As the world becomes flat, youths are facing countless opportunities in terms of gaining quality education. The latest education trend centered in Australia, a green continent. But the quality education costs a lot. However, we still can get what we want by getting scholarship. Numerous of scholarships offered to non-Australian citizens around the globe.
In order to get a scholarship, an applicant should fulfill some criteria such as English qualification (IELTS), Major related requirements, and so on. While the people starts to get interested in such opportunity, there are bunch of English Education Centers opened. Only god knows whether they are quality or not.
In my opinion, the exam is not everest of the examinations. You know what I mean right? It is not that difficult test to take at all. Most of the candidates take the test without any systemized preparation and got band score 8 or 8.5, etc,. However, some people still need some help or studying before the test, so they can get their attracted score.
This article is for those who needed a little bit of extra preparation.
I strongly believe that the most efficient as well as fun method to use for preparation for the IELTS would be self learning method. Your level of English is most likely to be the intermediate (considering your interest on the test). If then, why would you spend a great deal of money to learn things that you already know? Just to learn the structure of the test? Nah, I don't think so.
So, here is what you want to do. Get to know about the IELTS as much as you can. Dig into Google.com, hence, you can find the structure of the test itself as well as different strategies to use on preparation which is perfect. Then, make a vow to yourself by stating "I, ...... , hereby declaring that I am going to spend .... hours a day for my preparation for the IELTS" or smthng like that. And never brake the vow. After that, start working on Practice Tests from both Barron's book and Cambridge IELTS. I think both books are pretty decent and hey all you need is to become comfortable with test structure. By working on practice tests, you will discover "your way" to work on those. I mean, everyone has their own preferred way of studying or working and that is exactly what you want to find out in terms of yourself.
Try to work on at least one complete practice test a day. I assure you, you will become better and better. Moreover, your confidence will increase as you are practicing. The more confident you are, the better result you get. Also one of the benefits that you could get from these books is that they have fixed and model answers in it. So, you can compare your answers with books'.
Writing and speaking part would be tricky as there is no fixed way to measure band score. However, I'm preparing these parts with Liz. Liz is a teacher who has online preparation courses for the IELTS examination. You can find her videos by simply searching "IELTS LIZ" on youtube or you can visit her website - (www.Ieltsliz.com). Personally, I found her lessons very useful and it helps me a lot. (I'm highly suggesting you to watch all the videos. But you ought to see playlist section of her youtube channel for categorized videos).
I'm gonna take the test on 16, December and this is basically what I'm doing nowadays. Frankly, I was nothing but a big ball of stress in the beginning. But I could feel that I'm getting better and better. For instance, I scored like 5 or what on the Reading and Listening part of a mock test that I took about 2 weeks ago, but now, I'm scoring around 8-8.5 band score on each of them. I know it doesn't mean that I am actually going to get this score but hey, improvement huh? :')))
So the thing called "consistency" is the key of success in most cases. Keep doing already, you will get better bud. Then let's rock the IELTS.
(The most important thing, again, is to find your comfortable way of performing each and every task. Find it)
Good luck for y'all.