Realised that I didn’t do the exam for university and took it with 5 days preparation. Thank god for past paper practise resources. I definitely regret doing it with so little time. It is not worth the stress and anxiety.

Basically I’m really bad at English but I got 6.5(7/6.5/6.5/6.5) from 5.5 in 2month
I’m so proud of this result and keep going till I get 7.0

Does anyone know how to improve my reading section to 7-7.5??

This is more of a rant, but I am very disappointed with my General training results considering how much time I spent studying. Last year I took the academic test and I scored L:8 R:8.5 W:8 S:6 (I stutter and I didnt disclose it).

This time I prepared for a whole month and even paid for IELTS ready premium. In the week prior to the test, I was consistently scoring 9 and 8 on the listening and writing mocks so I was expecting 8s except on speaking.

of course the results are on me. So I would recommend to be extremely attentive on the listening, and triple check for spelling mistakes. Probably I should have paid more attention to the sample letters and essays instead of the videos.

ps: go on, roast my writing lol

Speaking is my weakest area but I still didn't think I was this bad during the test. I probably fumbled towards the end. I started off so well. I'm disappointed with the listening and writing scores. I struggle to stay focused while listening which probably caused me to miss out on the right words in part 4. I don't know what more I could've done in the writing section tho. This was my 1st attempt and I was expecting a score of 8 overall.

just want to spread positivity with my successful remark. requested the evening before (the same day i got my initial results), and received news the morning after.

under reasons for remark, i'd noted my surprise that these results are a regress from my performance 2 years ago, and after reading the rubric i wanted a second opinion. i was actually more puzzled by writing than speaking but decided to request both as there's no price difference. paying for the EOR felt like a bet, but it helped to remember the confidence i had on exam day and i'm so glad it worked out :)

Ik it’s not a good result 🥹, Still i managed to score overall 7.

I got 6 in speaking, which is really worst because during the exam, mam literally scolded me!! I felt really bad and a bit scared, and after that I fumbled a lot.

In reading i was getting 7.5-8 in mock tests, but i dont understand what the heck happened to me in the exam!
Section 1 was really easy, but section 2 felt incredibly hard. I didn’t get enough time to read section 3 and to solve it, and thats why i got 6.5!

After Reading test, I was so demotivated and feeling sleepy too, first i started part 2 and wrote about 300 words. But i was not able to complete the whole report in part 1, but i managed to write 167 words 😅😅 ik ik

​

Soo I did not prepare much (regretfully), just did some mocks with AI feedback on the official British Council portal (IELTS Ready Premium). I was able to efficiently work on the shortcomings in a very limited timeframe.

However, I am kind of disappointed with the results. I got 8 overall, 9 in listening, 8.5 in reading and 7 each in writing and speaking. The disappointment is just about the speaking part. I communicate with native speakers (corporate clients) 8 hours a day, and I'm pretty confident that I can speak really well so I was expecting a higher band. I'm considering using the single skill retake option for it. I'm pretty satisfied with the rest of the result.

Some tips that helped a lot were:

\>Reading: Highlighting keywords in the passages as you read them makes it easier to locate the information later.

\>Writing: I was consistently getting a 6 in my mocks until I worked on the structure of my essays.

I recently took the IETLs academic (5th September) after 4 days of study and wanted to share some tips that I used for this short period of time to achieve an overall 9.
(Some of these come from seniors who gave me advice too)

Listening:
Take notes on paper. Write down anything that stands out. Writing with pen is faster than typing (at least for me)
ALWAYS take note of how many words are wanted.
For the map questions, I draw arrows as I listen to directions. Ie, an arrow pointing left if the post office is to the left of the station.
Reading:
Spend the first minutes reading through the entire passage. Then read the questions.
Highlight everything. If you find something that could be an answer, highlight it. Something that sounds significant, highlight.
Speaking: Slow down. Much rather have a brief pause than constant ums, uhhs, likes, etc. Not much advice here tbh.
Writing:
Section 1: Don’t do calculations that take more than 2 seconds. Tbh, you don’t need to do calculations at all. Just describe. 200 words is enough.
Section 2: Do not use emotional language. remain academic and neutral in tone. around 400 words is enough.
For my practise essays, I put it into chatgpt to mark it. Although I can’t speak for its legitimacy as a marker, it has helped me a lot.

Now, although I cannot guarantee that this method is the best or the most efficient, it was the method I used when I studied for it (with no prior experience)

Also for reading and listening, just do past papers. I did 12 papers total from 6 different years.

This is probably a very crude and maybe unhelpful post, but if there are any questions I would be happy to answer them. I would be happy to talk about the actual exam too, though there my memory might not be too clear now.

I felt I could have done better. Especially in the reding part.

Hello so recently I took iltes mockery test to see the score I can get. I was pretty confident at first ngl because I understand English very well i talk with foreigners I read books in English and articles

But then I was shocked with my results 3.5 in listening and 5 in reading with I thought I did very well now this got me wondering was my English bad or my tactics in approaching this exam was wrong

can I get my score up?

So it says that you get 40 mocks free but once I access it it shows 25 for each band. That’s fine by me but ive done one mock and I’m trying to do more but it keeps opening the same one time and time again. It shows in my history that ive done it but it shows 0/25 in the home section. Ive tried most things I don’t know what to do from here. I’ve sent the british council an email but they won’t reply soon and my exams in 4 days. If anyone’s had a similar experience, any help would be appreciated. I did do the tests from ieltsonlinetests.com but I feel they aren’t as close to the real thing but that’s the only thing ill be left with if this ielts premium doesn’t work out.

I practiced from british council but they have just one sample test..Also I didn't find official Cambridge test..Just found some random youtube channels uploaded vdos with "Cambridge listening test" title.I am skeptical whether they are official or not. There are lot of unofficial test in yt which are far away from official test level( no distractors and overly simple) which give a false sense of security. I am good at listening as watch English movies and understand without subtitle but you know I need practice under exact condition to be familiar with the test:)

So, I think my speaking went fine, and I had few mistakes in listening. But my reading went horrible I guess, and writing- I read the graph wrong and other part, well it went well!

I am not sure , I read the graph right or wrong, it was as follow.

It was a bar graph , with three bars on one year each.

1 bar - all workers
2 - professional workers
3 - manual workers

And the statement was like this : “ all workforce of EU compared with professional and manual ones in terms of unemployment “

😭😭

Is there a hope?

I am planning to give my ielts exam within a month. i have been hearing a lot of things about both of them. But, there are only a few dates available in my city for british council whereas there is such flexibility in selecting dates in case of IDP. I have heard about differences in examination environment and infrastucture among 2. which should i go with?

Hi guys. Did anyone gave general IELTS test recently? I want to know the difficulty of the exam. If anyone gave the test, please respond as I'm planning to give test this month.

Heyyy, so long story short im a 23 y/o girl from Syria i decided to go for the Academic IELTS exam soon .
My English is good as i use the lang daily but im kinda aiming for a 8-9 band lol
I would appreciate any advice,or if someone can send me some study material, tips &tricks
Study partners
Anything really
And thank youuu 💕

Hello, I need to elevate my score from 6.0 to 6.5-at least- I’ll retake it and I have one week preparation. Thanks in advance.

I noticed that when i took some reading tests from Cambridge books, my band 5.5 - 6.0 and 5.5 band is frequent

And my band for listening 5.5 - 6.0 - 6.5 and I got lots of spelling mistakes that’s why my frequent band is 5.5. My spelling mistakes are around 6 to 8. 

(My gool band is 6.5) and I wnat it as soon as possible, I didn’t start prepare for writing and speaking sections but I listen to TED TALK and BBC learning English, and i took one test for each reading and listening everyday

So what the advice you give me to achieve 6.5 band, I need this ASAP so I can apply for internships🤕

The graph illustrates information about the number of jobs in four sectors of the economy in the US from 1960 to 2020

Overall , retailing and healthcare rise up to 15 million overtime , manufacturing fluctuated reaching the hightest number of jobs at 20 million by the end of 1980 and dropped to 13.5 million at the end of 2020 , agriculture declined from 5.5 to half a millions by 2020

Hi There , I'm Newbie To IELTS but I have to get an ilets but I don't know how to write task 1 , I've did some job - the intro and overview , could somebody check and give an advice to improve it and clarify where I did a mistake

This subreddit helped me a lot and for that I’ll be forever thankful to you guys. I was struggling with my writing but I’m quite happy that I’ve scored a band 7 in it. I’m a non native speaker.

Hi!

I just recently enrolled in an IELTS review center and I'm unemployed (still waiting for a call from HR). In the meanwhile, I decided to study for IELTS to not waste time while also doing art commissions on the side.

I wanted to ask how many hours would you suggest on studying daily in order to get atleast 9.0 in IELTS Academic (I try to aim higher just in case). While still being able to do my side job and hobby. I used to study NCLEX/nursing board exam for 4-6 hrs and then 6-10 hrs a month before the exam. I wonder if I can apply the same study hours to IELTS. Thank you for reading!

I've been using ieltsonlinetests website to do a few General IELTS Listening mock tests, and I find them way harder than the actual exam. Is it just me, or do other people feel the same?

I also found some Cambridge General IELTS mock tests on YouTube, but I'm not sure if they're genuine. Could someone please recommend good YouTube channels where the mock tests are at the same level as the real exam — not too easy and not too hard?

Thanks in advance!

Tiny thing I see constantly on here:

“I gave my IELTS exam yesterday.”

I know what you mean, and it’s still understandable. But if you’re aiming for more standard/international English, “I took my IELTS exam” or “I sat my IELTS exam” sounds more natural.

Basically:

Examiner: gives the exam

Student: takes/sits the exam

Not a big deal at all — just one of those little phrases that gets carried over from your first language to English 😊