What exactly is it that you can do in order to make sure that your IELTS result is inevitable?
Yesterday I was working with one of my students, a new student in fact, on his writing. He's getting fantastic results in listening and reading, but the two areas that are suffering are writing and speaking. Maybe you might be in this position as well; it seems to be the pattern - listening and reading improve writing and speaking don’t. He said; “Can you please send me more exercises on grammar? Also, I need to work on my vocabulary to make sure that I can get at least 7 in my writing”. And he's not wrong. That is absolutely true.
He needs to be able to use a wider range of structures both in speaking and in writing. He also needs to widen his vocabulary and bring in a higher level of sophistication in the vocabulary in order to hit that band 7. I'm sure for many IELTS students, perhaps you too, this is the situation that you are in. Working on these two areas, grammar and vocabulary, can certainly help a lot to improve your performance in speaking and writing. But you probably don't realise, that it also helps to improve your listening and reading too. So, if you're getting a good score in listening and reading, but you want more, then you can look at grammar and vocabulary to help you there as well.
Another student yesterday made a lot of mistakes in listening purely and simply because she didn't notice certain aspects of grammar in the questions. For example, one of the questions required an uncountable noun, and she didn't spot this and so she wrote the wrong word from what she heard, even though she had heard, and even considered, the right word. If she’d taken note of the grammar in the question, she would have chosen the correct word for the answer. I also see over and over in reading that people don't pick up grammatical signals. Signals, like ‘these’ and ‘those’ that will tell you to go back and read the previous sentence to get the full information. Grammar is fundamental to language and so also to everything you do in IELTS.
Therefore, the one thing that I want to tell you about today, which will improve all of your IELTS and make sure that you reach that 7/8 score, is to focus on English language skills, especially grammar and vocabulary.
Focusing on improving your English language skills is key to improving your writing and speaking, but also it can make sure you don't miss any questions in listening and reading. And surprisingly, a lot of students don't think about this. They just plough on doing test after test after test, and that only keeps you in a rather static place. If you want to make sure you get your IELTS band and get it quickly, you need to address your English language ability as well as your IELTS practice. It makes sense because IELTS is an English language test, and I've been saying over and over for years and years that many students do not address English language gaps or development. They just hope that what they already know will get them through.
If you start looking at model writing or listening to model speaking tests, you will hear that those people who are doing really, really, well in both of these areas are using a very wide range of grammatical structures and vocabulary, and they pay a lot of attention to performing their English language skills. It stands to reason, that if you're taking an English language test, you need to know about the grammar. You need to be able to use it well. You also need to know about vocabulary and be able to use that well too, not just ‘stuff’ it randomly into your essays, but use it properly and use it appropriately.
To achieve this, you must make grammar and vocabulary practice part of your IELTS preparation. You can't escape it.
At the end of the day, if you're not getting your score in IELTS, it's going to come down to how well you can use the language. And good feedback is critical to language development – without feedback you are working in a vacuum.
I've been working with IELTS students for over 25 years and even longer as an English language trainer. I can help make sure that you get your scores. If you're a good language user, you will get those scores. If you want to speak to me about how you can make sure that getting the IELTS band that you really want can be inevitable, follow the link below this video and we can find a time to hop on a call and look at what is currently stopping you and put in place a robust plan to make sure that in the next test you take, your IELTS score will not be in any doubt.