Study Guide to This Website (Page 2)
(You should have read the "Introduction to this Website" page before you read what is written below.)
How you use this website depends on how much time you have before your test. On this page, I have written suggestions for using this website for the following situations:
a) If You Have Three Days or Less Before your Test,
b) If You Have 4 to 14 days Before Your Test,
c) If You have 2 to 5 weeks Before Your Test,
d) If You have 5 to 12 weeks Before Your Test and,
e) If you have more than 3 months before your test.
Everybody, no matter which of the above groups they belong to, should be aware of when new topics are introduced into the test. If, between now and your test, you pass through one of the following three dates, then between 25% and 30% of the test questions will change: January 1, May 1, September 1. If you are in the situation where the test will change between now and your test, read this page, What Topics Should I Prepare For? and this page, If the Current Part 1 Questions are not for You.
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d) If You have 5 to 12 weeks Before Your Test
If you have 5 to 12 weeks before your test, you definitely have enough time to make some significant improvements to your 'real' or overall English-speaking ability. You also have enough time to more thoroughly prepare for the known test questions than some other people. However, even 12 weeks will pass quickly.
Before you do anything else, you should check to see if your planned test date is after the next topic change time. If it is, you need to adjust which topics you prepare for. (See here.) But there's a small problem – even though you can predict most of the Part 2/3 topics that will be retired at the change time (and also most of the Part 1 topics that will be retired but this is less clear than for Part 2/3), ... even though you can predict these things, there is still the possibility that 1, 2 or 3 of the Part 2/3 topics that are due for retirement will continue in the test. This happens quite often. All I can suggest is that you spend a lot less time on the topics that are due for retirement but don't completely omit them from your preparation because one of those topics might stay in the test and be the topic that you get in your test.
If you have not yet booked a test date for yourself, I suggest you try, as much as possible, to avoid doing the test in the months of January, May or September.
[Since 25% to 30% of the test questions are new at the first test of those months, people on the internet such as me who collect information about the test questions will have limited information about the questions, even after 3 tests (the average number of tests in each month). Therefore, you will be giving yourself a disadvantage by doing the test in those months because there will be less information on the internet about the questions and topics being used than if you do the test about 3 tests before the question change time. About 3 tests before the change time is safer than one test before the change time, (i.e., the last test before the change time), because sometimes some of the new questions are introduced a little earlier than the usual change date.]
With 5 to 12 weeks before your test, you should pay more attention to the ideas that I expressed in the page on how to learn to speak English, although that page was written for an even longer time frame than 12 weeks. Of those ideas, using 'Side by Side', practicing communication with a speaking partner, mimicking recordings of English speakers and wide reading of easy English are all suitable for you. But your time is still rather tight so I suggest you mostly restrict your reading to common or frequently used IELTS topics, starting at this page. For communication with a speaking partner, I also suggest that you restrict it to mostly asking each other known IELTS questions and discussing known Part 3 questions.
But those suggestions are not really part of this website, which is the reason for this study guide. Basically, you should read what I wrote for the people who have 2 to 5 weeks before their tests and do the same, except do it even more thoroughly than they have time for.
Depending on how good your overall English speaking ability is now, I suggest you spend between 15% and 30% of your Speaking test preparation time on improving your overall speaking skills and 70% to 85% of your time on studying and preparing for the known questions in the test. You also have a bit more time to explore the old Part 3 topics that are similar to the ones in use now and to explore the previously used Part 1 questions, but reading these is not a high priority.
For the Part 2 topics on this website, I suggest you try to speak an answer to all (or almost all) of them the first time you see them, and then, after doing that, spend more time preparing better answers.
For the Part 3, you should do as I recommended for the people who have 2 to 5 weeks before their tests but you should think about answers to many more of the Part 3 questions than the "5 week" people. You should also try to spend more time than those people reading, (on the internet or in books and magazines), about the Part 3 questions and topics in order to build up your vocabulary and your ideas.
As for pages to study on this website, you should have a try at doing a little test to see how well you recognize the correct intonation (stress pattern) to use. Then, follow on from the answer page of that test to Word Combination Lists. I don't recommend you spend a great deal of time reading, speaking and mimicking the recordings on those lists, especially if the topic seems too hard or too boring for you. This is just one aspect of pronunciation, out of many aspects. Nevertheless, I do think it will greatly add to your understanding of spoken English if you at least can understand the ideas that are behind this topic.
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e) If you have more than 3 months before your test
Your situation is suitable for carrying out all or most of the suggestions in the page, How to learn to speak English. I suggest you spend, no less than 40% of your speaking test preparation time on improving your overall speaking skills and no more than 60% of your time specifically studying and preparing for the known test questions on this website. Since you have quite a lot of time, I suggest you try to think of answers to all, (or almost all) Part 3 questions on this website that will be possible in your test.
Read what I wrote for people who have 5 to 12 weeks before their tests and do the same except for the following:
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