IELTS Preparation Guide - Self Preparation in 2 MONTHS

 Author: © JUBAYER AL MAHMUD, 2023

CAUTION: This guide is made with thorough research only. I never applied this though I wanted to because of my laziness. But I trust in this guide completely. I took a 11 days preparation for listening, reading & writing. For speaking I practiced with a few partners regularly for 1.5 months. Please don’t tell my parents about this. I took the test on 7th of October, 2023. My score was overall 7 (L-8, R-7, W-6.5, S-7). So, once you have acknowledged this you can try this if you like.

So, when I thought about preparing for IELTS I started researching about cheap & good courses in respect of money online just as the most students do. But I found those too pricey & unnecessary as my father already spent a lot amount of money on me already. Then I decided to take on the challenge & prepare by myself. Though I didn’t follow my plan at all but I am person who likes to research thoroughly so I did that in times when I was tired of watching anime & had nothing to watch. And I believe if someone can take on this challenge of self preparation, he/she can achieve any band he/she dreams of. 

HOW GOOD YOUR BASICS SHOULD BE TO TAKE ON THIS SELF-PREP CHALLENGE?

My basic was good from the very beginning of my childhood. I guess this is because I watched so many English cartoons/Anime. Never got less than 80% in school exams (except 2 times) without any kind of preparations before exams. Even in SSC & HSC. But here’s the thing, it doesn’t define how good my basic is. I just want to say that answers to English questions came to me almost naturally whenever I faced an English exam. But as human mind is beyond measure, I believe anyone who believes they can take this challenge will overcome it without any problems at all.

SO ENOUGH TALKS. LET’S BEGIN THE SELF PREP GUIDE…

NECESSARY BOOKS:

(I prefer hardcopy. You can find softcopy for these as well.)

1. The Official Cambridge Guide to IELTS
2. Cambridge IELTS Student's Book with Answers: Authentic Examination Papers from Cambridge English Language Assessment 10-18 (Enough. I recommend getting hardcopy for this as it will be helpful for easier self test.)
3. For Speaking - Makkar IELTS Speaking Guesswork
4. For Writing - IELTS Advantage - Writing Skills, IELTS Writing Task 1 + 2: The Ultimate Guide with Practice by Rachel Mitchel, Simon IELTS writing Task (1 and 2) or whichever you like. No problem. I personally choose Simons. Just randomly. No special reason.
5. For Vocabulary - You can buy one vocabulary book if you want. I bought one but never really read it. I will show how to learn vocabs from the Cambridge book itself. But more vocab means upper hand in the exam specially in reading.

Here’s my collection of soft-copy of some books. Find updated resources as well.

My Collection – Mega Drive

PLAN FOR THE FIRST MONTH

FOR FIRST 5 DAYS:

Go through the Official guide if you want to have clear concept of how the IELTS test works. If you are already aware of this then you can skip this part. But it's a crucial one if you have less idea about IELTS. It will give you the idea about how to answer the questions as well. If you don’t understand something simple look it up online or YouTube. IELTS Liz videos are really a good option for that.

And you should manage 1 or 2 speaking partners in the meantime. 3 person is better but do not exceed over 4. You will find a guide on how to operate with the team below in the SPEAKING TIPS section for that.

NEXT 25 DAYS:

Begin with book 10 to 18. Or 18-10 whatever. Complete 2 tests (Everything except speaking as you will do it with your partner) from a book each day. It will take 2 days to complete one book as it has total 4 tests.

HOW TO PRACTICE

Firstly, make a chart to track your marks throughout this session. This will give you overall improvement stats & areas to focus on.

LISTENING: 

Pick one test. Search for the audio for that test in YouTube or online. Listen to it and answer accordingly. If you are making too many mistakes then open the audio transcript in the book and listen to it again. Focus on how they pronounce each word. Take the test again if you are getting really low mark.

READING: 

Reading is everything about understanding how to answer. Time management is also important. You will find that the answer & the questions are almost serially. Passage by passage. Try to find out that particular pattern. You can answer in just 50 mins. Vocab gathering is crucial here. When reading a passage mark the word you don't know. Open dictionary & write down the meaning beside the word.

WRITING: 

Writing is crucial. So, know the formats of writing before you jump into it. The book you bought will help in this regard. You can also start with “5 Day Writing Challenge by IELTS advantage”. Just search it up & register. Look for similar model answers for that topic & try to answer on you own & evaluate via ChatGPT. Gives almost the same result you get in coaching. But first you need to train it. You can use Grammarly for grammar check of your writing as well. It will also teach you how to write a sentence more beautifully.

TEACH CHATGPT IN THIS WAY:

At first ask him to act as an IELTS writing test evaluator. Then give ask it to keep the following things in mind while marking in the prompt bar and ask it to consider it and mark your writing.

So, the prompt will be like this.

“Imagine you are a IELTS writing test evaluator. Now keep the following things in mind & evaluate my answer.

Task achievement (for task 1) and task response (for task 2)

Coherence and cohesion

Lexical resource

Grammatical range and accuracy.”

When ChatGPT is okay to go then put your writing in prompt bar and ask it to evaluate. Believe me it is pretty accurate. Remember the more info you feed him the more accurate the evaluation will be.

SPEAKING: 

Partners will ask each other & give feedback afterwards. If you can't manage partners, you can try mirror test. Stand in front of a mirror and start speaking on topics for 2-4 mins. You can also do audio/video recording test. Record yourself & listen to it again. Find out the mistakes. Try to avoid them. But the best way is to find partners.

25 DAY GRAMMAR

(I stole & modified it a bit from Banglay IELTS website. Practicing 1/1.5hr is enough for this.)

▪ Be verb- 2 Days

▪ Tense (Structure) - 3 Days

▪ Voice (Active Sense + Passive Sense) - 2 + 2 Days

▪ Simple, Complex - 2 Days

▪ Compound, Conditional - 2 Days

▪ Clause - 2 Days

▪ Article - 2 Days

▪ Preposition - 3 Days

▪ Gerund - 1 Day

▪ Infinitive - 1 Day

▪ Punctuation - 2 Day

▪ Linking Word - 1 Day

DECISION MAKING ABOUT WHEN TO TAKE THE TEST

After 1 month you will have a clear idea if you are okay enough to take on the test. If you are confident, book the test. If not repeat again in shorter version.

PLANS FOR THE SECOND MONTH

*** Firstly, continue the speaking practice the same way.

*** If you book the IELTS through British Council you will get premium access to their practice test. There are 25 tests. And a these are a bit advanced & tricky. Take one test each day. Improve the fields that you need to work on.

This is the end of the complete self-study guide. You will find many YouTube channels to guide you. I followed Asad Yacub, Banglay IELTS, IELTS speaking success, IELTS advantage etc. As for mock tests, writing evaluation & others you might need a coaching if you don’t like the ChatGPT version. But for me it was waste of money. Your wish.

Now time for some tips & list of useful websites…

PRO TIPS

(Even though I'm not an expert, I'm brave enough to share this. In order to help you become accustomed to the circumstances, I will attempt to include actual test experience in this section.)

LISTENING:

Listen to podcasts, news, cartoon, movies (British) for 30 minutes every day. I watched cartoons/anime’s a lot anyway. Expected 8.5 at least but due to exam hall nervousness messed up. Be particularly careful with the singular/plural form of words. Be attentive so that you don’t miss a single's/eses.

READING:

Reading needs exceptional understanding of passage. For that vocabs are must. To do this you can read English newspapers & magazines such as The Economist. You need a little bit of luck as well. I was really confident that I would score at least 8. Because my average score in Cambridge tests was 8-8.5 for reading. But on October 7 the question was really on another level. The people who faced the exam the same day can relate to that. Nothing ordinary. But I don't want to complain though because I didn’t really prepare enough.

WRITING:

In this section just follow “IELTS advantage” channel tutorials. Really good. I was confident to get 7.5 at least. Did my best in writing in the actual exam as well. Also, I have experience in writing (Written more than 500 threads in a forum site that I previously worked as a Moderator). So, naturally I thought it would be easy as the questions were common. But I was overconfident, I guess. They said I made spelling mistake in the result which I rarely do. I revised as well after finishing but I think I missed something. So be confident but careful enough not to make any spelling & grammar mistakes. Your writing should be good enough for them to understand. Unclear writing may have a bad impact on your result. Keep this in mind as well.

SPEAKING:

Just Practice. Nothing else. Be sure to get regular speaking partners. They don’t have to expert. Just someone who is responsible enough to attend the session every day. I got some regular speaking partners. It helped a lot. We followed the following routine and started to practice 2 topics from speaking part 2,3 (everyone) & 3-4 topic from part 1 (one each).

Class Schedule for IELTS Speaking Practice

Now, talking about routine. It should be as you like. I simply presented the routine me & my partners followed. It generally takes more than 1 hour when there is more than 2 people. But let’s learn why you should have more than two people in the team.

In the speaking exam, the more ideas you can generate, the more you have a chance to get a higher band score. So, when you are talking with more than 2 people you get to hear their ideas as well. But if you have more than 4 people you will have to spend a lot of time in speaking thus you can’t focus on other modules. For me, a 3-person team is the ideal team. You get to hear different ideas, also you don’t have to spend more than 1/1.5 hours. Remember, listening to others are really crucial in this session. So, try your best to listen & analyze how they answer. 

If you catch any mistakes, tell him/her about it in feedback session in the end. If you find something good & interesting try to copy it

***Tips: Try to manage partners who have same/similar time zone. It will be easier to conduct a session then. 

For example: Bangladesh, Pakistan & India is a good combo.

USEFULL WEBSITES

FOR TIPS & TRICKS

1. IELTS Liz

2. IELTS Simon

3. IELTS Mentor

MOCK TEST (LISTENING-READING)

1. IELTS Online Tests

2. IELTS Training Online

FOR WRITING (DETECT GRAMMAR MISTAKES/GET IDEAS)

1. Quillbot 

2. Grammarly 

3. ChatGPT (Get Ideas From Here)

FOR SPEAKING

1. Mirror Practice

2. Audio Record Practice

3. Help from ChatGPT

YOUTUBE CHANNELS I FOLLOWED

▪ Listening- Liz IELTS, Banglay IELTS, Asad Yaqub.

▪ Speaking- English speaking success (Kieth), IELTS Daily, IELTS advantage.

▪ Reading- E2 IELTS, Asad Yakub, Banglay IELTS.

▪ Writing- IELTS Up, E2 IELTS, IELTS Liz.

▪ Vocabulary- Adam's English lessons, English with Emma.

▪ Overall Tips and practice- E2 IELTS, Liz IELTS, and Banglay IELTS.

My Mistakes

Now I will try to explain what I did in the exam & my scores so that you don’t make the same mistakes I made…

I honestly don’t know what went wrong here. But it’s probably because I was nervous at that time. I was so sure that If I make any mistakes, it will be only one in the MCQ section. But I think I made mistake in singular/plural form of word. So be careful about that.

This section was pretty hard. The people who attended the same day knows how terrible it was. Fortunately managed to score 7. Alhamdulillah. Don’t lose you cool in this section. Keep calm. Focus on time management. I messed up in this as well.

Believe me, I thought I did really good in this as I have experience writing. I rarely make any mistakes in spelling & grammar. But they said that I made mistakes. So, focus on avoiding them. And give clear stand if the question asks you to do so.

Keep calm & confident. For part 1 try to answer in 2-3 sentences. 3 is ideal. For 2 you will have time limit anyway. So don’t worry about it. For part 3, 4-6 sentences are good. 5 is ideal. he mistake I made was when I was in part 2, I stopped just in the middle for self-correction.

They really caught that pretty nicely. That time I also repeated one word. I also used a wrong idiom. So be careful when using them. Don’t try to produce false accent. Be natural. People make false claim when they say accent matters. It doesn’t as long as they can easily understand what you say. Try to use sentences with different grammar structures.

So that’s it. Everything I wrote is from the core of my heart produced after long research. I actually researched more on how to prepare than preparing. LOL. Anyway, preparation is all about you. How you see things. So, don’t get intimidated by what others say. If you practice, you will do good. There’s no otherwise.

BEST OF LUCK FOR YOUR EXAM & PRAY FOR ME.

Reason why I wrote this guideline:

People fear IELTS just because they don’t know how to prepare. That’s why I decided to write a guide after thorough research.