IELTS Exam Experiences and Details

what about wallets.
and are you allowed to come outside to car during lunch break after writing and before speaking starts

Our test was in a hotel with the meeting hall converted into a test center so yes when we were not giving the test we could hang out or go anywhere. I donā€™t know if things are different in any regular test centers.

  1. do you get an email when result is out in usaā€¦?
  2. where do we check itā€¦?

results.ieltsessentials.com
or
ielts.britishcouncil.org

  1. Is it available even on 12th day evening or 13th day?

After 13+ days you can check your score online with the instructions they give your online. Once you can see that you should get the score card in the mail soon.

Just got score for IELTS exam which I gave in Seattle. Managed to get CLB 10 in every section:
Listening: 8.5
Reading: 9.0
Writing: 7.5
Speaking: 7.5
Overall: 8.0

Preparation
I prepared around 2-3 hours per day for 8-10 days.

Spent 4-5 hours on ieltsliz.com understanding the high level format.

Udemy course for Task 2. Went through 30% of this course to understand the high level structure, types of essays and strategy

4 tests from Cambridge IELTS 12 General Training. Did Listening, Reading and Writing in one sitting. Agree with others that more than 4 tests donā€™t help much.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1316637832/

Did 2-3 more Writing Task1 and Task2.

Challenges
Initially, I had assumed that my biggest challenge would be writing because I havenā€™t writing anything with pen/pencil in decades. However after 2 practice tests, I was in flow and usually finished both tasks in 40 minutes with spare time to revise.

My biggest challenge was Listening, because I donā€™t have much patience of listening random things. My mind would start wandering about other priorities in life and I would miss 1 or 2 questions. Because of this my score was all over the place - CLB 8 to 10.

I was most confident about reading, because I was consistently getting 40/40 correct. Practice tests helped avoid obvious mistakes (e.g. writing the full word instead of option A-F)

I was reasonably happy with my writing. Not sure why I got a low score in Writing. Maybe they missed evaluating my extra sheet for Writing Task 2.

As far as speaking, I didnā€™t practice this at all. I think I tried to dominate the conversation too much, because of which I got a lower score on Speaking.

Exam experience
There were 200+ people giving exam that day in Seattle. Most of them were Indians. A few odd American Citizens who wanted to move to Canada. We got in at 7:45, deposited our things and got photo taken. After that we took our assigned seats and were provided pencils for the test. Even though there were no headphones, but the sound quality was good. Missed a Listening question because someone coughed.

Overall, glad to be done with this!

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Amazing congrats and now you also get double the points for your work experience. Sounds like you have an ITA in your near future :slight_smile:

I canā€™t stress enough how important it is to study for this test. It delivers a large chunk of the points that are in your control.

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Wifeā€™s IELTS results will be here in 2 weeks and if she has CLB 9+ on all, we will be 449. A month after that I will lose 5 points based on age. So it will be tight. So letā€™s see how it turns out :slight_smile:

Do you expect the cutoff to go to 438+ this year?

It has been hovering in that range. You can check up on previous draws for this year.

Got my IELTS results today. Here are the scores:
Listening: 9.0
Reading: 8.5
Writing: 7.0
Speaking: 7.5

I have followed IELTS Ryan and IELTS Liz channels on youtube. ā€˜Official IELTS Listening testā€™ channel on youtube was very helpful. For writing and speaking, I have prepared using the below courses on Udemy:
IELTS Speaking 7 Plus by David Morris
Score High IELTS Writing(General Training Module) by Grace Je

I have spent around two hours per day for three weeks for preparation and gave mock tests from Kaplan IELTS book. I have practiced good amount for Reading and Listening while I didnā€™t practice much on Writing and Speaking. As you can see, my scores reflect it. So practice is the key. I hope this helps!

My exam is in 3 weeks and Iā€™m reading all the tips hereā€¦ great work guys !! Thank you for the tips.
I had a silly doubt : I talk with my hands. I make a lot of hand gestures when I talk. This is a very old habit . Is that something which can affect the score?

That shouldnā€™t affect your score :slight_smile:

Hello Wonderful community members,

I have a query related to IELTS registration.

While booking the appointment for exam we need to upload our photo to their portal with few of the specifications including below:

  1. be less than 10KB in size
  2. be at least 130 x 130 pixels

Does anyone know ( used ) any online tool to do it? I am trying but it seems like they meant 10 Kb ( Kilobit) and not 10 KB ( Kilobyte ) which is really very less.

Thank you,
Balbir

Uploading photo while booking the appointment is optional. On the day of exam, photo will be taken anyways. At least thatā€™s how it happened for me.

Thanks for your quick response.

I see below in the registration form:

You can click Next without uploading a photograph here. You must provide a printed or digital photograph directly to your test centre within 5 days of submitting this application.

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We had uploaded images which were 10 kilobytes.

Open the photo in paint. Click on resize, enter the pixel dimensions. It should take care of size and dimensions.

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7 posts were split to a new topic: I got a CLB 9 in IELTS so double points for work experience and education

@eap , question on the Cambridge IELTS book you mentioned on Amazon. It seems like it doesnā€™t come with audio CD for the listening part. How did you get the listening parts done? Were you able to get the audio, can you share the link please?

@Arash. Try this https://www.edx.org/course/ielts-academic-test-preparation
Although this is geared towards academic module, the listening and speaking sections are the same for both modules. I benefitted from this. Got L9R9W9S8.

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Did anyone write IELTS in India on June 2nd of this year? I am just curious about the answers in listening section 2ā€¦ I remember a few answers and want to just verify the sameā€¦