How to nail IELTS Academic test with ZERO cost *free resources and advice*

Hey guys, Abisheka here.

So I did IELTS Academic last week and received my score today. I got an overall band score of 8.5 with perfect scores of 9 for 2 out of the 4 categories! So naturally, I would like to let you know my whole experience with this very famous exam and I hope it will help you with your own IELTS exam.

I started preparing for the exam about 2 months prior, while I was waiting for my passport to arrive. I will list down some important online resources you can follow to succeed.

The below-mentioned YouTube video was very helpful for my Listening test. Definitely check out this YouTube channel, the instructor is amazing and you will definitely learn a lot that will be useful to you on the day of the exam! He also has videos where he analyses the way a candidate speaks and interacts with the examiner, so if you are nervous about the speaking test, watching these videos will definitely help you out!

Now I am going to break down this post into 4 parts, Reading, Listening, Writing and Speaking. Whenever I remember something useful that I did either on the day of or when preparing for the exam, I will just jot it down here.

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Reading

• When I initially started doing past papers, I was most worried about scoring well in the reading category. Specifically in the "Match the topics to descriptions" questions. During the exam, I found out that, if you are doing IELTS - Academic on the computer, you can actually use an on-screen highlighter to highlight important words and sentences. That way, if you want to have a look at the question while attempting to answer, you can easily go back to the place you were reading before.

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Listening

• Before the recording begins to play, you are given a few minutes to read the questions. Use that time effectively and get a gist of what sort of questions there are, and what sort of answers will go in the spaces. Then, when the recording begins to play, you can easily grasp the answers.

• It is VERY important to use the correct spelling during this test as most of the answers are either single words or 2 to 3 words long. So make sure to reread your answers at the end of each section!

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Speaking

• Confidence is key. Even if you are not very fluent in speaking English, pretend you are and work with the skills that you have.

• Make sure not to use too many filler words. The occasional "err" or "umm" is totally fine, but too many filler words will let the examiner know that you are a novice English speaker.

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Writing

• Practice, practice and PRACTICE! All IELTS writing exams have 2 parts. The first part is usually a question which asks you to describe a dataset such as a graph or a chart and the second part is a short essay. It is very easy to practice for the first part as there are many examples available on the internet and because you know exactly what to expect. Learn the kind of words to use when explaining a dataset such as the following phrases.

- A sharp decline

- Compared to

- In addition to

- However

- A significant increase

- In conclusion

• When attempting the second writing task, take some time to think about the topic given. Then break what you know about it into sections. If you are attempting the computer-based IELTS exam, you can ask the examiners for a sheet of paper for working things out. Plan out 3 or 4 paragraphs and definitely include an introduction to the topic and a conclusion. Don't be scared to express your view about the given topic. Just make sure you provide enough facts to prove that your view is the correct one.

That's all for now folks. I will update this blog when time permits. Till then, take care!