If you want to explore career opportunities in countries where English is the primary language, you too need to be good at it. The International English Language Testing System or IELTS is the exam that is designed to assess your skills in English. If you are good in English but you are not successful in securing band 7 or above, you might be wondering what it is that you are doing wrong.
Here, you will be provided with a few tips to secure higher band rankings in your IELTS exam.
Understand the IELTS exam format
The first thing that you need to do is understand the format of the IELTS exam completely. The four aspects of the test are:
- Listening
- Reading
- Writing
- Speaking
For the listening part, you will be asked to answer questions after listening to an audio recording. Next, you will be presented with three articles that you will have to read and answer questions about them. To assess your writing skills, you will have to write a short essay about a topic assigned to you in the specified time. For speaking, you will have to talk about the topic assigned to you by the examiners.
Time management is key
For listening, reading, and writing, you will be allotted 30, 60, and 60 minutes, respectively. You will secure good marks in your IELTS exam only if you manage your time well and answer all questions in time. The speaking section, although short, is the most difficult. The English speaking part of the test is conducted a week or two before or after the others. You will have to prepare for it separately. The following tip will help you with that.
Practice, practice, and practice
Practicing in real life situations will help you score better in your exam. There are a few things you can do to improve every aspect of your English. First of all, don’t force yourself to learn English. Instead, take interest in it and adapt interesting ways to get better. Watch TV and listen to the radio in English. Focus on how every word sounds and is pronounced. Read articles about the topics that interest you and read them out loud. While talking to your family and friends, try speaking English. Ask them if they can understand you and if they can’t, focus on your pronunciation. Speak every word separately and adjust your tone with each word. A flat tone doesn’t help express your emotions as you want them to.
Take a short course
If you want to be good at listening, writing, reading, and most importantly speaking, you need an appropriate environment for that. Taking a course will help you interact with other IELTS aspirants. Speaking English with them will definitely help you get better at it. You can join an IELTS course in Sri Lanka that has 6 students in a batch. It is a 10-lesson course that will cover 30 hours of preparation for IELTS over the weekends. The course only costs රු30,000 and by the end of it, you will see considerable improvements in your fluency in English.
