I had two messages today from IELTS students who had taken the exam and were feeling very depressed about their scores and couldn’t face another test.
I didn’t know these students so I didn’t really know the back ground of their exams and how many they had taken or what their scores were. I hope to discover that when I speak to them.
However, it did remind me of a student, Anjana, that I worked with some years ago who was a ‘serial test taker’. She almost seemed addicted to the IELTS test and would book several tests all at once. I advised her strongly against doing this but she was determined. One reason was that where she lived it was hard to get a test date as the IELTS tests were very popular. Another reason was that she felt taking the test over and over would eventually result in her ‘lucky test day’
In fact what happened was the opposite of what she had hoped. While we were working together she had booked 6 consecutive tests, one each week over 6 or 7 weeks. In the first test her scores were quite good but her speaking just missed her target after that the scores started to go downhill until the last test she took had the worst score of all.
There were two reasons for this:
She did not allow any time between tests to fix the things that stopped her getting the score she needed. After her very first test if she’d taken some time, she could have practised the area (I think it was speaking) she missed and then taken it again in a few weeks. I am pretty confident that she would have been successful in the second test – but there was no space for this to happen in her tight test schedule.
As each test failed to achieve the scores she wanted she became more and more depressed about it and went into subsequent tests not with confidence but I kind of fatalism. Confidence is hugely important in the test and without it then fear and nerves can take over and if these are compounded by lots of tests then confidence spirals downwards and fear takes over.
So, rather than pack in a whole series of tests. Firstly don’t book until you are certain you can get it. If you do book a test, make sure that you can study enough beforehand to reach your score. If you do neither of these things then you will be wasting not only a lot of money but also a lot of time!
Be realistic about your timetable. Are you ready to get the score? If you take the test and don’t reach your band then don’t leap in and book another test. Step back, look at the scores, work out what went wrong or where you likely lost marks (you may say you have no idea) in my experience all students have a very good idea of why they may have failed to reach the band. There will be things that you know either you were not 100% confident about or things that didn’t go as well as you had hoped in the exam. These are the things to work on.
Work on these things to fix them. Pick the easiest and quickest first – this will give you confidence to tackle the other things.
It may be that you need to take a short break for a few days or weeks. This is not a bad thing. Language needs to ‘bed-down’ and settle in your brain and ‘clearing your head’ can sometimes help you to work better and indeed gain improved scores very quickly.
However you feel after not reaching your score, make sure that you ‘pick yourself up’ eventually and start again. I have seen so many students who felt like the world had ended for them and yet a few short weeks or months later they were ‘over the moon’ having finally secured the bands they needed to move on.
And Anjana? She took a break for a couple of weeks after the last of her 6 tests. Then we had a chat and made a plan and about a month later she got all the scores she needed when she took the next test.
If you have got a disappointing result and want to find a new plan to move forward then I’d love to speak to you.
Just tell me a little about your IELTS (very short questionnaire) and book a call and we can look at the best way for you.
https://englishlanguagetraining.wufoo.com/forms/zeexrjk00ssc9d/