Welcome to our IELTS exam preparation tutorial! I guess you may be frustrated or getting so nervous to prepare for the test, which included reading, writing, listening, and speaking. But no matter if you are an absolute English beginner or an Advanced English user, we are going to introduce you to the structure of the IELTS examination, how you can get a high score easily, and help you be more confident taking the exam. We have prepared more videos for some tips and advice so that you can handle the rest comfortably.
Alright, let’s get started.
What exactly is IELTS?
The full name of IELTS is International English Language Testing System it is used to measure the proficiency of non-native English speakers. I guess you may have heard about the brand name of British Council, Cambridge Assessment English from the UK, and IDP Education from Australia. They partnered with each other and created the IELTS exam in 1989, and more than 3 million students are taking the exam in the world every year nowadays. It’s highly recognized and accepted by millions of organizations around the world including Universities, fortune 500 companies, and governments, especially for immigration purposes. So it’s a good choice you just started the preparation right now.
Differences between IELTS Academic and IELTS General Training
You need to know there are at least two major types of IELTS examination, one is IELTS Academic, another is IELTS General Training. Some other types are IELTS for UKVI Academic, IELTS for UKVI General Training, IELTS Life Skills A1, and IELTS Life Skills B1.
So, what are the differences? Well, according to the official statement, the IELTS Academic test has topics more suitable for students entering university or professional institutions while the General Training test contains topics based on general interest. So just pick the right exam type according to your own purpose.
Myth: Is IELTS general training exam much easier?
Wait, lots of students ask, is the IELTS general training exam much easier than the academic one? Well it’s really difficult to say, but we can say they are similar in format, but differ in content in the Writing and Reading sections, for most students they can write a short letter but feel challenging for summarizing a complicated graph or vice versa. So it really depends on your educational background.
You can choose to take the exam with the British Council or IDP in different countries. According to the IELTS official, there are over 140 countries with over 1600 test locations available, so no matter where you are, you can easily find your test center. Usually, there are more than 4 exams monthly for IELTS academics and around 3-4 exams monthly for IELTS general training, you can easily check in British Council or IDP through Google.
Once you decided which type of the exam, you can pick the format, whether you prefer computer-delivered IELTS or paper-based IELTS, both the format need your physical presence at the testing center, the differences are just you want to do the listening, writing and reading on the paper or through computer, it will be definitely advantage if your typing speed is fast! Or you didn’t write on paper for a decade. For the speaking test, you still need to talk with the examiner face-to-face, demonstrating your English talking skills. Be alert that if you want to know your exam result earlier, you should choose the computer-delivered IELTS because the score will be delivered in 3-5 business days while the paper-based one needs around 13 business days. And both types of formats cost the same, around USD$250, depending on which country and center you choose.
Marking scheme of the IELTS examination
Alright once you get ready for the examination, you should know the marking scheme. The lowest score should be 1 and the highest should be 9 so you may always hear the other instructor tell you they aim to Band 9 of the IELTS exam. To be frank, it’s not that easy even for a native English speaker. According to the demographic data from IELTS, most countries have lower than 1% of participants who got Band 9, even the United state and Canada have just around 1% of participants achieve Band 9. As mentioned, over 3 million participants around the world take the IELTS examination, most of them fall into the range of 5.5-7.5 score. It’s really good if you can achieve an overall band of 7+ to be honest if you are a non-native English speaker.
One of the key strategies for IELTS preparation is to speedy improve your grammar, which highly affects your grade in writing, speaking, listening, and reading. So investing time for better grammar is essentially a smart decision for your IELTS exam. In my experience, I was really frustrated in the grammar world, those mixed tenses, conditional, indefinite articles, etc, make me really confused. So I tidied up some notes hope to help you improve your English grammar foundation shortly.
We hope you can achieve your goal through our structured lessons.
Let’s learn English together with fun! Stay tuned.
