IELTS Test Format: Academic and General|How to prepare IELTS
IELTS test format: IELTS is the most renowned and accepted English test for non-native English speakers in the world. It is recognized by over 8,000 organizations worldwide and is the world’s most popular English language test, with over 2 million tests taken each year. It is jointly managed by the British Council, IDP, IELTS Australia, and Cambridge Assessment English. In the below, we have discussed the IELTS test format and how a candidate should take preparation.
IELTS Test Format
There are two types of IELTS tests, General and Academic. The Listening and Speaking sections are the same for both types, while the topics in the reading and writing sections are different. IELTS is an English language test where the examinees are tested on their four basic skills which are Speaking, Listening, Reading, and Writing. The Speaking test is taken on a separate day which lasts for eleven to fifteen minutes while the other three tests are taken on the same day at a trot and it takes around three hours to complete. The examinee will get ten minutes time to transfer his/her answers to the answer sheet for the listening part only but no extra time will be allocated for the reading section. You will have to transfer your answers within sixty minutes. The examiners will collect your answer sheets after the conclusion of each section (e.g., when the allocated time is over for the listening section, the examiners will take the script as well as the answer sheet, and provide the reading script along with its answer sheet).
The Speaking Module of IELTS (11-14 minutes)
In this section, the examinee is tested on his/ her speaking skill. There are three parts to this section. In part one, the examiner will ask the candidate general questions about himself/herself and a range of familiar topics. This is the easiest part of this test which will take about three to four minutes. In part two, the examinee will be given a cue card which will contain a topic and a few questions on how to describe the topic which is quite helpful for the examinee. These questions will assist in what to say. After a one-minute preparation time, the candidate will be asked to speak for two minutes. The examiner will stop you when the time is over and take back the cue card. Part three will last for four to five minutes. This part involves a two-way discussion regarding part two or any other topic. This will give the examiner an opportunity to test if he/she can talk about abstract issues and ideas or not. These questions will be a bit difficult to answer as these questions will require you to think.
The Listening Module of IELTS (30 minutes)
The Listening test takes around thirty minutes, plus ten minutes additional transfer time. You will have to listen to an audio and answer at the same time according to the question paper. Writing on the question paper will not count, so you will have to transfer your answers to given answer sheet. There will be four sections containing ten questions each resulting in forty questions in total. Section one will consist of a conversation between two speakers (e.g., conversation between a travel agent and a tourist). Section two generally has a map or diagram which describes an incident, an event or a place. Section four is a conversation between two main speakers (for example, two university students in a discussion guided by a tutor). Section four will have an academic topic (lecture on global warming). There will be a variety of question types like fill in the blank, multiple choice, matching form, note, flowchart, table, summary completion, sentence completion, short answers etc.
The Reading Module of IELTS (60 minutes)
Among all the modules, reading seems to be the most difficult according to the test takers. Reading Module is a sixty minutes test which consists of forty questions from three passages. The texts are taken from books, journals, magazines, newspapers, etc. Writing answers on the question paper will not be counted, you will have to copy your answers to the answer sheet. There will be no extra time to copy your answers to the answer sheet as mentioned before. The reading section consists of eleven question types like multiple-choice, true/ false/ not given or yes/ no/ not given, list selection, matching headings, match paragraph, summary completion, sentence completion, categorization questions, matching sentence endings, table/ flow chart, diagram completion, and short answers which tests a variety of reading and analyzing skills like skimming scanning, etc.
There are a few differences between Academic and General in reading module. The Academic test will consist of three long text. On the other hand, General test will have two to three short text in the first section, one or two short text in the second one and a long text in the last part. Relatively, the General test is a lot easier than the Academic test in terms of reading section.
The Writing Module of IELTS (60 minutes)
This section is a one-hour module. It consists of two large tasks. In task 1 the examinee will have to explain a graph, table, or diagram in one hundred and fifty words in twenty minutes. Some get scared when they hear that they will have to deal with graphs and charts. The good news is, it is a language test, not a mathematical one. Therefore, you don’t need to worry about math; you will just have to explain what you see. In the General IELTS, you will have to write a letter to request information or explain a situation in the first part. Task 2 will be a more difficult task than the previous one where you will have to write an essay in two hundred and fifty words, and the time will be forty minutes. Here, you will have to write an essay from a range of topics and types, but you will not get anything that you do not know. This test is designed on the level of undergraduate and postgraduate students.
Hopefully, the above discussion on IELTS test format will be helpful for a candidate to understand how the test is conducted. If you are looking for IELTS coaching, please contact PEC-Education at its Mirpur and Uttara center in Dhaka, Bangladesh on the following number.
01630 840663(Mirpur & Uttara Branches)
Prepared by Arshil Khalil
