Email from Student November 2012

ielts-yasi.englishlab.net

Written Nov. 7, 2012

An Email from a Student Asking How to Prepare for the Test in Two Months

-- On Tue, 11/6/12, XXXXX> wrote:

From: XXXXX
Subject: ILELTS SPEAKING
To: "gelin3" <gelin3@yahoo.com>
Date: Tuesday, November 6, 2012, 11:33 PM

Hi,chris:

   I am your student in the XXXX class. My name is XXXX (XXXXX). I have only 2 months to prepare my ielts test.

And I am really worried about the speaking test.

Could you give me some advice on how to practise my spoken english?

Whether I should practise all the topics provided on your website?

which topics are more important? What I should do everyday?

I will take the exam on 19th Junary in 2013.

It seems that there will be many new topics and questions.

Are these new questions very difficult ?Please give me some suggestions.Thank you very much!

                                        XXXXX

                                        6th November 2012

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Hi XXXX,

I thought I explained in class how to prepare for the test. And I thought I explained this on my website.

Read everything on my website, not just the list of current questions in the test. Especially read the page, "How to learn to speak English."
Spend more than half of your time improving your "real" English, as I explain below, and less than half your time "preparing" for known current topics and questions. Don't "over-prepare" for the current topics & questions on my website by memorizing, word-for-word, prepared answers. Examiners can see overly-prepared answers, they don't like them and they might reduce your score if you speak overly-prepared answers, regardless of how good these answers are. So you need to skillfully prepare for questions but, in the test, appear to be speaking naturally, as if you had not prepared any answers. Doing this well is a real skill!
In general, avoid 100% word-for-word memorizing of long pieces of English but memorizing short sentences and phrases is good and is the natural way to learn a language.
Make a study plan for the next two months based on what I write below.

Pronunciation

Everyone should spend some time mimicking some of the listening test recordings from the Cambridge practice test books (after you have used them to test your listening and after you learn what any new words mean). Mimic everything, such as how the speaker links words together and how he or she puts stress on certain words in sentences – do more than simply mimicking the pronunciation of each word, although that is very important, of course. If you think your pronunciation is not good, spend several hours in total on this. If you think your pronunciation is good, just do a little of this.
See http://ielts-yasi.englishlab.net/PRONUNCIATION.htm

Grammar

This is probably the most important thing to study for IELTS students!

Spend some time doing the exercises in good, (preferably imported) grammar books such as those on my Booklist.
Make sure to revise irregular verbs for the past tense & past particles of these verbs.
But that will only improve your sentence-making ability, not really your speaking of these sentences. So also practice using the "Side by Side" books. (See Booklist). You must use the CDs with these books – you can't practice speaking by just reading the books, even if you read aloud. But don't spend too much time just on Books 1 & 2 – try to move on to Books 3 & 4 after using Books 1 & 2 as review. Books 1 & 2 represent, more or less, what you have learned in early high school English. Spend a lot of time on this.
Practice making your own example sentences using linking words. That is, practice making complex sentences. Especially practice using the word, "which" so that, in the test, you can effortlessly make sentences using "which".
Read on my website about improving your grammar and about common mistakes to avoid. See http://ielts-yasi.englishlab.net/GRAMMAR.htm

Vocabulary

Don't spend too much time using books labeled as "IELTS Vocabulary". Those are mostly for Writing & Reading and many of the words are a little too formal for the speaking test.
Use the books listed at Number 8 on my Booklist. (There's a new one of those, too.) Spend a lot of time on this. Mimic the contents of the book & self-test for some of the vocabulary. Don't try to memorize too much of the dialogues, especially any long sentences. As I wrote above, memorizing short word combinations is better.
See this page, http://ielts-yasi.englishlab.net/VOCABULARY.htm, including the page, http://ielts-yasi.englishlab.net/AVOID_FORMAL_LANGUAGE.htm.
Do a lot of relatively easy reading on topics that interest you (not just IELTS reading tests, which might be a bit challenging for you).
Check out the vocabulary lists on my website & increase your knowledge.
Read about current & common IELTS topics on the internet. See http://ielts-yasi.englishlab.net/GOOD_LINKS.htm

Fluency

Try to get some experience (the more the better) informally chatting with another Chinese student in English (and avoid speaking Chinese as much as possible). Have topics or questions to talk about. Some of these topics should be IELTS topics & questions but you should also choose whatever is interesting for you to talk about. Emphasize exchanging information. Be real & be interesting. If you only study how to speak but never really use English in speaking as a communication tool, your "real" speaking ability will improve much slower than if you did sometimes practice using English as a communication tool.
See http://ielts-yasi.englishlab.net/FLUENCY.htm

Coherence

Read this page & study the contents: http://ielts-yasi.englishlab.net/COHERENCE.htm
Practice making example sentences that are introduced by connecting words and phrases.

Other Things

Read about "Yes/No" questions at http://ielts-yasi.englishlab.net/YES_NO_QUESTIONS.htm and do the self test for Yes/No questions at http://ielts-yasi.englishlab.net/SHORT_ANSWER_QUIZ.htm

Read the contents of this page, http://ielts-yasi.englishlab.net/LANGUAGE_FUNCTIONS_and_QUESTION_TYPES.htm & especially spend time on the topic of "language functions" & "types of questions", making your own example sentences based on my examples and suggestions.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yes, there will be a change of topics at the beginning of January. About 1/3 of the topics will change. The topics that will be retired will probably include some of the oldest topics that are in use now but not always! (Look at the "Topic Usage History" pages to see how some topics have been (temporarily) retired even after just 4 months of use and some topics stay in the test for more than 12 months.) So you can't really predict what topics will be retired in January. Maybe I forgot to mention in class that the best times to do the test are, a) late November and early or mid-December, b) late March & early or mid-April and c) late July & early or mid-August because you will have more information about the currents questions at those times.

You do gain some advantage by having more information about the questions being used in the test but this advantage is not as big as you might think. I'm guessing the advantage for most people is probably about 15% of your score. So if you get 5.5 without knowing what questions are in use, you would probably have gotten 6.0 after knowing what questions are being used. [5.5 x 0.15 = 0.825. 5.5 + 0.825 = 6.325 = 6.0). But for a few people the advantage might be 20%. In this case, 5.5 without knowing the questions would give a score of 6.5 after knowing the questions. (5.5 x 0.2 = 1.1. 5.5 + 1.1 = 6.6 = 6.5). On the other hand, some people probably just gain a 10% or even a 5% advantage. Remember, if the examiner clearly sees that you know what questions are in the test, you might lose points, not gain points!

Concerning what topics to practice more and what topics to practice less, I suggest looking at all the current topics but spending a little less time on any topics that will have been in use for a year or more in January 2013. Also, spend more time on the harder topics because many of the easier topics might not need much of your practice – it's the harder topics that will hurt your score if you make too many mistakes or can't speak well on those topics.

I don't know if the new topics in January will be difficult or not – some probably will be but others won't be too difficult. Some of the "new" topics in January will actually be repeats of topics that have been used before.

Good luck,

Chris

****************************************************************************