Hi there! It's Asiya and today I want to talk about the best resources for your
IELTS preparation. Why is it important? Because there is so much information
available on IELTS but quite often I still get questions from students, saying
"well I can't understand this question" or "I can't understand this essay topic; it's
confusing. I don't know what to write about." When I look at the task, I can
see straight away that it's not an official IELTS task; it's not built the
same way or it's simply incorrect and confusing. So the quality of the
information really matters and I'm going to share a number of resources for you,
most of which are free. Ok, let's get started!
the IELTS exam is co-owned by three companies which means we have four
official websites and each of them has its own practice tasks or practice tests
and all of them are free the only difficulty is to find them on those
websites so I'm gonna give you direct links they all are gonna be in my IELTS
study plan next if you're just starting your preparation and you want to learn
about the format and types of tasks the best description of the
test is on IELTS.org that's all you need and I know that many of you watch
YouTube on your smartphones so before we go to other online resources let me show
you one mobile app it's called IELTS prep app by British Council okay let me
show you this app a little bit so you have three tests available for both
IELTS academic and general training and you can practice all four sections of
exam in the listening section you can't skip so you have to take all 40 minutes
and wanna go and also you can't type answers on the screen so you have to use
pen and paper but I think it's still great practice and there you can listen
to all the recordings and just get used to the exam format in the reading
section you can type answers on the screen I'm not sure why and your answers
will be calculated and you get your score automatically which is great the
only thing is the screen of your smartphone is quite small so you can't
see the passage and the question at the same time you can't compare them
directly mmm it's not very convenient because in a computer-based exam you
have large monitors and you see almost all the passage and several questions
it's just so much easier to solve them this way okay
in the writing section you type your answers on your phone which is again
less convenient than a keyboard but then when you submit them you get some model
answers to compare yours to that's a good feature I like it in the speaking
exam mmm no one's gonna ask you questions but all three sections are
still timed so during your exam you have maximum 5 minutes for part 1 and that's
what you get in this app and you see questions so first you see questions for
the first topic in part one you answer them then you move to the second topic
answer questions and the third topic and you record yourself and then he can
listen to your answers which is a great tool to improve your speaking skills and
just develop awareness of what you should work on and let's talk about the
online resources that are available the first website is IELTS org where you
can get a full practice test academic and general training and all the
materials are available in the PDF format
which means you can download them on your computer you can print them out and
they look you look at the official paper-based booklets it means it is
breathing for example you have passage on one page and then you have questions
on other pages and you need to turn pages so it's gonna be exactly this way
during the exam the only thing you need to get is official answer sheets for
IELTS writing because you need to write your practice essays on those official
sheets in order to figure out how long your essays should be otherwise you will
have to count words during your exam I find that the format of this test is
slightly different to all the practice tasks but it's totally ok to start with
the second website is British console and again you have enough materials for
a full practice test he the test itself is great but the format
is really inconvenient because you see everything on the same page of their
website let's say you open IELTS reading and it's just everything on the same
page and if you want to find questions you have to scroll down and then scroll
back up to get to the passage so it's not a computer-based format and it's not
a paper-based format either I suggest just hoping all the materials into the
word document printing them out and doing it on paper it will be much better
but actually that's a website where you can download all their meat shall answer
sheets the next website is called IELTS essentials and it's by IDP and if you're
wondering if there is any difference between British consul and IDP exams
there is no difference and all the practice tests are the same and all exam
papers are written by Cambridge English not by IDP and not by British Council so
you can practice on all the websites the best thing here is that IDP gives you a
whole practice test in the computer-based format and it looks
exactly like the real exam you can highlight things you can switch between
different exam questions at the bottom of the screen basically you can practice
in any format but before you exam take the full practice test in the same
format just to get used to all the little things you need to do during the
exam and if you're still hesitating between the two I have a full video
discussing all the differences and it will help you to make the right decision
so we talked about the full practice tests you can also find information on
all the types of tasks you may find in IELTS listening in that it's reading and
those are really handy because you need to have a strategy for each type of task
so that during the exam when you don't have time to
figure out how to do something you know what this task is about the moment you
see it and those materials are available on two websites IELTS essentials and
IELTS org now let's talk about books if you decide to purchase one or two so the
best guide on oils I would say that's the most famous book the official guide
to IELTS by Cambridge and it's a big book and you can find explanations on
what you need to do in each section of the test and you get exercises so it's
good because it gives you a number of tips and in general it covers most of
the things you need to learn but I find that it doesn't go into detail into how
IELTS writing and speaking are assist you just get tips and I suppose by the
end of the book you still won't be able to fully understand how your writing
tasks are assessed and if you just get a tip you don't always understand why you
should do it also this book is for both academic and general training students
it and it says so but you get explanations for both exams but at the
end of the book you get eight practice tests all of which of academic students
I personally don't think that you need to do tons of practice tests because you
do several you could use to the exam format you learn strategies but then if
you can't get the score you need you should work on your English skills and
just doing tons of practice tests doesn't really help you to improve your
score but if you feel that you need more tests but the best book is this one so
this one contains four academic tests and you can get a similar one which says
general training in June there will be new book number 15 so all tests here
our official tests the best for practice and at the end of the book you also get
some model answers so this one is a model answer by the examiner so it's
perfect and you can see it they are a bit unconventional and you also get it
answers from other students so you can read the answer and then you see the
feedback from the examiner and you can also get this score so it's good for
developing awareness of how good you need to write I think it's quite
inspirational because and seven essays are not perfect and if you buy this book
you will see it I also want to recommend a good grammar book and it is English
grammar in use by Raymond Murphy and that's a book I used to learn English
grammar it's not too advanced it's for b1 b2 students and it gives you all the
basics you need to know perhaps you already know many things but it's great
to use as a reference it means when you're not certain about something go
and check in this book for example it gives you chapters on present simple and
Present continuous tenses you already know that once but do you know why you
say hmm I always try to work by car but I'm always losing my keys so tense is a
different but the word always is in both of them so this book will give you
answers like that and will help you improve your skills to a large extent
your IELTS score depends on your vocabulary basically how many words you
know and how accurately you can use them and perhaps if you can't get the score
you need you need to work on your vocabulary of course it takes more time
but then there is a good book that contains this vocabulary that helps you
to achieve b2 c1 levels it's called Cambridge vocabulary for
IELTS by Pauline Cullen it gives you words it gives you
exercises to help you memorize them and both books on vocabulary grammar also
have free previews which I'm gonna link in the description box below
okay all the links to practice tasks are gonna be in my aisle study plan just
downloaded in the PDF format and you'll find everything there links to books and
apps are gonna be directly in the video description box below thank you for
watching me today good luck with your preparation in your exam