IELTS TIPS 

Firstly, familiarise yourself with the IELTS test format.  Knowing what to expect helps you to focus on the skills being tested and can improve your overall confidence.
 

There are four parts to the IELTS examination: reading, writing, speaking and listening.  Use the following tips to help you improve your skills in each area:

1. Speaking  
2. Writing
3. Listening
4. Reading
      

Speaking 
Practise speaking alone for up to two minutes, as this will help you become more fluent and confident as well as give you practice for Part 2 of the speaking test.  Part 2 requires you to speak for two minutes by yourself. Practise giving more information and detail to simple questions, such as those asked in Part 1 of the speaking test.  Part 1 is a chance to ‘warm up' your speaking and includes simple questions about personal information. Practise justifying your opinions and giving clear examples to support your ideas to help you in Part 3 of the speaking test.  Part 3 is a discussion between you and the examiner. 

Writing 
Make sure you identify the question and keywords clearly, so that you know exactly how to answer it. For Task 2, (which is an essay question), take time to do a quick brainstorm and a plan of your body paragraphs.  Each paragraph should have a topic sentence and this will reflect the main idea of the paragraph.  Use examples, evidence and other supporting ideas to back up the main idea. For Task 1 (which involves writing about a graph, table or chart) , take time to look at the most important information and decide what to include in your report. Use 20 minutes for task 1 and 40 minutes for task 2. 

Listening 
You only hear the listening test once, so make sure you write your answers as you go.  If you miss an answer, skip it and move on to the next one so you do not get behind and miss answers you may have understood. Use the time before listening sections to look ahead at the questions and start thinking about the topics and even prediction possible answers.  This will help focus you to the topic and task. Wait until the end of the listening test to carefully transfer your answers to the answer sheet.  You are given ten minutes to do this at the end of the listening test.

Reading 
Start at the beginning of the test and work through, skipping any questions you cannot do so that you can go back at the end, if you have time.  Keep a close eye on the time.  Use reading techniques (scanning, skimming, previewing) to help you. Allow time to write your answers on the answer sheet, as you are not given extra time to do this. Read instructions and examples carefully.  If the instructions say not to use more than three words in the answer, then make sure you follow them. Allow time at the end to go back over any questions you could not answer.  It is worth having a guess at the answers if you still do not know.