Speedrunning IELTS in Two Weeks

Now that I've registered myself to IRO, I'll have to cope with the deadline for EPT submission on the 10th January. My 5th semester finals concluded itself on the 15th of December, but I was only able to start studying for IELTS on the 17th. Because of the aforementioned deadline, I had to register myself for a test on the 30th at the latest. So all in all I had less than two week to prepare myself. How did I do it?

Prerequisites

It would be pretentious of me to say that it was only my effort during the two week period and nothing else that contributed to the decent test score that I ended up getting. Before this, I obviously wasn't a stranger to English. I got used to watching foreign Youtube videos in English without subtitle since grade 8, which made it a breeze to pick up the listening subtest once I started studying for the test. Due to my activities in MUN, I'm used to both academic reading (because I had to read a bunch of formal government documents and research papers) and writing (because I had to write position papers, which I actually put a lot of effort into). MUN also gave me a leg up on speaking since it immensely improved my enunciation and pronunciation. Specifically on writing, I do enjoy it, as can be seen by the relatively rich content of this personal website (though to be honest it's more of a love-hate relationship, that's why some entries in this website are empty). And I've been used to writing in English since before I got into college.

Two Weeks of Drilling

Just like how I solved my past academics shortcomings, I approached this issue by just keep drilling myself with the test at hand. I registered for my test at the British Council. I highly recommend any of you planning to take this test to do the same, because the British Council gives out a rich collection of learning resources for the test. Most notably, they gave test takers access to this service free of charge up until the test day. I mostly drilled myself using the resources there and I firmly believe that I owe most of my test score to the drills that I did there. Other than the resources given by the British Council, I also did three mock IELTS test during the two week period.

It'It's redacted from the server-side, do you think you're so clever? It's redacted from the server-side, do you think you're so clever? It's redacted from the server-side,

English At Home

This might sound surprising coming from someone who has done a lot of MUN but I found that the IELTS speaking test to be pretty hard. The difficulty that I faced was in coming up with the correct words and sentence structure that can convey what I want to convey, which wasn't easy to do in a live real-time English conversation without any script where every answer you give must be impromptu. One of the way that I counteracted this was by speaking entirely in English with both of my parents in my day-to-day. I found that at the start of doing this, I can feel the heavy tax on my brain every time I speak. This tax represents itself in the form of a noticeable ache going in my head. But as days went on, the ache slowly went down in intensity until it just stopped. Choosing the proper words and planning my sentences simply became easier and easier over time as I speak English with my parents. For better or for worse, the habit carry itself over even after the test and I still speak with them in English to this day.

The Test and Its Result

Right after the test I thought that I had fumbled pretty bad because I spent half of my writing time for the first text that I was supposed to write in the writing subtest, even though it is weighted less compared to the second text in the subtest. I ended up with what I felt was subpar writing for the second text. Additionally, I didn't think that I did well in the speaking test because of two reasons:

• I just didn't feel that fluent when talking to the evaluator.

• In all three of my mock IELTS test, I maxed out at 7 for speaking.

All in all, I was feeling pretty down after the test. I thought that I would probably get a 7 or 7.5 at maximum. Which is a perfectly fine score, but I had a high target of 8 considering that I'm planning to choose host universities that are in Europe or North America.

Thankfully, right after new year on the 2nd of January the result came out and I got an overall band score of 8. I got 9 on both writing and reading, 8 on speaking, and 6.5 on writing. Although I was overjoyed with the great result, I cannot help but be somewhat pissed at myself considering that my score is within spitting distance of 8.5 (it'd only take my writing score to be improved to 7 for me to get that score). But I quickly counted my blessings and at the end of the day, 8 is pretty great.