IELTS & TOEFL Study Tips: What you need to succeed

Hi, everybody, welcome to www.engvid.com, I'm Adam.

In today's video, I want to give you four tips for IELTS or TOEFL success.

Doesn't matter which test you're doing, all of these tips will help you get the score

you need and get the dreams you're chasing, right?

I'm also going to tell you about my other channel, which is www.writetotop.com, and

I'll explain to you how this can help you in your preparation for these particular tests.

But first, we're going to start with a couple of general strategies.

Number one, start early, okay?

A lot of people who need to take these tests leave it to the last minute to start preparing.

These are very difficult English tests, they're English proficiency exams.

What they're testing is your ability to join an academic classroom and understand what

the professor is saying, be able to contribute to discussions, be able to do your homework

in a timely fashion, and basically succeed in an academic environment.

If you're taking these tests for immigration purposes, they also want to make sure that

you have enough English to move to an English-speaking country and succeed.

So, these are very difficult tests, give yourself enough time.

A very general rule of thumb, for each band - for example, in IELTS, for each band you

want to go up, or for every five points on TOEFL, or every three points on TOEFL, give

yourself a month of studying.

You want to go up to a band 7 or band 8, make sure you're giving yourself 3, 4, 5 months

to prepare for this test.

I know a lot of people, how they prepare is by just taking the test many times, again

and again.

It's an expensive test.

Instead of taking the test 10 times, study hard, take it once, maybe twice, and pass,

and move on.

Make sure when you're starting, build your vocab, that's the most important thing you

need to do.

Vocab, vocab, vocab.

Also, for those of you who are not used to writing essays, start building an idea bank.

An idea bank is a collection of ideas and topics for the essays, so when you get a question,

you're ready to answer anything, you have ideas.

And I'll tell you more about the idea bank in a moment.

And read, read a lot, a lot, a lot.

The main reason you're going to do that is one, to build vocabulary, two, to get more

ideas that you can use in your essays, but most importantly, build your speed.

You have an hour to, for example, on the IELTS, you have an hour to answer, to read 3 passages

and answer 40 questions, you need to make good use of that time.

And I'll talk about that in a moment again.

Second, even if you don't have much time, the basic thing you should do is get to know

the test.

Don't go into the test center on the day you're having your test and find out what's going

on and try to figure out how the test is set up.

Make sure you take at least three full practice tests.

And when I say take a test, I don't mean just, you know, look at it one day a little bit,

next day a little bit, sit down for 2 hours and 40 minutes and do the listening, reading,

and writing sections in one shot.

Turn off your phone.

Don't put it on silent next to you.

Turn it off, put it in another room.

Make sure that nobody bothers you.

Make sure the door is closed, nobody comes in, you don't go out for 2 hours and 40 minutes

because that's what the situation will be on test day.

No phones, no leaving to go to the washroom, no breaks, no interruptions, full concentration.

Do that.

Also, get to know the directions on the test.

Study all the directions in the listening, reading, and writing sections and the speaking

section.

This way, on the test, when you're doing the official test, you don't have to spend much

time looking at the instructions or listening to the instructions.

You know what's coming.

You can take that time, for example, in the listening, you can take the instruction time

to look ahead and prepare.

During the reading, you just need to know a few things, like how many words can you

use to answer with, or what are they looking for, yes, no, true, false, etc.

But basically, you don't want to waste time reading directions.

Use that time for the test.

And again, talking about the reading section, create a strategy.

There are different ways to approach the reading section.

I actually have a video about this, about three different strategies.

Try different ways to approach the reading section, find one way that you think works

the best for you, and keep practicing that strategy until it becomes second nature.

Don't try to go into the reading test without ever having practiced it, because it can be

very, very confusing, and you need to manage your time and try to answer all the questions

if you can, okay?

So, these are some more technical things.

Let's look at two more tips.

Okay, so the next tip is to start with the writing section.

Now, the reason I say this is because the writing is the hardest skill to master, and

this is for 99% of test takers.

A lot of people, and I've heard this many, many times, they get eight listening, they

get 7.5 reading, they get 6.5 or 7 speaking, and then 5.5 writing.

Or all kinds of different combinations, but their writing score always brings the overall

score below what they need.

This is true for IELTS, it's true for TOEFL, it's true for many of the other English tests.

Writing takes time to improve.

Give yourself enough time.

Start writing all the time, every day write a little bit more.

It's the hardest section, and the reason it's hard is because if you don't get feedback,

you're going to just write the same things, you're going to make the same mistakes again

and again.

Make sure that you find out what your weakness is and fix it, or what your weaknesses are

and fix them, right?

Ideally, get somebody to read your essays and give you feedback.

That's very important.

Remember, before I mentioned the Idea Bank?

If you have a hard time coming up with ideas, because remember, these tests, their writing

section is not just English, it's not just vocabulary and grammar.

Your ideas, your arguments, your examples are very, very important to the score.

You can have perfect grammar and perfect vocab, but if you don't have good, convincing ideas,

you're still going to get a bad score, so work on that.

Now, one of the things you can do to work on the Idea Bank, or if you want to find out

more about what an Idea Bank is, visit www.WriteToTop.com.

That's my website.

This is my...

I also have a YouTube channel that's also from Write to Top, and what I do here in this

channel is focus only on the writing skills.

Of course, I also do vocabulary building, I do grammar development, but all of this

is focused towards writing, and especially writing for these two tests, the IELTS and

the TOEFL.

So, I want to help you pass your test, I'm going to help you improve your writing, and

as you improve your writing, you will also naturally improve your reading, so they go

kind of hand-in-hand.

So, if you come to my website, you will see videos, and they're going to be course-based

videos, a little mini courses.

They're going to be sample essays and sample letters for the general test, and sample summaries,

etc.

I help you build vocabulary, high-end vocabulary, more academic vocabulary, grammar, more complex

grammar, not just basic grammar, and basically I teach you how to write, how to have a topic

sentence, how to elaborate, how to include good arguments and examples, how to close

things off, how to organize an essay, all of the things you need to write better.

Now, even if you're not taking one of these tests, but you do need to write, writing is

writing.

Whether you're writing for a test, or you're writing for business, or you're writing to

a friend, it's all based on the same principles.

So, if you need to learn how to write better, hopefully I can help you on my site.

Now, if you need even more help, I also have an e-book store.

So I create my own e-books that are very focused and targeted towards the skills you need.

So, you don't need to get a little bit of everything.

Focus on the things you need.

I have an Idea Bank book, I have a self-assessment book to help you if you don't have somebody

to read your essays, I have some call locations, I have all kinds of different books.

Go check it out, if they help, great.

I'm sure they will help, let's put it this way.

So, that's all my tips there, four tips.

I wish all of you the best of luck on your test, and remember, it's not all luck, it's

all work.

So, make sure you put in the work for that.

That's it for this video.

Please go to www.engvid.com, look at the comment section.

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask me.

There's a short quiz there, just to - a little bit of comprehension, a little bit of listening

practice for this video.

And I hope you like this video, please give me a like if you liked it.

Don't forget to subscribe to my two channels, and ring the bell there for notifications

of new videos, and come back next time and I'll have some more English lessons for you

ready.

See you then.

Bye-bye.