Use the Best IELTS Test Blogs to Boost your IELTS Preparation

ielts blogs

The International English Language Testing System or the IELTS is extremely famous and reputed ‘English Language Testing System’ across the world. Different categories of students and professionals appear for the test yearly (approx. 2.7 million) with a dream in their minds to shine and grow in life. The easy access to the Internet all over the world has changed life a lot for everyone. A candidate with a good basic English knowledge, with a ‘Do It Yourself’ attitude (aka ‘DIY’), and a burning desire in heart and a big realistic dream to achieve success in life can prepare himself for the IELTS Tests, without any external help. The question is how? There are plenty of ‘Blogs’ which are loaded with excellent study materials for the IELTS Tests.

It might be tough for a student to select the best Blogs, right? But, that is not a roadblock at all. Anyone can search Google and do a bit research work to get a lot of ‘Very Good Blogs’. Here, I am trying to make life easy for students or candidates, by introducing with some of the best ‘Blogs’ which are immensely helpful for the IELTS candidates. There are hundreds of IELTS Blogs for the IELTS preparation. A good lot of the bunch are extremely helpful and really great resource for getting ‘Actual Exam Like’ study materials’. I think I should discuss, ‘How a candidate can prepare himself’ using the Best Blogs in the right way. Before starting the discussion, one point should be mentioned that preparing with the help of Internet is undoubtedly the cheapest and one of the surest ways but it is applicable to those students only who have at least a good grip over the Basic English language.

Feedspot’s team has selected the following blogs from thousands of blogs all over the world, based on Google reputation, Google search ranking, social media popularity, quality and consistency:

http:// ielts-blog.com
http://blog.ieltspractice.com
http://ieltsmaterial.com
http://reddit.com/r/IELTS
http:// ieltsliz.com
http://ieltsbuddy.com
http:// dcielts.com
http://ieltsnetwork.com
http:// ieltscanadatest.com/blog
http://ieltsielts.com
http://magoosh.com/ielts
http://ielts-simon.com
https://ieltsacademy.org/wp
http://ielts-academy.com/blog
http://ipassielts.com/main/weblog
http:// ieltspodcast.com
http:// ted-ielts.com
http://ieltssharebox.com
http://ielts7band.net/blog
http:// ielts-karachi.com/blog
http:// ieltsdaily.ir/blog
http://ieltsexamstips.com
http://freeieltscourse.com/ielts-blog
http://ielts7.guru/ielts-blog
http://fluentu.com/ielts/blog
http://scorellc.org/blog-1
http://ieltsadvantage.com/reading
http://ieltsolutions.com/blog
http://passmyielts.com/blog

The IELTS has two divisions 1) Academic Module and 2) General Training Module. Both the divisions have four types of tests. 1) Speaking Test, 2) Listening Test, 3) Reading Test and the 4) Writing Test. Before starting the discussion, I must mention that before starting your actual preparation, you must check your English knowledge, don’t overestimate yourself, that would be dangerous for you. If you need to start from the scratch, the ‘Self-help process’ is not for you. If, and only if you have a standard knowledge over both the ‘English Language and Grammar’, only then you can have a head start for preparing all by yourself. If you are poor in English, it’s not the end of roads for you. You will have to take help of a ‘Good English Teacher, who is good at both in Spoken and Written English’. So, the cream of the discussion is, you have to have a real ‘Good Basic Knowledge of the English Language and English Grammar’ to prepare all by yourself for the ‘IELTS’ Tests. So, let’s come to the exact point of discussion: How to use the best IELTS Blogs to prepare all by yourself:-

1) Speaking Test: For the speaking test what is required from you?

The one-liner answer to it is: You have to be an extremely fluent English speaker with perfect pronunciation, accurate grammar and a wide range of suitable vocabulary. The ‘Best Blogs’ have free to download good quality ‘Audio Lessons’, which will help you a lot to get familiar with the accent of the ‘Native-English Speakers’. You have to listen to those audios and try to rectify your pronunciation by imitating them, one point is to be kept in mind that, imitate their accent, but don’t try to imitate their diction. Initially, you will face some serious trouble with understanding the foreign accent, but don’t lose heart, it is the most common problem all the non-native speakers. Just keep listening to as many audios as possible.

Listening to the audios repeatedly, you will soon start understanding the contexts, depending on your acceptability and your seriousness. The more you listen the sooner you start understanding better. Next, you should start thinking and talking in English with yourself. Please note the underlined words: You should start thinking and talking in English. While at the learning phase all most all the non-native speakers commit a similar mistake. They first think in their mother tongue, then they translate it into English and then they deliver. Don’t you think it’s a ridiculous process? What will be the outcome? You will slow down a lot, you will fumble, you will pause-think and speak, thus you will sound awkward, isn’t it? Don’t do it ever, if you do this you will never be able to speak in ‘English’.

So, what should you do? Take a week time and set a goal. Make a promise to yourself, that within a span of 10 to 15 days you will start speaking in English with whoever it is possible. Then after that after 10 to 15 days start speaking in English with friends, relatives or whoever it is ‘Possible’. You are not supposed to talk to the ‘Potato seller’ in English, right? If you get to talk to an English speaking person, it’s the best option. Don’t shy away, speak a lot, you will make mistakes for sure, but mistakes can be rectified once they are spotted until you make mistakes you won’t be rectified, right?. Now apart from downloading audio files download relevant study materials for spoken English from any of the above mentioned ‘Best Blogs’. This way your grammatical knowledge with your vocabulary and sense of the construction of sentences will also improve a lot. Read the study materials, learn from them, put your best efforts and within maximum 3 to 4 months you will become a much better speaker. If you are a ‘DIY’ person with a never say die attitude it is absolutely possible for you to prepare yourself thoroughly for the ‘IELTS Speaking Test’ within the mentioned time span. And be confident you will be able to score high as well, provided you have worked hard and worked smart. Just keep in mind, that actually you are preparing for the other 3 tests simultaneously.

2) Now we will discuss preparing for Listening Test: Again comes the point that you have to have a good base on the English language including knowledge of grammar and you must be a brave heart ‘DIY’ person. Usually, any non-native speaker, as already mentioned, suffer understanding native-English speakers accent, but he can overcome the problem by listening repeatedly. While we are going to talk about preparing for ‘Listening Test’, let me remind you that while you were getting prepared for ‘Spoken English’ by listening to the downloaded audio files from the chosen Blogs, you have completed half of your job. You have now started understanding the ‘Native English Speaker’s Accent’ and that’s what is needed from you in your ‘Listening Test’. In this case, you have to listen to the audios that played during the test, understand them and write the answers. So that is the skill needed in the listening test. You can hone this skill of listening and grasping the contextual meaning to write the answers correctly, in that sense your listening test is not only about your skill of listening, rather it also takes a test of your vocabulary. From the above-mentioned Blogs, you should download and read the study materials. What you will learn includes how to guess the context where the answer is hidden, you will learn lots of synonymous words (thus enriching your vocabulary) and also the art of paraphrasing. When the native speakers speak sometimes they hurry through their speech and thus become even tougher to understand, so if you miss a few parts of conversations, don’t get scared, even the native speakers do not understand every word. These Blogs contains lots of audio samples to give you ample practice using the ‘exact type of speeches’ that create problems. All in all, you will get more than enough study materials and at the same time get your each and every unasked question answered in those ‘Best Blog’.

3) Preparing for the Reading Test: As I have already mentioned in this article that you have to prepare simultaneously for all the four types of tests. While preparing for the reading test don’t think that it’s all about reading; rather its’ reading first then writing a lot. Anyway, this test is a bit tough compared to the previous two. Here you will need to learn, Completion of sentences, Writing a summary or describing flow-chart/table/graph, writing short answer type questions, matching headlines, answer multiple choice questions and much more. Without the help of a teacher, how could I learn so many things? That’s what you are thinking, right? No, you don’t need any external help, you will get each and everything you need from the listed blogs. You won’t have to go for any tuition at all, though it depends on a lot of factors. If you are not a confident person if you are sort of a person. ‘Mummy helps me, I can’t eat myself’, then nothing will work right for you, it’s’ the hardest truth, don’t take it personally, there are hundreds of persons who cannot do anything by themselves. Anyway, let’s come back to the point, everything, you need to learn for the ‘Reading Test’ is provided with such intricate details and presented with so many actual tests like ‘Sample Question Papers with Answers’, that you will be overwhelmed. It is absolutely possible for a person with a little intelligence to prepare himself. Sample papers with solved answers are available in plenty in almost all websites, you just have to download and practice.

4) The IELTS Writing Test: This test is without any dissent the toughest of all fours. It is, you can call the ultimate test for any candidate. Actual scenario though is not that much frightening if you are geared up with all it needs, nothing to get scared about. Let me tell it in a bit details. The ‘IELTS Writing Test’ for the IELTS Academic module and IELTS General Training module differ from one another. But in both the cases, there are Task1 and Task2. [Reading Tests are also different for the two modules.]

What does the writing test expect from you?

If you are a candidate and you want to score high you have to be a competent one with:

Excellent writing skill, solid grip over the English language, immaculate grammatical skill, a vast range of vocabulary, ability to compose and construct complex sentences keeping the contextual clarity intact and almost no spelling errors. So, naturally, the question peeps into the mind, how a non-native countryman will be able to write so good English? The answer might surprise you but it is often seen in reality that, native English speakers often caught in trap writing informal/casual English. But, take the example of a non-native student (A good student of course), studied in English medium school, he has learned English with a lot of efforts, apart from that, as the medium was English, he has read all the other subjects in English. (Except the 2nd language as the vernacular). So, one can surely expect from such a candidate to write ‘Good English’. Moreover, a smart candidate can develop his English a lot, really a lot, by studying the ‘Downloaded Study Materials’ from the listed Blogs. The ‘Best Blogs’ contain Extremely useful high-quality study materials, Very important lessons on so many ‘How To’ articles on essay writing, letter writing and each and everything you need to learn for the Writing test. If your basic knowledge is up to the desired level, you can prepare yourself thoroughly for the writing test with the help of the Blogs a without any external help.

Therefore, we can conclude that any candidate with a good knowledge of the English language, can take his preparation to the highest level using all the study materials, mock tests, audio lessons and writing samples, gettable in the blogs. For the mock tests, you should not see the answers first, just take your test according to the sample test papers (maintain time as well). Now, check with the answers given and rate yourself according to the IELTS Band Score marking procedure. At last, I must write that however good the Blogs are, if you don’t have an extremely sincere approach, you cannot expect success, instead if you are an utmost sincere candidate you will never have to go for any IELTS coaching center or for any external help.

Originally posted 2017-06-09 11:52:17.