Mary E. Kuder - IELTS Scholar: A Companion Guide for Cambridge IELTS Book 6

This book is designed to be used in conjunction with the series of test books of authentic IELTS tests published by Cambridge University Press. It has been designed primarily for students studying for the academic version of the IELTS Exam, but will also be of use to teachers preparing students for that exam. It will also be of use for those students studying for the general version IELTS Exam in that the speaking and listening are the same. However, the writing and reading sections for the general exam will differ from those of the academic exam.

The reading section gives overall advice for this section of the exam and guides the reader through the questions in a systematic fashion. Additionally, there is a vocabulary activity after each section, using vocabulary from the reading itself. A detailed analysis of all the answers to the reading questions can be found at the back of the book. The listening section also gives overall advice on how to approach the exam and highlights the synonyms and parallel expressions that are used. An awareness of these is essential in order to do well in both the listening and the reading exams. You should first do the listening test and then listen to it again to check any answers you got wrong and to complete the synonyms and parallel expressions. An answer key for the synonyms and parallel expressions can also be found at the back of the book.

You should be aware that there are no shortcuts to doing well in the IELTS Exam; students with a low language level will not get a good IELTS score. There is no point doing any kind of IELTS preparation course until a good level of English has been reached, meaning at least at an upper intermediate level.

As well as doing practice tests, you need to think about other ways of improving your English. For example, you should read and listen to as much English as they can to extend your vocabulary. Reading Easy Readersat a level one level below your current class level will reinforce knowledge of grammatical structures and vocabulary and ultimately improveyour writing ability. Students who do well in the listening section of the exam tend to be students who watch a wide variety of films in English. Additionally, there is plenty of material available on the internet and in print. A good knowledge of vocabulary is essential to doing well in the exam. For this reason, a copy of the Academic Word List(Coxhead, 2000) would be useful. You should try to learn about ten new words every week that you think would be useful and try to make these words active by incorporating them into your written and spoken English.

The materials in this book have been and are being tested at ACE (Australian Centre for Education) in Cambodia.

Tips for the Reading Exam

In order to do well in the reading test, you should read as much English as possible outside the classroom and expand your vocabulary. The reading texts in the exam are authentic and usually come from magazines, but may also come from books, journals, newspapers, and online resources. Below are a few hints that should help you when you take the reading component of the IELTS Exam. You should practice performing these actions when you are taking the practice exams so that these behaviours become automatic long before taking the actual IELTS Exam.

• During the exam, you will not have time to read the article properly before you look at the questions. You should always read the title and any subtitles, however, and skim the text to get a general idea of what it is about and how it is structured. You should not spend more than a minute doing this. You should then look at the questions and try to locate the part of the text where you can find the answers.
• The first questions in each section tend to focus more on the first part of the text while the last questions focus more on the last part of the text. Be careful, however, as this is not always the case.
• Time is your enemy during the exam. If you had two hours to answer the questions, you would do much better. You should spend no more than 20 minutes on each section. You have to answer 40 questions in 60 minutes. That gives you just one and a half minutes per question. Do not waste time on a difficult question. Go on to the next one and go back to any difficult ones at the end.
• The readings are supposed to get progressively more difficult throughout the exam, although this is not always apparent.
• The answers to some questions, such as multiple choice questions and True/False/Not Given or Yes/No/Not Given questions are in the same order as the text. Therefore, when you have answered one question, the answer to the next question will be further along in the text. N.B.: True/False/Not Given questions are associated with factual situations/questions, while Yes/No/Not Given questions are associated with situations in which an opinion is asked for or given.