there is no way you can read all of that
but at the end of each section they give you 30 seconds to review your answers
so i think you should spend that time on reading questions that are still coming the truth is
if you missed a question or two the probability of getting them later is pretty low you'll be
much better off clearly answering questions which are still coming and you can still come
back to those you missed later in the test if you read the questions if you try to memorize
all the options then you'll be able to navigate through your tasks much more efficiently and you
will feel that the pressure goes down because you know what you're listening about i think
it really really helps and if you're wondering if you're even allowed to switch to the next section
yes absolutely if you take a paper-based test you get this brochure you will write your name and
the candidate number and then at some point they will tell you that you may open it after that
you can turn pages as you wish you don't have to wait for a certain command to do that if you take
a computer-based test then you will see a set of questions on the screen and when you want to see
the next set you need to click on the question for example number 10 and the screen will change
so don't forget to do that because screen will not change automatically and at the end of the
test you still have time to review your answers in a computer-based test you have two minutes
you don't need to transfer your answers anywhere so you have two minutes to check a couple of
answers you missed and try to guess them from the context in a paper-based exam you have 10 minutes
transferring answers to the answer sheet takes two three minutes so you have seven minutes to
go through all your questions if you wish before using this strategy in your exam
you should definitely try using it at home and the best practice tests are cambridge english they are
really the closest to the real exam questions you should try to use recent books number 15 and 16
in summer 2022 there will be a new book number 17. there are several free tests and you will get
links to those in my study plan they're helpful but they're not exactly the same because they're
several years old like more than five years old and of course there are some tests written by some
other companies or just published on some websites in the internet the problem is that the level of
difficulty there may be different or there may be mistakes and questions so the results may
be misleading and i really encourage you to use the official tests actually these are the books
academic and general training number 16. let's talk about ielts reading
one of the main challenges here is that there is a lot to read you have three
passages like that 40 questions and 60 minutes to answer all of them and transfer your answers
if you take a general training test your passages will be shorter but you have
five of them so you also have a lot to read and i think if you just try to read the passage and then
answer the questions it will just take you too much time what you can do is you can concentrate
on the questions in ayat's reading most questions come in order you can read the question
and then you quickly read the passage until you feel that the answer is somewhere here then you
slow down you read the question again you read the sentence again you locate your answer then you
read the second question and you continue reading the passage and so on in this case you will always
be looking for something you will know exactly what you're looking for i don't mean that you
should look for a particular keyword the truth is all keywords incorrect options will be paraphrased
that's the way this test is organized but at least you will have the idea of what's important
and then you can ignore things which are not important another challenge of the reading test
is that probably there will be words you can't understand this section is the most
challenging in terms of vocabulary you need the widest vocabulary for your reading section
but if you are looking for a particular answer then some unfamiliar words are relevant you just
move on you know the very first time i took my test there were a lot of words i didn't know
in the third section it was so hard but i still managed to get banned eight in that test so my
strategy really worked and you should try to do that too it will help you to concentrate it will
help you to direct your attention to the right places and it will help you to avoid this problem
with unfamiliar words one thing when you read the instructions for the reading section you see
that you're gonna have three sections and you should spend about 20 minutes
on each section the truth is the first section is quite a lot easier than the last
so if you spend 20 minutes on the first probably you're not gonna have enough time for the last
so you should go through your test more quickly try to finish the first section in about
15 minutes 20 for the second 25 for the third or if your english skills are good try to go through
your questions even more quickly and if you complicate an answer move on to the next question
and then you will return to those at the end of your test in my test there are always questions
i can't answer straight away probably three or sometimes even five and i i return to them at
the end it really works much better because at least you answer 35 questions already and then
yes maybe you answer the remaining five maybe not in any case you're gonna get a great score
let me quickly mention which questions actually come in order so most of them true false not given
yes no not given questions missing information or filling the gap multiple choice questions
notes diagrams all those questions are in order but matching information
questions are not in order for example matching headings here you should read one paragraph
then match it to the heading read the second paragraph match it and so on in this case
you don't have one question but at least you have one paragraph to concentrate on
and you'll be able to work with the task more quickly this way and at the very end of your test
you may get several questions which are not in order because these are the hardest questions
of your test most of them are in order ielts writing i think this is the main challenge of
the ielts exam but many people don't know about it i remember when i was preparing for my first exam
i knew i couldn't answer all the questions in ielts reading i knew that ielts listening was a
challenge i knew i couldn't speak fluently but i was writing well i i could write something
like whatever and i got my lowest score in ielts writing just like most people do
the thing is there is a big mismatch between what ies candidates think they may need
and what ielts examiners know they need i as candidates often think that the problem means
that they don't know enough about those topics but ielts examiners don't say oh he didn't know much
here is a low score no they say well ideas were there but they were not developed the
position was not clear ideas were not linked together and in task 1 there was no overview
requirements are much more precise the truth is in ielts writing you're marked on your english skills
and also on your writing skills fifty percent of your score depends on your vocabulary and grammar
or your english skills so you need complexity and accuracy for a high score but
50 of the score depends on how well you write your answers do you fulfill all the requirements
do you link ideas do you develop ideas is your essay logically organized and easy to follow
you can learn how to fulfill all these requirements pretty quickly and i think you should
really spend some time on preparing for ielts writing you know i've spent several years looking
for the best strategies to pass the ielts exam and over the years i've created a number of courses
eighty percent of information there is about ielts writing that's because step by step preparation
really helps them i'll link my courses in the description but with the course or
without a course here is what you should do first of all you should learn what the requirements
are and how to fulfill them then you need to write more quickly so you should learn
what you write about in each paragraph of your task 1 and task 2.
then you should learn what types of tasks you may get in task 1 and task 2.
then when you see the task you know exactly what to do straight away it saves time
you should read some well-written answers to know what you're aiming for and then you should
practice practice practice and really spend enough time preparing for ielts writing let's
talk about ayat speaking this is a face-to-face interview with an examiner or is it is it actually
an interview i've taken it a number of times and it's not like any other interview where you expect
that you will get a question you have time to answer it and then the next question and so on no
in ielts speaking you sit there constantly bombarded by questions and quite often you
hear the next question before you finished your answer the examiner may interrupt you any moment
and this is normal it doesn't really mean that your answer was incorrect it just means that they
need to move on to the next question after all in ielts speaking it's the examiner who manages
the time so each part may not last more than like five minutes in parts one and three so two
minutes in part two and the examiner has to ask you questions on a certain number of topics so if
your answers are too long they will interrupt you you should practice your answers at home
you should practice with the timer answering common questions answering difficult questions
from recent exams i have a number of videos about them but don't concentrate on part one too much
after all this part is to warm up these are parts two and three that will really reveal your score
and it's important to talk for the full two minutes in part two whatever question you get
so you should practice doing that at home you should practice giving longer answers
developing your ideas in part three and if you don't live in an english-speaking country yet
you need to practice talking every day at home for 15 minutes and it will help you and one more tip
many people feel that they don't know what to say because they want to say something smart it's an
exam after all it's not that kind of exam being talkative is the best thing in ielts speaking
don't be smart be chatty and you pass it the exact steps you should take in your preparation depend
on how much time you have before your exam so i've created three ielts study plans for seven days
one month and three months and you can download yours if you follow the link here
and my ielts preparation courses are linked in the description please check them out if you're
interested and thank you for watching me today good luck with your preparation and your exam bye