Hey everyone and welcome back to the Understandable English Podcast.
My name is Oliver and today I am going to be talking about the IELTS examinations.
Many of you who use or want to use English academically, so in education or professionally will know what IELTS is and what the IELTS exams are.
But for those of you who don't, I will explain.
Okay, so IELTS stands for, so it's an acronym for the International English Language Testing System.
Wow, quite a mouthful.
You can understand why I would rather say IELTS and why most people just say IELTS.
And it is one of the most popular English tests in the world.
And it looks at your ability to communicate in English and measures it across four areas.
So listening, reading, writing and speaking.
All of the main areas that you need for a language.
And this examination or result is accepted by thousands of universities employers, so companies and also immigration authorities.
So if you need a long term visa in the UK.
Australia or Canada for example.
So that is why IELTS is important.
If you're planning to study at a university where courses are taught in English, then you'll probably need to take the IELTS exam.
And, like I said, it's important for visa applications and even for some jobs in English or jobs that use English language.
Basically having a good IELTS score can make it easier for you to live, study, and work abroad.
So in this episode I am going to talk a little bit about some ways to prepare for IELTS, some important bits to focus on and, quite generally, about the exams.
But first I want to mention kind of an advertisement or a sponsor.
So I am partnered with the British Council, which is actually the company that runs or administers.
It's one of the companies that run and administers the IELTS exam.
And in the description below, there is a link for their courses and classes that they do for IELTS.
This is great because the British Council run the exams and they have very thorough and well put together materials and teachers that are fantastic to help you prepare to get the best result.
The plans and subscriptions are designed for quite intense short-term learning and there is different levels.
There are different varieties of plans that you can choose.
I won't lie, it is quite expensive and i know it's not something everyone can do, but i do thoroughly recommend it, because with the plans, you can get both private and group classes and you get plenty of practice tests, including speaking practice tests, which are fantastic.
Free webinars and sessions with unlimited access, which is fantastic.
It's very high quality English learning for IELTS and probably the best place or way to learn IELTS that I can recommend.
So if you're interested, do click the link in the description.
I do also benefit from this.
If you do decide to learn with the British Council, it supports me as well.
So thank you.
Okay, back to our podcast episode.
So as you probably know already IELTS is split into four main sections.
So we have listening, reading, writing and speaking.
And what I always tell people to do is to first think about the areas that you are strongest with.
Depending on how long you have to prepare for the exam, you will need to pick and focus how you organise your time for study.
For example, for me with foreign languages, usually I'm a lot better at reading and writing than I am at speaking and listening.
Sometimes it's the opposite for other people.
And in this case, it would be wise or smart for me to put more of my focus into the reading and writing, especially because they are much bigger sections of the exam in terms of time.
But it's important to understand the different parts of the exam and how long you have for each.
So do make sure that you understand and you know which areas are probably going to be harder for you.
So I recommend to practice each section or part separately.
So to take a day for each, perhaps in the week, and focus on a different skill related to the IELTS exam.
And then, towards the end of your study, closer to the exam, you can begin to start doing practice exams together to make sure that you have enough time and that you get everything done on time.
To start with the writing section.
So the writing section can be quite tricky, quite difficult.
And the best thing you can do is to practice writing lots of essays and reports under timed conditions.
So you want to time yourself.
And the number one way to do well on this is to focus on structure and sentence structure.
Learn lots of sentences and structures that you can change and use in the exam.
In general, the writing section is usually quite formal, and learning some of these more formal sentence structures can really help you.
And it can be good to ask maybe a native speaker or a teacher to look at some of the sentences or the structures that you have made, to make sure that they are right and correct, before you learn them.
It also means when you get into the exam, you already know how to write a general structure of the essay or report and all you need to do is add in the extra details to make it specific and relevant.
Okay so another key point I would like to make a note about is the speaking section.
So for the speaking section it is important to practice out loud a lot.
And I recommend to people to record yourself giving a speech, maybe on a practice topic, and replay this to yourself so you can look for or listen to areas that you can improve.
And if you can send it to a native speaker or a teacher or a friend and get their feedback too on how you can improve that speech.
And the final point I'd like to mention is time management.
Timing is so important in IELTS.
I have had so many students that have had problems with timing.
They have had great scores on the content that they have finished, but they have ended up with a bad overall score because they have not had enough time and they've spent too long on one section and not enough on the other.
So once again there are so many ways that you can learn for the IELTS exam and prepare.
There are official examinations, study groups, lots of apps and websites and, of course, the British Council classes and courses that I've linked below.
It's up to you to find your own study routine and the best way of learning.
So that is everything for today.
I wish you luck on your IELTS learning journey if you are learning it. or preparing for the exam.
And let me know in the comments below if you have done the IELTS exam or if you will or want to do it in the future.
Thank you for listening and I hope you have an amazing day.
Goodbye.
