IELTS Focus Week 8 General Training

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 8

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 the IELTS listening exercise this is a complete test. Try it today in the time allocated (you can check your answers if you like but you might want to wait). On Day 3 you will be doing this again more slowly to make sure you have everything right.
– 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 This is a complete reading test – do exactly the same as you did with yesterday’s listening test
– 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 the IELTS listening exercise – try this test again but this time take your time and concentrate on getting the answers correct – what is the difference in your two scores? Are you near your target?
– 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- Work again on the reading test today – try to get all the answers – take your time – is there a big difference in your two sets of scores?
– 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
– Negative statements
– More on Negatives

 

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 you will know which areas of each test are still challenging. Try to focus on these exercises and do more of them (take them from your test books or other IELTS books – it doesn’t matter if you have already done them before it’s unlikely that you will remember).

 

– 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.

– Are you using your mental check list of errors when you write and also check your writing – you know the mistakes that you often make

– Keep doing Gapfillers listening exercises -these have proved with other students to really increase your reading score (they are more difficult so you can listen to them as often as you need to get the right answers).

– 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 😉