There are some important things that you should bear in mind in order to achieve high IELTS score:

1. Regular practice

It is important to study regularly; otherwise, you will forget things you learnt and consequently find it difficult to make progress.

When doing practice, pay close attention to your own mistakes and try to figure out why you made such mistakes. You might note down these mistakes, especially in listening and reading skills, so that you can avoid them later. For example, in note completion task in listening skill, you may spell certain words wrong, so it is a good idea to make a list of these words and frequently look back at them to make sure that you get them right next time.

2. Build up your vocabulary

Enriching your vocabulary is of great value to your IELTS preparation; it will be beneficial for all the skills of the test. You will be better at not only understanding texts in listening and reading but also expressing yourselves properly and varying your language.  When studying new words, remember to study them in context. In particular, pay attention to a word’s collocations, pronunciation, and connotations so that you can really know a word and use it correctly in your own writings and speaking.

In order to achieve a high score, you need to use a wide range of vocabulary. For example, in speaking, at band 7 and above, it is required to use less common words and idiomatic vocabulary. In addition, try to build your topic vocabulary. A speaking task that asks you about a football match, for instance, expects you to use such words as penalty, referee, goal, defender…

3. Writing skill:

- Your language:

  + Vocabulary: know features of academic language. Learn academic lists of words. Use synonyms or paraphrase to avoid repeating yourself.

  + Structures: know which structures are highly appreciated. When reading an academic text, pay attention to the structures the

- Ideas:

  + “Steal” ideas from other texts, e.g. articles, debate forums… Compile your own bank of ideas for different topics.

- Organization

  + Read the task carefully & identify the type of essay to make sure your response directly addresses the question. 

Good luck for your exam!