IELTS rant

[Ken]

A tradesman born and bred in one of the countries where the holding of a passport deems you to have the standard English skills should not be required to sit this test as it does not impact upon his ability to communicate in general life and in the completion of his daily job.

 

Holding a passport will indeed score you a band 6 which means you are considered a competent user which as the term suggests means that you are able to communicate in general life. You only need the test to show that you are a band 7 or 8. The question is why does Australia want tradesmen to have standards of English that are higher than competent? The answer is it probably doesn't but political pressures mean they don't want immigration to be too easy.

 

On the other hand it is possible to have a British passport without being a competent user of English so there is an argument to say you should have to do the test to prove you really are a band 6.

[twister292]

Having taken IELTS 3 times over the last 5 years (first in 2006 for a student visa) and then in 2011 for different reasons (new points test, graduate job), I do find that it is not quite a walk in the park many people make it out to be.

 

I come from a non-English speaking background, but I was educated from the ground up in English, and I did GCSEs and A-Levels for secondary education.

 

Most people that I know find the academic writing and reading modules categorically difficult to score beyond a certain "plateau" they sit on, writing particularly so.

 

While Listening and Reading are objective and the scores are simply based on the numerical proportion of what you get right, the academic reading material is quite hard in places to accurately extract information from...in my experience it needs what's called "surgical speed-reading", where you gloss over the passages quickly for a first run, and try to roughly remember mental "bookmarks" of where key pieces of information are...use highlighting/underlining if you need to. Next, read the questions, and extract information from the right place to answer accurately. The answers lie in the same sequence in the passage as the questions.

 

IELTS is a rather formalised test, so even native speakers can sometimes score lower than what they expect. This is not because they're bad communicators, but perhaps because for native or frequent speakers the language dilutes to more and more informal versions over the years.

 

Writing is the most subjective perhaps of all four tests...I scored fairly consistently in writing in all 3 of my IELTS sittings (8, 8.5, 8.5). The key is to follow instructions and to answer Section 1 without any personal opinion at all.

 

In writing (academic), Task 1 requires summarisation/comparison of data, not opinions or reasons behind it. It's simply a case of describing the key trends in the given chart/figure. However, there is no harm in throwing in the occasional anecdotal reference.

 

Also, it is important to use words of emphasis rather than flat description for the important trends. For example, saying "A increased from 20% in 1992 to 55% in 1998" is not quite as punchy as "A increased almost three-fold from 20% in 1992 to 55% in 1998"...if part of the data is insignificant in relation to the overall bunch, you can still describe it using adjectives and descriptors rather than droning on in a flat tone. For example, saying "A and B increased from 20% and 3% respectively in 1992 to 55% and 4% respectively in 1998" is not wrong, but writing "A saw an almost three-fold increase from 20% to 55%, while B had increased by nearly a third over its 1992 percentage by 1998. As such,the relative significance of A compared to B grew significantly over the period from what the data shows" is better.

 

In writing Task 2, the important part is to understand the topic, and ease the reader into it using a suitable introduction. Because Task 2 is often opinion/argument, you have to amply support your side of the argument. It is also important to use vocabulary that shows that you can add emphasis to argument where necessary, and use sharp language if necessary.

 

The essay should not make "jumps" between paragraphs and sections...you have to transition smoothly between the opening/intro, the main body, and by the time you write the summative closing paragrah, you should already have an air of finality in the preceding material.

 

Ofcourse this is just my experience, and not a model/ideal answer...with writing, one has to be aware that everyone has their own distinct style of expression.

[Guest The Ropey HOFF]

My wife Helen said it was a nightmare when she went............. on one section of the test they put her in a massive room with about another 100 people and she ended up right at the back. She says she could only just heer the person speaking who was asking the questions and to make matters worse the voice wasn't English, she said they were either Australian, or Canadian. We put in a complaint just before the results, my wife was convinced she would fail this section and when she got her results........... she had easily passed the other sections and scraped in on this section. She was so relieved and vowed she wouldn't do it again, but what can you do?

[Guest NeilEB]

Wow I was in a bad mood yesterday - sorry everyone :-(

 

Voices can either be English, Canadian, Australian, Kiwi or American - but the accents are never that strong - and they always speak slowly.

 

With a couple of practice papers, there should be no reason not to walk through Listening, Reading & Speaking as a native speaker, especially for the General Training.

 

Writing is a different matter, especially if like me it was a long time since you did any formal writing. There's some great advice earlier in the thread from TheLongWait

[tomsan]

Hi all,

 

Realise this is an old thread, just wondering if there are any IELTS examiners out there who might be able to help with research I'm doing into rating scales. PM me.

Tom

[JenPen]

Hi - has anyone got tips on the reading aspect? My Husband has failed twice on the Reading….any help appreciated xx

[syabring]

Although I chose to do the Academic test, the reason for doing the test was to apply for a job as well as migration, and General Training would have sufficed. Whilst the results are barely okay to apply for my visa, my job (with a major financial firm) required a minimum score of 8 in each of the modules.

[syabring]

I wasn't very surprised to see that I've got 7.5 for reading because I found the passage somewhat difficult and didn't put much effort in to it. Getting 7.0 for writing, however, made me very, VERY pissed off.

[syabring]

What is really surprising was that the first time I did the test (which was more than 5 years ago), I got at least 8.0 for all of the modules and 9.0 for writing. The overall score was 8.5. I find it hard to believe that after 5 years of studies in a couple of Australia's best institutions with academic results far above average in addition to having written an Honours thesis, my writing skills could have dropped from "Expert User" to one who "has a good command of the language with occasional mistakes and inaccuracies" or whatever it says.

[syabring]

I double and triple checked everything I wrote. My grammar, punctuation and spelling were perfect and my essay was very well written. I addressed all the points and justified my views with examples. I really thought it was a masterpiece, and at any rate was far better that what I had written 5 years ago. Although it asked for 300 words or more (with no upper limit), I must have written at least 750 words.

[syabring]

Although I'm bilingual, English is my primary language. I had learnt to speak and read when I was very young. All my primary, secondary and tertiary schooling was done in English.

[Partner]

Hi all,

 

I'm asking the following question on behalf of a relative. Is there any criteria or possibility that if a person scores less than the required IELTS points for an employment visa, he can have points transferred from a blood relative (PR holder, working in Perth) to satisfy the required points?

Could someone give a link to a website where this information might be available. Will highly appreciate that!

Thanks!

[Ozmaniac]

No. The primary applicant must score the required points personally. It is not possible to 'transfer' points from anyone else.

[IELTS STUPID]

SIGN PETITION

www.change.org/p/cambridge-stop-ielts-from-becoming-a-money-making-business-we-need-fair-evaluation-and-transparency 

Stop IELTS from becoming a money making business! We need fair and transparent evaluation!

 

any people are taking English language exams like ILETS for immigration purpose and education purposes. In recent times, IELTS exam is losing its credibility and losing trust among test takers. Many people complain that IELTS bands (especially writing) are not fair in recent times and there is no feedback given to candidates about the areas of improvement.

Candidates were not given with justification for their score and they are often left with a confused state not knowing what went wrong. Despite their dedicated efforts and hard work, candidates are often awarded only 6.5 in writing (note that band of 7 is what candidates are targeting to live their immigration dreams. IELTS is literally spoiling everyone's life with .5 everytime). "Hide everything from candidate" is not going to benefit anyone. We want IELTS to be transparent with evaluation and band justification. We would like to have a provision wherein candidates can request for their answer sheet copy (Xerox or something) for a fee. This will help the candidate to understand why he/ she is awarded any band and if anything is wrong with evaluation they can file a complaint and get justice.