IELTS Preparation — All Four Sections with Practice Tests

Hi everyone and welcome to your IELTS introductory class. My name is AmaraChi Oladipili and I'm going to be your IELTS instructor. So first off, we're going to see what IELTS is. IELTS stands for International English Language Testing System and it's one of the English proficiency exams you write when you're trying to migrate to another country, be it for work, for academic purposes, or for whatever route you're planning to take um the IELTS comes in two forms and two types so we have the academic and the general IELTS um and a lot of students want to know which they're writing well if you're planning to get a student visa then you need the IELTS academic um that's what you use to apply to schools and then if you're planning to get a work visa or do a PR then the IELTS general it is also there are two different IELTS exams so we have the UKVI and the normal IELTS and UKVI stands for United Kingdom visas and that's the one you want to write if you're planning to migrate to the UK and that also comes in general and academic and the normal IELTS for any other country also comes in general and academic all right so IELTS also comes either written on paper or taken as a CBT test that's on computer and a lot of students ask also which is better or which should they write and the answer to that is that IELTS questions on CBT and on paper are the same the same level of difficulty the same timing the same everything and the only difference is that the computer based comes out in five days and the paper comes out in is out in 14 days so um you want to do the one you're most comfortable with and maybe if you're in a hurry you might want to take the computer based but regardless um aside from that we both of them are basically the same exams, IELTS is scored in band scores so we have bands one to nine, being the highest it's typically okay for students or um test takers to find out what band score they need um typically a good score starts from a 6.0 but um I've had situations or places where lower band scores are accepted, but for schools and work visas you might want to look at getting a 6.0 and above, of course 9 being the highest you can get on the IELTS there are four categories to the IELTS test we have the reading, the listening, the writing and the speaking tests the three tests you're going to be writing on the day of your exam you have the listening first then the reading then the writing and then you're going to be taking the speaking separately um sometimes on the same day and some other times on different days so those are the four different exam categories you're going to be preparing for under the IELTS, now before we proceed there's a link attached to this course where you get all the materials that you're going to be needing for our reading listening writing and speaking and you get the Cambridge 16 and the Cambridge 17 so it's advisable that you go click on the link download these books because that's what we're going to be using throughout our classes now i would want you to open up the books and on your screen um open them down so that when you watch the videos i'm going to call in the pages just going to go into the page number for example when when i give you assignments or when we're reading the text together i'm just going to refer you to the page um maybe cambridge 16 or cambridge 17 and then the pages that we're going to be using for each exercise all right so i would i want you to do that now click on the link download Cambridge 16 and download Cambridge 17 with that we have come to the end of our introduction video I'm going to be seeing you in our next video where we're going to go into the reading proper and help you understand what that means hi test takers welcome to your speaking class my name is Amarachi Oladile and I'm going to be tutoring you on how to ace your speaking test okay for this class we're going to do a brief introduction into the ielts speaking um the first thing you ought to know is that there are two kinds of the ielts speaking the first is usually referred to as the face-to-face or the in-person course and that means that the examiner who's going to be conducting your ielts test is going to be there with you physically and he or she's going to be asking you a couple of questions face-to-face right and then the second one is the virtual speaking test which is going to happen um with the examiner not present in the same um space with you right so you're going to be seeing the examiner on the system something that looks like a video call um he or she will be taking the test um from wherever he or she is via the video call that's going to be on your screen so those are the two um types of the speaking test that you're going to be having so a lot of people want to know if they can choose to take a video call or a face-to-face test and the answer usually is no most times the ielts body assigns virtual call or face-to-face tests for you but there are some situations where you can't choose especially if the option comes out or you find the option when you're registering then you can have the power to choose but in most cases the IELTS body usually just assigns one to you especially after the corona period where they've just gone virtual for most of their tests the British Council especially the second thing you need to know about the IELTS speaking test is that it is divided into three categories or basically three different parts so we have the part one the part two and then the part three then what you need to know again is that the IELTS speaking is about 11 to 14 minutes long um that's like the shortest exam you'd ever take on the IELTS test um it's over before you know it you just have to answer some questions for 11 to 14 minutes so it can be as short as 11 minutes or as long as 14 minutes right um the IELTS speaking test also happens to be the only test that you take all by itself what that means is that you're either going to take the test before the other routine tests or after the other routine tests um but if you're taking the computer based exam then you have to take it on the same day but you're going to take um probably take the routine test in the morning and the speaking test in the afternoon or in the evening depending on how what time has been scheduled it's also the only test that you get to pick your time between if you're writing the paper test for example um and you're doing speaking test on a separate day you have the liberty to choose a time for your speaking test either in the morning in the afternoon or latest in the evening by 4 p.m you're advised to come 30 minutes before your time that is if your time is 4 p.m then you you should aim to come at least or get there at least uh 30 minutes before your actual speaking test and that's it for the introduction to the speaking in next video we're going to tell you everything that you need to know on test day hi test takers and welcome to IELTS tips on speaking okay um for the first tip okay which has been mentioned in the previous video which is to arrive as early as possible um at least 30 minutes to your speaking test day now let me walk you through what's going to happen on your speaking test one thing you do not want to forget is your passport because this is very necessary it's very important it's actually crucial to your test that you have it on you with you at all times okay now to test proper um like i said in the previous video IELTS speaking test is divided into three parts which means that um you begin the part one then the part two then the part three now before the part one begins there's a part we IELTS um examiners or IELTS instructors like to call the part zero now the part zero is usually the introduction the IELTS introduce yourself part now we call it part zero because it's usually not marked which means that you do not get a score for that part however it is advised that because it's um the first things you do first impressions of course still advise that you do it as properly and as well as you can now what happens in part zero part zero is the introduction stage like i said so the instructor So, or the examiner will introduce him or herself to you by giving you their first name, last name, and then ask you to introduce yourself We usually say that you give the examiner your full name as it is written on your passport So, for example, the examiner says, my name is Amrachi Jamal Aladele And tells you that they are the examiner they're taking a test, blah, blah, blah Then asks you what your name is. you should say your name exactly the way it is written on your passport so the next thing you want to do is to tell the examiner what to call you now a lot of people say do i have to tell them what to call you no you don't if you do not tell them they will still ask you um what may i call you please that's because that that's what is polite in english right so it's polite in english to always um tell someone what they can call you especially when the person doesn't know which is your first name which is your last name and things like that plus it's polite it's easy it makes the conversation go more um easily naturally yeah so that's the first thing you want to do tell the examiner your name and tell them what to call you so it goes something like my name is amarachi jamal please call me amarachi and that's it all right my name's okay so we usually just say just say my name's like with the contraction s my name's instead of saying my name is there's no there's no big deal you can always say my name is if you feel more comfortable with that so my name's amarachi jamal please call me amarachi and that's that for the introduction doesn't um attract any score but it's a good way to start your ielts yes to show who you are what you are about and how proficient you are in speaking okay that's usually the part zero now before your ielts begins the examiner will then okay if you're taking a paper test right examiner will then ask for your international passport so you hand over your international passport and say here it is or um this is it or just say something remember it's a speaking test so it's always important that you you know speak right so here it is or this is my international passport you just hand it over to the examiner he or she's going to take a look at it just to make sure that you're the person who's taking the test and that's still part of the part zero because it's still an introduction so he or she looks at the passports and hands it back to you right this does not happen on the virtual test right because for the virtual test there will be an examiner who is there present with you who would have checked your passport prior to the exam happening this is because of course the person is virtual so he or she cannot request that you give them their passport all right so the physical examiner would have done that before you walk into the exam before you go into the room where the test is going to happen so basically they just start with your name and then proceed to the IELTS test part one okay so physical tests um your name and your international passport but for virtual tests you just say your name and then you go into the test all right now comes my favorite part telling you the tips for doing well on your IELTS speaking number one you have to exude confidence now there's no marking criteria for confidence obviously nobody's going to mark you because you're confident right there are just four things the IELTS marks for your speaking number one is your vocabulary resource that is the vocabulary the the words that you use right the kinds of words that you use the better the words the the more marks you score just like every other part of the IELTS we deal with contextual vocabulary so it's not only about saying big words it's about saying the right words right So that's one score. The second score is on pronunciation, right? So we want you to do um not to fake an accent or speak um like a white person, but we want you to pronounce words um correctly. Right. The third thing is your grammar, your sentence structures, the grammar that you use and things like that. And of course, your fluency, the fact that you're not looking for words, you're not, you know, you're just moving connecting your words and moving on and on and you're sounding as natural as possible so those are the four things we are marking however confidence helps you to speak well confidence helps you to sound natural and that's what we're looking for we're looking for someone who is okay who is good at speaking English like so who someone who speaks English on a daily basis We want communication we want to know that this person is comfortable and so you need to exude confidence you need to look the examiner straight in the eye and answer your questions rather than look down or you know start looking at different places now your examiner themselves is not going to be giving you the score they only recommend the score and i also do this because they want to remove biases right so that examiner is probably not the person who's going to give you a final score but it is important very imperative that you look at the examiner while you're having the test tip number two you need to be as clear as possible right you're going to be recorded your speaking what you're saying is going to be recorded and the examiner is going to make you aware of that right he or she is going to tell you that your um speaking is being recorded for marking purposes like i said earlier the person taking your test probably wouldn't be the person assigning you a score he or she can recommend the score but wouldn't assign you the final score the recording however is going to be used so a group of examiners are going to listen and then either concur with the score prescribed or suggested or they give you another score so your recording has to be as clear and as loud as possible of course not as loud as shouting but you need to be audible you need to we need to hear you right the third thing you want to do on your IELTS test is to not fake an accent this is a Nigerian thing you just have this um want to sound foreign don't do that on your test please try to sound as natural as you speak the way you normally would all right so faking an accent on the IELTS test is a no no no don't do that okay because if you do that chances are that the ielts examiner will know will find out and it will affect your score negatively all right fourth thing you want to do on the ielts test is to avoid filler words okay there is absolutely no way you're going to take the test without one or um or pauses and all of that but you don't want to make it a regular thing you want to answer the question all right straight up answer the question and begin to be as fluent as you want um use them to the minimum as minimal as you can another thing you want to do on your IELTS is to avoid foreign words okay or limit or explain them if you can't avoid them explain them for example what's your favorite food um your favorite food is amala and gbegiri for example um nobody's saying you can't say amala and gbegiri but you have to explain them for example oh my favorite food is amala and gbegiri um it's a yoruba food from western nigeria and it is made out of yam flour that's okay oh my favorite festival is the festival where we celebrate the god of our land who's the god of iron that's okay so you want to explain foreign words any words that you've used that are foreign you want to explain them or at least avoid them another thing you want to do on the IELTS is to pronounce your words well now there's a difference between pronouncing your words well and you picking an accent right so there are commonly mispronounced words in nigeria and one of them is theta sounds that's the th sounds right so nigerians love to say with instead of with all right they want to say t instead of th or they want to say d instead of th right so th sounds are usually a lot tricky for nigerians and not like they look at all of your pronunciations they're just specific ones like th that sound or for example the ch sounds when nigerians like to say cash instead of catch or shosh instead of church and things like um then the er sounds uh where we say teacher sort of teacher with a soft er and um the al sounds where we say political or tropical instead of political or tropical things like that so you just want to watch out for some specific uh pronunciations i also didn't necessarily um flag all of your pronunciations but some of them like the theta sounds the al sounds and all of this now note that these things will not prevent you from getting a seven but from a seven and above you want to hit your pronunciations um you want to give the right pronunciations for every um weak sounds right another thing you want to note on your ielts is that it is very important that you try to use idiomatic phrases right or what we call modal phrases um idiomatic phrases kind of adds flavor to what you're saying right it doesn't just sound bland or ordinary it begins to sound close to what a native speaker would say um not of course the cliche idiomatic expressions like green light and all of that you could use um as simple as hit the gym as simple as i've known him for donkey years um simple idiomatic phrases would work when you're taking the test so you want to look for places in the test where you can use idiomatic or um modal phrases to spice up what you're saying so after this video we're going to place links to um idiomatic phrases that you could try out on your speaking day you could just inflect them in your speaking or attach them to whatever you're saying because using idiomatic phrases almost guarantees that you get at least a band 7.5 to an 8 in your speaking because they make your speaking colorful, flavorful, you know, just add that spice and creativity to what you're saying, okay, um, the next thing you want to do on your IELTS speaking day is to always remember not to give monosyllabic answers, what I mean by that is if, for example, they ask you what your best color is, just say my color is yellow, where do you work? I work as a psychiatrist. Do you love your home? Yes, I do. No, those are monosyllabic answers, they are bad because they do not tell you if you speak well, anybody can just say that, anybody can say best color is yellow, my best color is pink, I love my house, I've lived there for three years, no, you want to show off your speaking range, you want to give us a range you can work with, so the importance is that you need to speak right, so you do not just want to give us monosyllabic answers, you want to give us a direct answer and then give us some sort of details to what you're saying, for example, I work as a teacher I actually teach IELTS International English Language Testing System and I've been doing this for six years or um, I'm a doctor, um, specifically a gynecologist, I work at so so so hospital and I've been doing that for six years now of course that gives me a range of your speaking capabilities it tells me that this person has capabilities i can give you a score between six and eight okay but if you just keep giving me one answer i like it it's cool it's not but then i don't know if you can speak or you cannot speak and that's bad for your speaking test because i've given you a very low score all right so that's about one of the most important um tip you need to have on the ielts test give your answer and always come up with a detail in form of a reason or an explanation for your answer always come up with some kind of detail that you attach or you add to your answers okay you also need to know when um you over you started talking too much you know an answer should always have a way so you do not want to talk too little you also do not want to talk too much you want to stay on topic what is what job do you do i do this i do it at this place and i've been doing it for this long or i do this i love it it's a fantastic a job whatever you want to say must stay within what you do when you begin to tell me about your years in university how you enjoy studying the course then you talk too much right you want to stay on topic you want to keep your answer reasonable you want to be concise you want to be as coherently as clear as possible you do not want to begin to give me excess irrelevant information with that we come to the end of today's tips and in the next video we're going to show you what to do for each part hi test takers welcome to your speaking class um this is a continuation from the tips and we're going to be looking into what happens in your part one and how to answer the questions in your part one so let's begin it's test day and you've introduced yourself right you've told them my name is so so so please call me so so so and if you're taking a physical test they've probably looked at your ID if you're taking a virtual test somebody else has looked at it before the actual test begins now if i didn't mention in my previous video i'm mentioning now that if you're taking a virtual test you'd have the headset on your head and the person would be in the video so there's a headset thing and you're listening using the headset right so if you're using the headset so you're going to be hearing the examiner via the headset you're going to be seeing them on your screen okay so um the introductions are done and then the examiner tells you that you're being recorded and that's over she now takes you to part one so she says now your part one begins all right because the IELTS examiner at each part will always inform you that they're moving to part one or they're moving to part two or they're moving to part three now for your part one there are three categories of questions that you would be asked on right so the first category is your home or your hometown so IELTS likes to ask us about our home or our hometown what that means is that if you ask questions on your home you will not be asked questions in your hometown you're asked questions in your hometown you will not be most likely not be asked questions from your home now home has to do with accommodation where you live and things like that and your hometown of course has to do with where you're from now a couple of people always say they ask me about my hometown and i don't know about my hometown should i talk about my home like where i live yes you can now there is no right or wrong answers on the IELTS the thing is there are answers that are not well developed then answers are not fluent enough not pronounced enough not using the right grammar so remember that at all times IELTS is checking your speaking capabilities not your IQ not your ability to answer correct questions okay they want to know if you can speak as if you can communicate in English do you understand English when you communicate right back right so there are no wrong or right answers they are poorly developed answers but they are answers that do not really answer the question that is being asked right so do not worry if you are answering something you think is not right for example if they ask you what your best color is and you can't think of the color at that time you can easily just say i do not have the best color um i am not a really kind of person that likes colors i just go with whatever i just go with the flow basically if it's a team party i the colors of the team at that time, not really color person that's fine right, the thing is for you to speak, IELTS just wants to make sure that you're speaking that you're using correct English that you're using correct grammar that your fluency is there so every time just tell yourself it's fluency, it's pronunciations, it's grammar and it's the vocabulary that's what they care about so for your part one you want to give the answer and then elaborate just a little on the answer so for example some people they ask you where is your hometown or where do you live, so where you live is where of course where you're residing like your accommodation and then where your hometown is where you're from, so the part one usually lasts for four to five minutes right, four to five minutes which means they're going to ask you a couple of questions under this first category so let's talk about your home and then they begin to ask questions about your home, what kind of home is it, what kind of place is it, how many rooms does it have, what's your favorite room um, do you like it, how long have you lived there, questions like that and then or they ask about your hometown, where are you from what are the people best known for um, is it the best, is it a good place to be from, the people who live there are they comfortable, things like that about your hometown right, so they can ask you either of this hometown or home, now the second category is the work school category so they can ask you they'll ask you do you work or do you school, if you say you work they begin to ask you about your job what do you do for a living do you like it um how long have you been doing it would you like to change careers things like that if you say your school then they begin to ask you about your study what's your favorite subject um who's your favorite teacher what do you like about school things like that okay so they can ask you that for another couple minutes and then they move to the last category now this last category is a general question um basically we've narrowed it down to leisure things you do in your leisure um favorite things or hobbies so they can just ask you do you like music and what kind of music you like or do you like movies what kind of movies you like or do you like shopping what kind of shopping do you like to do how often do you shop or do you like plants or what do you do in your spare time or anything at all do you have neighbors do you like your neighbors what do you think about your things like that you can ask you practically anything on the third category okay so there's the first category there's a second category and then there's a third category first category they ask you home or hometown questions then they ask you work or school questions and then they ask you one on a general topic usually favorites hobbies or things you do in your leisure regardless of the question you're asked the best thing to do for your IELTS speaking test one is to answer the questions directly give a direct answer how often you give them time frame so how often maybe once or twice or not very often or very rarely or almost all the time then you explain all right so you either explain as a detail or you give reasons for your detail for example do you live in a house or a flat oh i live in a flat a three bedroom so i living a flat is the answer but i want to give details it's a three-bedroomed flat um the sitting room is quite big but the rooms are really small and cozy that's a detail okay what's your favorite color oh my favorite color is red uh i like to attract attention and i think that the particular red color especially too much red bright red colors are very attractive and they you know make me stand out everywhere i go that is just a detail okay the answer is red i like red every other thing i've said is a detail so that's what you want to do in your part one remember it's just the beginning right just the beginning so you're just trying to get to know you don't want to over talk you don't want to begin to talk and talk and talk you also don't want to give you no monosyllabic answers which means you don't just want to give a short brief answer like yes i do oh i like green oh it's a big place oh it's a small place no i'm going to elaborate a little bit more and that's what you do on your ielts test day for part one all right so those are the three categories and that's how to answer every single question until the end the next video i'm going to show you what to do for your ielts test part two