Hi. Welcome back to www.engvid.com. I'm Adam. Today, I have a bit of a special lesson for
you. We're going to look at the IELTS test.
Now, before I begin, I have to tell you that I will be speaking a little bit faster than
usual because this is for IELTS test-takers. You need to get used to faster speed English,
more natural speed English. But for everybody else, keep watching. It's still a good practice,
still lots of vocabulary to learn, lots of things to learn.
So, more specifically, we're going to be looking at IELTS time management. Now, many people
tell me... I've had many students come and tell me the biggest problem they had taking
the IELTS test was that they ran out of time. They didn't know how to manage their time,
and that's why they lost a lot of points. Okay? So, today, I'm going to help you fix
that a little bit. There's lots to talk about. Let's get started.
Two things we have to worry about: mind and body. Okay? First, let's talk about the body.
One of the biggest mistakes people make when they go to take the test on test day is they're
exhausted. They're just not mentally ready to take the test. It's a long test, it's a
difficult test, and it's a test in English; not your native tongue. Obviously, right?
So, what do you do? Very, very important. The night before... The night before the test,
don't study. If you don't know it then, you won't know it the next day. So, the night
before the test, go to sleep early, get a full eight hours of solid sleep, wake up early,
do whatever you need to do in the morning, go to the test center relaxed. Okay? Very,
very important. You need as much brain power as you can get on test day.
Speaking of waking up in the morning on test day, make sure that you eat properly. Don't
go to the test hungry. Your stomach does a lot of your thinking for you when you're not
prepared. If you're hungry, you're thinking about your stomach; not about the English.
Okay? Eat. Eat properly. Carbohydrates, proteins. Avoid coffee and sugar. But if you have to
have a coffee in the morning to wake up, like I do, have it at least an hour, an hour and
a half, two hours before the test. Don't go into the test room with a cup of a coffee
in your hand. Well, you can't anyway, but don't go into the test center with a cup of
coffee in your hand. Get it all out of the way early. Okay. So this is still body.
During the test, when you have a few extra seconds, maybe between sections, between questions,
in the listening section, etcetera, close your eyes. Breathe. Just calm yourself down,
relax. Remember, at the end of the day, if you didn't do well on the test today, you
take it again next week or the week after that. You can do it again. Relax. Close your
eyes. If they're burning, close them, relax. Get a little bit of energy back, move on.
Same idea, if you have a chance, stretch. Don't be afraid to waste-if you want to call
it that-take a minute of your time to stretch. Arms up, do whatever you have to do. Don't
get up and walk around. I don't think they'll be very happy about that, but as much as you
can, stretch. Legs, arms, neck, whatever you need to do. A strong, healthy body helps you
do better on a test. It actually helps you save time, believe it or not. Okay, this is
one thing.
Most importantly, your mind. We need to train your mind. It's not all about English. Okay?
The IELTS test, the TOEFL test, etcetera, these are called standardized tests. It means
they're always going to be the same structure. They're always going to be about the same
time, the same set up, the same types of questions. Okay? Know them.
So, how we... Do we train your body? Practice. I cannot stress this enough. Practice, practice,
practice every single day. What do you practice? Excuse me. Practice your listening and speaking
as much as you can. The easiest thing to practice is your listening. Okay? TV, music videos,
YouTube, internet. Like, English is everywhere. Very, very easy to practice your listening. Okay?
Practice your vocabulary. Learn vocabulary. Learn vocabulary. Learn vocabulary. You need
a lot of words for this test.
Practice your skills. Note taking skills, paraphrasing skills, just writing skills.
Notice I wrote this here, "write legibly". If the reader, if the grader of your essay
can't read what you're writing, then you didn't write anything and you're losing points. If
you have very bad handwriting, practice doing it nicely. This is actually the best that
I can get. But when I was in high school, my teachers told me that I will be a doctor
one day because I already know how to write prescriptions that nobody can read. So I had
to change. If you have to change, practice and change.
Okay, now, this is probably the most important one: know the test. Okay? What does that mean?
Instructions. Every section has instructions. Okay? Know these before test day. Okay? Don't
go to the test and read the instructions. Big, big waste of time. You should have practiced...
You should have taken practice tests so many times that you know every instruction for
every section. You take the time they give you to look at instructions, you're already
looking ahead to what is coming. You are getting ready. Maybe you're closing your eyes, maybe
you're stretching. You are not reading the instructions. Okay? That's one.
Structure. Know the structure of the test. It doesn't change. We're going to look at
that in a second, what the structure is, but make sure you know it. There should be absolutely
no surprises on test day. You should know everything about this test; what's coming,
what you can expect. No surprises.
Okay. You know what? We're going to leave it there. We're going to come back in a second.
We're going to look at the structure, and what you have to do for each section to save
yourself time and do better on this test.
Okay, let's start with the listening section. The listening section has 40 questions, about
30 minutes for the entire section. Okay? Again, always going to be the same. Always 40 questions,
always 30 minutes. You got four sections in the listening section. Your first section
has two speakers. Your second section has one speaker. Your third section, two speakers.
Your last section, one speaker. Okay?
The last section is the most difficult because it's a lecture. It's usually one person speaking
the whole time, you're going, answering the questions, multiple choice, fill-in-the-blanks,
etcetera. But just understand it's always going to be like this, so you're always...
Know exactly what's coming, how to listen. How you listen to two speakers is different
from how you listen to one speaker. Two speakers, you have to be aware of the shift, when you're
switching from one speaker to another. Man and woman speaking, easy. Two men, two women
speaking, not as easy; you have to listen for the cues.
Now, another thing you have to keep very much in mind, they're going to give you... Each
section they give you a little bit of time to look ahead before the recording begins.
Okay? Look ahead. Take this time, use it wisely. Now, what are you looking for? Are you going
to read everything? Are you going to try to read everything before the recording starts?
Of course not. You don't have time to read everything. I think the first section, they
give you about a minute to look ahead at the first part. Don't try to read everything.
Read around the blanks. You have blanks to fill in, for example, this is one question
type is the blanks. Read what's around. Look for the words that you're listening to to
give you a hint or a cue that the answer is coming. Again, that's why vocabulary is very
important, and learning and practicing your skills. Paraphrasing skills also very important.
Multiple choice questions, like for example, section four, there's often multiple choice.
If you see multiple choice questions and you have time to look ahead, don't try to read
every question and answer. Go to every question, identify the main question word. What? Who?
When? Where? Etcetera. All these words, find out exactly what you are listening for. Are
you listening for a time? Are you listening for a person, a place, a thing, an idea, an
action? Etcetera.
Also, listen for numbers, names, milestones. For example, if you're listening for numbers,
then you know where they are. For example, if you have a table, you see all these numbers,
you're listening for the missing numbers. Dates, time, etcetera, these are all numbers.
Names, names of places, names of companies, names of people, etcetera.
Milestones. Okay? Milestones tell you you're getting to this point. So you need to be ready
for this word. Here was a question, here's a question, look at the milestone. This tells
you that you've past this one, you need to be getting ready for this one. This is very,
very important in terms of time management. Why? Because if you are aware that this is
a milestone, that this is where you need to listen to between these two questions, if
you get to this milestone but you didn't get the previous question's answer, you missed
it. Don't worry about it. Don't try to listen to it, because you won't, it's gone. Get ready
for the next question. If you're trying to figure out what this was, you're going to
miss the next one too. So be very careful about these milestones. They are your markers,
they are your guides along the recording. Okay?
There are a few other things, let's see what they are. You're going to have like a table,
or a graph, or a diagram, something visual that you have to label, for example, or you
have to fill in the blanks, for example. Always look at the headings. Always look what is
here, always look what is here. Always look what is here, always look what is here. Okay?
Again, this is with the time they give you to look ahead, this is where you're looking.
And if you have extra time, look at the words around the blanks, look at all the little
clues. But make sure you know what the headings are so you can match things up.
If they give you a diagram, the thing that... That extra time that you're given, what you're
looking for is the starting point. This is where you're going to start. This is the first
blank you have to fill, this is where the recording is going to begin. Now, if you have
let's say a few... You have like these. This is the first one. This is question 14, let's
say. This is question 15, this is 16, 17. Make sure you know the direction. This way,
you're always listening: what is this? This is next. This is next. What is this? This
is next. What is this? This is next. What is this? This is next. Etcetera. Always know
where the recording is going.
Now, very, very important... Okay? Let's say you... You come to an end of a section. Oh,
let's say you have fill-in-the-blanks.
This is one of the sections, let's say. This is your last question, let's say question
13 of the section. Let's say you've heard the answer, you've written down the answer.
Are you going to listen to this? No. Why? You don't need to know what's being said here.
Well, once you have this answer, you have two options. One, close your eyes, relax.
Get your energy back. Get ready for the next section. Better choice: take this extra time
that they're speaking here to look ahead at the next section. So instead of having one
minute to look ahead, you have a minute and a half, a minute and 45 seconds. That gives
you more time to prepare for the next section. Okay? Remember: this is all about time management,
and about keeping yourself calm, and fresh, and ready to go.
Now, another thing, if you're looking for this answer and suddenly you realize that
you heard something here and this answer you didn't get, it's gone. Let it go. Move on.
Don't try to answer this question from the recording because you can't. If you missed
it, you can try to guess or just let it go, move on, get ready for the next one. Okay?
Very, very important to do this.
Now, and I can't stress this last point enough, spelling counts on the IELTS. A lot of students,
they try to... They worry about the spelling here. They're trying to write the word perfectly.
Remember, at the end of the section, they're going to give you time to write the answers
on the answer sheet. That is when you should worry about spelling. Here, just get the answer
down. If anything, use your note taking skills to write it quick and short, but enough that
you understand it, and worry about writing it perfectly later on the answer sheet.
Use abbreviations, shorten the words. Use your little codes, "B4", for example. You
don't need to write the full word. You need to write enough that you understand what the
answer is, worry about spelling later. Don't worry about it here, because as you're thinking
about this, you're missing the next question. Okay? So it's all about keeping up with the
recording and staying ahead of the recording. Okay, that's it for the listening section.
Let's look at the reading section.
Okay, so now let's look at the reading section, which again, same structure every time, get
to know it. You have 40 questions, you have 60 minutes. Basically the breakdown is 13
questions, 13 questions, 14 questions, or any combination thereof. Could be 13, 14,
13. Doesn't matter. But more or less, that's the way it is. Now, most people think that
you should do 20 minutes for each reading section. Don't do that.
Break it down like this: first reading, 15 minutes; second reading, 20 minutes; third
reading, 25 minutes. Now you're asking me: why? Okay. Two reasons. One, and the most
obvious one, reading number two is harder than reading number one, so you need more
time. Reading number three is harder than reading number two. The readings get harder
as you go along. Okay? You want more time as you go along, that's one.
Two, you've just finished a 30-minute listening section. By the time you get here, you've
just done 40 minutes or so, 35 minutes of reading. Your brain is tired. It's English.
You're frustrated, you're angry, you're... Maybe you're hungry because you didn't eat
in the morning like I told you to. Here, you need more time. Why? You're tired, it's harder.
Simple as that.
Now, how are you going to use this time? The thing that I want you to practice eventually...
I will show you on another video how to do it, but spend five to seven minutes getting
the gist of the reading. The gist? The overall idea. Get a sense of what the article is about.
Find the thesis statement for each paragraph, and find the key words. Now, why are we doing
this? By doing this, you will be able to write a heading, a one sentence, a very short sentence
saying: what is this paragraph about? You write that down next to the paragraph. You
do that for every paragraph.
If you can do this quickly... And believe me, it takes a lot of practice. If you can
do this quickly, then everything else is very easy. Once you have the heading, you can answer
the heading type questions. The summaries you can answer because you know where to begin
the summary, and then you just follow along and complete it.
The most important, though, is everybody's favourite question: true, false, not given;
yes, no, not given. Everybody thinks "not given", that's the hardest question. It doesn't
have to be. Okay? The not given question wastes a lot, a lot of time. Why? Because people
try to read the entire article to find an answer that is not there. If it is not given,
you will not find it. So why spend so much time looking for something that is not there?
What you should do, if you can do this properly, then whatever the question is, you should
understand where it ought to be. This is the question, the answer should be in paragraph
three because that's the structure of this article. That's what... This paragraph is
talking about this information in the question. So you go to paragraph three, you don't find
the answer. You look a little bit a paragraph two, not there. You look a little bit at paragraph
four, also not there. Guess what? It's not given. Circle it, move on.
Speaking of moving on, again, if you're looking at a question and you just don't know the
answer, you just can't find it anywhere, don't spend too much time on it. Remember, you have
about a minute and a half per question for the whole reading section. If you're spending
five minutes on one question, that's two questions that you can't answer later because you won't
even have time to read the question. You don't know, you guess, you move on. Okay?
Again, another thing you want to do, build your vocabulary. This is the hardest part
of the reading section is the vocabulary. And learn your paraphrasing skills.
Learn how to write this sentence a different way, but keep the same meaning. Very, very important
because the questions... The answers, I should say. The answers and what's written in the
article will mean the same thing, but completely different words, completely different syntax
or grammar. Very, very important skill. I will make a lesson for this as well in the
future. Look out for that. And then you move on to the writing section.
Okay, last section, writing. I'm not really going to speak to you about the speaking section
because there's not much in terms of time management. You walk in, you speak, you leave.
Okay? There's no tricks here. It's a live one-on-one interview with a person. He or
she will set the pace, you follow, that's it. The only thing I will say about the speaking
section, sometimes you will have the test right... The speaking test 30 minutes after
your paper test, sometimes you'll have it two or three hours later. If it's later, just
go somewhere, stay calm, stay focused. That's all I can tell you about that.
But writing section, now, here you have two tasks. Task one, spend the 20 minutes. Task
two, 40 minutes. One hour. Leave the breakdown as they recommend it. Task one, they want
you to write 150 words. Aim for about 200. Task two, they want you to write about 200-...
Minimum 250 words, there is no way you can get seven, for example, a band score of 7
with 250 words. Aim for 350. Okay? You don't have to. I recommend it if you want that high score.
Now, what will you do with your time? Your 20 minutes, your task one, very, very straightforward
essay. There's absolutely no opinion to be given in here. Very straightforward. Paragraph
one, what am I looking at? What is the diagram? Is it a table? Is it a graph? Etcetera. Paragraph
two, what are the highlights? What are you going to..? What are your main points you're
going to talk about? You're going to talk about highs, you're going to talk about lows.
You're going to talk about big fluctuations, you're going to talk about stability. Okay?
And paragraph three, minor points. Or if you're comparing two graphs, second paragraph, graph
one; second... Third paragraph, graph two.
Check out my colleague, Emma, at www.engvid.com, she has a good lesson on task one of the IELTS.
It'll be very useful for you.
Task two, 40 minutes. Now, here's a little breakdown here. I'll focus more on the task
two. Spend five to seven minutes planning. Do not skip this tep... This step, sorry.
If you do not plan, you will waste lots of time while you're writing your body. As soon
as you plan your essay, you're already done. All you have to focus on now is English; sentences,
vocabulary, transitions, etcetera. Spend 30 minutes writing it. Leave yourself three to
five minutes to check over typos, etcetera. Remember, it's handwritten, you want it to
be legible. If I can't read it, I can't score you, you're getting a lower grade. Okay? So
use that time to check. If you have to fix anything, do that. Don't try to rewrite whole
paragraphs. You don't have time.
Now, sadly, a lot of my students tell me that the writing is not the hard part, that the
English is not the hard part. What do they have a problem with in task two? Ideas. They
don't know what to say. They don't think about some of these questions. They've never considered
these things, so they don't know what to say. Even in the planning stage, they're just like
sitting there blank.
Here's an idea. Again, be ready before test day. When you go into the test, you have an
idea bank in your head. These are very common topics that you will see on the IELTS test
or the TOEFL test as well: technology, education, travel, environment. Okay? Make up questions
for these. Find universal examples. For example, technology, internet. You can use the internet
to answer almost any question about technology. Okay? Apple. Apple is a specific real-world
example, you can use it. Microsoft, you can use it to talk about many, many things. Okay?
Education, university, high school, travelling overseas, learning at home. All these things.
Have your ideas ready before the test. Don't try to think of them during the test. Big
waste of time. Travel, environment. Okay? Lots of ideas. Get yourself examples. Worry
about examples. Don't worry about reasons, don't worry about what the question will be.
Just think of technological examples that you can use for many types of questions. Of
course, practice. Get yourself a list of questions you can practice, but have your examples already
in your head. Okay?
Okay, I'll give you an example of an example that you can use. President Obama could be
used for any of these. Why? Because he's a person, he's the President of the United States.
That's a big, powerful country. America is the leader in technology, for example. Education,
American... America has one of the... Some of the best schools. Obama is the President
of America. You can use him for almost anything. Travel, environment, Obama's from Hawaii.
There you go. He's trying to save the environment, like...
Anyway, get your ideas ready before you go into the test. So, when you go there, you
plan because you already have the ideas, you write, you check. Okay? Very straightforward
stuff. I will actually have, again, lessons on more of these items for you in the future.
But if you have any questions, please go to www.engvid.com. There's also going to be a
little quiz there to review this stuff. You can ask me questions. Please also don't forget
to subscribe to my channel on YouTube. And please check out my new website to help you
with TOEFL and IELTS, www.writetotop.com. Thanks. See you next time.