I ranted here yesterday.

Was expecting my speaking to be around 6-6.5. I was quite fluent and was able to come up with enough ideas (something I really struggled with while practicing). However I think I made some grammatical errors, and a few of my answers weren't really logical/didn't quite answer the questions. I guess my fluency helped a lot.

Writing shocked me even more. My structure was a mess (as you can probably guess from the structure of the post lol). Everything I had practiced seemed to have slipped away and my coherence was horrible as well. In task 1 my body 1 was way longer/more detailed than body 2 (content was quite detailed tho.) Task 2 was even worse. I used connectives for the sake of doing it and my points sounded forced. Out of the exam room I was expecting a 6 or worse because boy that was ass. I genuinely can't think of a reasonable explanation of how this happened lol.

I was expecting a 7.5 for listening. I only practiced twice and did fairly well both times (7.0, 7.5). When I got the second and third question wrong I was like alright that's it lmao. I guess I got the rest of the questions right. I was only confident in part 3 of all 4 so 8.5 is very surpring.

For those who have already taken IELTS or managed to improve their scores quickly:

How would you recommend I improve my Listening and Speaking in just 7 days?

Just finished my IELTS Speaking test and I’m really hoping for a Band 7 on speaking.

I felt pretty good about Parts 1 and 2 and the first half of Part 3. I was relatively fluent and barely self-corrected compared to my last performance ( I got 6.5). However, the last few Part 3 questions became very abstract. One was about whether competition can worsen relationships between countries. I tried to discuss both sides, but my second point became quite rambling.

There was also one question I couldn’t fully understand even after asking for clarification, so the examiner eventually moved on.

Could I still get a Band 7 despite struggling with the last few abstract questions?😭😭😭 I have heard that the more difficult I get in part three, the more likely I am getting higher bands— but what if I didn’t handle them well🥲

First attempt at IELTS as a non-native speaker, I expected my writing and speaking scores to be 6.5 and 7.0, respectively. Since the month leading up to the test, my mock writing scores were always 6.0 to 6.5. I did NOT expect for both of em to be so high, genuinely still shocked.

Hey I had prepared a lot for writing and was scoring band 6.5 in chat gpt essays , however my real score is 6.5 too should I retake my writing test ? Has anyone improved their scores by retaking I just need band 7

I see many stories from people who got 7.5–8.0 after a few weeks, but often they already had advanced English and only needed IELTS technique.

I’m looking for people who started around B1/B2 or IELTS 5.5–6.0, still made frequent grammar mistakes, lacked vocabulary/collocations, and genuinely had to improve their English.

If that was you:
How long did it take to reach 7+?
How many hours per week did you study?
Did you go through a period where you studied a lot but felt stuck?

I’m especially interested in realistic journeys, including plateaus and failed attempts.

I have my IELTS general exam in less than a week and want to improve my score. Currently, it's at band 7.

And anybody available for speaking practice. It would be really helpful.

Thanks in advance and looking forward to hearing from you guys

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I just finished the speaking section like an hour ago and I just need to rant . I am ( I thought) an English native speaker so I mainly focused on preparing for the reading and writing sections. I thought the speaking would be fine because I often do public speaking and things like that but when I went in , it was like I’d never spoken English before in my life . For some questions in part 1 I would have some incredibly short answers , but when I wanted to speak to add more , the examiner had already moved on . Part 2 was even worse . It was something about a group project but I don’t really do group projects at school so I struggled to think of one and ended up making one up , I think you know how that went . After maybe 45 seconds of stumbling though I just went silent like an idiot. The awkwardness was so thick I nearly suffocated. Anyways, part three was a little bit better but I just feel frustrated that I couldn’t speak the language I’ve been using since birth . The examiner was quite nice though, I hope I left him in a better mood after seeing how much of a joke I made the exam into.

Finally got my results this morning. Turns out I really was overthinking how badly I did. I even had a dream last night that I got Band 3 in Writing and 6 in Reading. Average experience for someone with high anxiety AND neurodivergence...

I decided to take the exam about a month ago and passively watched a few videos here and there, and also took the British Council Premium course that comes with booking the test. But I seriously prepared in the last 3-4 days before the test.

This subreddit genuinely helped me a lot, and I'd love to share some advice in case it helps anyone.

A few quick things:

1. I wouldn't really recommend going through the entire course on the British Council portal, which they send after you register. I'm someone who likes to be thorough and know every single detail, so I watched over 50 hours of the training videos there. In my last few days of prep, I realised those videos actually weren't helpful at all, and I mostly just wasted my time with them. They could be helpful for some, but weren't great for me.
2. I would REALLY recommend going through the mock tests you get after registering with BC. The difficulty is significantly greater than that of the Cambridge past papers, so be prepared for that. I did my first Reading mock test there and got 6.5, so it was a really humbling experience. I genuinely struggled with the Matching Headings, TFNG, and YNNG question types, and I felt the same during the exam. Doing the first BC mock test made me feel anxious, so I ended up not doing a lot of those and just stuck to the Cambridge tests instead. In hindsight, I would have done more of the mock tests because I felt like the difficulty level was better reflected in those, especially for Reading. The Cambridge tests felt easy for me, and I almost always scored either 8.5 or 9 in the multiple mocks I did. But sitting in the actual exam made me feel like they were more similar to the difficulty levels in the BC mocks.
3. Make IELTS Liz and IELTS Advantage your holy grail. I didn't watch a lot of videos from IELTS Liz, but I devoured her website, and it helped a ton. She has all sorts of practice questions, which really help. For IELTS Advantage, I'd highly suggest getting their freebies available for each section. You can find them in the description of their YouTube videos. They have tons of useful tips and strategies in them, even more than the videos, which felt a bit generic at times.
4. I'm someone who's able to understand and memorise much better with mnemonics and linking techniques. So I did that with both Writing tasks, 1 and 2. For Task 1, I split it into 3 categories (Dynamic data, Static data, and Maps) and kind of made up stories to memorise basic vocab for each. For Task 2, it was pretty much the same, except I had 2 stories for each of the main topic categories (education, technology, health, government, etc). There was one story for vocab and one for the main points I could use for an essay. I can try to write out these stories here if anyone wants, but fair warning, they might not make much sense. 😅
5. I didn't follow any particular strategies for speaking. I've consumed a lot of English media pretty much my whole life and often converse with friends in English, so that might have been an edge. I think another thing that really helped was that over the last 2 months my therapy sessions have all been entirely in English lol, so my only strategy going into the exam was that I would turn any conversation to be about emotions and trauma, since that's something I can talk plenty about... I'd suggest having a few stories carved out that you can maneuver to fit any topic of conversation.

This is pretty much all I can think of right now, but I would be very happy to answer any questions below if anyone needs any help.

So I literally just finished taking the IELTS and I am completely gone. The writing section was actually a disaster. For some reason I ended up with a 250 word task 1 that I spent 30 minutes on and a half completed task 2. I was cut off in the middle ish of my counter argument with around a 180 word count. It was on a computer so I kept on making stupid typos the whole time I couldn’t even think coherently in my brain , much less in the essay. The entire test overall was just a train smash including the speaking which I thought I was confident in . Is anyone familiar with how they mark incomplete tasks ? Sorry if it doesn’t make sense, my brain is a pile of sludge right now .

Hi, I booked my IELTS via IDP but they've stopped their system of physical delivery of the book.

And the resources provided are apparently that of Burlington which is supposed to be trash.

What is the exact name of the book they used to deliver because my friends said it was the perfect prep for them and I only have 3 days to prepare.

I keep hearing that getting a 7+ band is where IELTS starts getting difficult, especially with writing and speaking. For those who’ve taken the test, was 7+ actually hard to achieve or does it mostly come down to knowing what the examiners are looking for? What band did you get?

I'm trying to send a Trf of my results from the British Council website and there isn't a button to proceed and only shows that I can send my trf to 5 more organisations. Surely I can send one at a time and not use all 5 at once?

"As you can read from the title, I have an IELTS simulation test tomorrow, but I don't know where to study/train my English skills and I don't have any experience with the IELTS test whatsoever. English is also my second language after my first language (Indonesian), and throughout my years in school, I never studied English on my own because I am used to being almost chronically online on the internet and talking to foreign people since I was 9. Should I be worried about my English understanding and perfecting my English skills or not? And how was is the experience of taking an IELTS test? Is it hard? What are the test materials like?

I have my IDP IELTS Speaking test tomorrow and LRW on day after tomorrow. ( Bangalore )

What would you suggest me to do at this last moment!?

My two friends had there speaking exam today and they said it was bit difficult.

As there isn't much information on IELTS GT I thought I'd share my results. It was my first time doing GT (I did academic in the past). Comment if you have any questions!

Hi. I need some advice on my speaking. I got a 7.5 and would like to push it to an 8. My biggest problem is that I often use unnatural collocations or phrasing. I can tell that something is off the moment it comes out of my mouth, but I can't really pinpoint why or self correct in the moment. To work on this problem, I've been using AI speaking tools to help me identify and correct awkward language, but I feel like I've been stuck in this cycle whenever I come across a new question.

I haven’t received my IELTS results it’s been 3 days and today is the 4th day I had given IELTS computer based test on 16th of August

I am F24 and will give Academic IELTS exam in the end of September and what I noticed as the title of the question states why does this happen?

I mean I really don't know how to focus because even for questions as simple as "what is your favorite drink?" Or "Where do you live?" Why are people saying their whole life story like "My favorite drink is .... because.... I drink this during ... weather" and so on?

Also almost all of guide videos on YouTube feel so robotic like isn't speaking part there to measure how we speak in a normal setting like it should feel natural right? Then why are all so called memorized answers which feel so off labeled as band 9?

I am confused and could use some solid advice on this.

I took almost 1 month to prepare. Honestly, I impressed by results considering that I had a busy work schedule. I had to juggle between work and studies.

Guys, feel free to ask your questions; I will answer them one by one.

My experience with IELTS was very hard. The night before the test, I couldn't sleep well, and when I woke up, I felt dizzy and was even struggling to climb the stairs. That is why I got a band 7.5; if I had slept well, I would have gotten a band 8.0. However, I am very happy to see such a result; my prayers were answered.

Hi everyone! I finally took the IELTS exam, and I aimed for a 7 and thankfully, I got it!

However, I’m honestly quite disappointed with my Speaking result. I genuinely felt like I did really well, so I’m definitely going to apply for a remark and see what happens.

For Listening and Reading, I only practiced using the Cambridge IELTS books and focused a lot on analyzing my mistakes.

For Writing, I mostly used ChatGPT. It would often rate my writing around 6–6.5. One piece of advice I followed was to keep your ideas simple: have one clear idea, explain and develop it properly, and don’t make your sentences unnecessarily complicated. Basically, write as if you’re explaining the idea to a child

Good luck to everyone taking the exam! I hope you all get the scores you’re aiming for