How To Fail the IELTS exam is a strange title for an article from an IELTS teacher, but sadly, there are lots of students who go into the exam very unprepared and it looks like that's exactly what they are trying to do.
In this article, I want to go through the six ways that will certainly help you to fail your IELTS exam and I want you to think about whether you are doing any of these things.
Number one - this is absolutely the best way to fail the exam - book the test and don’t show up on the day.
Now, I personally don't know anybody who's done that, although I was talking to a student a few months ago who had taken the written part of the test and was so upset with how it went that she said she wasn't going to turn up for the speaking! I persuaded her not to do that as even if she hadn’t done very well in the written part, she would have no idea how she’d actually done in the exam. And also, if she didn’t do the speaking, then she’d definitely fail it.
She did do the speaking part, and she actually got her best score in the speaking part of the test! So, you never really know.
So back to the first strategy, if you really want to fail it, then don't show up. The only time you can get band zero, is if you don't show up. So that's by far the best way and the easiest way to fail IELTS. It’s just money that you will waste on the test - but you won't have to do anything else.
Method number two for failing the exam is to show up and take the exam, but not do any preparation whatsoever. There are lots of people who do this. You might be surprised, but they don't even open an IELTS book. They just book the test and they turn up and they take it.
Okay, if you are a very good at English, if you're a native speaker, perhaps then you might get away with it. But I think any test you take, however good you are at the topic, you ought at least to find out what it entails.
If you're doing it just to test yourself, then there might be some merit in 'having a go’, you're testing yourself against the test just to see how you get on, that's fine. To my mind, it's rather an expensive way of testing yourself and there are other ways which won't cost you anything!
Now, number three - leave your preparation for your exam to the very last minute. A week or so before, and I know lots of students who have done this. They've started to look at the IELTS exam just a week before. Again, if you're a native speaker or a really good user of English (remember, not all native speakers are good at writing and not all native speakers are good at reading) you may be fine to do this. You can probably ‘wing’ listening and speaking - but even in the speaking, people can get nervous. It's not a good idea to leave it too late to start studying before you take the test.
If you were taking a driving test, I don't think you'd get in a car for the first time just a week before the test! It's a risky strategy.
Those three methods are probably the most foolproof ways of failing the IELTS test if you really want to do this.
Number four is not an outright failure, but it can be a good way to fail. This is where you spend all of your preparation time just looking at the reading and listening and either ignore the writing and the speaking completely, or you just leave that until the last week.
I know lots and lots of students who do this and with this method the chances of getting a good overall band in the exam are quite slim because you're only really focusing on half of it.
In order to get a good overall mark, you need to focus on all of the parts.
So that's another fail the IELTS strategy, and one which, if you are engaging in it, you need to think carefully about what you're doing.
Number five – is probably the most common reason that people fail the exam. Failure strategy five is where you don't have a proper plan for your IELTS preparation. I’m sure you've probably heard me talk about this over and over. It is the 'headless chicken approach’ where you just open your computer or your phone and you search around for something to do.
Remember, language improves step by step. You start with elementary or beginner, then pre- intermediate, intermediate, post-intermediate, lower-advanced, higher advanced etc.
The levels go up steadily like that and you can't go from beginner to advanced immediately.
It takes time to build up each level.
So, if you don't have a proper progressive plan that will take you through all of those stages, you’ll not have a consistent development of your language skills. Even if you start at intermediate or upper intermediate, there are still some steps you need to take to get to the level that you should be if you’re hoping to get band seven or eight. So having a random plan or no plan at all is a good way to fail at that level.
The outcome, if you use this method exclusively, is going to be most likely that you will not get the score you want and may have to take the exam several time which can be very expensive.
You may get a good score, you may get 6.5, or even some 7s. But to get a consistent seven, eight overall or the magic 8777 that I know a lot of you want, you need to be much more systematic.
Although number five is a good thing because you're studying and probably studying hard, it's not the best way to make sure you can get your band.
The final way of failing the exam, is actually, to my mind, the saddest way. But it happens.
Fail IELTS strategy number six is where you take an IELTS course and you study hard and you work with a teacher or tutor or you might do an online course, but you're very serious about your preparation and you follow a proper system and a proper plan. But then you get to the exam and you ignore everything you've learned and you do it your own way. Why would you?
I do know lots of students to whom this has happened. I know that if this has happened to you, it's not deliberate. You didn't deliberately want to abandon all your learning and do things the way you did before you started the course.
But I think faced with panic, faced with nerves, faced with some tricky questions, you may geta little fearful and a lot of students do, which causes them to just abandon everything and go for the comfort zone - all the stuff that you were probably doing before you started working on the course that was going to improve your skills. In a way it's reverting to the previous methods which didn't work in the first place. It's very sad when that happens.
But generally, if it happens to any of my students, and occasionally it has done, then it's fixable.
You've lost that exam and you'll need to take it again. But it is fixable. It probably means that your confidence level wasn't high enough and this could mean that you didn't do quite enough practice, or as is very common, you booked your test before you started the course not knowing if you’d be able to reach your target in the time.
You need to work on those things and you need to work on your fear or your panic so that when you get into the exam again, you can manage everything calmly.
To recap - How to fail the IELTS exam:
- Book the test but don't show up.
- Show up, but don't do any preparation before the exam.
- Leave all your preparation to the very last minute.
- Only prepare for half the exam
- Don't have a proper plan.
- Learn everything you need to learn in order to be successful but abandon it all in the exam and do it your own way.
The six ways of failing the IELTS.
This is, of course, all a bit facetious and I know that actually you cannot fail the IELTS. The IELTS is not a pass and fail exam. It's just a snapshot of your language ability in 3 hours, on one day. Clearly it is not the whole story, but it’s all there is to work with. So, whoever is requesting your band - a university, immigration, or your professional organisation, all they can do is take the band you’re given as your level.
Therefore, it's really important that you're fully prepared for the day you take the exam and avoid all of the other ways that are not going to help you to be successful.
Make sure you follow a course or a system that's going to develop all of your skills in IELTS and make sure that you are fully prepared mentally as well as language-wise for the day of your test.
If you want my help with that, then follow the link below to book a call with me and I can show you how to make sure you only need to take the test once.
https://ieltslearningtips.com/breakthrough/
If you want to fail IELTS you know what to do 
But don't follow these techniques if you want to be successful!