How To Get At Least 5.5 in IELTS

Getting 5.5 in IELTS for some people perhaps is easy, however for people who just started learning English it must be difficult. Two years ago when I decided to go to Australia to take Diploma course , I was very afraid to face an IELTS exam. I was not good in English and also when I studied in Junior and Senior High School I never learned English properly. At that time I thought “I am Indonesian and I don’t have a plan to go to abroad someday, so why I have to learn English?”. It was so naive to think about that.

When I realized that in order to study in Australia I have to learn English, I did not any choice except arranging my study so that I could take 6 in IELTS exam. Luckily I learned English in Pare, East of Java. People from my country said Pare English Village because there are so many English courses in there. If you visit Indonesia and want to speak English with some students please visit Pare as well I think student in there must be happy to speak with foreigner .

At that time my target is to get band score 6 in IELTS exam. First I learned speaking English intensively for a month, then I learned grammar for four months. Yeah.. perhaps it was wasting time to spend a lot of time to learn grammar, but I am very glad because eventually I know the structure of sentences very well. There are some tips that I used when I prepared to take IELTS exam two years ago.

To prepare listening task

To prepare this task, I trained myself to listen English, I bought some CDs about daily conversations in English and some IELTS books such as Cambridge IELTS 1, 2, 3. I examined my self to do all tasks and followed the instruction such as at the time for reading I have to guess which part of speech I have to put on the blank box so when I listened the audio I can skim what the answer is. After I finished those books I checked on the answer sheets so I know how much improving my listening ability is. Recently I found that the best way to improve listening task is watching English movies without subtitles.

To prepare reading task

If you know about structure of sentences, doing this task is quite easy. The thing that you have to do to prepare this task is improving your vocabularies and some grammar rules. When you know which one is a subject, which one is a verb, which one is a object, you will be easier to get the main idea of paragraph. Also you have to read more English articles so you will be used to read English fast. Every Friday I always check www.mangastream.com to read One Piece manga online. When I was said like children by my friend I just said to them “I am not reading a comic, actually I learn English ;p”

To prepare writing task

Of course you have to learn grammar, otherwise you may get grammar mistakes and loose some points in writing task. Practicing to write English every day is better way to improve your writing. Try to make mind map before you write, and always bring wristwatch to check if you spend 17 minutes to do task 1 and 35 minutes to do task 2 and 8 minutes to check all of them. I built this to improve my writing ability and also to gather some information about preparing IELTS writing.

To prepare speaking task

Try to speak English with everyone or if you wanna self-study you can visit Effortless English website. Effortless English offers audio materials about how to speak English quickly automatically so that you can listen those everywhere and every time.
Finally after preparing for 5 months I took an IELTS exam and got 5.5 overall. Yeah… I thought it was not so good but also it was no bad. However by band score 5.5 I didn’t have to take ELICOS at my course. If I had taken ELICOS, I would pay a lot of money for the fee .