In this blog IH Manchester Academic Manager, Joseph Baker, will share some top tips for IELTS exam success with you.
First let’s think about why you need to know about the IELTS exam. If you know what you’re expected to do in the exam that means you can do it well and the exam is a better reflection of your English level so the better you know the IELTS exam the better it tests your english rather than your exam knowledge. So let’s have a look at the IELTS exam.
You need to know about the format of the exam.
How many sections are there?
There are four sections:
-reading
-writing
-listening
-speaking
I’m going to have a little look at each of those sections now.
The reading test text lasts for one hour. There are three texts that you have to read and a total of 40 questions across the total and one hour exam.
The listening part will normally last about 30-40 minutes. You have 30 minutes of listening and 10 minutes to copy your answers onto your answer sheet. There are four different parts that you have to listen to which could involve one person or up to four people.
The writing part will last for one hour during which you have to write two things. First a report and secondly an essay.
The speaking part will last about 15 minutes and there are three different parts in this 15 minutes section.
Okay so within the reading and listening you need to know about the different task types that you will be asked about.
This website here will take you to a page that tells you about the different task types. Here are some examples you can see that i’ve taken from this website so there are a total of six listening types and 11 reading question types. All of them can be found on this website understanding those different question types can help you answer the questions in a better way.
Following that, for the speaking and the writing the band descriptors are publicly published so you can find them on this website here. They tell you what you need to do in order to get the level that you require, so really useful to find out what you actually need to do in order to get the score that you are looking for.
Watch the know the IELTS exam video
For more information about our IELTS preparation courses, online and face to face in school, please click the links below:
