Pre-Core Program: English

English

Practice IELTS online

IELTS Tips

IELTS Tips
1- General Tips
• Avoid translating everything.
• Get ENOUGH sleep. Never stay up late before the exam.
• Have a light meal. Some dates or honey mixed with water is highly
recommended.
• Dress comfortably.
• Make sure that you already know where the exam place is.
• Understanding and observing the instructions of every question is very
important in the four sections of the test.
• The best and most important tip is (PRACTICE).
• Do not leave any question unanswered. Answer all the questions even if
you are not sure of their answers. There is no penalty for guessing. Never
guess unless you are about to run out of time. However, you need to
make intelligent guesses. For example, statements that look logical are
often (Not Given). Such statements are put there to trap candidates into
believing the statement is actually mentioned and true.
• Taking practice tests without feedback and checking what went wrong is a
waste of time
• Time is crucial. You must answer as soon as possible
• Stay relaxed and focused. Panicking will not do any good for you. Take a
deep breath when feeling nervous.
•
Test Day (Advice)
You must bring with you
• Your ID card or your passport if you are taking the test outside your
country, you need to bring.
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• The pens, pencils and erasers which you need for the test.
• Know the date, time and place of your test and arrive before the starting
time.
• You must not bring into the test room the following items:
o Correction fluid and highlighters.
o Mobile phones and pagers: they must be switched off and kept
outside the exam room
During the test you must
• Tell the supervisor if you think you have not been given the right question
paper, or if the question paper is incomplete or illegible.
• You may not lend anything to, or borrow anything from, another candidate.
Advice and assistance during the test
• Notify the test invigilator immediately if test day conditions in any way
impede your performance.
• You cannot ask for, and you will not be given, any explanation of the
questions.
2- Tips on the IELTS Reading Section
• Read faster by reading words in groups/chunks rather than word by word.
• Do not give more than one answer in a gap. Otherwise, it will be marked
as wrong.
• There are two extremes:
• Before going immediately to the question, familiarize yourself with the
passage by examining: the title, headings, pictures, and the first few lines
of each paragraph. This will help you
o grasp the overall idea of the passage
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o find/locate answers easily
• Learn the skill of 'scanning' the text looking for key words. Then read
around the keyword to find the answer. In other words, use the keyword in
a question in order to find the answer. If there is no keyword in the
question, you can read the first two sentences of each paragraph to know
if it might include the answer.
• In filling gaps questions, your knowledge of grammar can be useful. For
example, if you have the following: (this is a ………… challenge), you can
easily conclude that the word in the gap must be an adjective beginning
with a consonant rather than a vowel. Another example is the following:
“The police believe the driver of a (17) ……….. lost control of the
vehicle”. Question 17 must be a singular noun beginning with a
consonant, since the word before the gap is the indefinite article "a".
• Do not waste time reading, enjoying, and completely understanding the
passage. You can return to the passage for each question. That is why
there is no need to understand it completely.
• You are advised to skip time-consuming questions and get back to them in
order not to miss the easier questions.
• If you are unsure of the spelling of a word, write an approximation of the
way the answer sounds. Sometimes you can copy it from the exam
booklet itself.
• Do NOT spend too much time on a single question in order not to miss the
easier questions.
• In the question that asks you to match headings to paragraphs, read a
paragraph and then choose the most suitable heading.
• Be careful about what the question asks you to do. Do not confuse
(TRUE/FALSE/NOT GIVEN) with (YES/NO/NOT GIVEN) questions. So, if
you put (TRUE) while you are supposed to answer with (YES), you lose
the mark.
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• It is extremely important to pace yourself. Thus, each passage has almost
20 minutes INCLUDING the time for transferring your answers to the
answer sheet.
3- Tips on the IELTS Writing Section
It is extremely important to read the IELTS Band Descriptors that can tell you
what examiners want to see in your answers. These are available at the IELTS
website (www.IELTS.org)
It is also equally important to pace yourself. Thus, Task 1 should take almost 20
minutes while Task2 should take 40 minutes.
The process of writing both tasks (Task 1 & 2) consists of three mail stages: prewriting,
writing, and post-writing. You should pace yourself according to this.
In the pre-writing stage, you should:
1. understanding the task
2. outline/plan the general framework of your essay
3. brainstorm/generate as many ideas as possible
4. organize and classify the ideas generated in the previous stage
In the post-writing stage, remember the following:
• All your sentences have subjects and verbs.
• All your sentences start with a capital letter and finish in a full-stop.
• Long sentences should be avoided in order not to lose control of them.
• Your answer should be divided into paragraphs.
• Each paragraph is about one central idea, which is developed by things
like quotations, examples, and details.
• Transition words should also be used for more cohesion.
• Do not use contractions. Write full forms.
• All your sentences should make sense. Simply imagine yourself as the
reader.
• For the introduction & conclusion of Task1, make sure you write an
overview/general sentence about the whole chart.
• For the introduction & conclusion of Task2, make sure you state your
position/opinion about the topic.
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4- Tips on the IELTS Listening Section
• Do not give more than one answer in a gap. Otherwise, it will be marked as
wrong.
• If you are unsure of the spelling of a word, write an approximation of the way
the answer sounds. Sometimes you can copy it from the exam booklet itself.
• Listen to the instructions because they tell you what questions you should
answer while listening.
• In order not to stay focused, try to listen ‘actively’, i.e. predict what you are
going to listen to especially the answers. Most mistakes are made because of
the lack of focus.
• In labeling questions, following both the question and the chart might be
confusing. You just need to follow the number or the letter logically in order
not to be lost or confused.
• Do not use the time between sections to transfer your answers because there
will be 10 minutes at the end to transfer them.
• Listen in chunks. It is not necessary to understand every single word to be
able to answer the questions.
• Practice listening through the media like watching the BBC. This is important
not only to develop your listening skill but also to develop your language in
general.
• In gap-filling questions, be aware that some of the answers may come quickly
one after the other.
• Check that your answers are given in grammatically correct English. For
example, if there is the article ‘a’ before the gap, it means that you have to
supply the answer in singular form. If not, it means that the answer will be
either plural or an uncountable noun.
• In multiple-choice questions, before the passage is played, or as you listen,
circle the topic of each question in order to stay focused.
• Pay attention to capital letters like names of people, months, places (hotels,
cities, countries, etc.)
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• In almost every IELTS listening test, you have to write dates at least once.
The simplest way to write a date is to write the number and the month as in
(15 July).
• If you miss something, do not worry. Otherwise, you will miss other things.
• Always write numbers as figures rather than letters in order to save time and
to avoid spelling mistakes.
• While listening and answering, it is not necessary to write the words in full.
This will help you save time to focus on answering the other questions. You
exam booklet will not be marked.
• In labeling questions, following both the question and the chart might be
confusing. You just need to follow the number or the letter logically in order
not to be lost or confused.
• When writing down letters, do not confuse them such as (k & q), (j & g), etc.
• If you see a complicated question, spend the time given to look at questions
in order to examine it carefully.
• Make sure that you include the suitable units if not included in the answer
sheet. Examples of units are like cm, $, am, pm, etc.
• If you need to write one of the letters that have similar forms in both capital
and small cases (like k and K, c and C), make sure that they are big enough,
etc.
• A common mistake is confusing 80 with 90, 18th with 19th, etc.
• While listening and following on the exam sheet, you need to be patient and
not to hurry things up writing down the first possible answer you hear. Often
the speaker changes his or her mind and makes a correction before giving
the answer that you need or someone else corrects him/her.
• Capitalize the names of sections/departments related to institutions like
(Computer Lab, Students’ Toilet, Staff Room, etc.
• In both reading and listening, you should consider the following when
transferring answers into the answer sheet
􀂾 Spelling