IELTS Focus Week 9 Academic

 

This programme comprises the following weekly components:

4 (3 plus word of the day) set exercises each day (Mon to Fri) on Gapfillers (these are in the Gapfillers latest panel and dated – in the middle of the home page) This should take you around 30 minutes to 1 hour to complete, depending on the type of exercise.

Two supplementary reading and listening exercises from Gapfillers plus 2 each of IELTS reading and listening exercises which I’ll send to you.
Both a task one and task two writing exercise. I will send you the questions for task 1 and task 2 which you can complete and return via email.

Finally, a weekly Skype lesson for checking the week’s work and practising the speaking part of the test

Doing the exercises

– Make sure you make a note of your scores (this is part of monitoring your progress)
– Try the exercises more than once if you need to
– Make a note of anything that you don’t understand or is confusing

Schedule – week 9

This week we will try to improve scores in reading and listening – don’t be too ambitious getting one extra point consistently is good. Know roughly how many points you need to get the band you want and then move slowly towards that score. Identify from your scores where you make the most mistakes and work on these exercises particularly to gain an extra point or two. Try this week to gain 1 point in listening and reading. This is now our target for the next week.

Day 1

– Complete the daily exercises on Gapfillers – grammar, writing and news bulletin.
– Complete this extra reading exercise on Gapfillers
– Complete an IELTS listening exercise This is a complete listening test – Go through the test making sure that the answers are correct (rewind if you need) getting the answers is more important than the timing (make a note of how long it takes) you should be around the score you need for your band now and hopefully getting this score consistently.
– Prepare a plan for Task one

Day 2

– Complete the daily exercises on Gapfillers – grammar, reading and news bulletin.
– Complete the extra listening exercise on Gapfillers
– Complete the IELTS reading exercise Go through the test moving quickly from question to question (you have around 1 minute per question) leaving those you can’t find until the end of the passage – check again and then go to passage 2 and do the same.
– Write Task one and send it to me (send me your plan too)

 

Day 3

– Complete the daily exercises on Gapfillers – grammar, listening and news bulletin.
– Complete an extra reading exercise on Gapfillers
– Complete an IELTS listening exercise
– Prepare a plan for Task two

Day 4

– Complete the daily exercises on Gapfillers – grammar, reading and news bulletin.
– Complete a writing exercise on Gapfillers
– Complete the IELTS reading exercise- Here is a passage -3- this will be more difficult than the other two. Try to complete it in 20 minutes – make sure you finish it but make a note of how far you got in 20 minutes. You should now be getting these first two passages done quickly. If not then see which questions are slowing you down and work on these more.
– Write Task two and send it to me (send me your plan too)

Day 5

– Complete the daily exercises on Gapfillers – grammar, listening and news bulletin.
– Complete an extra listening exercise on Gapfillers
– Here are two grammar exercises that might be helpful
– Common uncountable nouns
– More on nouns

Check:

– Did you complete all the daily exercises (3 per day plus word of the day)
– Did you make a note of all your scores and timings?
– Did you make a note of any problems or things you didn’t understand?
– Did you send me your writing exercises via email and did you plan these first?

Now we have just 1 week of the programme left so now is the time to ask if there is anything that is worrying you are that you still need help with. Next week there will be a Mock Test and I’ll be speaking to you all individually about your exam.

 

– Keep recording yourself for the speaking – especially part 2 but also look at part 3 questions and record the answers you would give to these.

– Compile a list of past questions for Task 2 writing go over these and write down the plan you would construct if you got these in your exam – don’t write the essays. Remember topics are recycled but the actual questions are likely to be different so it is important that you are able to adapt to the question.

– Keep doing Gapfillers exercises all exposure to English is good and these will keep your skills moving fore=wards. As these are longer and often more involved than the IELTS tests don’t worry about timing just concentrate on getting the answers correct.

– Remember I am at the end of an email – anything at all that is worrying your or you are not sure about then email me. There are NO silly or stupid questions 😉