Below are IELTS Tips for Band Score 9 from a successful IELTS candidate. These tips are written by candidates who share their experiences of the IELTS test and their exam preparation tips.
Initially, I practised online from various websites, but later realised that these are not accurate, are unnecessarily high level, and the answers are sometimes wrong. I realised the only source I can trust is the official IELTS Cambridge books. These are curated exactly like the official IELTS Exams, and thus, provide the most accurate formats and practise questions. My biggest tip for Listening would be to read the questions ahead of time. The IELTS exam format gives you time to read questions beforehand, but it might not always be enough (eg. in the last section). Along with the reading time, I would advice to use the “introduction of the section” time and the “answer checking” time as well. Reading questions ahead gives you an idea of what to expect for an answer (i.e., a number, a street name, an adjective, etc.). Focus and concentration play a crucial part of course. Practicing gets you equipped with the Listening test format, accents and your focus increases as well.
Or
Eg. The audio might say: There’s a lot of litter on the beach. This might be harmful for children playing or adults walking on the beach. So, we need people to clean this up from the beach.
The test might have the question: “making sure the beach does not have ________ on it.”
The word “litter” is never repeated after the first time it’s said. Thus, we need to keep close attention to the audio and concentrate to find answers even if the sentences are paraphrased.
Again, use only Cambridge Tests for practise. I would advice to read a couple questions first, and try to LOCATE the answers to those questions, by skimming through the passage. Try to identify a particular word or couple words in the question that are unique, and find those in the passage. Begin from the first paragraph, because 90% of the questions come in order.
Tricky parts:
“I believe I managed to score a 9 with continuous practice and being myself in the test. The best thing is not to feel shy when you speak about any particular topic. Do not think that your thoughts might be too little or simple to express. Some of us may believe that if we are not full of knowledge, we may not be able to impress the examiner. In speaking module however, knowledge of the topic is not a big deal. The thoughts presented may just be of a lay man and do not need to reflect an in-depth understanding of the subject.
I never crammed any specific topics however; I did gather my thoughts for topics which I would have found difficult to talk about. For example, I have not been visiting many historical places in the past. The one or two that I have visited, I made sure that I gather sufficient thoughts about those places to talk about. Important thing is that those thoughts were purely my own and not learnt from a book or Wikipedia. Gathering own thoughts in your own words is important.“
I have BAD handwriting which live up to all the cliches about illegibility of doctors. This was a big issue for me with IELTS being a written exam. I realized that all my writing skills would be for naught if it looked like someone dipped ants in ink pot and let them loose on the paper. So I ditched the cursive, zoomed in the fonts and increased the space between words and made several people go through it till their satisfaction. I was confident about my vocabulary and grammar, so that helped but this exam is all about sticking to the format. I made sure to follow the cite-support-example format for body paragraphs on task two; it really eased the though organization process. Task one is straightforward but it’s important not to get mired into details and just focus on major trends and data points. I didn’t have problem with time and word count. But even if you do, I really suggest taking 2 minutes to read the task and then a minute or so to jot down writing points on paper; paragraph wise. Also keep a minute or two at the end to go over your writing. Do not try to correct or improve large sections of a sentence but concentrate on spell check, grammatical gaffes and punctuation marks.