So I passed IELTS in my first attempt. And scored 8.5 overall out of 9.0, with 7.5 in writing. What follows is a breakdown of what I did to prepare for the Exam.

What is IELTS?

It’s an English language exam which you must take to demonstrate you’re capable of speaking and working in an English speaking country like UK, Canada, Australia, etc. Specifically, for doing PLAB and starting a career in the UK, you need to undertake the IELTS academic exam (not the general exam) for visa and immigration purposes.

My Exam experience

Initially, I had it scheduled for 24th October, 2020 and even took my speaking test on that day. The remainder was to be held the following day. But as luck may have it, the Listening, Reading, and Writing exams were cancelled at the eleventh hour. To top it off, I had undertaken an overnight train journey to reach my exam city (Kolkata), and then stayed at the same hotel where they’d conduct the exam. all was for naught. The exam was then scheduled for one week later, and I travelled again. Overall, both trips cost me twice that of the exam fee. Quite an expensive I£LT$ exam that was! 😃

So let’s cut to the chase. Here’s my prep strategy:

OVERVIEW

The IELTS exam has 4 parts and I’ll explain my prep strategy for each part ahead.

IELTS Liz

Always begin your preparation with IELTS Liz. Skim over all 4 sections using her videos and website.

https://ieltsliz.com/

IELTS Prep App

Download the IELTS Prep App by British Council and go over that too. There are lots of things to tap on and that makes it annoying but for starters, this app is good.

Listening & Reading

Now listening and Reading were a cakewalk during prep and I saw no improvement in my scores on the first day than on the last. But I did practice from the Cambridge Academic 14 & 15 books to get a gist of them (didn’t flip the older ones). I especially dealt with a map-type question, and I got one in the real exam too.

The thing with map questions is the language and orientation. eg: Go up to the bank of the river. And words like “Conurbation“.

So what are these Cambridge books? They’re books being released annually by Cambridge university with four full fledged IELTS question papers in each of them based on latest trends. And it’s got close ties with people who actually prepare the real exam question paper. For the listening part, they used to include CDs with the book. No idea what is the trend now.

Writing

Writing has two parts. Part 1 is academic writing with data interpretation, etc. Part 2 is essay.

For ages I would see people of Fb saying they were eternally stuck at 6.5 in the writing section with no way out. I kept that in mind and allotted a major chunk of time to it (2-3 weeks).

Contrary to the varied sources mentioned everywhere, I picked up the Cambridge IELTS Consultants series (there are around 5-6 books. Each book is 50 pages, tops).

Then I read all of them. You should practice all questions from their Writing part 1 book, and analyze your essays strictly according to the model answers. Try to make a diagram out of tabular data for easy visualization too. Then in sequence, read:

1. Writing part 2’s first book (see the examiner’s comments on the essays)
2. Vocabulary book (takes 20 mins to finish)
3. Grammar book (MOST IMPORTANT. GOLD MINE)
4. Writing part 2’s second book book (optional).

Try to make a note of all grammar tips from the grammar book and implement them in your essays. I practiced writing maybe 5-6 part 2 essays overall and spent heavy time in analysis as you see in the pics. Lastly, watch IELTS-Up videos on YouTube. Hardly one hour’s watch at 2x speed. Just to get more comfortable with writing part 1 essays.

Speaking

Lastly, the speaking section. Keith’s speaking academy on YouTube is amazing for everything. His videos are top of the line.

Then once you’re closer to the exam, go over all the topics in Makkar IELTS book. It’s a book that predicts all the possible speaking topics that are likely to come in your exam. The latest edition of the book is more than enough and you don’t have to flip through the older editions unlike the Cambridge model Q&A book. Have an answer planned for every question topic given in the book. The book’s prediction strike rate is close to 100%. I got both my speaking tests’ questions from it (if you read my exam experience, you’ll know I took the speaking test twice). Another advice people bring up is to look up some IELTS predictions, but no predicted cue card videos were available online and besides, Makkar IELTS was enough.

Remember to watch a few interview videos on YouTube and pause after the question to come up with an answer of your own. This helped me tons to regain the fluency I had lost sitting at home for past 2 months without speaking much English.

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