written by Rakibul Hasan

A common question many come up with on this group, is, what is a good coaching centre for IELTS? My personal opinion is that Coaching Centres are a waste of time and money.  The best thing an IELTS candidate can do is to practice the model tests from Cambridge IELTS Books 1 to 9. All the books are available at your nearest book store. You don’t have to run to Nilkhet as the price is pretty much same everywhere.  With the Cambridge Books you are all geared up for the IELTS, no book/guide of any other sort is needed.  Believe me, these books are a true reflection of what you would face in the actual test day. These books are self-explanatory so it is very easy to understand the rules of the tests. Each book comes with a CD that contains the listening tests. The listening tests are timed, so to take a listening test in designated time all you have to do is to follow the audio instructions on the CD.

Many Coaching Centres nowadays, claim to teach certain tricks for the IELTS. Actually, everything, including those tricks along with every possible rule are explained in the first few pages of the Cambridge books. Read carefully those pages, and you will have a clear idea about how to answer the questions, rules about using abbreviations and so on. Here is a simple tip; it is a good thing to write all your answers in uppercase letters, it can save you from possible loss of marks for the inappropriate use of small and capital letters in cases of Nouns and words in the middle of a sentence.

As you know the IELTS test has 4 modules, namely, listening, reading, writing and speaking. However there is one module that can help you improve every other module. Reading. Read as much as you can and it will improve your listening, writing and speaking skills. Read whatever you want to. It doesn’t have to be any text of guidebook. Read from the internet, sports, film magazines anything. Just take care that what you are reading is in proper English. For speaking, a good practice is to record your speech in your mobile phone recorder and then listen to your own voice to detect the mistakes.

These are just some simple guidelines on how to prepare for the IELTS test. Start practicing, and you would device many such guidelines yourself. Just don’t waste your money on coaching centres. Give the money to me, if you have a lot of it!

Rakibul Hasan