My IELTS Test Experience & Tips

I have taken the IELTS test 2 times since 2010 so i thought i had some experience to share

Who will get high scores in IELTS

Achieving high band in IELTS test depends on many factors some of which are more important than others, below i am listing the most important factors

First: your accumulated knowledge and experience in English language
Second: whether you have an "Answering System" or not and how much you are familiar with the test format
Third: how much practice tests you did



There are some other factors that are part of IELTS exam design, from what i have experienced so far, it seems that IELTS also tests your time/stress management, your analytical skills and your IQ but i think these factors are less important than the 3 main factors below

Factor #1: Accumulated English Knowledge

You need to enrich your English knowledge by reading, writing, listening and speaking English a lot

Factor #2: Answering System/Process

You need to have a process for solving each type of question, exam timings are so strict and you will not have time to think what to do in the exam, you need to handle each question from minute #1


Example: Reading Questions Answering System

Now you have a long essay and about 10 questions to solve in 20 minutes, if you went on reading all the essay i can guarantee you will fail in this part of the exam, since u will not be able to memorize it all and the questions are sometimes tricky and may contain synonyms of the essay words


Solution:
When i checked the tips on the web i managed to invent my own system, and it worked

1. I write the current time on the top of the page to monitor time left to solve this specific section
2. Quickly read all the questions in that section, and MARK every single word that seems significant, this part will take 2-3 minutes, you will know why it is beneficial in the next point
3. Then i read the first paragraph in the essay and first line of all other paragraphs, while reading i also MARK any significant word and specially words that match the QUESTION WORDS i marked earlier
4. And Finally i go through the questions one by one and try to locate the paragraph which contains the answer, thanks to marking, now you will be able to easily match questions with paragraphs by looking on the marked words either to exclude or to do deep reading on that matched paragraph
   

Factor #3: Practice 

The more you solve practice tests, the more you will be confident and unstressed at the tough time of the exam, and you will also be able to try and tune your answering systems and to track your timings 

Tips & Tricks

Below i am listing some of the resources that i used and recommend for everyone taking the Test, these resources contains suggested answering systems for other question types such as Listening, Writing and Speaking



IELTS Tips Playlist 
A great playlist containing British Council tips videos for all question types


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uCp2jaF5Ms&list=PLB3i9IKhwBX88hly_CpHmXwOkfNK1zJVq&index=8



Listening & Speaking Tips

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCqhhQYeL6E
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sIU9CC1Fvg



Writing Tips
A great PDF containing valuable writing answering system and tips

https://www.dropbox.com/s/nd8z6kj92a4onkr/LearnFromTheExaminerWritingEbook.pdf

Sample Questions & Answers

http://www.britishcouncil.org/professionals-exams-ielts-intro.htm

Other Tips

1. The test system is very strict, make sure your are at the test venue 1 hour before your test, if you came late specially in the speaking test, you will be at risk of not entering the exam
2. Sleep well, make sure you have breakfast, bring a bottle of water, got to the toilet directly before the exam, you don't want to go to the toilet while the exam is running, that's precious time to lose
3. Bring your ID 
4. Take a deep breath between each section of the exam
5. If you found a question that is hard to solve, put your best guess, mark it,  pass it, and check it back if you still have time at the end
6. Always keep track of time for each section, move to the next section if the available time for the current section has ended
7. In the reading section, Make sure you have enough time to transfer your answers to the answer sheet

What is my IELTS score :) ?

7.5