What next?
You’ve now completed two-thirds of the course. You’ve practised most of the task types for each test. You should feel more confident about taking the exam, but don’t worry if there are still parts that you find challenging. There is plenty of time to practise those parts and to deal with any problems you are having. Here are some things that you should do now.
Continue to take every possible opportunity to speak English. You know what sort of things the examiner will ask you in the spoken exam, so practise exchanges of that nature. Concentrate on both fluency and accuracy and try to use new words, phrases and expressions you’ve learnt recently. Practise using grammatical structures that you have difficulty with like mixed past tenses or conditionals. Go online and find clips of students in the IELTS interview.
Continue to listen to both English that you understand quite effortlessly and English that stretches you. Check the news on an international news channel rather than in your own language, or go online to listen to news items and stories. Watch other types of TV programme and listen to radio programmes in English if possible. Watch films in English whenever you get the chance. Occasionally, stop and replay parts that you didn’t understand or that you want to listen to again. There are all sorts of websites that have short clips with people speaking English. Continue to borrow CDs if you need extra practice with the Listening test of the exam.
Continue to read as much as you can. You should now be able to cope with English newspaper stories and magazine articles. There are an infinite number of websites in English and you can always find something that you are especially interested in. Whatever you read, continue to look at how the text is organized and how paragraphs are introduced by topic sentences. Note down new vocabulary that you think will be useful. Think about joining a chat room where people communicate in English. This will develop both reading and writing skills. Choose something you are really interested in – a site for fans of your football team, for example – so that you forget you’re trying to use another language.
The texts you are reading on this course contain a lot of new vocabulary and you may feel that you want to learn and remember more than is realistic. Make sure you learn and revise vocabulary that is useful and that you’ll use to talk about what interests you. As well as single words, you should learn words that you already know used in new ways. You should learn how words go together to form common phrases and expressions. When you learn a new word, make a note of its various forms. If you learn a verb, for example, check what the noun and adjective is. Make a note of any nouns that typically collocate with the verb.
Practise writing reports and discursive compositions. Write whole compositions, but also concentrate on individual parts that you have difficulty with like introductions and conclusions or topic sentences. Make sure that you check and revise the spelling of any new words you are likely to use. Continue to look at as many model answers to exam questions as possible. This will further familiarize you with typical IELTS writing tasks and the typical content of a good answer.
Go on to the next section of the Course Book. Make sure you practise all aspects of your English, but focus on what you are having problems with. Don’t worry if you don’t make progress in all areas at the same time.
Pathway to IELTS 6.0 133
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