how can you improve your IELTS score by 1 full band in less than one month at home this was a challenge Amata faced when she first contacted me she just received a 6.5 score in her first test but she needed a Band 7 in each section for her master's program and if she failed to provide it by the end of the month she would lose her place with no time to waste we reviewed Amata's strategies and her practice answers and discovered that although she wasn't fluent her English was quite good but she was making some very common and costly mistakes so I prepared a study plan which she followed for one month and now the results of her second test are in and because her mistakes were so common I thought I would share this plan with you too it's Asiya here let's get started [Music] the first rule is to spend more time on the sections you find more difficult in Amata's case these are reading and writing if you haven't taken your test yet take an official I practice test to assess your level and I recommend using Cambridge practice tests because these books are just like the real exams and tests on the internet May may be more difficult than real tests or confusing and in some cases simply incorrect so to get accurate results use an official practice test and always prioritize I El's writing by default okay let's begin with I's reading amata symptoms were classic she couldn't read everything as she would just simply run out of time long before she would get to the end of the test she also did didn't know some words and so she would get confused and frustrated and simply give up on some of the questions and trying to get to a higher score she looked for every possible hack and she found some on the internet for example in matching headings she would only read the first and the last sentence to save time but that's a wrong technique and as a result all that led to even more mistakes am mat got to b six in academic reading which means she answered at least 23 questions correctly and this means that almost half of her answers were wrong but when I was speaking to ma discussing different questions I noticed that she could understand almost everything and she knew the vocabulary better than she thought and although she was lacking certain specific words and terms I was sure that she could do better than 23 answers so here is the advice I gave her forget all the Hecks telling you you don't have to read the whole passage they don't work Hax telling you to read the first sentence and not the whole paragraph or hack telling you to look for the exact word or for a paraphrasing of that word if you don't read everything you will not understand it correctly so forget about them and for now also forget about um time constraints take as much time as you need while you're progressing through the next step learning about different types of questions there are a lot of question types but if you concentrate on these five groups of questions you'll cover between 80 and 100% of your test questions so the first is true false not given and yes no not given and pay particular attention to not given questions as those can be quite tricky matching headings of course other the matching questions information or paragraphs multiple choice questions they can have one correct answer or two answers so those with two answers can be quite difficult and filling the Gap questions if you learn how these questions are built how information is organized and what you need to do to find the answers you'll be able to concentrate on things which matter and ignore some of the things which don't matter and then the test will become a bit easier for you and you'll be able to find your answers more quickly but for now don't limit yourself don't rush spend as much time as you need to find your answers and then move on to the next stage the next step is to learn about the order of questions in your test believe me or not but test writers are not trying to confuse you so you'll find answers to most questions in the same order as you find the questions and this means that you can read the first question start reading the passage until you find your answer read the next question resume reading the passage and so on and this means that you'll always be looking for an answer to specific question not just reading this huge passage that can save you a lot of time but as I mentioned most questions come in order some don't so question types that common order are filling the gap or missing words questions true false not given and yes no not given questions sentence endings the only type type of matching questions which comes in order and multiple choice questions with one answer questions that don't common order all most matching questions such as matching headings paragraphs and information multiple choice questions with two answers may not be in order and those questions at the very end of your reading test when you have two or three questions at the very end of different type they may not be in order if you'd like to save this information you can take a print screen now now that you've learned about question types and order you can start working on your time management skills after all it is important to finish in 60 minutes and you need to have the right pace to go through the test and finish on time the general advice is to spend 20 minutes on each section but I think it doesn't work section one is quite a lot easier than section three so we need to save more time for the third section try to complete the first section in about 15 minutes and keep 25 minutes for the third section if you are more advanced you may complete the first section even more quickly and then you have some time at the end for example 10 minutes to try to find answers to those questions you skip skip the first time round to check your answers and so on another technique that can help you go through your test more quickly is switching between extensive and intensive reading what those are intensive reading is when you read slowly trying to understand everything and that's how we usually read in English as English Learners that's how we're taught to read but that's very slow extensive reading is when you read fast you don't pronounce those words in your head you don't pronounce them with your lips it will slow you down even more you just read quickly if you don't understand something you don't stop you continue reading that's how we would scan a newspaper in this case if there are some un familiar words you will just skip over them and you will read for the general meaning it's much faster once you know which questions come in order and which don't and you have questions which come in order you read the question and then you start reading your passage extensively quickly until you feel that the answer is somewhere there and then you slow down you read the question again you read your sentence or sentences you pay attention to detail you don't rush you find your answer you read the next question question you resume quickly reading the passage this will save your time and allow you to spend more time answering questions and less time on those sentences which don't contain any direct answers at the same time you will still read the whole passage so you will understand what's it about and be able to answer questions correctly and one more thing never spend too much time on any single question if you can't find the answer if you can't understand what answer is correct Market to review and move on if you have some time left at the end of the test go back and try to solve those questions but answer all the questions you can answer first once you have a strategy for your test learning about tips and tricks is also helpful here are some of them um highlight keywords that will help you concentrate and remember what you're looking for also highlight any dates names locations names of theories in case you need to find them later cross out any incorrect options because you have few options to choose from and don't leave any questions unanswered marks for incorrect answers are not deducted and you can always guess correctly there is always a chance so learning tips like that does help a bit so using all these techniques a mat could increase her score from six to 7.5 in one month that's a great Improvement and by the way all our reading and listening materials are free for everyone on YouTube and you can follow exactly the same steps if you download our IL study plan it's free and I'll link it in the description let's talk about the second section I El's writing where M also got a band six and when I had a look at her writing one thing stood out to me immediately it was quite complex and confusing but some basic things were missing and I see it in a lot of answers I think some I students try to impress the examiners by using complex words complex grammar to put their score up the problem is that creates quite a lot of mistakes so their accuracy goes down that's not good but also it drags their attention away from the two criteria that really matter task achievement or response and coherence and cohesion here's one thing a lot of people don't realize your vacabulary or lexal laws and grammar or grammatical range and accuracy together determine half of your writing score only half and here accuracy is as important as complexity and students often overestimate how complex their answers need to be particularly to get a b seven or even an eight and they underestimate how much attention they need to pay to task achievement or response that's how well you answer the task it's not not as easy as it might seem how you develop your ideas how you present your opinion and also coherence and cohesion or the structure of your answer how you link your ideas within your sentences or between your sentences and even between paragraphs but there is one good piece of news it takes a lot of time to improve your vocabulary and grammar but our examiners say that quite often the lower scores are task achievement and coherence and cohesion the essay writing skills and you can improve those relatively quickly here is how first of all just like before forget all the hacks uh I mean things like template answers that's when students uh learn certain words and then they fill in gaps with topic specific vocabulary but they never work they so obvious and they never help you really answer the question so your score will go right down never use templates or learning some big words to add to your essay to push the vocabulary score up again it doesn't work this way examiners assess all your vocabulary and it's very important to use words you're comfortable with which you can link correctly with other words not just insert some extra complex words don't waste time on that what you should do instead is study some high quality sample answers to understand what the standard is and what's required you need to know what you're aiming for and again the answers should be high quality on the internet there are so many answ anwers with major faults I'm not even mentioning simple vocabulary and grammar mistakes so find high quality answers study them next learn the requirements today all the requirements examiners use to assess your answers are public you can find them in I's band descriptors study them they are quite interesting to read but I find that um you still need to study more to to understand um what each requirement really means in practice because it's not obvious next you should learn about each type of task to know exactly what you're expected to do to answer the question in task two there are five types advantages and disadvantages two views in your opinion opinion essay or agree disagree Also may be positive or negative development problem and solution and two direct questions in task one academic you may get a table a line grph bar chart pie chart a map or a diagram and in general training there are three types formal letters a lettered to a business a newspaper or a local Authority semiformal um for example a letter to a colleague at work and informal when you're writing to a friend now next learn how to write your answers paragraph by paragraph what you should include in each paragraph and importantly how to develop your ideas in body paragraphs each body paragraph should have one Central topic one big idea for example all the advantages but at the same time you can't just name them first second third first of all you need to write a topic sentence that presents the whole paragraph for example H has a number of advantages it doesn't have to be sophisticated or unusual simple writing can actually bring you a higher score and simple ideas are easier to explain so you may write a better essay but learn how to write each paragraph and then start practicing in time conditions because you do need to finish in 60 minutes and this is a a big challenge in ayats writing but remember that you can begin with your task one or task two it's up to you you can switch between them during your exam I personally usually begin with my task two then finish task one then proof read both check which way works better for you and if you're taking your exam on paper practice on your answer sheet with a pencil that's quite an experience in itself uh if you take your exam on computer type your answers and turn your spell checker off so all your typos won't be highlighted because in the real exam they won't be and you need to prr yourself to correct all of them so practice is really really important and I know that in ay's writing there is a lot to learn and that's why I created our I writing courses that can take you through each task each type of task step by step this is one system that works and we know that because we have over 30,000 students who taken these courses and their reviews are amazing and am mat did take our courses and she could improve her writing from a band six to a band seven now let's let's talk about a speaking here I was surprised when I talked to mat over a zoom call she could communicate quite well she could explain her thoughts she was friendly she was emotional and U she wasn't fluent but she could speak quite well but her schore was only 6.5 but then when they listen to her sample answers I understood what was going on the moment she found her answers were assessed her manner changed completely she became much more reserved much more formal almost a naturally so she tried to use complex ideas and sometimes she couldn't answer questions or she would start answering them and then just stop in the middle probably because she run out of words in English so I thought there should be a way to improve so I gave her two pieces of advice the first is don't try to sound formal or smart your level of intelligence is not assessed in I speaking so you can use Simple ideas even if that's not what you really think and also I know it's an exam but you're not expected to uh speak for formally like it's a formal presentation or it's your writing essay speak informally be respectful but speak informally it will be easier for you and also answer each question and then extend your answer to show off your English and here the big question is uh how long your answers should be well let's have a look in part one uh you have up to 5 minutes there is a short introduction at the beginning where you give your name where you're from show your passport and then you answer questions on three topics so you have about 20 25 seconds per question that's two or three sentences some of your answers may be slightly shorter some slightly longer but generally 20 25 seconds part two instructions read that uh you should talk between between one and 2 minutes but in reality you should try to talk until the examiner stops you so for 2 minutes part three that's where you also have up to 5 minutes but questions here are more serious more abstract and um there are few of them so you should give longer answers you should extend your answers and you can actually talk about up to a minute your answers may be shorter and then the examiner will ask you a follow-up question or the examiner May interrupt you and ask the next question that's fine because maybe the examiners just heard enough on this topic and they would like you to answer another question or maybe it's simply time to move on to the next question those interruptions don't affect your score so just be prepared for them okay let's talk about the study plan how you can prepare for your a speaking to achieve a higher score to achieve this score you deserve to achieve with your current English skills first of all if you haven't taken a speaking test yourself yet go and watch a mock speaking interview it's important to know what to expect but watch one or two there is no reason to watch a lot of them because watching them is not helping you to improve your performance and actually I think that uh some of those mock tests said unrealistic expectations of performance because they are pre-rehearsed that's why answers are so perfect and in reality you can be much more human and still get a great score some time ago I asked my husband to take a mock speaking test so that was real and when people watched it a lot lot of comments were oh he was not speaking well he would get a six or something like that when examiners watched it they say yeah an 8.5 his fluency wasn't perfect I think he was a bit shocked by all the questions but still a great schore I'll link it in in description if you'd like to go and check it out so this was a realistic mock interview with someone who's not perfect at presenting but that test is an 8.5 I think it will give you some confidence next learn what to expect in each part so in part one your answers can be much more personal they should be personal informal about your experiences in part three questions are abstract and your answers should be abstract about Society not about your personal experiences so don't make your your part three answers personal instead of talking about um a situation that happened to your friend say some people and reframe it to make it more General this will help you to use more complex vocabulary and grammar in part three and will help you push your score up and of course you should learn the requirements um just like in is right they all listed in I band descriptors go and check them out I don't think it's as important to study them in depth but you should definitely know what's assessed and what's not assessed like how smart your ideas are or your accent those things are not assessed yeah just to be clear your pronunciation is assessed so if you speak clearly if you pronounce words sounds generally correctly that's important it's important to speak clearly so the examiner could understand each word um I know it in exam conditions uh you may feel nervous and U speak too quietly or Mumble or some people start speaking very fast but you should really control yourself and pronounce everything well but if you speak with an accent that's absolutely fine next practice answering common and challenging I speaking topics in I speaking the same topics are used over and over again and even if the topic is different the types of questions are the same and the more you practice the more comfortable you get at answering them and if you practice a particular topic and then you get it at your exam you will feel more confident because it's easier to talk about something you've just discussed you can practice at home on your own in untime conditions just take some questions and answer them aloud or time conditions because one of the difficulties of the speaking test is that you need to handle the pace you're going to get so many questions in a short period of time and so getting used to that is important in our speaking course uh we offer uh practice tests where there is a Gap a time interval after each question so students could get into the space uh you can imitate it at home uh you can ask a friend to ask you questions uh part one 5 minutes part three 5 minutes part two 2 minutes and record yourself and and listen to your answers do you speak clearly is it easy to understand you do you repeat any words or phrases too often I know that if I don't control myself I tend to say I think and so all the time so maybe there are some phrases you repeat to often cut down those and for your preparation uh you can either follow our fre steps in the study plan or for more indepth for more structured preparation we have a course the next section is I listening where students tend to get slightly higher scores so it's a good opportunity to push ahead and push your overall score up too okay first of all if you haven't taken a test yet take a practice test assess your current level then learn about different question types luckily there are only four of them so everyone gets filling the blacks questions or missing words and multiple choice questions and then either a map or a matching fures exercise one of the two but you should learn about all of them learn how they're organized and what you need to do to answer questions next question order in il listen all the questions come in order and in some tasks it's obvious like 1 2 3 but in some it's not for example if you have a map and you look at the bottom you will hear about question number 15 a coffee room first and then number 16 Warehouse 17 and so on so that's a good tip next time management I find that one of the main difficulties of the list listening test is not the recording itself it's listening and reading and writing all at the same time it's impossible to do so first of all what you should do is learn the structure of the test how much time you're given to read instructions so learn those instructions so you don't need to read them through the test quite as carefully how much time you're given to read your questions how much time to review them so you can learn all that if you take official practice tests because in your real exam you're going to be given as much time as in these tests uh the only difference between I on computer and I on paper is how much time you're given at the end so in I on paper you need to transfer all your answers to the answer sheet so you're going to get 10 minutes for that in iot's own computer computer you select your answer straight away so you'll be given 2 minutes at the end that's the only difference everything else is exactly the same and uh to avoid reading and listening at the same time you need to read all the questions and answers beforehand but sometimes there's a lot to read like in multiple choice questions that may be really a lot and then there is not enough time in the test but after each section you're given some time to review answers from the previous section and you can spend this time on reading questions coming next I think a lot of our students find this technique quite useful so I suggest that you check if it works for you too and of course all the little tips and tricks like Crossing out and correct answers they do work so do learn them so far I'm only talking about preparation techniques that you can complete in a short period of time because if you improve your vocabulary your grammar your speaking skills of course it will help with your score fundamentally your score depends on your English skills what we're talking about is optimizing your performance so you could boost your score and get the best score you can get with your current level of English skills for example amata didn't have time to improve her English she had one month and she managed to boost her listening score from a 6.5 to an eight which is great and her speaking score which I don't believe I mentioned before in the second test was a seven and that gave her an overall score of 7.5 and this means that in September she's beginning her master's program in in the UK this is such a heartwarming story and I hope it will inspire you to spend more time on your preparation and pursue your goals thank you so much for watching me today download our aat study plan it's free and check out our speaking and writing courses in our a preparation packs thank you so much for watching me today good luck with your preparation and your exam bye