Mohit’s Struggle to Achieve an IELTS Band Score of 8.5

There is no doubt that the IELTS or the International English Language Test is one of the most crucial admission requirements to universities or any academic institutions abroad. Not only is the requirement restricted to academics but also immigration and work. One cannot imagine getting immigrated to any foreign country without submitting an English language proficiency test score. IELTS is taken by over 3.5 million students throughout the world, and now probably more. How will you make a difference among the crowd of students is food for thought? The only way is to achieve an IELTS score that surpasses the cutoff of your selected university or college, or the immigration requirements.

Generally, a student prepares for IELTS either by themselves or by enrolling into an IELTS coaching institute. They take practice tests, understand the concepts and take the exam. But eventually, they feel stranded when their score doesn’t meet their target IELTS score. Mohit’s story of achieving an IELTS band score of 8.5 demonstrates how he has strived to make this happen. Let us throw light on his IELTS preparation method.

To start with, Mohit worked as a nurse in the Indian Railways. He always had the aspiration to move abroad. He decided to move to Australia on a quest to find better job prospects. What he needed was an IELTS score of 7 as a mandatory requirement for immigration. As clueless as he was about the preparation method, there were certain IELTS preparation tricks that made him succeed as a pro.

Mohit started his journey to IELTS success with a pretty satisfactory score that would have never landed him in Australia. He scored 6.5 in IELTS writing, and 6 in IELTS Speaking. None of these scores were enough for Australian immigration. Mohit, even during his initial preparation days devoted himself to learning English but somehow that didn’t result in him scoring the required score.

He lacked the knowledge of some skills that prevented him from a score 7. Let’s learn how he understood the problem areas and took the necessary changes.

• Mohit’s problem area was IELTS writing where he scored 6.5. After simultaneous proofreading and scanning other sample answers, he realized his writings had a dearth of relevancy. Now, the IELTS writing marking criteria has four very crucial schemes: coherence and cohesion, task response, vocabulary usage, and definitely grammatical accuracy. As Mohit has stated with regard to IELTS writing, “If the examiner wants a banana, you can not offer him an orange.” This means the examiner wants exactly what is being asked. Task response is the place where he lacked ideas. He put a constant effort into providing a perfect essay.
• Mohit also improved on the vocabulary usage part of the IELTS writing marking criteria. IELTS preparation requires you to daily learn new words and phrases as examiners always praise them. This doesn’t mean using complex words that you don’t know the meaning of. He learned new vocabulary words on a regular basis by reading, referring to the thesaurus, investing time in word games, concentrating on flashcards, and more. He also referred to youtube videos and apps that enable studying from wherever you are.
• For the IELTS speaking section, Mohit followed quite some tips to increase his IELTS speaking score. Not only did he learn new vocabulary to amp up the fluency, but also practiced from IELTS speaking practice papers. He focused on utilizing the 1 minute time allotted for preparation by underlining the important words in the cue card that he would like to speak on, writing down keywords besides the important words, and speaking without pausing. Things he learned to avoid were hesitating while speaking, speaking in one/two words or small answers, not being under confident before the examiner.
• Another significant preparation trick he followed was understanding the IELTS exam pattern and its intricacies. Even after months of preparation, you may seem to stumble when answering the questions. This happens because they may not be aware of the timings, breaks, problems that may occur. For instance, IELTS is a 2 hours 45 minutes test and many test-takers feel tired towards the end. A real-time practice test helps you in getting used to it.

Preparing from an IELTS coaching that is an expert is a requirement. After following the above IELTS preparation tips, Mohit succeeded in securing the following IELTS band scores:

Like Mohit you may also be trying hard to secure a high IELTS score. Constant practice and understanding of concepts will result in that.