10 ‘Highly Effective’ IELTS Tricks and Hacks
Got an IELTS test coming up soon? Need some quick tricks and hacks to improve your band score quickly and easily? Good, because I hate IELTS, I don’t like how they make so much money from failing candidates, and I want you to beat them! Here are a some quick tricks and hacks for IELTS…
When Should I Take My IELTS?
This question of when to take your IELTS gives myself and my students so many headaches. As a sixth form student counselor and former IELTS examiner, here is my honest answer. Firstly, you should not take your test until your English level is ready, otherwise you may waste time and money retaking. Secondly, if you…
3 Ways To Know You Are Ready For IELTS
Find out if you are ready to take the IELTS test before you book and prevent yourself from wasting your time and money. Here is how: You are ready to take IELTS if you can get the band score you need in three consecutive IELTS practice tests, or if you have taken a CEFR placement…
Is IELTS UKVI Harder To Pass?
As a former IELTS examiner, I constantly get asked whether the IELTS UKVI test is hard to pass, and if the standard IELTS test is easier than UKVI IELTS?’ So, here’s my answer after teaching and testing thousands of students worldwide… The UKVI IELTS test is as hard as the standard IELTS test. It follows…
How To Write Complex Sentences For An IELTS Band 7+
In this post, I want to use my decades of IELTS teaching experience and examining to show you how to write complex sentence structures for IELTS writing tasks 1 and 2, and also for IELTS speaking. If you want the short answer though, complex sentences can be made by simply linking together two or more…
How Complex Sentences Are Used In IELTS Writing And Speaking
Howdy people! Do you want to smash the IELTS test? The let me show you how complex sentences are used in IELTS so you can use them too! Complex sentences are used in IELTS writing and speaking anytime you want to link more than one idea or piece of information together in a sentence. Normally…
IELTS Speaking Do’s and Don’ts For Bands 7, 8, and 9!
OK people. Tim James, here, former IELTS speaking examiner ready to give you my top do’s and don’ts for the IELTS speaking test. I’ll be telling you what I believe it is important for candidates to do and what to avoid in order to score an IELTS band 7, 8 and 9. First Up, IELTS…
How To Introduce Yourself In IELTS Speaking
Introducing yourself in the IELTS speaking test Before the examiner says anything to you at all they will say this opening paragraph for the benefit of the recording: ‘This is the International English Language Testing System on the 20 March 2020. The Candidate name is… The candidate number is… The centre is… and the centre…
How Do IELTS Examiners Mark Speaking?
Question: How do IELTS examiners mark speaking? IELTS Examiners mark speaking by assessing your speaking skill across 4 categories, they are: fluency and coherence, lexical resource (vocabulary), grammatical range and accuracy, and pronunciation. The examiner gives you a band score out of 9 for each of those criteria and then the average of those is…
Why Is The IELTS Test So Hard?
IELTS is so hard because it is a test designed to push your English ability as far as it will go. This means that at some point you will reach a point where you can no longer complete the the questions effectively. Not everyone will always be aware they have reached that point but those…
About Me…
Hi there, I’m Tim James a former IELTS examiner and IELTS teacher of over a decade. This site is where I share my exam strategies to help people get the score they need. I hope it helps you!
In A Hurry To Pass IELTS? Then Check Out…
