IELTS Preparation | 110 5 Great resources to help you pass the exam

Effective preparation for the IELTS requires study of a wide range of diverse learning resources. You need to have a broad selection of quality online sources that can keep you both challenged and entertained. To help get you fully equipped to take on the challenge of the IELTS, we’ve put together some great sites that you can tap into for developing your English aptitude and have you thoroughly conditioned for anything that the test may try to stump you with.

http://www.esl-lab.com/
Boasting a treasure trove of great listening material, ESL Lab has been around for years and still comes complete with quizzes for each listening segment along with some thorough vocabulary review.

http://ift.tt/1rRwtnw
Don’t let the unassuming web design fool you, the owner of this site has gone to great lengths to house hundreds of stories for short reading practice that all finish off with vocabulary drills, comprehension tests, gap fill exercises and crossword puzzles.

http://ift.tt/1HdKO4N
This study site certainly lives up to its name. As you’ll soon find out, each segment of their reading and listening resources includes concise comprehension follow-up that can be handled in under 5 minutes. Great for when you’ve got a bit of free time available but not enough to do in-depth study.

http://ift.tt/1n8zYGv
Founded by the California Distance Learning Project (CDLP), the intended goal of this site was to help support adult basic education services in California. Despite the project no longer being in operation, they do leave behind an innovative resource that covers both reading and listening of articles related to life skills along with interactive tools to make sure you retain everything.

http://ift.tt/1vsdN30
Although originally built for German learners of English, the well-crafted vocabulary and grammar quizzes can be used by anyone and are great methods to help build on your writing skills needed for taking the IELTS, regardless of what country you are from.

http://ift.tt/1hcvqZU
When it comes to getting yourself ready for the IELTS, you can do no wrong if you opted to exclusively rely on the website of British Council, a site that is both user-friendly and full of incredibly detailed audio and video productions, podcasts and online activities.

http://ift.tt/1SvJkvU
Canada’s University of Victoria English Language Centre has created a very comprehensive site for the benefit of its own international students learning English but also ensures that it remains free and beneficial for use by anyone else seeking to prep themselves for taking challenging English tests.

http://www.engvid.com/
With their native teachers posting their engaging lessons on YouTube, EngVid has created an amazingly engaging and interactive site that supplements each video with quizzes and comment sections where you can communicate with the teachers and other students. Engvid contains close to 1000 different videos, covering all sorts of stuff. They do recommend their viewers to watch beginner vocabulary and slang videos, as they’re pretty easy to understand without much context.

http://ift.tt/1VAESv9
Featuring thousands of videos and audio samples, Elllo covers it all and ensures you have ample quizzes and online drills to keep you sharp.

http://ift.tt/1SvJkvV
What better way to learn English than through music? With a variety of songs and musical genres to select from, LyricsGaps allows you to watch and listen to YouTube music videos and then study up on the vocab and sentence structures that you just heard. These flashcards can also help students: http://ift.tt/1VAESvb

http://ift.tt/1VAESvd
Once you search around Laurie’s ESL Website, you’ll see that she’s put together quite a comprehensive collection of reading, listening, and comprehension study resources to help further polish your skills.

http://ift.tt/1SvJi7i
Claiming to have over 9000 audio files to aid in your English development, you can easily spend hours, weeks or even months of time reading and listening to all the resources that this site has to offer.

http://ift.tt/1VAESve
Non-stop English has great interactive lessons to fine-tune your writing and grammar in advance of taking the IELTS, while bolstering your vocabulary at the same time.

http://ift.tt/1SvJinz
While not known for its individual lessons, Mondo’s World is a great resource that functions in a blog format for IELTS learners seeking contemporary study of daily news and cultural insights. Additionally, by taking the time to search his links to other resources, you’ll find that he has a lot more helpful and educational web concepts going on than just his blog.

http://ift.tt/1VAEUDb
If you’re looking for something that’s captivating and focused specifically on drilling for the IELTS test, try out EnglishMediaLab’s interactive tests and begin grooming yourself for success!

 

The post IELTS Preparation | 110 5 Great resources to help you pass the exam appeared first on IELTS podcast.

IELTS Speaking Expand your answers using this five step system

IELTS Speaking can be notoriously difficult, especially if we have our nerves going crazy. If you have a system to follow while answering, you can make sure you are delivering strong coherent answers.

In this podcast you will learn how to

-expand your answers (no more uncomfortable silence)

-impress the examiner with interesting details

-use a system to deliver high scoring answers that INTEREST the examiner

-use your fingers to help you remember the structure

-make your answers compelling and unique

If I were you, I would download the podcast and take notes, THEN read the transcript.

The podcast has lots of practical examples you can copy, and use in your exam.

|Download | Stitcher | iTunes|

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IELTS Writing: Test Marking Criteria

When preparing for the IELTs writing test, the most intelligent place to start is with understanding how the essays will be marked. Students can easily avoid common mistakes and achieve a 7.0 or higher by fully understanding the 4 IELTS score components. If you want to score well, understand the IELTS writing grading criteria first. In this post we will look at each category and provide ways to boost your test score.

 

The 4 Score Components

The marking criteria falls into the following 4 categories – which are equally weighted at 25% to makeup your overall writing score:

 

• Task Achievement (Task 1) and Task Response (Task 2),
• Coherence and Cohesion,
• Lexical Response,
• Grammatical Range and Accuracy.

 

Task Achievement (Task 1) and Task Response (Task 2)

To get full marks in this category you need to do what the task asks you to do.

 

• Do you answer the question being asked?
• Do you answer all parts of the question?  
• In Task 1, do you clearly give details of the key features, trends and differences?
• In Task 2, do you clearly justify your position and write in a direct fashion?

 

Ways to boost your score in this area:

 

• Don’t rush into writing! Allow yourself time to read and fully understand the question. Often you will have 2 or 3 points to consider/answer.  Underline them!
• Determine what type of question is being asked and use the right structure. The first paragraph should be the introduction.  The last paragraph should be the conclusion. The middle two / three paragraphs should be your body paragraphs.
• Include ALL of the key points in a graph/chart. Omitting important elements can lose you points. Again, spend time reviewing the chart before you start writing.
• Remember to state your position/opinion in the introduction.
• Use examples to explain your position in more detail in the two middle supporting paragraphs.
• Write at least 150 words for Task 1 and 250 words for Task 2.
• Task 2 contributes 2x as much as Task 1 so you may want to focus on it first.
• Watch your timing and leave enough time to answer both essays.  Allow 40 minutes for Task 2 and 20 minutes for Task 1.

 

Coherence and Cohesion

In this category, the examiner is looking to see if you can:

 

 

• logically organize information and ideas,

 

 

• clearly progress from one thought to another. This should be achieved by using a range of cohesive devices throughout (i.e. connecting sentences with the appropriate phrases like ‘on the one hand’, ‘on the other hand’, ‘firstly’, ‘secondly’, etc),

 

• present a clear central topic within each paragraph when answering the Task 2 question.

 

Ways to boost your score in this area:

 

• Plan before you write!  Think about your ideas and examples first.  Jot down a few keywords to keep you focused.

 

• Use an idea that will be easy and simple to write about.  This is not the place to show off your creative thinking. Complex ideas are often too hard to communicate and will lose you points.

 

• Present only one idea in each paragraph.

 

• Remember to clearly state your position in the introduction and make sure that each following paragraph links back to that.

 

• Learn to use a range of linking words and phrases correctly. (I.e. ‘on the one hand’; ‘on the other hand’; ‘Furthermore’; ‘Moreover’, ‘firstly’, ‘secondly’ etc.)

 

• Perfect your punctuation! Often essays become incoherent simply because commas, and semicolons are in the wrong place or full stops are missing.

 

Lexical Response

In this component, we are essentially looking at the vocabulary/words that you use in your essay.  Here you need to:

 

• use a range of vocabulary

 

• use vocabulary with precision (i.e. use the right word for the meaning you want to portray),

 

• use the correct combination (collocation) of words together.

 

Ways to boost your score in this area:

 

• Do not use the same noun, adjective, or verb in the same sentence, or preferably not even in the same paragraph.

 

• Leave time at the end of your essay to check for repeated word use and change words where you can.

 

• Learn native English collocations of words (i.e. commit suicide, NOT undertake suicide; burst into tears, NOT blow up into tears; surge of anger, NOT rush of anger; completely satisfied, NOT downright satisfied).

 

• When you are learning vocabulary, learn word combinations as well.

 

• Use less common vocabulary where you can use it precisely (i.e, enormous, NOT big; minute, NOT small; intellectual property; INSTEAD of copyright law).

 

• Check for spelling mistakes.  One easy way to do this is to read your essay backwards word by word.

 

• Write a list of three similar ideas.  This is an easy way to pack in some vocabulary. (i.e. International marketing is invasive, insensitive, and inappropriate in the 21st century)

 

Grammatical Range and Accuracy

In our final category, students need to remember to:

 

• use a variety of complex sentence structures,

 

• produce error-free sentences,

 

• have a good control of grammar and punctuation.

 

Ways to boost your score in this area:

 

• Be more accurate with simple grammar than complex grammar.  

 

• Learn how to use articles correctly (i.e. a, an, the, etc)

 

• Use relative clauses (who/that/which/when etc) to impress the examiner.

 

And the Most Important Ways to Boost Your Score

Practice writing numerous essays.  Get feedback on your writing from a native English speaker. Create an error list of the types of mistakes you frequently make.  Spend time working on the grading criteria that you feel you are the weakest in. Finally, save five minutes at the end of your exam to read through your essay and check for silly mistakes.

 

The post IELTS Writing: Test Marking Criteria appeared first on IELTS podcast.

105. How Kim dealt with her IELTS score going up and down

Meet Kim, her score keeps bouncing up and down, however, she is almost ready and will soon immigrate to Australia!

Personally, when a student is in this situation I feel really sorry for them because it must be so frustrating, not to mention expensive. Anyway, in this interview you can learn from her mistakes so it doesn’t happen to you.

What I like about Kim was she that she started three months in advance of the exam date giving herself plenty of time to improve.

She also engaged in SOLID HARD WORK by buying one of the more difficult preparation books, so when she took the test it was a little easier than expected. This strategy not only boosted her confidence but also made her target band score much more likely.

Listen to this great interview to discover:

• Which READING book to buy to get Band 8 (Link to Amazon) -it’s not the official ones!
• How to avoid letting your band score slip between exams.
• The best way to get a Band 7 in the writing.
• Why an English tutor could only help her so much.
• A practice technique to improve your speaking fluency.
• How to prepare for the speaking with an English tutor.

Download the podcast here:

| Download | Stitcher | iTunes |

 

 

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