The International English Language Testing System (IELTS) is an internationally accepted method of testing English language skills for non-native speakers.
IELTS was once a requirement for higher education in the UK and Australia. However, currently universities in the US and Canada also accept this test score, and universities in most European countries accept the IELTS.
British Council, IDP: It is jointly administered by IELTS Australia and Cambridge English Language Assessment.
Anyone can take the IELTS test, no educational qualification is required. There is no age restriction here either.
IELTS Test Type
The IELTS test is conducted in two ways. Academic and General Training.
Academic Module
Academic modules are required to study at the undergraduate, postgraduate or PhD level in foreign universities.
General training
If a student wants to take admission in technical subjects or training, he/she has to appear in General Training Module. Apart from this, those who want to go for immigration, also have to give exam in General Training Module.
Test procedure
The IELTS test consists of 4 parts in both types of modules. Listening (Listening), Reading (Reading), Writing (Writing) and Speaking (Speaking).
listening
Candidates have to listen to the recording conversation and answer the questions in this part. Comprehension is checked by listening to conversation. There are 40 questions. The test is conducted in 4 parts of 30 minutes. A subject is played only once.
In this part the candidates have to understand the accent. They can encounter 4 types of accents. For example – British, American, Canadian and Australian.
In this case, various online videos and YouTube videos, movies, sports commentary can be helpful.
Writing
English writing skills are tested in this part. Where two questions have to be answered in 1 hour. The second question carries more marks than the first question.
There are 2 types of tasks in writing. Task-1 may describe various diagrams or graphs.
Task-2 mainly requires analytical skills, critical evaluation. In this case, reading various news reports or critical articles in detail is very helpful.
A format can be followed in this case. First and second paragraphs preface. Then the main idea or idea, then the reason or logical analysis. Finally the example. If you follow this rule, the score will be good.
Again, for writing, it is good if you have the habit of regularly reading articles from newspapers like the BBC or the Economist. Online podcasts like TED Talks or TEDx talk about various contemporary topics. Videos can improve listening and reading skills in addition to writing.
speaking
In the Speaking section, the candidates have to take a test of approximately 11 to 14 minutes. In the first part the candidate is asked some general questions like: family, studies, hobbies etc.
Second part is to speak for 2 minutes on a specific topic. One minute is given for preparation before this.
The third part consists of a 4-5 minute conversation with the examiner on a specific topic.
Several issues are taken into consideration in this section. For example, fluency, vocabulary, grammatical range and accuracy, and pronunciation.
Reading
In this part, candidates have to answer a total of 40 questions from 3 paragraphs in 1 hour. Some parts are taken from various journals, books, newspapers, magazines. From there there are questions like sentence completion, short answer, finding the correct answer etc.
In reading, it is better to read the questions first. Otherwise, the examinees may get lost while reading the entire passage. In this case, those who have the habit of reading English newspapers regularly can do well. A mastery in English literature is even better. And especially the better the vocabulary, the better they are in the reading test or reading comprehension.