I’ve said this time and time again in my seminars and in my courses, IELTS institutions are lying to you, constantly. IELTS can be prepared by self-learning. You just need a proper regiment, routine, resources and I know it sounds cheesy but also the proper mindset.
Preparing for a test all by yourself can be a daunting task, but the biggest thing I preach here on IELTS with Awais is self-learning and resilience. So let me hand over to you a complete framework, and a step-by-step guide on how you can prepare for IELTS in just 2 weeks.
Pre-requisites:
Before you embark on this 14-day journey, you’ll need a few things. They are listed below:
⦁ A laptop or PC.
⦁ Stable internet connection.
⦁ 3-4 hours of daily practice and study.
Let’s begin with the framework. I’ll list it out first and then explain each part of the process along with providing you with the necessary links to proper and helpful resources.
⦁ Mindset and Effort
⦁ Paid Courses
⦁ Free Resources
⦁ Time and Division of Components
⦁ Focus on Learning instead of results
⦁ The only correct way to practice
⦁ Feedback
1-Mindset and Effort
The first and foremost thing you need to embark on this journey is to know where you stand. You’ve probably heard mixed rumors regarding the test. “It’s too difficult, everything is confusing”, “it’s a piece of cake, I could ace it with my eyes closed”. The spectrum is quite wide because of the variation of human skill and practice.
So, how difficult is IELTS and what does that mean for you? This is where most students get into the wrong mindset. They either think it’s too easy or too hard without ever knowing the true extent of their final potential. This can lead you to sideline instead of focusing on your weaknesses. You need to begin by assessing your level of English proficiency. There are multiple tools available on the internet for that including my very own free assessment test which I check myself for each student individually.
Link to the free assessment test: Click Here
Here’s a neat little grammar checking tool from IDP itself: Grammar Checking Tool
Now you know where you stand, let me make this easy for you. I’ll give you a breakdown as to how much time I suggest to my students based on their scores of my assessment
⦁ Less than or equal to 4 bands = 3 months of English and 2 Months of IELTS Practice
⦁ 5 to 6 bands = 2 Months of English (If time is available) and 2 Months of IELTS Preparation
⦁ 7 bands = 1 Month of IELTS Preparation
⦁ 7 to 8+ bands = 2 Weeks of IELTS Preparation
Now that you know how much time you’d potentially require to prepare effectively to achieve your desired band score, you need to establish a certain mindset. These timelines are tried and tested, but only for those who lean into them fully. Consistently making an effort to improve themselves, leaving no stone unturned in terms of knowledge and not letting a single hour in a day go to waste. You’ve got to… “Lock in” so to speak.
2-Paid Course
If you’re one of the students:
⦁ who’ve gotten 6 or below bands in my assessment,
⦁ or you regularly get that close to or below that number in your own practice mock exams and your target is much higher or your requirement is around 7 or maybe even more,
⦁ or if you’re just struggling in general to make improvements;
Then I strongly suggest you to be open to paid courses for IELTS as well as English itself.
The biggest advantage of playing the Pay2Win game is that there is a structure to your learning. As a teacher whose job is to make and suggest schedules, I can tell you from first-hand experience that STRUCTURE IS EVERYTHING! Trust me, a structure or a curriculum is easily the most important aspect of learning something new, it acts as a pillar and I only speak from experience. No uneducated opinions here.
You don’t have to buy mine, although recommending you other courses would be enabling my own competition, I do understand that not every teacher is appropriate for every student and sometimes you just have to find someone who matches your groove, who speaks on the same frequency you listen to, and sings (instructs) with just the right rhythm to make you move.
That being said, there are plenty of options available for you. But how to decide whose course to buy when there are countless to choose from? Pretty simple. Take a look at their free resources, do they resonate with you? Do you like the way they teach? Do you like their voice? Did you actually learn something? Was it fun? Enjoyable? If yes, then it’s safe to assume that your purchase would be an investment rather than an expense, and the return would be an increase in band scores.
Check out my courses: Click here for Paid IELTS Courses!
3-Free Resources
If you aren’t willing to spend money due to financial or other reasons, then let me just tell you that free information can also contribute to your success much more than you can imagine. I never spent a dime and only had 20 days to prepare for my test, and although it wasn’t perfect, although I only got 7.5 in speaking, my overall score was still 8.5. And this is just the 1st ever attempt.
That being said, if you lack basic English skills, or if your English is not up-to par, then you’d have some serious difficulty achieving a high band score. So, it is essential to improve your English before and simultaneously preparing for the test itself. It was easy for me, because I literally am an English teacher and I was, long before I chose to pursue IELTS coaching.
The better your English roots, the better the foundation, the easier it would be for you. I don’t mean to toot my own horn, but for improving your English, let me suggest you the only comprehensive resource available on the internet, English Self-Improvement Framework.
Link: English Self Improvement Framework Guidebook (Link to PDF)
The Roman Urdu version of this document can be found on my discord server.
Join the discord community server: Discord Community Server
It contains every aspect of life with step-by-step instructions as to where you could sneakily insert English and learn it, no, improve it passively. That is priceless in my humble opinion.
When it comes to learning and understanding IELTS, and improving your band scores, although still having English as a basis, the resources required are a bit different. You need more niche and more specific tips than “improve your vocabulary”. You need a proper structure on what to improve, how to improve it and most importantly, why? For this, I have written a document called “Lexical Resource Guidebook”.
Link: Lexical Resource Guidebook (Link to PDF)
Note: This document is NOT available in Urdu or Roman Urdu.
Cheekily named like a clickbait YouTube title, this doc doesn’t just contain vocabulary-improving tips, it explores specific linguistic structures far more advanced. Although not written with depth in mind, it would be a good starting point if you are blank about where to start.
Practice Resources:
Now let’s talk about the fundamentals, what resources to use for practice?
Essentially, your best bet is the IELTS Books by Cambridge as they are indeed collections of past IELTS exams. They’ll give you everything you need, an identical layout to that of the real exam, the pacing, the various forms of questions used in each component and so on. Start from book 10 test 1 and go through as many as you can. In my opinion, book 11 is the hardest at the time of writing this article, and book 15 is most unique but to each their own. Although paid, the free pdfs are widely available on the internet, awaiting a simple google search.
You can check some of them out here: Cambridge IELTS Books
Apart from that you can also use websites specifically designed for IELTS Preparation.
Check out Engnovate
Check out Jumpinto
And IELTS tests online
When you book your test using the official British Council website, you get a lot of free practice material as well. This material has a higher difficulty than other standard mock tests or Cambridge IELTS books and will prepare you very well for the test.
4-Time and Division of Components
Now that you have a general awareness of what you’re up against, it’s important to allocate proper time and effort to each component of the IELTS test. This section is essentially the reason why you clicked on this article.
Get a general idea about IELTS (in Urdu)
There can be two distinct preparation strategies for 14-day IELTS Prep.
- Broadly speaking, you could:
Prepare Listening, Reading, Writing and Speaking Simultaneously. (Preferred for practice) - Prepare Listening, Reading, Writing, and Speaking one after the other. (Preferred for learning, hence I structure my courses in this way as well)
Both of these approaches have their pros and cons. The former allows to prepare each component in unison with the other, effectively having a spillover effect where your reading skills can improve from your listening efforts and vice versa. Same with speaking and writing, improve one and you’ll see improvements in the other. This prepares you for the real exam as well because it is akin to solving a mock exam every day for 14 days straight. This is the suggested approach if you’re attempting IELTS for the 2nd time.
The latter however, allows you to truly get focused, in depth, independent learning for whichever component you choose at a time. It’s fairly logical that you’ll see rapid increase in skills for 1 task at a time. Instead of doing 4 things, now you are only focusing on 1 at a time. This potential to lock in and focus on just one component is the only reason I structure my courses this way.
Anyways, enough chitchat. Let me give you one example structure for each strategy and then you can decide which one to adapt.
Structure 1: Simultaneous Prep
Days: 14
Hours Per day: 3.5 (More or less)
Goal: Solving 1 test for each component in the same sitting.
Time Per Component:
Listening: 45 minutes (30 for actual practice and 10 mins for Revision and Correction)
Reading: 75 Mins (60 for actual practice and 15 for Revision and Correction)
Writing: 60 Mins (You need someone else to check your writing. Try Chatgpt for starters and basic grammar but don’t trust it for improving your band scores, HIRE A WRITING EXPERT FOR THIS! Chatgpt makes a lot of errors!)
Speaking: 30 Mins (Generate ideas, make mind maps record yourself speaking and revise your mistakes, essentially get a coach for this.)
I have mentioned practice resources already above, so apply these time constraints and by the end of day 14, you’ll have effectively practiced each component for 14 times each. Meaning? You’ve essentially solved 14 IELTS tests. If that doesn’t prepare you, then I don’t know what will.
Start with book 10 test 1. Move on and try to add variety in your practice. Try alternate tests, for example, test 1 and 3 of one book, then test 2 and 4 of another, then come back to that book and complete the remaining tests.
For speaking, you can use the help of a friend, there are many avenues where you can find fellow IELTS aspirants to practice with. Discord is a huge place of communities; you can join the following server to find fellow English Learners:
Link: Biggest Official English Learning Discord Server
And you can also join IELTS with Awais’s Official Community server as well: (Click Here)
And if you enroll in my courses or buy my video course titled “Self-Prep”, I will always check your writing and speaking progress and give active feedback via text or voice chat.
Structure 2: Independent Prep
Days: 14
Hours in a Day: 2 to 4
Goal: Solving many tests of the same component
Time Per Component:
Listening: 2.5 Hours (Solve and check 4 tests. Do this for 3 days in a row. You can add another hour for writing here)
Reading: 3.5 Hours (Solve and check 3 tests, again for 3 days in a row. Make sure to study your mistakes in detail. If 3 is too much reading for you, then try 2 tests instead.)
Writing: 4 Hours (Solve and check 3 tests. 3 hours for attempting the tests, and keep 1 hour specifically to check them, understand and improve your mistakes. Do this for 4 days in a row. Don’t chicken out on extra writing practice, you’re going to need it.)
Speaking: 2 Hours (Solve as many tests as you can for this duration. Record yourself for cue card and highlight your mistakes. Attempt writing as well if you can spare an extra hour. Do this for 3 Days in a row.)
Day 14: Practice all 4 components in one sitting and attempt 1 test for each.
This should get you all geared up and ready to attempt the official IELTS Exam. If you haven’t booked it yet, click these links:
Book a date for your IELTS Exam with IDP Pakistan
Book a date for your IELTS Exam with British Council Pakistan
Book a date for your IELTS Exam with AEO Pakistan
Keep in mind that this doesn’t have to be a set and stone strategy. Maybe you have more than 14 days, maybe you have less. Just take what you need, and personalize it for your weaknesses. For example, my listening got 9 bands. During my prep, in the practice tests I always got 37 or 38 answers correct. This meant that I didn’t really have to spend more than 2 days on listening, and I could utilize the extra time on something else such as writing or reading.
5-Focus on Learning instead of results
Moving on to the next step, I’d like to highlight a major mistake that most students make when they start preparing for IELTS. This one is specific to listening and reading, chasing numbers. For example, a student may get 26 out of 40 in a certain reading test. Then he practices a few more times and his average comes out at 28. I’ve seen first-hand how many students can become tunnel visioned by this. They think, if only I could practice more and bump that number up to 30 or 32, but no matter how much they practice, they stay stuck. This is a terrible approach.
The problem is, IELTS is designed to accurately assess your English level. If your level is 5.5, then you’re going to get 5.5 no matter what. What you need, is understanding. You need to study your mistakes, figure out what you missed? Why did you get confused? What words were new for you? Which line did you skip over? How did you misunderstand the question?
After you practice, take a note of your mistakes and figure out why the correct answers are correct, and why your wrong answers are, well, wrong.
This approach will slowly and silently build up your English level and before you know it, your band score will naturally start to increase. So, to sum up, don’t just practice with sheer brute force. ALWAYS study your mistakes and learn from them. This will benefit you in the long run too.
If in the worst-case scenario, you fail to get your required band and have to re-attempt the exam, you’ll already have a solid foundation. Just build on it by slowly increasing your English level while simultaneously practicing for IELTS.
6-The only correct way to practice
Some people have difficulty taking out the time for practice. Some people treat it as resentful homework.
Let me just say that, if you can’t make a necessary sacrifice, then you’re not going to get what’s necessary.
If you need the motivation, think about your future. Imagine yourself in that dream country or university where you want to go. That should ignite the fire. Consider it a chore. It just has to be done, no matter what. Whether you want to or not doesn’t matter, you need to. That’s what matters.
Now let’s talk about how to practice. You need to put your phone away. And I don’t mean don’t just mean put it on do not disturb and start practicing on it. Put your phone in a separate room. Hand it your parents and tell them not to give it back to you for the next 3 hours if you have to, but get your daily practice reps in.
Get a laptop or personal desktop computer. You won’t be typing on your phone during the exam. Make the environment similar to the exam room. Sit up right on a comfortable chair, put your laptop or computer on a table. Make sure to hydrate and attend to the call of nature before the session.
Turn on the do not disturb mode in your computer and type “clock” in windows search. Click the sandwich icon on the top right and switch to “stopwatch”. Start it. Click always on top. Now you can see how much time you have spent during the practice session. Stop and reset the clock whenever you need to. But keep it up there, it will force an anxiety of time on you, this will create the exam room feeling and you’ll be able to time yourself.
This is the only correct way to practice. No exceptions. Make an exam room, and get to work. Forget the world exists. Extreme? Maybe. Does it work? Absolutely.
7-Feedback
I talked about getting proper/professional feedback on your practice. You can do that with the help of fellow students, IELTS aspirants, teachers or an IELTS tutor/coach. Getting proper feedback is essential to improve. You can learn a lot by collaboration, this is why I always suggest my students to reach out to different IELTS communities where they can find like-minded people.
That being said, you can book a slot with me for a one-on-one session too where we can discuss your needs and schedule a course accordingly. Please visit the pricing tab on my website to check the details of my courses.
I wish you all the best for your IELTS journey. Please comment your thoughts down below.
