Ielts

[KittyKat]

Dear All

I tried to search this topic in previous threads but with no avail.

Friend of mine, Indian pharmacist, is having a trouble to pass his IELTS. Failed already twice and is getting frustrated with the writing section (getting 6.5). Now, I would be eternally grateful if anyone can recommend an English teacher/practice resource that worked for them in passing this.

Many thanks
Kat

[rainbow121]

hi kitty kat. i m not an expert in IELTS but i can guarantee ur friend doesnt need any teacher. he/she can do it by himself/herslef. all u have to do is practice. ielts comprises of 4 different sections. From urpost it looks like ur friend is experiencing problem with writting. as for myself, i had a good look on different books.doesnt matter how good is ur friend's english, i have observed that IELTS examiners look for a specific layout which u can easily follow (from any decent IELTS book). i personally had to go through all the terms which r commonly used in describing a graph, made a list and used it in my exam. For the second passage i made sure to give a reasonable introduction, two or three paragraphs in support of my opinion, one or two paragraphs towards my disagreement with any possible solution and final paragraph for conclusion.

Examiners also observe if ur not repeating urself and ofcourse wealth of vocabulary ur using plus any spelling mistakes. i think there is a decent book by cambridge (cant remember the full title unfortunately but it does has cambride in its title) which can give u a very good idea about that specific layout. again english is not my first language and i m not an expert on IELTS but thats what i did, made myself familiar to the general layout of writing. most important thing in IELTS is time though, time is the biggest enemy in ur IELTS exam so u have to be precise and know what has been asked by u.

why ur friend is losing hope and getting frustrated anyway. many of my friends who r pharmacists and doctors made several attempts (some of them even made more than 10 attempts to clear IELTS) and they managed to do it. wheres the fun in life if everything is so simple and readily achievable . i m confident that ur friend can easily do it as well (maybe after few more attempts) and trust me, those few attempts worth it.

anyway i m adding a link under my post for to improve writing skills. its a pretty straight forward guideline with useful jargon and termnologies frequently used in explaining graphs. hope ur friend will find it useful. i know i did.....

Best of luck.

http://www.world-english.org/ielts_writing.pdf

Free IELTS advice, tests and samples

[paul2008]

I agree, its exam technique, parts of it are not too different from O'level English language as it was in the late 90's. There are courses in the UK and else where which will teach you to pass, even with a relatively poor grasp of English

As mentioned above there are tricks to passing the writing section in particular and just a bit of practice and perhaps doing a couple of tasks by explaining to a friend and discussing the task will help.

[KittyKat]

Thanks a lot for the response, I passed them onto my friend Ragu and he was glad to hear there is a ligth at the end of the IELTS tunnel!

[Rafael]

if he is not on a spouse visa, or settled statues in the uk, might be worth mentioning that under the CURRENT rules ( recent rules changed couple of months ago), it is almost impossible to get a work visa to do his pre-reg, unless he do it at hospital pharmacy, as it's still judged as in shortage by the government.