Power cut during the exam. Got 6.5 - Honestly, I Was Expecting 5.0 😭
Hello everyone!
I'm from Hyderabad, India.
My IELTS Result
I recently took the IELTS exam and got 6.5 overall, which honestly surprised me a lot.
Before the exam, I genuinely thought I would get around 5.0 overall.
My English has always been a weak area for me. Even though I completed all my education in English, I still struggle with grammar, vocabulary, speaking fluently, and expressing my thoughts clearly.
My Background
For the past one year, I've been learning German because I’m planning to do my Master’s in Germany.
Because of that, I’ve actually been using and thinking about German quite a lot recently.
And this created some funny problems during my previous English exam. 😂
My Previous TOEFL Experience 💀
During my previous TOEFL speaking test, I actually spoke German words in the middle of the speaking section.
My brain basically went: English? ❌ German? ✅
😂
So I was honestly worried that my IELTS speaking would also go badly.
My Preparation
Honestly, I didn't really prepare for IELTS at all. 😅
I only found out that I needed an IELTS certificate for my visa, so I booked the exam immediately and had only one week to prepare.
The first thing I did was take a Cambridge IELTS 19 practice test.
My results were:
- 🎧 Listening: 6.0
- 📖 Reading: 4.0
- ✍️ Writing: Didn't practise (saw the structure on YouTube)
- 🗣️ Speaking: Didn't practise
And that was basically my preparation. 😂
I didn't follow any proper study plan or practise regularly. I just went into the actual exam after that one week.
That's why I was genuinely shocked when I received 6.5 overall.
Power Cut During My IELTS Reading Test
During the Reading test, there was a power cut for nearly 12 minutes.
When the UPS came back on, some computers turned on immediately, but my computer and the computers of two other students did not restart automatically.
The test centre staff had to manually turn on our computers.
The biggest problem was that the test timer was not paused. When we were able to open the test again, the timer was already running, so I had lost a significant amount of my Reading time.
The centre staff did help us and offered to reschedule the test, but unfortunately, I wasn't available for the rescheduled option. Because the time is very less for my Visa.
Has anyone else experienced something similar during a computer-based IELTS exam? How was it handled at your test centre?
So I continued with the exam despite losing that time.
The Result
Despite all of this, I somehow ended up with:
Overall: 6.5 🎉
I still can't believe it because I was expecting something much lower.
It made me realise that sometimes our perception of our own English ability can be much worse than our actual performance.
My Takeaway
If you're also preparing for IELTS and feel like your English is terrible, don't underestimate yourself.
I'm definitely not saying that 6.5 is an amazing score, but considering how I felt before the exam, I'm genuinely happy with it.
Has anyone else had a similar experience where you expected a low IELTS score but ended up doing much better?