How Popular IELTS Test Is

It cannot be denied that IELTS is one of the most popular English assessment test. Even TOEFL uses similar 4 section in its new test model, the TOEFL-iBT  that is also considering 4 important skills in English.

Sharpen your skills on IELTS listening test | Part 1

“Listening is a skill, not a gift”, said Simon Braverman on his book titled Ace the IELTS. Here are some tips to sharpen your skills on IELTS listening taken from the same book. You may find many tips about listening already; assume these as added value for your experience.  

1. Teach yourself the words. The main point of this is to train your ears to understand the words you hear in the flow of the sentences. You may hear flow of sentences that you could not follow, resulting in misunderstand of the sentences. Train your ears using recording or podcast or even the real audio selections. Use a mp3 player that is small and light so you can bring it wherever you go. Here are some tips while practicing with podcast: 
• Listen, and remember what you heard and stop the podcast after each phrase. Even if you did not understand, keep play it in your head. 
• Say it out loud. If you understand the phrase, this practice will improve your pronunciation. If not, break the sentence into words, look at the dictionary, and make sense out of them. You got new vocabularies and your skill to make sense of sentences sure is improving. 
2. Instruction will keep you safe. Every task in IELTS listening test has its instructions. FOLLOW THE INSTRUCTIONS. If the instruction states that you have to choose 3 words, choose exactly 3 words, because choose 4 or 2 words will get you 0 score. Moreover, when counting words, “a” or “the” count as a word. 
3. Divide and concur. The recording in audio selections IELTS divide questions into groups, so every time you are instructed to answer a group of 4-5 questions, there are 20-30 seconds to prepare before each group. 
• Understand which group of questions you need to answer. Example: “Look at questions 1 to 4”. Take your 20-30 seconds to pay attention and underline the keywords of those questions. Draw a line under the last question (question 4) to prevent your eyes from seeing the other questions. 
• Answer all the questions while listening to the passage. You can answer one questions while still listening to answer the next questions.   
• Repeat the process to the next group of questions. In the next article of this series, we will talk about 5 more tips to sharpen listening skill in IELTS. 

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Reference: Ace the IELTS (Simon Braverman)


- Read Sharpen your skills on IELTS listening test | Part 2 Here

IELTS Reading: Improving Reading Score | Part 3

What are other things that we can do to improve your reading score? One stimulant that you think about is soldier’s activity. When a soldier is going to be involved in a war, he or she will learn on the battle itself, including the place, the time, and the enemy. The same thing happened in IELTS. You have to learn on the types of questions that you deal with in this reading section. You need to do many exercises on these different types of questions as each type of questions need different treatment.

IELTS Speaking Test - Introduction (part 3)

From IELTS Speaking Test - Introduction (part 1 and part 2) we have learned about part one and part two of the speaking test. Now, lets continue to the next part.

Being Smart and Tricky in Writing IELTS Battle

Why does the test taker need to be tricky as well in facing a battle in this section? Yes, smart is not enough in achieving a high score in this section. That is why being tricky comes up as the best solution for getting the expected score.

IELTS Reading: Improving Reading Score | Part 2

In this article, we are going to discuss more on how to improve reading score in IELTS. Besides applying skimming and scanning as the strategies, you can do some actions such as:

IELTS Speaking Test - Introduction (part 1 and part 2)

There are 3 parts in speaking test, each part has some characteristic questions. The examiner (interviewer) will record the interview and score you based on what have you answered. This time we will explain you about part one and part two in the speaking test.

More about Timing Strategy in IELTS

Simple but important thing to do during IELTS test is wearing a watch. Yes, by wearing a watch, you can check the time regularly. This checking is important to make sure that you are “on schedule”. You can try to check the time after completing each passage.

IELTS Reading: Improving Reading Score | Part 1

When we talk about IELTS, it will be also about reading section. This section gives you a big opportunity to increase your overall band score as long as you can manage everything properly. One form of managements itself can be translated as using skimming and scanning techniques. If you have got the basic ideas of these two techniques pretty well, you can ask whether you have got the idea to improve your skimming and scanning ability or not.

Important Things in Listening IELTS Part 2

In the previous article, we discussed some important things that should be paid attention on listening IELTS such as main ideas, voice changes, and specific information. Now, we will discuss more about other important things such as interpretation toward the recording, hidden meaning of the sentences and memory enhancers.