r/IELTS

I honestly did not expect 8.5, I expected 8!

I regsitered for the test on: Sept 30.

Test date: Oct. 8

Number of days prepared: I would round it up to 2.

Well, I have mixed feelings about the results… Although I am grateful for it, seeing that I missed out 8.5 by just 0.5 points is rather disappointing 😅 I am especially saddened by the unfortunate listening part 1 as I completely missed out on the spelling questions.

For context, English is my third language and I am studying at an international school where English is the primary language of instruction. This was my first IELTS.

I prepared for only two days using IELTS Liz’s site. Definitely recommending it, the advice from her was very helpful.

In the writing section I had maps of a museum in task 1, and an opinion essay about whether schools should foster good behaviour alongside formal knowledge in task 2. I would recommend leaving some time to recheck your work. I didn’t and it backfired - did a lot of mistakes in grammar and didn’t correct them.

In speaking I had questions about home/technology/old buildings in part 1; “describe a city - aside from your hometown - that would be nice to live in” in part 2; and questions about cities/settlements/nature/ecotourism in part 3.

As expected got overall 7.5. Part 2 wasn’t a generic cue card in speaking, still I’m happy with 6.5. Feel free to ask if u want to know anything related to exam/prep etc.

Taking the IELTS as a non-native English-speaking student with 2 days of preparation is doable. Skimmed through the IELTS complementary 3-day trial and IELTS Advantage free section (did not subscribe to the VIP lessons).

The most challenging part of writing is getting used to generating simple and reasonable ideas within first 2 minutes of each task. Complicated lexicons are overrated. In reality, structure and cohesiveness trumps content every single time.

Do not overthink it! No idea is too dumb as long as you can explain it. It is not the time to show how smart you are (I’m sure we’re all intelligent), but to show how easy we can help the marker understand our essay. 1. Simple paraphrasing of the question, 2. Use linkers, 3. Following a structure, and 4. Stick with one stance and elaborate your idea with one example in each body paragraph (Task 2).

Best of luck to all future test takers!

I'm a first-time test taker, tbh I should be grateful cuz I didn't prepare shi. I'm not a native speaker, so ig that is one way to cope for me. I was honestly expecting atleast a 7 on writing. As for speaking that was expected since I fumbled hard in task 3

I used to get around 7–7.5 in both Listening and Reading in the Cambridge tests, but I got 6 in Listening and 6.5 in Reading in the actual exam

Honestly, I'm pretty disappointed. I thought the real exam would be around the same difficulty as the mocks, but it really wasn't

So yeah, don't expect to get the same score in the real exam as you do in your mock tests. I definitely wasn't expecting this 😭

I studied for a total of 10 days. Watched 2-3 of Chris Pell’s videos per section on YouTube and practiced individual sections + 2 full length exams from British Council’s IELTS Ready Premium resources.

If anyone has questions or wants advice, feel free to ask in the comments!