How much time you should need to prepare for the IELTS?

The International English Language Testing System (IELTS), is an international standardised test of English language proficiency for non-native English speakers. It uses a nine-band scale to identify the level of proficiency in English, where band 1 is non-user and band 9 is expert. There are 2 types of IELTS tests. IELTS Academic is for people applying for higher education or professional registration.

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IELTS General Training is for those migrating to Australia, Canada and the UK, or applying for secondary education, training programmes and work experience in an English-speaking environment. The main skills that are tested by the IELTS are listening, reading, writing and speaking. The test can also be taken on paper or computer format. For someone who is aiming to score high for the IELTS, they would have to prepare themselves in the 4 areas that are tested by the IELTS.

Listening is one of the components of both the General training and the Academic IELTS. There can be multiple types of recordings and the questions may be of various formats but the principle of this section is still the same. The person sitting for the test will have to listen to recordings and answer questions based on these recordings after only one try of listening to them.

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The recordings can be a normal conversation, a monologue set in everyday context, a conversation set in an education or training context or a monologue on an academic subject. The questions can be Multiple Choice Questions (MCQs), Free response Questions (FRQs), Matching, etc.

Reading is another component of the IELTS. The type of passages that people will be tasked to read will be slightly different depending on whether they are taking the General training or the Academic test. The academic test will have three long texts ranging from descriptive and factual to the discursive and analytical. The passages are taken from books, journals, magazines and newspapers. The general training test will instead consist of passages that people are likely to encounter on a daily basis and thus are less technical.

Writing, similar to reading, is also different depending on which type of test the person is taking. The topics for the academic test will be topics that are of interest to test takers entering undergraduate or postgraduate studies or seeking professional registration. Similar to the reading component, the writing topics for the general training will also be very general and not technical. The speaking component of the tests will be similar for both types. The examiner will test on general questions about the test taker, will give a particular topic for the test taker to talk about and some further questions. This will just be to test how fluent the test taker is at speaking English.

BOTTOM LINE

Having so many components and having so many different questions that they can ask, it may seem very overwhelming for the test taker to study for it. Thus, it is recommended that preparation should start at least 2 or 3 months before the actual test date. Test takers are recommended to go for IELTS training lessons or taking classes from ielts tutor online. It is difficult to prepare for such broad topics for the 4 subsections and thus, these lessons can help them narrow down on what exactly to focus on. By going for these lessons and doing IELTS practice tests that can be found online, they can become much more prepared for the test. They should continue practicing after doing these over the course of the 2 to 3 months. All of these will be ample preparation needed to do well for the IELTS. Good luck!