hi guys it's asiya and in this video let's discuss what you should do to prepare for
your ielts exam in seven days one month or three months each stage may take you
more or less time depending on your level and how many hours a day you dedicate
to your preparation in any case everyone should do all the essentials from the seven day plan
if you have some time left before your exam start doing things from the one month plan
if you still have some time then move on to the three months plan and there is no
need to write anything down because i have a pdf plan for you to download okay let's get started
how to prepare for your ielts exam in seven days well that's an emergency situation when you have
just a few days left before your exam in this case there is no time to improve your english skills
and any attempt to do so will be a waste of time all you need to do is learn about the exam format
learn the main strategies that can help you perform better and be more efficient during
your exam and avoid any silly mistakes that will harm your score i assume you've already
booked your test but if not first of all check if you're required to take ielts academic or general
training then decide what format suits you better paper-based or computer-based if you're thinking
about the computer-based test take a practice test on the idp website then you can learn about
the platform and see if it actually suits you when you're booking the test you can find all the tests
on the ielts.org website and you'll notice that some tests are ukvi that's uk visas and
immigration and if you're coming to this country you will probably be required to take this test
but sometimes you don't it's the same test just taking in a room with video cameras
and it's more expensive so if you don't need it there is no point in booking it
the very first thing to do is to take a full official practice test there is no better way to
learn about the ielts exam in three hours several practice tests are available on the official
websites ielts.org idp and british council but the best tests are published by cambridge english
they look like that academic or general training and ideally try to get the most recent book at
the moment it's number 16. each book contains four tests and it will be enough for your preparation
let's talk about ielts listening and reading preparation you should do two things here well
first of all you should learn about the tests how many questions you actually need to answer
correctly to pass your exam how they are organized uh what the answer sheet looks like how much time
you're gonna get because um there is some extra time in ielts listening to transfer your answers
but not in ielts reading and you should know about all these in advance there are also some
strategies that can help you to be more efficient and answer as many questions as you can with your
level of english so you should learn that number two is to learn how to manage your time you'll be
short of time and ielts i promise and you need to use every minute as efficiently as you can so take
a few official practice tests in timed conditions and learn how quickly you need to go through the
questions that's all it may not sound like much and it shouldn't because you should spend most of
your time and effort on ielts writing and speaking ielts writing most people get their lowest score
in ielts writing but some don't spend too much time on it because well they don't like writing
essays and who does and then they don't even know that it's a problem but you do so you already have
an advantage act on it first of all you should learn about the ielts writing requirements they're
very specific and if you don't know about them there is no chance you're gonna hit them by chance
all the requirements are listed in the ielts band descriptors so download the documents study them
and find out what each requirement actually means and what you need to do to fulfill them next learn
about different types of tasks in task 1 and task 2 and learn what structure you should use in each
task and then practice practice writing essays every day you have 7 days well then you can do
7 ielts writing tests you need to get up to speed and learn how to finish both tasks in 60 minutes
and one last thing if you are taking a paper-based exam then download the answer sheet
and practice writing your essays using a pencil that's what you're expected to do during the exam
you need to know how long your answers should be to avoid counting words during your exam
ielts speaking the problem with it is the pressure you're in a room with the examiner
it's quite stressful and stress may affect performance it's also intense there are a
lot of questions and just 14 minutes so you don't have any breaks you don't have much time to pull
your thoughts together you have to answer answer answer and you need to prepare yourself for this
grueling experience first of all watch one mock speaking exam you don't need to watch tons of them
that's not helpful but knowing what to expect what it looks like is helpful then practice answering
ielts speaking questions just read a question and answer aloud read the next question and so on
you also need to time yourself during the exam your examiner will be controlling the time
and they may interrupt you if you need to move on
but if your answers are too short you don't use all the opportunities to show your english skills
and if you're talking for too long the examiner will have to constantly interrupt you
which is quite distracting so try to learn how long your answers should be
the first and the third parts last up to five minutes so make sure your answers are between
5 and 6 minutes at home part 2 lasts up to 2 minutes so try to talk for the full 2 minutes
next learn what the requirements are download the ielts band descriptors study the document
find out what those requirements mean but during your test don't think about the requirements
concentrate on being talkative and answering the questions these are all the things you should do
to prepare for your exam in one week and it is possible to pass your exam at this point
actually i passed my first ielts exam with just a bit more than a week of preparation
on the other hand if you're better prepared for your exam you improve your chance of passing it
so it would be silly not to use this opportunity if you haven't so here are all the things you
should do once you complete the initial stage of preparation ielts listening and reading so
what can you do in one month well first of all it's time to learn about the most difficult
types of tasks in seven days you learn the strategies for these sections in general but
now you can learn about those tasks which you find particularly challenging for most people these are
in ielts listening multiple choice questions and maps in an ielts reading true false not given
yes no not given questions and matching headings so practice answering those questions also in each
practice test you take i bet there are some questions which you don't answer correctly
analyze your test results try to find the correct answer try to understand why your
answer is not correct it will help you to get rid of some of the mistakes you make
and start working on your listening skills if you can't understand everything in the recording
there is a great exercise you can do so first you listen to the recording from your
practice test and you try to understand everything you may listen to challenging bits several times
then open the transcript it's in the book listen to the recording again following it
in the book and pay attention to all the bits you couldn't understand
of course if you couldn't understand a certain word just because you don't know it
there is nothing you can do with it in a short period of time but try to get to the point where
you can hear everything you can understand in the text in front of you then close the book and
listen to the same recording again trying to hear it that's how you develop your listening skills
and start reading in english read newspapers read articles anything just try to get used
to the practice of reading in english if you have one month to prepare it's a great
opportunity to improve your writing and speaking skills so ielts writing to get a band 7 score
you need to write good essays and not all schools teach you how to do that so it's time to learn
learn what to write in each part of your answers how to organize your introduction your conclusion
and how to write your body paragraphs the most important parts of your essays ielts examiners
also check if your ideas are connected so learn about different ways to connect your ideas
and you will definitely need to use a variety of linking words such as despite however furthermore
and so on so learn them you have time it's also time to start learning some vocabulary for your
task 1. for example academic task 1 is about describing a chart a map a diagram or a table
and it requires words we don't use every day so you have time to learn them and it
will help you improve your score in ielts general training you need to write a letter
and in this letter you must use the correct tone in form of semi-formal or formal so learn about
the differences in informal and formal style and learn some phrases for letters it will help you
next practice writing task 1 and task 2 answers you may not like doing that but you have to force
yourself the more you write the better you get and it's great to practice using recent topics
we've collected topics from recent exams and created a pdf guide you can download it on our
telegram channel it's called fast track ielts it's linked below and once you open it the guide will
be pinned at the very top ielts speaking if you don't live in an english-speaking country and you
don't speak english outside of the classroom and you don't really speak english in the classroom
either because there are just a lot of pupils so there is no opportunity and then it's not
surprising that this skill is underdeveloped so it's time to start working on your speaking skills
set yourself a target to speak english 15 minutes a day and you can talk about anything
did you watch a movie last night talk about it did something happen and you want to talk to your
friend imagine that you're talking to your friend in english and keep on complaining for 15 minutes
the more you talk the better you get and also practice answering difficult ielts speaking
questions of course ielts examiners use a lot of topics but still if you download our guide with
recent topics and you practice answering those you find particularly challenging
it's a great exercise for you and also there is always a chance that you're gonna
get this topic in your exam and talking about something you've recently discussed is always
easier writing and speaking are the two sections which most people find particularly challenging
and i have online courses which can teach you how to meet each band 7 requirement
how to prepare your answers step by step and how to prepare for your exam in less time
and achieve the highest score you can achieve with your current level of english
if you're interested i will link them in the description box below please check them out how
to prepare for ielts in 3 months you have time imagine how many practice tests you could do
but that won't help there is no point in doing a million of mock tests you've already learned
the ielts strategies now it's time to work on your english skills ielts listening listen to
books podcasts news in english it doesn't have to be ielts related just listen to people speaking
english it's a passive skill so you improve it by just listening and get familiar with
british and american accents with a particular emphasis on the british accent
they sound slightly different so let me try to imitate in british english we would say
hot water in american accent it would be more like hot water so you may not recognize even a familiar
word if you're not familiar with these differences in pronunciation so learn both there are many
other accents but i i think if you're familiar with the two main ones you'll be all right
ielts reading to succeed in this section you need to read fast and you need to know a lot of words
actually i think you need to have the widest vocabulary for this section so read ielts related
articles and learn new words the more you read the faster you read and the more words you know
the easier it is for you to read so for ielts academic read more scientific style articles
such as the science magazine or the science section on the bbc website
for ielts general training just read things in english news job descriptions instructions
everything you normally read but in english ielts writing it's difficult to write a great essay
if you don't know much about the topic and if you're lacking the topic specific vocabulary
so what you can do is you can start doing research for your essays choose topics which are commonly
used in ielts so choose one and then go on the internet and find articles on this topic
try to find good sources newspapers or large websites to ensure that you're reading
high quality articles and then read them analyze them see what ideas they use write them down
see which words they use write them down see how they organize ideas how they split them into
different paragraphs how they connect ideas it will help you improve your writing on all levels
ielts speaking if you have some time before your exam learn more about english pronunciation
25 of your speaking score depends on your pronunciation not your accent but pronunciation
so learn how to pronounce each sound in english how to merge words into groups
how to use the rhythm and intonation in your speech you can find videos on youtube for free you
can take a course on udemy they cost like 10-15 dollars i took one once and it was very helpful
and speak english every day you can talk to yourself you can find a speaking partner
on our telegram channel we have a post where hundreds of people are looking for a speaking
body if you go to our telegram channel and search for the hashtag ft2 you'll get straight to that
post and you can take speaking lessons with the native speaking teacher if that's what you're
interested in i highly recommend gambling right now you can download the ielts study plan for you
with all the things you should do and links to all the resources you could use
all you need is to fill in the form on our website and we'll send it to your email immediately
thank you so much for watching me today good luck with your preparation and your exam bye