Doing Self-preparation or working to prepare for the IELTS exam at home is now in demand. It also includes online IELTS classes which give you the flexibility to learn from anywhere and have personalized feedback on your performance.
Some students don’t have the money or resources to hire a personal IELTS instructor, so they can still find a way to do IELTS exam preparation at home and save their time and money. Thousands of web pages and blogs offer “Free Advice” and “Pro Tips-and-Tricks”
to pass the exam. The students who find IELTS boring, usually fall into those tricks and waste their time and money on IELTS exam fees.
Preparing for the IELTS exam at home is not an easy feat. It comes with its own set of challenges. The students who are determined can only go through this. Firstly, the challenge is to find a proper website that offers pure advice without offering or selling anything under the garb of compassion. Many websites are guilty of doing this, while many offer proper advice without asking for money.
A student has to find it after weighing everything and look for the places that tell the truth, whether you want to hear it or not.
At Voxcel, we also do the same and care for the students. They may hate us at first for telling them the truth but with time, they start giving us the respect they could ever give to someone for showing the reality, thus saving their time and efforts. In our 7 years of experience and having an Academy in Ludhiana, Punjab, we met many students who were using the wrong material and thus, had an impression of fake information that never worked.
They had come to us after taking many repeated IELTS exams and were claiming that IELTS is a fraud organization. When we worked with them and told them to unlearn all the information they knew, it was first very difficult for them to do, but with time and effort, they did and gained real knowledge about the IELTS exam. We are proud to tell you that almost all cleared their IELTS exam on their first attempt afterwards.
That time we realized that many students prepare for the IELTS exam at home around the world and they need proper material to practice. We started building this website to help such students. On this website, you will find All Band 9 Writing Samples of Task 1 and Task 2 (Both Academic Writing Task 2 and General Training aka GT Writing Task 2). All of the samples are of the questions taken from official IELTS Cambridge Books 1-19, which will help you tremendously to maintain a rhythm in the practice.
The writing band samples are coherent and follow a certain structure, which covers all 4 writing parameters of the IELTS exam. When you go through them, you will an ocean of real content which is written to help every test taker in scoring a minimum band 7 in writing.
You will also find all the modules of IELTS Listening and IELTS Reading of all the Cambridge Books on our website. Let us see how to prepare section for the IELTS exam at home for free;
Listening
- Watch English movies and TV shows. Watch classic Hollywood movies and TV series and use subtitles with them. Not only you will enjoy the content, but you will also improve your reading speed by reading the subtitles as the film advances. Nonetheless, you will also improve your speaking skills since you will learn pronunciation, intonation, stress and chunking naturally.
- Listen to news, podcasts, and audiobooks. Refer BBC website for the podcasts. They offer great content to improve listening skills.
- Listen to Video Songs with Subtitles on. Try listening to every genre of music including rap to become habitual in listening to speed talks used in the 4th IELTS listening section. It gives an immense boost in understanding and students usually score a perfect Band 9 in the exam.
- Practice with official IELTS listening tests. Refer to Cambridge, British Council, Burlington etc. materials only.
Reading
- Develop a habit of reading English newspapers, magazines, and books. Do read every kind of genre. It will also help you to improve ideas for writing and speaking. Reading is a food for the mind, so feed your mind with proper content. Use local as well as foreign English content to read.
- Master different reading techniques like skimming, scanning, and in-depth reading. It will not be an easy thing to do, but with practice, you can do it. IELTS reading modules are to understand the exam format, and doing them repeatedly will not help at all until you don’t do what is needed. Reading extensively also improves your spelling and indirectly feeds your mind to improve grammar and sentence structuring.
- Understand various text formats such as academic and general writing. Since both the readings have the same kind of question types, you can do both for practice. For the GT students, if you are scoring low band in the IELTS exam, do the Academic reading as the 3rd section of GT reading is Sciencitic based content, which is Academic reading content.
Writing
- Practice regularly by writing different types of essays, graphs and letters. The only way you become good at writing is by doing it regularly. It may seem boring at first, but trust us, you will enjoy the process. If you can, find a teacher or a friend who can find errors in your essay and help you in avoiding the mistakes.
- Master essay structure, grammar, and vocabulary. All band 9 writing samples on the Voxcel website have a unique and easy structure to follow. Work on those samples and practice like them.
- Seek feedback on your writing from native speakers or experienced teachers. Do it when you are prepared. If you feel like taking feedback from an expert, hire them or enrol for a month of classes for the feedback on all different types of essays and Task 1. We also give IELTS coaching online monthly and essay correction services.
Speaking
- Practice speaking English frequently with friends or family. Speak in English as much as you can. The only way to improve speaking whether you are preparing for IELTS at home or have joined any IELTS classes is to speak it every time. Even when you are thinking, think in English. There’s no alternative. We never learn car driving or swimming by just watching their videos, we learn them by doing them. Similarly, we become fluent in the speaking module by doing it every day. Practice makes the man perfect.
- Record yourself to identify areas for improvement. Do it every day. Speaking has 3 parts. Do it for every part. It will help you understand repeated mistakes like mistakes in Simple Present Tenses and Simple Past Tenses.
- Build confidence by practising fluency and pronunciation in front of a mirror. If you feel hesitant in looking at yourself in the mirror, focus on the part between the forehead known as glabella. It will help you to focus on your words, rather than the surroundings.
- As mentioned earlier in the listening module, watch English movies, and TV shows, and listen to music videos and podcasts. Do it every day. Remember IELTS modules are interlinked.
Conclusion – IELTS isn’t easy or difficult, it asks for the practice and right mindset. Many students prepare for the IELTS exam at home without any instructor. Not Impossible! Do it and sail the skies and live a life king-size.
Voxcel aims to impart not only world-class IELTS coaching but also we look forward to develop the overall personality of our students.