IELTS study material.
Where do you get it from?
Who do you get it from?
And how do you get it?
In this video I'll give you a brief overview of some of the sources.
Hi there.
My name is Ben Worthington.
In this video we're going to look at IELTS Study material.
Where do you this material from?
Well, a few different sources.
Of course, you've got Amazon.
You go there and type in "IELTS" blah blah blah.
The problem is it's gonna take you 3 or 4 days to get the books and all this stuff.
A lot of people, a lot of students go for the official ones (which of course is quite
a smart idea).
And they get the practice test.
Good idea, definitely get the practice test.
But don't just focus on the practice test.
Because with that strategy, you are going to get familiar with the exam but you're going
to find it quite difficult to improve your vocabulary
and your language skills.
So first of all, get clear about what you are wanting to improve.
Do you need to improve your language skills?
Or do you need to improve your exam skills?
So you've got Amazon.
And just a word of advice here:
A lot of students buy the book, thinking they're going to buy the solution.
So they buy the book for IELTS vocabulary, thinking they're going to get IELTS vocabulary.
It's kind of logical but it doesn't really work like that.
To get vocabulary, to get IELTS vocabulary, or any vocabulary in any language, what you
need is
lots of interest and lots of repetition for it to be embedded, and for it to be learned
properly.
One very successful teacher told me (and I totally agree with him)
"If you want to improve your language skills, find something that you do actually love."
So if you love the premier league, start reading all about the premier league.
By using that as your motiv you're going to get lots of grammar structures and lots of
new vocabulary.
And then near the exam, start reading about the other topics like health, crime, environment,
all the other stuff.
Now, to get that type of vocabulary, go to The Guardian, go to the BBC, and you can type
into Google "official government report, environment, pdf"
Bang.
And that's a very good source and it's free.
And you can go through those reports, start highlighting the vocabulary, and make your
own list.
Now another source for IELTS material are the torrents (everyone choosing those torrents),
personally, I'd stay away from those.
You've got Scribd S-C-R-I-B-D dot com.
And there's quite a lot of material there (I've posted some material as well).
And just put in the search bar "IELTS" and you can find...
I won't tell you.
You can find out yourself.
You will get quite a lot of useful material.
It's quite cost-effective as well.
Another fantastic resource which is often overlooked is if you...
So you've got your essay back and you realize that you need to work on your articles or
you need to work on your punctuation,
just put "ESL punctuation online quiz" and you can find lots of quizzes there.
And self-correct, you do the work, and then it gives you an answer: yes or no.
It gives you 8 out of 10 or whatever.
But it's a really cost-effective way to improve because you do the work, you get the feedback,
and it's instant, it's fast, and it doesn't cost you much.
If you dedicate 30 minutes a day to doing those exercises on those specific areas that
are costing you points, you will see an improvement.
Trust me.
And you can find resources not only for punctuation but for articles, put "English article online
quiz" and bang.
Start doing those 30 minutes a day, every morning and you'll see a big improvement.
Another very good source is if you put into Google "cloze" (spelt with a Zed).
C-L-O-Zed-E F-R (space, "fr")...
I'll put a link below.
And there you can copy-paste test so you want to choose some test that you really enjoy.
Some academic test or some test from BBC.
Copy it, paste it into this website.
And what it does, you can choose to remove the articles, to remove the W-H words, to
remove the prepositions, and you basically are creating a gap-filled exercise.
And this is fantastic because the more times you do it, the better you get.
It's cheap, it's practically free, and it's a sure-fire way of improving your language
skills.
Another one (I just remembered) are the reading tests.
You just put "reading test" and bang.
You're going to test your speed, test your comprehension, and is a fantastic way to improve
your exam skills which are essential for the exam.
Okay, now if you need more help, do not hesitate to email me.
Come over to the website, sign up, get my email address and bang.
Fire away.
Okay?
And good luck in the exam.