How to prepare for IELTS exam in 10 days ( Part 4- Speaking )

Hey guys,

IELTS speaking is the area where i didn't scored very well. I had taken a mock IELTS 15 days before my actual IELTS exam. In that mock, i scored 5.5 in speaking and the lady told me to really work on my speaking ability. And guess what, my final result in IELTS Speaking was 7.5 which is not awesome but still good enough.

Here i will share what all i did and what you should do to prepare well for Speaking in IELTS.

1. I started speaking a lot on general topics for 10-12 minutes continuously just 4-5 days before the test day.

2. The speaking section can be categorized into 3 areas:

A. First part in IELTS speaking is a general discussion about you, your family, your native place, about your job, etc.. All general stuff. This goes for around 3 minutes. You dont
need any preparation for this. But make sure that you keep speaking.

B. Second part in IELTS speaking is where the interviewer will give you a topic to speak on. In my case the topic was "Speak about a product whose advertisement influenced you to purchase it". Now it was a bit smart. I thought that i should speak about a topic on which i can pull in many ideas, even though that product's advertisement may not have influenced my decision to buy it. So my HP laptop clicked me. I spoke how advertisement of HP laptop influenced my decision. What all features were discussed in the Ad. And how the advertisement distinguished the HP laptop from rest of the laptops. She gave me 2 minutes to speak. I spoke for 2 minutes and she stopped me after that. So make sure that you speak continuously for 2 minutes.

C. The third part in IELTS Speaking is where the instructor would test you how you are able to analyse the topic. She asked me if apart from advertisement, i did any other reasearch. What about the companies that prepare advertisements targetted towards children. And 2-3 more questions.
So the key here is be yourself. Take 3-4 seconds to prepare your answer and then start answering. That's it.

To summarize the above points, i would say KEEP SPEAKING, BE SMART, think in different directions while speaking, remain cool-n-calm and take 3-4 seconds before you start answering. That's it !

If you follow all these steps and if you are fluent in english, i see no reason why you should not be scoring above 8 in IELTS speaking section.

With this post, i end the article series on IELTS preparation. In case you need any help from me regarding your preparation, feel free to contact me.

How to prepare for IELTS exam in 10 days ( Part 3- Writing)

Hey guys, Sorry i got late to write this post. Well i hope your preparation is on right track for IELTS.

Today we will discuss about how to work on IELTS writing and what you should keep in mind to write well..It's easy to say that you should write logically.. And flow of ideas should be smooth, structured. But no one really talks about what strategies you should follow.

Let me break this post in two parts. Part A and Part B. Part A is where you will have to analyse a graph and analyse it. Part B is where you ll have to put in extra effort and give more time. The ideas for both remain the same except that Part A will be small. IELTS suggests you to write minimum 150 words in Part A and min 250 in part B.

On test day, i had written around 220 words in Part A and around 350 in Part B.

Part A

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1. While writing for IELTS, firstly, you should give an overview of what the graph analyses. In first paragraph, write about what you would be comparing. Make sure that you capture the main points.

2. I use transition words whereever possible. This is VERY VERY important. For example "In Contrast, A showed growth.." OR "In addition, the growth of females suffered during 1990" OR "Moreover, the volume of rainfall increased... " etc..
So do you words like First, Second, Third, Morever, In addition, In sum, To Conclude, In contrast, At the same time, Incidently etc. This will make your writing very easy to read from a reader's perspective.

It's really important that in writing for IELTS, you use words like: increased, decreased, remained almost constant, stable, volatile, sharp decline etc..

3. While concluding in IELTS writing, give a 2-3 line summary of what you analysed. For eg. "In sum, the ratio of males to females increased during the period 1990-2000, while it remained stable during 2001-2005 and then showed a sharp decline during the period 2006- 2010"

Part B

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The rules for Part B remain the same. In part B, use more imagination as you dont have a graph. Use your own ideas and think in varied directions and then keep forming paragraphs. My topic for Part B was "In your opinion, what would be the result of introducing a common international languague for communication" So i formed a general introduction that there will be both pros and cons. In pros, i made around 3-4 paragraphs and talked about the benefits. In cons also i did the same. And i concluded by saying that i feel that the cons far outweigh the pros and there are more disadvantages of introducing such a language.Then i summarized it in 2 -3 lines by using keyword "To conclude, though there are advantages of introducing a new international language like .., .., .., the disadvantages far outweigh the advantages, and hence....."

One important point that follows for both part A and part B in IELTS writing is that you should also keep your writing gramatically correct and follow english rules like parallelism, correct punctuation as much as possible. This is really important.

Keep these points in mind and i am sure you will get 8.5 out of 9 in IELTS writing as i got :) If you need any assistance in writing part, feel free to contact me.

PS: If you have a lot of time with you, start writing a blog. You will realize that as you keep writing every few days, your way of writing will improve.