Compared to…

Saturday, February 27th, 2010

Hi

How many different ways of comparing things do you know?

I’m asking you this because in your IELTS speaking test there’s a good chance your examiner will ask you to make some comparisons and then listen to how you do it.

(I included some example IELTS speaking questions in a previous post).

If you use a variety of grammatical structures and/or linking words to make comparisons, you’ll have a better chance of getting the IELTS band score you need.

Here are some different ways of making comparisons (taken from a recording of two native speakers comparing the cost of living in various cities):

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An example of IELTS-type speaking

Thursday, February 25th, 2010

Hi

After listening to some more of the recordings on the website that I recommended in the post ‘Listening to British, American and other accents‘, I realised that some of them are also examples of IELTS-type speaking.

There’s one recording, for example, where the speakers are making comparisons; this is something that you’ll probably be asked to do in your IELTS speaking test.

To give you some practice, here’s a selection of speaking questions from past IELTS tests that have been published. Read the full post »

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Listening to British, American, Australian and other accents

Friday, February 19th, 2010

Hi

In the IELTS listening test, the recordings include a range of native-speaker English accents, e.g. British, American, Australian, Kiwi and Canadian.

To help you become more familiar with these different accents, I’d like to introduce you to a great website with a huge choice of audio recordings of speakers from many different countries.

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The Academic Word List

Monday, February 15th, 2010

Hi

Some vocabulary that you should learn more about as part of your IELTS preparation are the words on the Academic Word List (a list of words that are commonly used in academic texts but not so common in everyday conversation).

One way to learn more about these words is to look at how they are used in texts.

Here’s an example.

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Which newspaper articles should you read?

Wednesday, February 10th, 2010

Hi

Most of you have probably been told that you should read newspaper and magazine articles as part of your IELTS preparation, but do you know which articles you should beĀ  reading?

Well, a good place to start are articles related to topics that commonly occur in the IELTS test.

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