speaking 9.0
Listening 9.0
Reading 8.5
Written 7.5
Overall 8.5
really surprised I managed to pass the written section, I guess the examiners have a talent for reading illegible handwriting!... anyone who's interested then here's how it all went
Speaking section was real easy, its just talking, probably the toughest bit for most people was talking for 1-2 minutes on a given topic, I lucked out here because I've got a hobby for which I've done a number of press interviews on, and was easily able to reinterpret the topic in a way that I could just give my usual well rehearsed press interview on.
Listening was likewise easy, I saw someone give a tip on reading 2-3 questions ahead, the answers do come in the order of the questions, but don't let the first few sections fool you, the test gets progressively difficult, and the last section required you to do a fair bit of reasoning about which answer was right from what you hear
Many people say they have a problem with the reading section, and I can see why... there is a LOT to read, so I didn't bother reading, I just looked at the question and flash read the topics for the answers, this works fine for the first few sections, for the last section you may want to flash read the whole lot before reading the questions to ge an idea of how the essay is structured and then read the questions and try and work out which section is relevant.... one thing with the reading... dont make the mistake of thinking that anything in there is vague or ambiguous, as was the case of one American who complained about references to first/ground floors being different between US and UK, if he actually read things properly then he would have realised that the ambiguity was irrelevant.
Written was a letter and a short essay.... in this case the letter was to a friend who you just visited and had a meal with and evenings entertainment... unfortunately I let my sense of humour get the better of me here... and the result was an exercise in sarcasm, thanking the friend for letting us spend several hours looking at their holiday slides....
The essay was about exclusion of kids who misbehave... then important thing to remember about the essay, is that it doesn't matter if your opinion is right or agreed with, what's important is that you use written English to put your argument forward and clearly make your point... they are after all assessing your English not your politics.
Hope this helps anyone else who has to take this somewhat pointless test.
Congratulations on passing the IELTS. When I spoke to you couple of weeks ago you said you couldnt even read your own handwriting, so the examiner had not chance. You were obviously telling us porkies.
Well done.
Debbie
xx
__________________ Debbie, Stuart & Kids __________________________ Made decision to move to Oz 27.01.08 :yes: Received new passports 04.04.08 1st appt with Agent 10.04.08
Congratulations on passing the IELTS. When I spoke to you couple of weeks ago you said you couldnt even read your own handwriting, so the examiner had not chance. You were obviously telling us porkies.
Well done.
Debbie
xx
I wasn't lying, my handwriting is REALLY that bad, I can only assume that they have a lot of experience with reading very bad handwriting!
Maybe thats a difference between IELTS and GCSE, GCSE really would can you for bad handwriting, in fact I failed GCSE English!
