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IELTS is the test of English which is the requirment for most of the countries where Pakistani students want to take admission and the country on top of that list is United Kingdom.
We will discuss in detail about how to get band above then 6.5 also some university require overall band of 6.5 or 6 while some universities require higher level band along with "no less then 6 in all modules". so first of all keep in mind your goal is to achieve overall band or individual band higher then certain requirement.
There are four modules in IELTS for Both Academic and General Test.
As this website is for students so our main goal will be Academic test.
The four modules are Listening, Writing, Reading and Speaking. The test of speaking is usually taken before or after the Listening, reading and writing(these will be taken on the same date).
The test is to judge your knowledge of HOW PROPERLY you can convey your message to your audience. so there is no need to read a lot of books available for preperation grab one book but read that book with full concentration and practice is the only key to success. Many people think that if i can speak English well then i can easiy get higher level band, of course it can hep you in speaking test but if you dont know the proper way to express then a good english can not help you as there is a difference between talking to native english person and non native engish speaker. The accent is counted, the vocabulary is counted, the grammer is counted, the arrangement of word is counted, the replica of words is counted and some techniques can boost your score to higher bands even if you think your English is not that good.
We shall start discussing it in detail, each module after a brief introduction.
Fundamentals of English
The four fundamentals of English are Reading, Listening, Writing and Speaking. The First two i.e Reading and Listening are Receptive Skills. Receptive skills in reading means that you have to look at the text via eyes and send the information to your mind, same in the listening you have to hear a tape or conversation via ears and send it to your mind. The Speaking and writing is known as expressive skills. By expressive we mean that in speaking you have to transfer whats on your mind through your mouth to speak, and in writing you have to transfer it via hands to write.
There are some terms which has to be strong in all the modules such as Vocabulary, Grammer, Unity and Organization
READING:(60 minutes,normally three passages(13 or 14 questions each passage)
In the reading module in real test we have 60 minutes, three passages and we have to answer the questions at the last of every passage. in general we can say that we have to give 20 minutes each passage to read it and answer its questions which is most of the times impossible for average students. The best way to attempt this module is to answer as many questions as possible with right answers rather then attempting all with confused answers.
There are three methods to read any passage and they are Skimming or extensive reading in this method we guess the meaning of the word by its neighbour words, such method is very much used in reading newspapers, novels, or magazines etc in which a user is not interested in the specific meaning of the word but he can guess what the word expresses. the second method is known as Text Reading or Intensive reading in this method we need to know the meaning of each and every word that is provided in the passage an example of this type is course work or text book where we underline the words we dont know the meaning and then go to dictionary and find the meaning and then proceed. The third method is scanning in scanning we hunt for some specific information like some specif date, number, country name and to the point information.Always underline the technical words and connectors.
depending on the nature of question we use one of the above method or combination of these methods to answer accurately.Never answer in form of sentence,answer in a word or two words as defined in the directions.
In reading answer according to the instructions provided. for example if its given in instruction to write T in front of true statements so you can not write TRUE or CORRECT. here according to instruction true=correct but both are not equal to T.
Passages are arranged in a pattern, First the TITLE, then the body(body has two parts introduction and explaination), and in the last the conclusion statements. A paragraph in a passage represent single idea and they are arranged as, Topic sentence, Supporting sentecne and conclusion sentence.
TYPES OF PASSAGES
Folowing are some types of passages
Narrative which are story like passages
Argumentative in which an author is in favor or disfavor of certain idea or topic
Analytical in which author do analysis of certain topic and present his results
Comparison The author compares some ideas and present his view
Expository Passage the author explain some idea
How to found the main idea.
The most important task is to find the main idea, and the main idea is found in the TITLE of the passage, the first sentence of the first paragraph or in the last sentence of the last paragraph. If a passage starts with an example or is continued from the last paragraph then the idea lies in the last sentences of the paragraph.
TIPS: underline main idea, keywords, main words, specific information, dates, nouns, and write simple sentence in front of each paragraph so when you come back to passage you can find the desired paragraph quickly.
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WRITING(60 minutes, one description(150 words) one essay(250 words))
Writing is the module where the examiner judge two skills of the student, descriptive skills and argumentative skills. in descriptive a chart, table or diagram is given with certain data, and a student has to write 150 words about that particular data in very technical way to express more in less words. in the second part a student has to write an essay round about 250 words in favour, disfovour or either of them. keep in mind that for both tasks the DIRECT WRITING STYLE is used. we shall not write irrelevant data.also avoid such clauses"the topic given to me is","The given table show us"etc
we shall discuss it in detail now.:
TASK 1:
Task one is generally minimum of 150 words but shall not exceed on average of 170 words. The best way to answer your passage and to make an outline structure is to ask yoursef "what is this, what is it about" you will be able to write the description from the very beginning. for example we are given a certain table about the ecomony fall in the company so we can easily ask our self the question What is it? what is it about? so direct style of writing, It is a chart describing the economic fall in a company. avoid using "in the given chart we can see that the chart tells us about the fall in economy of the company".
HOW TO ATTEMPT:
There are three steps invoved
1.Planning and outlining:
Before writing any thing on the answer sheet take 5 minutes and properly plan your whole idea.write down your main idea, the body,the conclusion, and arrange your plan, outline it, write only the keywords instead of writing the whole sentence in outlining so you can easily remember your points later on putting your idea on the answer sheet.Think before writing,then to think in the middle of writing. If you plan your whole idea then you will easily finish your TASK1 with in 17 minutes. but if keep thinking about points in between and thinking for a single point for 2 minutes and your task has several points say 6 or 8 then you will waste all your time in thinking about the material.
2:Start Drafting
After proper planing start drafting and give your structure the beauty now,use pronouns once or twice you use noun, proper place connectors to produce continuity, punctuations to seperate the idea.REMEMBER: The table, charts,graphcs and such diagrams make you to write more and here they check how you express more within the limit. You shall never use the informal English words consider the below to further clear the idea
USE_______________________DO NOT USE
YES_______________________ya, yup
Department__________________Deptt
Do not______________________Dont
Mother,Father________________Mom.Dad
Gentleman,boy_______________guy
The third step is to revise and edit any minor mistake you may have,but it is not necessay if you have followed the above method because there is less chance to make errors if you propery plan also remember this the test of your expression not your spelling so try your level best to accurately speel every word but if you miss a character its not a big problem like folowed instead of followed. the examiner is interested in grammer,vocabulary, unity and organization then your spelling.
In the writing task1 we are normally given a bar diagram, graph(for comparisons), table for explainations pie diagram for proportions or in rare cases a process. in any case we shall follow some pattern for example if we have a table in which we have number of male and female employees in an office different 10 departments. now we have 10 columns which show different departments and 2 rows one for each gender. here we have to see which one is less, rows or columns and here we have only two rows, instead of writing about 10 different department we can summarize it on the base of genders. after selecting such point of view the next thing come is the TREND, trend means how the things is going. we will consider the previous example of economic survey fall.suppose we are given a data like
1997|___/__________________
1996|_______/______________
1995|______________/_______
1994|__________/___________
1993|_____/________________
1992|___/__________________
1991|____/_________________
1990|__/__________________
___0______10____20______30......percentage
here if we look at the graph we can see thatfor the first four years it fluctuates with in 10 percent however a dramatic change is seen in the next two years reaching to the highest point of 22 percent is jumped back to its initial state in the upcoming two years. this is how you can express the whole diagram but we do are missing the years, so combine the years with the trend change and make a nice passage of it.
what examiner want to see is the competeness,relevance, vocabulary,spelling, grammer,use of different words, unity and organization.
TASK2.
Task two is not like the task 1, but the examiner do see the same things which are previously explained. The theme is the same like you have to prepare before writing, outline it etc. but here you will have to say in favor of a topic or in disfavor or as discribed in the description.
Again to write a nice passage you must have rich vocabulary, accurate grammer, unity and well organization. As described before a passage start with a Introduction then body and then conclusion.
Here are some example essays of different bands ranging from 6 to 8 for your review please click here to download
LISTENING:
It is the first test you will face on the test date, in listening your listening power as well as understanding of english is checked. you wil hear a tape for once only and at the same time you have to write the answers on the sheet, but before starting the tape you will be given the time to read some questions normally 5 or 7 and then you have to hear and answer the tape, this time is where you will find the keywords and then listen to the keywords or words with the same meaning. The difficulty level increase with time, which inclulde the accent and the answer picking. There are test available for preperation but best practice is to isten to audio songs or movies, we mentioned LISTEN TO because when we watch some program we do pick it from visuals as well, so try no to look at the screen and get the speaker.
In listening while you listen your answers will not be spoken straight forward in the test. for example in tape there is a statement "Domestic use cycles are 1/3 time weaker then the mountain bike" and in the answer sheet it may be written some thing like "the mountain bikes are _________ times stronger then domestic cycle" now the clever test taker will get at once that here the thing is same but the questions is tricky, the rite answer is 3.
In listening there are questions which will check your such skills as defined in example, where you have to label some areas on the answer sheets while you will be given a starting point in most cases for example:a teacher showing the new campus to studnet, the campus will be drawn on the paper with blank spaces and you have to listen to the tape carefully and fill in the blank as the speaker define them, most of the cases the directions East, West,North and south are given and the teacher say like"the building in the north is the cafetaria, and in front of cafetaria there is arts gallery" so you hav to look first the cafetaria and then the building which is in front of the cafetaria.
SPEAKING:
It is the test which is one to one between the student and the examiner, and in speaking test your style of English, vocabulary, delivering method is checked directly and is recorded as well. you will be asked by examiner to introduce your self and after some introduction you will be given a topic to speak on. you will be given a time of 2 minutes to think before you start speaking. use the formal English,avoid using words like ya,yup,dont, isnt instead use proper words like yes, do not, is not etc.
Preparation: There is no special preparation required, all you need is the courage to speak the language, practice in front of the mirror or ask your friend to interview yous..but the best practice is to get any topic and start speaking about it, in your mind,organize it well...and above all stay calm while speaking.