Past papers
IELTS — Reading previous papers properly
Unlike most examinations discussed on this site, IELTS preparation is largely about task familiarity rather than knowledge. Official practice tests expose you to every question type — true/false/not given, matching headings, map labelling, summary completion — and each has its own technique. A candidate who has met all of them scores better than an equally proficient candidate who has not.
How to practise each skill
- Listening — practise with the recording played once only. Replaying it defeats the purpose. Following while writing is the skill.
- Reading — practise the true/false/not given questions specifically. The distinction between "false" and "not given" is where most marks are lost.
- Writing — write to the assessment criteria, timed. And have your work read by someone who can apply those criteria.
- Speaking — practise aloud with a partner or recording. Silent rehearsal does not build fluency; speaking does.
- Practise Part 2 with the one-minute preparation. Structuring a two-minute talk from one minute of notes is a specific skill.
The task types that most repay specific practice
- True, false and not given — the largest single source of lost reading marks. Not given means the passage does not address the claim; false means it contradicts it. Candidates who reason about what is probably true rather than what the text states lose marks systematically here.
- Matching headings and matching information — both reward locating the main idea of a paragraph quickly rather than reading closely, which is a different skill from the one comprehension usually builds.
- Academic Writing Task 1 — describing data — a formulaic task with a recognisable structure: overview first, then the significant comparisons. Learning the structure is most of the score.
- Speaking Part 2 — the long turn — one minute to prepare and up to two minutes to speak. The preparation minute is what makes the difference, and it has to be practised as part of the task.
Practise listening with the recording played once and no pausing, from the first session. It is tempting to replay a section you missed, and it builds exactly the wrong habit — the test plays each recording once, and the skill being examined is partly the ability to keep going after you have lost a detail rather than stopping to recover it.
For writing, practise against the assessment criteria rather than against a model answer. Task achievement, coherence and cohesion, lexical resource and grammatical range and accuracy are what the examiner scores, and a piece can read well while failing one of them — most commonly coherence, where paragraphs are competent individually and do not build. Checking your own work against four named criteria is more useful than comparing it to a sample.
Speak aloud, from the first week
The speaking test is an interaction with an examiner, and fluency is built by speaking rather than by planning to speak. Practising with a partner, or recording yourself and listening back, is uncomfortable and effective — and it is the component candidates most consistently prepare for silently, which does not work.
