This article will outline some tips and tricks that helped me out during my preparation. My overall band was 7.5 (L: 9, R: 7.5, W:7, S: 7)
Most of these are from IELTS Advantage youtube channel and some from my own experience. If you are someone preparing for IELTS, I would suggest you to stick to this one channel since it has quality content unlike other creators who give incorrect tips and misinformation.
I have discussed different strategies depending on question type for each section because going in exam with a single strategy for all questions is a big mistake.
Listening
Listening is the easiest part and just takes a little bit of effort to master.
💡 The biggest issue is we are not used to listening with focus for 30 minutes straight so we need to improve our foucs.
- Watching TV shows and movies without subtitles
- Any Tedx talk, try to keep 2 ideas in mind. One the speaker is currently talking about, Secondly, the one speaker discussed just before the current idea. This will greatly boost your mcq scores (multiple choice, select 2 choices type questions)
- Third, panel discussions will help you to differentiate between 2 people POV, espically helpful in part 3 academic discussion.
maps
There was a map question in my listening exam and I used these strategies.
- Go through the essential map vocabulary. It only takes 10 minutes
- Read title, it tells you what you are looking for. eg proposed traffic changes
- Scan the map from left to right. First notice Main roads, streets etc then buildings and finally unusal things such as trees in a long row
- Visualize yourself walking on the streets, taking left, right etc
- Beware of traps/distractions such as signposting language eg: if you go to the left you will see the lake. (not helpful)
- listen to the beginning of the talk very carefully. tells you about your starting point eg might start at north gate or south gate then keep moving your cursor with recording
- Think of paraphrase language/synonyms they might use. eg supermarket might be referred as grocery store, food shop, descriptive phrase (where people buy their daily groceries)
- Finally, try to predict where given options can be. eg: playground might be located somewhere in an open space
multiple choice
This is not only about listening, in this section you need to think and listen at the same time
- Since questions and options might be long and we don’t have enough time, so first we only go through questions and highlight keywords
- keywords such as both speakers agree/disagree, Speaker A/B opinion, topic under discussion like renewable energy.
- After questions, highlight keywords in given options and compare them: how they are different from one another. Helpful in elimination method
- When listening, focus on current mcq and keep thinking about the next in the back of your mind. 2 idea tedx technique I mentioned earlier helps here
- Lastly, look for paraphrase language/ synonyms eg long time ago (can be 50 years ago, 100 years ago etc)
💡 More mock tests are not going to improve your score. Identify your mistakes and work on weak areas. No one can help you with this, you need to identify them yourself. Use Egnovate to filter according to your question type, to improve them
- for example, for me, matching headings was getting wrong b/c I was highlighting whole phrases instead of just one keyword
Reading
Reading is easy in the sense that you have the choice to manage the time on your own unlike listening. Of course, goes without saying, not more then 20 minutes/passage.
Before doing any mocks tests, watch this IELTS Advantage reading video and take your own notes. It has all the question types with strategies on how to attempt them. This video helped me to score 8 on reading mocks
My reading strategy
💡 Understanding difference b/w True/Fasle/Not Given and Yes/NO/Not given was a big deal. T/F/NG are always about facts while Y/N/NG are about writers opinion and can be implied based on context.
- See question types. decide which one to attempt first. eg: ordered questions are always first like summary completion. On the other hand, matching information and matching headings are always last b/c they need full understanding of the text.
Using Skimming and Scanning with where b4 what strategy. Finding the location in the text is first thing, only then we can answerwhat- For matching headings, try to think of your own heading first
- 80%-90% of answers are either synonyms are paraphrased.
💡 My weak areas in reading. you need to find yours
- too much time on Not given. looking for something that does not exist in the text
- highlighting irrelevant information in passage wasting time.
Writing
Writing was my weakest area until I watched this IELTS Advantage Video. It’s 11 hour long but worth every second of it. Doing writing practice without clear strategy is utter waste of time.
notes examples
Take your own notes. Some examles of the notes I took from above video, can’t include everything b/c its too big.
💡 Reference essays from band 7, 8, 9 students will help you a lot.
- go to this ielts advantage website for 100 band 7, 8 and 9 essays
- use active reading, instead of passive reading.
- try to find your solution first, then see solution mentioned in the essay and compare both.
- After you have read the essay introduction. try to think of ways how would you go about the idea development. Only after this read their idea development
- notice different collocations being used
- identify grammatical structures used. below image shows how i have identified different grammatical structures
💡 For vocabulary, make an excel sheet with the most common collocations, adverb collocations, descriptive words and phrases for landscape, atomosphere, city/town, buildings/landmarks etc. Try to use them in daily life instead of memorizing
Speaking
As far as speaking is concerned, the more you are going to speak, the better it’s going to get. So, practice with some friends or people online.
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chatgpt is very good at giving feedback too.
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watch this ielts advatage speaking mocktest playlist to get an idea about what you can expect in the test and how to answer them.