What do you know about IELTS? For each question, circle the letter of your choice.
Answers: 1. b; 2. a; 3. b; 4. b; 5. c; 6. a; 7. c; 8. c; 9. a; 10. a; 11. c; 12. b; 13. b; 14. a; 15. c; 16. b; 17. c; 18. b; 19. a; 20. c; 21. c; 22. a; 23. c; 24. b; 25 a; 26. b; 27. c; 28. b; 29. a; 30. b
Here are the answers for pp 4-6: 1. a; 2. b; 3. b; 4. b; 5. a; 6. a; 7. a; 8. a; 9. b; 10. a; 11. b; 12. a; 13. b; 14. a; 15. a; 16. b
Here are some adjectives to describe candidates or the answers they give in the Writing and Speaking tests.
In the Writing test, what do examiners like?
Tick the positive attributes, and cross the negative ones as in the examples.
What do the adjectives above mean?*
Complete each sentence on the left about a candidate with the best item on the right.
In the Speaking test, what do examiners like? Tick or cross again.
What do the adjectives above mean?
Complete each sentence on the left about a candidate with the best item on the right.
Many examiners can judge a writer or a speaker in one or two sentences.
Read the items, below, from Writing tests, and rank them from most to least competent: A-E. There is an example.
An A from above would probably score an Eight; a B a Seven; a C a Six; a D a Five; and, an E a Four. (The order is: ADECB.) There isn’t space here to explain why these bands would be awarded, but you might like to compare the items, and discuss them with another candidate or a teacher.
Read the utterances below from Speaking tests, and rank them from most to least competent (8-4), bearing in mind that you can’t hear the candidates’ pronunciation although some words are written as they’ve been said. There is an example.
Here are the answers for pp 6-8.
Adjectives to describe strong writing candidates: edited, elegant, exemplified, formal, grammatically complex, legible, logical, persuasive, pertinent, succinct, tempered. Weak ones: biased, bogus, facile, formulaic, grammatically inaccurate, lexically narrow, rambling, tangential, under-length.
Sentence completion: Writing: 1. E; 2. G; 3. B; 4. A; 5. H; 6. C; 7. D; 8. F.
Adjectives to describe strong speaking candidates: amenable, articulate, coherent, contemplative, courteous, expansive, idiomatic, natural, self-correcting, unruffled. Weak ones: boastful, decontracted (Eg: ‘I am’ instead of ‘I’m’; ‘it is’ or ‘it has’ instead of ‘it’s’; ‘they will’ instead of ‘they’ll’ etc), hesitant, insincere, memorised, obsequious, opinionated, over-confident, scruffy, shallow.
Sentence completion: Speaking: 1. H; 2. A; 3. F; 4. E; 5. B; 6. G; 7. C. 8. D. Speaking utterances: 68745.
There are ten IELTS bands, and the creators of the IELTS exam describe them thus:
Go to www.ielts.org for more information on the bands, and on the public-access criteria examiners use to mark the Writing and Speaking tests.
Here is a table of approximate marks out of 40 needed to achieve certain bands. Bear in mind that the makers of the IELTS exam do not release this information, and that from time to time, marks needed may be one higher or one lower, depending on the ease or difficulty of a real IELTS Listening or Reading test.
Use this table to work out which bands you would score for the tests in this book.
*If you’re interested in reading levels, look up ‘Readability’ or ‘Flesch-Kincaid’.
*An IELTS Seven knows many of these words; a Six knows five or six; and, a Five knows just two or three.
*Printed by permission of Cambridge English Language Assessment. © UCLES 2015.
