If you are one of those aspirants who are crazy about studying abroad, you must have heard about IELTS (International English Language Testing System).
For others wondering what IELTS is, IELTS is an English Exam for non-native English language speakers.
Passing this exam helps you move abroad for the purpose of education and work. The British Council and Cambridge Assessment English take care of IELTS. You can take the exam based on your requirement. If you need to move abroad for Studies, you need to take IELTS Academic. If your purpose of moving to a foreign country is for work, then you need to take the General Training Version Exam, where the eligibility criteria for IELTS remain the same.
The IELTS score is accepted and recognized by more than 30,000 universities in the United States and accepted in other countries like Canada, Newzealand, UK, Australia.
The IELTS is considered one of the best substitutes for TOEFL. It’s recognized and accepted in most countries.
IELTS Eligibility:
You are eligible to take the IELTS exam if you are over the age of 16. Some other eligibility conditions for IELTS are,
- You must have a valid passport
- You must be planning to study in countries such as Canada, Newzealand, UK, Australia.
The IELTS doesn’t have any strict rules like the other exams but the given conditions should be fulfilled in order to appear for the IELTS Exam.
Registration for IELTS:
You can register for the IELTS Exam real quick. It’s quite simple. You can apply either online or offline.
If you are registering for the IELTS Exam Online, all you need to do is go to the official website and book a test option. You will be given options to choose the country, your nearest centers, and the date you are available to take the exam.
Once that is done, you can fill the application form with all the necessary details, submit it and pay the registration fee of Rs.13,250/ –
If you can register for IELTS online, there is nothing to worry about. You can just download the application form that is given on the official website and go down to the British Council directly, fill the form, and submit the application.
You can pay the registration fee Rs. 13,250/- using debit cards or credit cards or ICICI Bank deposit slip or a demand draft.
Difference between IELTS Academic and IELTS General
| IELTS General | IELTS Academic |
| This exam is more of General Writing & General Reading | This exam is more of Academic Writing and Academic Reading |
| You can take this exam if you want to study, migrate, or work or even for Secondary Education | You can take this exam for Higher Education purposes |
| You can attempt to write this exam if you are willing to migrate to English speaking countries | You can take this exam if you want admission in Foreign Universities |
Exam Pattern for IELTS:
The IELTS Exam pattern has 4 sections,
- Reading
- Writing
- Speaking
- Listening
You should take these exams in a go. There are no breaks allowed in between. You can attempt to take the speaking test before a week or after a day of attending the other 3 tests.
The time duration for this exam is about 2 hours and 45 minutes.
| Section | No. of questions | Duration | Details |
| Writing | 2 | 60 minutes | There will be 2 writing tasks and you need toComplete that in the provided time. |
| Listening | 40 | 30 minutes(excluding 10 minutes of transfer time) | There will be 4 sections, each with 10 questions.You will be asked to listen to the recordings and then answer the questions. |
| Speaking | 3 parts | 11 to 14 minutes | Oral Interview |
| Reading | 40 | 60 minutes | There will be 3 passages in total and you will be asked to answer all questions. |
IELTS Syllabus:
The IELTS syllabus has different sections. We will now see a brief about all the key sections in the syllabus.
Listening:
There are 4 sections in the listening and In each section of listening, there are 10 questions. The listening section is just to evaluate your capacity of understanding and your ability to progress ideas.
These are one mark questions and will be asked in the form of tables, notes, summary, flowcharts, or anything for that matter.
You will be expected to provide relevant answers based on what you have listened to.
You will be played four types of recordings,
- A casual conversation between two people
- Speech by a person, most probably a monologue
- Discussion between 4 people, usually in the context of academics
- Monologue based on the academic subject
Academic & General Reading:
All you have to do is read the given passage thoroughly and answer the questions that’s been asked.
The Academic & General Reading will have 3 sections and each section might have a maximum of 13 – 14 questions. However, this whole section will have around 40 questions. You may have to write a summary, or sentence completion, or information matching.
Since the academic and the general reading are different, we’ll see about that separately.
IELTS Academic Reading (40 questions in 60 minutes)
You will have 3 reading passages in this section. These are all one mark questions and tasks may range from,
- Multiple-choice
- Identifying Information
- Identifying Writer’s Views/Claims
- Matching Information
- Matching Headings
- Matching Features
- Matching Sentence Endings
- Sentence Completion
- Summary, Note, Table, Flow-chart Completion
- Diagram Label Completion
- Short-answer Questions
IELTS General Training: Reading (40 questions in 60 minutes):
The IELTS General Training reading has 3 sections. The questions are taken from an english speaking country’s magazine, or daily or articles.
The types of questions in this section would be, ‘
- 2 to 3 short texts or multiple texts
- Two Texts
- One Long Test
Academic & General writing:
The writing of both academic and general would be of the same pattern but the context is different.
It consists of 2 tasks and h=will be given 60 minutes to complete.
Types of Task:
- You need to describe the visual representation of what is given in not more than 150 words. You will be given 20 minutes to complete this task.
- The candidate should compose an essay in view of any argument or an issue.
The time duration given to this task is 40 minutes and you should not write more than 250 words.
IELTS General Writing:
Task 1: The candidate will be asked to write a letter asking for any information or explaining the situation.
You have 20 minutes and you have the word limit of 150 words.
Task 2: The candidate needs to write an essay in response to any argument or in view of an issue.
You will be given 4minutes to take this exam and a word limit of 250 words.
Speaking:
This is the most crucial part. Your conversation will be recorded to further evaluate your performance.
It has three sections. It takes 10 – 15 minutes to complete and evaluate your English speaking skills.
- Introduction & Interview
- Long Turn
- Discussion
Based on your performance in all the 4 major sections, you’ll be given scores. You will be picked by the Universities based on the IELTS score.
Closing Points:
IELTS is one of the most important Exams to crack to move abroad. These are the things that you should know before attempting to write the exam.
You can take guidance from the Meet University in case you get lost in the process.
