How to get 9 in IELTS

I only know one person who has gotten straight 9 Band in IELTS. Here is what he says:

“First time I gave IELTS I spent over a month preparing with a thick tedious book, even gave up a vacation, and still ended up scoring below 8 in two sections.

Paying the $300 a second time to take IELTS was painful.

I knew my english was good enough so there’s something else I was doing wrong. I realised that I’m not preparing for specific IELTS styled test-taking.

You need to deconstruct IETLS down to first principles. The entire writing section is just about following the template. This meant, no matter what the essay/letter is, you need to know EXACTLY what EVERY SINGLE line of your writing would look like.

The actual test had zero thinking, just execution.

Similar things worked for the other sections as well. Missed a word in Listening? Just move forward and PAY ATTENTION to what the speaker is saying, not the voice in your head screaming at you for missing the word.

Here’s the thing. This is where official books get it wrong. The IELTS is not a test of our English or speaking or listening. The IELTS is just a paid test with its own bends and hacks. And it should be practiced in that way.”

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It’s true that getting 9 straight Band is only possible once your base level of English is already good enough to get high 7s at least. But after that, it’s about test-taking strategies.

Here are some Hacks that helped me to get 8.5/9 Band in first attempt.

HACKS FOR WRITING

Hack # 1: The Structure

If your IELTS exam is tomorrow and you are reading this section today, I want you to take only one thing out of this: Writing is all about Structure.

Your examiner is your audience. When your audience reads anything that you’ve written, it experiences one of the two states: pleasure, because of a smooth reading experience, – or headache, because of a messy reading experience.

If you read any blog post on AustraliaYours, it’s written in a way to make it a pleasurable experience for you. Each of my blog post is a 8+ in IELTS Writing Test.

How to create a solid structure in your Writing Test?

1) You will always have 5 paragraphs. Each paragraph will be focusing on just one thing.

A paragraph can be as short as two lines. It doesn’t have to be a big block of text.

There will always be one introduction paragraph, 3 body paragraphs, and one closing paragraph.

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Hack # 2: The Planning

If I tell you that an essay that will take you 40 minutes to write, can be written in 20 minutes if you spend 5 minutes to plan first – making it a total 25 minutes task – would you?

This is exactly what the difference is between writing without planning and after having a structured chain of thoughts.

In Writing Task 1: Letter, your planning will include answering all 3 bullet points given in the topic with just 1 line.

For example,

If the topic says Write a letter to the hospital. In your letter:

explain why you would like to do unpaid work at the hospital
say what type of unpaid work you would be able to do
give details of when you would be available for work

You will first use 3-5 minutes to answer each of these questions in 1 line.

explain why you would like to do unpaid work at the hospital
1 line: I’m passionate about helping other people because it makes me feel good about myself
say what type of unpaid work you would be able to do
1 line: I can take care of wounds by providing antiseptic and bandage
give details of when you would be available for work
1 line: I can start working from next month

Once you have this planning completed, you will just expand on your 1 line answer by inventing details (numbers, dates, places, examples, etc) around it.

You will expand your 1 line into 2-3 lines by adding context to it, and you will have your 150 words crossed with a very well-structured, well-planned letter.

Here’s an example of adding details to the first bullet point’s 1 line answer:

explain why you would like to do unpaid work at the hospital
1 line: I’m passionate about helping other people because it makes me feel good about myself

Since childhood, I have been extremely passionate about helping people around me. Whenever I used to play in streets with other kids and if someone used to get hurt, I used to be the first one to rush towards him for assistance. As I grew up, I realised that helping other people gives me most satisfaction in life.

That’s already 57 words!

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We go into detail of constructing essays effortlessly for both writing tasks, exercises, and examples in the video course, to make sure you get 8+ in your Writing Test.

HACKS FOR LISTENING

Hack # 1: Never Make Notes

A common approach many people take is that they start taking notes as the audio is being played. They do it out of fear because they think they won’t be able to remember what is being said.

You might be thinking that Listening Test is the test of your memory. How well you can remember the information. That is totally not true! Instead, Listening Test is your ability to listen for only the thing you want to listen.

For example, if I ask you a question: “How much did Virat Kohli score in the last match?”

Then I turn the volume on and you hear commenter speaking, “India has won the match with a splendid 3rd wicket partnership between Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma. Together they put on 159 runs in just under 20 overs. Kohli was unbeaten at 89, while Sharma contributed 70 runs to the partnership before being caught at the boundary”.

If you were making notes of this entire commentary, you would jot down a lot of entirely useless technical information. And because you were busy writing, you might even end up confusing the scores of both the batsmen.

Instead, if you had just read the question and known exactly what you were listening for, you would have patiently listened until the commenter announced Kohli’s score. You would have listened and answered, “89”.

You will train yourself to only listen for the answer.

Remember in the pressure situation, your memory will be very less. By the time the audio has reached third sentence, you will have forgotten what the first sentence was about.

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Hack # 2: Tone Gives It Away

This might take some practice for you (I’ve given examples in the video course). The tone of the speakers help you figure out the answer.

Answers are spoken loud and clear so everyone can understand them.

If the speaker in the audio speaks something very fast or swallows his words, that you find it difficult to understand or keep up, answer is never there.

For example

If you have a question: ___________ will form the jury for the competition.

You will hear in the recording, “the writing competition will be judged by the famous authors from the literary club”.

The words famous authors will be emphasised in a way that they stand out in the entire sentence for your mind to process.

HACKS FOR READING

Hack # 1: Not All Questions Are Created Equal

There are only 5 different types of questions in the Reading Test. Only 1 type of question requires you to have full understanding of the passage.

All the other 4 types of questions require you to locate information.

For these 4 types you can pretty much answer all questions by understanding as less as 20% of the passage only.

That’s why for each section, you will first flip over the passage to skim the questions and find out whether you need to understand the passage at all.

Also, once you skim through the questions even before looking at the passage, you will develop a general idea of what the passage might be talking about. With that idea at the back of your mind, when you read through the passage, it will just make much more sense than it would have otherwise.

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Hack # 2: Heading + First Sentence = Full Passage

In reading passages, a common mistake that most people make is that they try to skim through the entire passage quickly to get an idea of what’s written in this passage. That’s a terrific waste of time!

You will instead read the heading first, and then the first sentence of each paragraph.

Also, instead of reading them fast, you will read them slowly and absorb them. This will take just 10-15 seconds per paragraph, but you will get a very good idea of what this entire passage it talking about.

Reading the first sentence only will save you up to 80% of time that you would otherwise waste in reading full passages.

After some practice, you will discover that you will end up reading only 40-60% of the total passages when answering the questions. So why should you waste time trying to understand the full passages?!

HACKS FOR SPEAKING

Hack # 1: Simple Wins Over Complex

If you are like most people, your biggest concern is walking in the interview and trying to impress the interviewer. This is the wrong mindset for IELTS!

IELTS Speaking test is different from job interviews because in job interviews, your intellect matters. Your ideas, facts, and opinions should be right.

In the Speaking Test, you can be totally lying, making up stories and saying things that are unpopular, and still score high. How you say it matters, not what you say.

You don’t have to impress the examiner with your knowledge and intelligence. You are just scored on your fluency of English.

And what’s the best way to be fluent? By being simple.

Don’t try to use difficult words to show your range of vocabulary, or try to construct complicated sentences. These will take a lot of your time in preparation and won’t contribute highly towards your score.

Instead, if you can answer each question in simple words using short sentences, you will score very high.

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Hack # 2: Fluency Doesn’t Mean Fast

Do me a favour and search ‘Obama Out‘ on YouTube. This is Barack Obama’s last speech at White House dinner. This is a masterclass on speaking.

Is he speaking fast?

Not at all. Instead, he is speaking the slowest you might have ever heard anyone speak. And yet, he is the best public speaker in the world.

Fluency is all about first thinking, then speaking without hesitation.

This is a game-changer mindset.

Speaking Test demands a structure more than anything. You need not speak fast, but you should be clear and precise. Take your time to gather your thoughts and then choose the right words.

I’ve included a real-time demo of my interview in the video course to demonstrate this and all other hacks and strategies.

One more thing, the use of tonality is the number 1 difference between a good speaker and a great speaker. No one tells you this!

Tonality is the way we modify our emphasis on certain words to create a better mental visual in the listener’s mind.

Let’s take a sentence, “I live in a large house on the far end of the town”.

Emphasise LARGE and FAAAAAR, and you will change the entire image of this sentence.

In the normal way, listener has to process the words to make sense of what you are saying. But by adding tonality, listener’s mind will automatically create an image of your house and it’s location.

As a result, listener’s mind will believe that you are a good speaker, and you are going to get a high score.

I hope armed with these Hacks you are able to increase your Band by at least 1 overnight.

If you are interested to get into details for 8+, I’ve an in-depth video course for it.