雅思考试10 Top Tips to Improve Your IELTS Score

In most speaking test interviews you will be asked to introduce yourself - be careful not to become a robot: my-name-is-George-and-I-graduated-from-xyz-university ... try to be natural and friendly, a person who is willing to speak and has interesting things to say. To get better at introducing yourself write out a "2 minute me" on a piece of paper. Include information that you think is interesting and maybe a bit different from other candidates. Then go out and practice, firstly with people that you know and then with people you don't know - is the content interesting? Does it sound natural when you speak? and so on. How do people react when they hear it? Adjust the content as appropriate.

Top Tip Eight

Articles - many candidates find the use of articles one of the most difficult tasks in English. There are two kinds of articles in English, the definite and indefinite. The definite article (the) can be singular or plural. The indefinite article (a or an) is singular. Check your writing to make sure that you have included and used articles in the correct format. Use a good grammar book to practice your use of articles before the test.

Top Tip Nine

Keep up to date with current affairs. Make sure that you read a newspaper each day because the IELTS writing tasks are based on items of general interest. In theory no special knowledge is required to answer the questions but it is always useful to have a knowledge of topics that are of concern particularly in English speaking countries. For example, you probably know about global warming but do you have sufficient ideas and vocabulary to write an essay arguing for or against the banning of cars in city centres?

Top Tip Ten

Writing word count - writing task one usually requires you to write 150 words and writing task two 250. If you fail to write a lot less than the correct number of words the maximum score you can be awarded is 5.0. If you write too many words in one task and not enough in the other again you will be penalized. The best strategy is to keep an eye on the clock - divide the time by the total number of words that are required for each task, generally 20 minutes for writing task one and 40 minutes for writing task two. However, as stated before, read the questions carefully and make sure you follow the instructions in your test.

Good luck with your IELTS test, and remember, prepare, prepare, prepare!