IELTS-The English Language Proficiency Test
Every year, over one million people take the International English Language Testing System, or IELTS, to test and grade their proficiency in English, thereby making this test one of the most sought for in the world today. There has been a steady increase in the demand since 1989 when it first started.
The IELTS test is commonly taken by international students and job seekers who are non native English speakers, who want to move to Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, the UK and the USA.
In order to cater for the needs of the people and their level of understanding of English language, IELTS test is divided into students/professionals, and immigrant/workers version.
IELTS Modules
The test is segmented into four different tasks which include listening, speaking, reading, and writing.
The listening module is a 30 minute test that requires a test taker to listen to series of conversations from a CD, and answer questions that emanates from the conversations. There are 40 questions in all.
The reading module, just as the name implies, is all about testing the competency of a candidate in reading and understanding English texts. Questions asked are based on the texts read. They are framed to draw out responses from the candidates from different perspectives which are common to issues of life.
The writing module is a one hour test that tasks the candidate to interprets, organize, compare and contrast, justify and present opinion on raised issues.
The speaking module is an interview session that finds out personal and general information about a test taker, and some other familiar topics to further determine how well the candidate can communicate in English.
Taking a Preparatory test is necessary for some test takers, hence some centers run this sections before candidates will sit for the real test.
The marks scored are graded in bands which is given grade 1 to 9, signifying non user to expert user.
The test is graded to determined whether a candidate meet up with the minimum acceptable competency for use of English language as students or as workers, and not to show whether they have failed or passed.
Common Mistakes That Lowers Candidates Performances
Not obeying simple instructions is the problem of many candidates. What the examiners are looking for mostly is simple obedience to instructions which many failed to do.
Paying attention to the following will help a lot
Some people have been made to believe that they can fool the assessors by answering more questions than necessary, so they tend to write more. They failed to realize that these assessors have been trained, and they are being monitored to be fair to all by following what the questions say. Hence these methods only lead to scores deductions.
Writing on an entirely different topic, or something similar to it, but not the same as the real topic just because a candidate cannot produce the right answer is not allowed. No matter how well answers like these are presented, they will not get any mark and may even lead to stiffer penalization for the candidate.
Accent and pronunciation are not the same, but they do affect each other a lot. For this test, a candidate is required to pronounce each word correctly irrespective of his or her accent.
The details and description of answers given by a candidate shows how well he or she understands the subject topic, hence there is no right or wrong answers. We all have different opinions or views about issues which are expressed in our speeches, writings
About the Author
Find out the best IELTS training classes by visiting http://ieltssingapore.net
Tell others about
this page:
Comments? Questions? Email Here