Now that we understand how to approach the IELTS exam, let’s go into more detail by offering you practical advice that, if followed to the letter, will help you pass the exam without problems and on the first attempt.
Listening Part:
Listening is usually the first test of the IELTS Exam and lasts 30 minutes, during which you will only listen to the dialogue once, following which you will have to answer 40 questions.
To reorganize and transcribe the answers on the answer sheet (the sheet on which your answers are evaluated) you are given 10 minutes.
Listening is a really complicated step for many students because the average Indian does not have many opportunities to train this linguistic function.
Therefore, first of all, it is really important to get to the exam with a large number of plays.
How to do?
I definitely recommend that you start with documentaries or podcasts that deal with real-life issues, so that you can develop a certain habit of listening to the English language.
Above all, I advise you to get used to understanding numbers without problems, because in the listening phase they can put you in difficulty and lead you to error more easily, if you don’t know how to distinguish them precisely.
And consequently have a big impact on your test result.
In summary, for the Listening test, follow these simple steps on the exam day.
Reading Part:
The Reading, divided into 3 sections, lasts 60 minutes and is of increasing difficulty, as the language becomes more and more complicated and structured.
In this part of the exam, organizing the time you have available is very important.
Spend 16 minutes for the first section, 18 minutes for the second, and 20 minutes for the third.
By doing so, you will take 6 minutes to check that you have answered all the questions and that there are no errors.
In Reading, you are asked for different skills, such as answering multiple-choice questions, empathizing with the writer’s points of view, or completing a table with diagrams.
Therefore, when preparing for a reading, I strongly recommend that you consider a wide variety of material to be able to address the different types of topics.
The structure of Reading is very different depending on whether we consider General Training or Academic.
In General Training, the first section challenges you to perform tasks related to understanding general life information, such as advertisements or notices.
The second section, on the other hand, is more focused on the world of work, so you will be called upon to interpret job descriptions, contracts, or training minutes.
Finally, the third section focuses on what is reported in newspapers or books, therefore, as you can imagine, the level of difficulty is high.
How do you get through this part brilliantly?
Reading at Ielts Academic looks very different from what we have seen so far. In fact, here the test is composed of 40 questions of increasing difficulty, which are based on three texts that are part of the three sections.
The texts are passages from a book, excerpts from newspapers or newspapers, and contain a great variety of styles and linguistic registers.
In addition to the advice we have already listed, we must consider that in the Academic it is important that you begin to read briefly what is reported in the three texts, with the aim of understanding what the writer’s goal is.
It is not absolutely necessary that you read the texts in their entirety and completeness because you have little time and you have to get straight to the point by answering the questions that are asked of you.
Take advantage of the adverbs that usually emphasize the author’s opinions, as well as the expressions that say a lot about the author’s attitude towards certain situations.
Writing Part:
The part of the IELTS Exam dedicated to written production is definitely the most demanding for Asian students.
We Asians are in fact used to writing long sentences with a very complex and, in some ways, redundant construction.
The English language, on the other hand, works just the opposite: short and concise sentences and, in the body of the text, you have to go straight to the point, without too many words.
In this part of the exam, you are asked to write a text of at least 150 words, trying to be as original and authentic as possible.