Top 5 Best Websites for IELTS Preparation

Posted by IH Aberdeen on 27th November 2015

Preparing for the IELTS exam doesn’t stop outside the classroom. The internet is a
great source of free extra materials for IELTS practice.

But with so much choice, which are the best resources?

IH Aberdeen’s IELTS teachers Angela and Will pick their top 5 IELTS resources to help
you prepare for the IELTS exam:

1. IELTS.org

This is the official IELTS Exam site and it’s a great place to familiarise yourself with
how the exam works. There is a lot of useful practical IELTS exam information here:
general info on the IELTS exam format, how to register, where to find an IELTS test
centre, sample IELTS exam questions and tips on preparing for the exam.

There’s also an active Facebook page which contains quizzes and tips, and is updated
regularly. You can comment on posts, ask questions and converse with other learners.

www.IELTS.org
2. IELTS-simon

This site has some great resources for IELTS preparation.

The site is run by an expert: IELTS-simon is run by an ex-IELTS examiner. The advice
offered here comes from people who really know about IELTS success!

The site is updated daily with ‘IELTS Lesson of the day’. They offer a generous
amount of free information and study materials: sample exam questions and
papers, model answers, and lots of IELTS Exam tips.

You can subscribe to the site to get daily lessons and tips delivered to your inbox.

ielts-simon.com 

3. IELTS Buddy

It is easy to focus on IELTS skills, technique and exam practice and forget
that vocabulary and grammar are important for IELTS too. IELTS Buddy is a great
site which focuses on these important areas.

The informative section on Vocabulary and Grammar is useful for the IELTS Exam, with
academic wordlists (to make your essays shine!) and grammatical structures
appropriate to the writing tasks.

IELTS Buddy also offers more of the useful IELTS resources as the sites mentioned
above: information on the exam format, sample exam questions and papers,
downloadable materials. 

www.ieltsbuddy.com

4. IELTS Liz YouTube channel

If you prefer a more visual approach to learning, English teacher and IELTS examiner
‘IELTSLiz’ (not her birth name of course…) has a lovely youtube channel. Her video
lessons cover all 4 IELTS tasks and the IELTS lessons are friendly, well-paced and
informative. She also offers some other general tips and advice for the IELTS exam and
she covers IELTS vocabulary too. https://ieltsliz.com/ielts-writing-task-1-lessons-and-tips/

www.youtube.com/user/ieltsliz

5. IH London blog

There is a lot of information and advice on IELTS on the internet and it can be
overwhelming. IH London is a respected IELTS exam centre and language school and
has a really useful, concise IELTS resource section on their blog. Here, you’ll find
straightforward tips on how to improve you IELTS writing score, prepare for the listening
test as well as many other parts of the exam.

A great, short resource on preparing for the IELTS exam!

www.ihlondon.com/blog/posts/2014/all-about-ielts/

Overall, there are lots of great resources out there for you to choose from. You’ll find
which resources work best for you. And if there are any other websites of resources that
you find really useful, let us know so we can tell other students all about them! 

Study hard for IELTS and you will succeed. Good luck everyone! 

To find out more about IELTS Preparation at IH Aberdeen, email us

oninfo@ihaberdeen.com, or call on +44 (0)1224 634006

You can prepare well for the IELTS writing tasks through good practices. It's a common
myth that scoring in writing section is difficult. You can try out the Cambridge’s WRITE
AND IMPROVE BETA online software to assess your writing work. It's been developed my a
team of Cambridge English researchers and it shows you the score on the Cambridge scale
from A1 to C2. You can try out a numerous tasks in there and hence you can get an idea of
your final score.
Try listening to English podcasts from iTunes, ABC radio, BBC Live Radio, etc from the
internet or Apps.

For speaking, try speaking out fluently by cutting the unwanted disturbing sounds like
Ummm, Ahmm, Errr. These sounds may attract the examiners to reduce your score as they
make the examiners to think that you are not fluent.

Try speaking about various topics in front of a mirror or with your friend or a family
member. Try out all the three parts of speaking test.

Watch YouTube videos on IELTS speaking, which are officially released by IELTS on
YouTube. They feature a list of videos ranging from band score 3.5 to 9!

Read and listen to IELTS-style material

Read lots of IELTS-style texts, and listen to lots of IELTS-style audio recordings. These will
help you to improve your English. You will also find out about the kinds of topics that come
up in the IELTS test. Focus especially on topics related to education, health and the
environment as these are topics that frequently come up in the IELTS test. Here are some
great websites for reading practice.

IELTS Reading preparation: 11 websites to help - IELTS Charlie

For listening, listen to podcasts, BBC Radio and TED Talks.

 Build your IELTS vocabulary

To succeed in the IELTS exam, you need to have a wide vocabulary. This means having a
good level of general English, but it also helps to know lots of words and phrases connected
to common IELTS topics, such as education, health and the environment.

Here’s an online course where you can learn lots of words essential for success in the IELTS
test:

IELTS Vocabulary: Learn 300 Essential Words for IELTS

So here are my few tips which helped me achieve my result.

 1. You should enroll for course at British Council even if it’s expensive. The reason
is that, you will learn a lot better from creators of the course than anyone else. It’s
really worth it.
2. Do all components of IELTS every day, such as reading, writing, speaking and
listening. Don’t just focus on one at a time. It will get you bored out that way.
3. Practice makes it perfect. Get past papers / material to practice. The more you
practice, the better your result will be.
4. Listen to English news at least for 30mins a day or watch movies on youtube. It
will help you learn faster. Languages always improve the more you listen to.
5. Speak clearly. Record yourself and hear your pronounciation. If you keep talking
but no one can understand you, then it will be worth nothing.
6. If you are a beginner, then try using apps to translate words, phrases or whole
sentences. I used this app to translate some words which I will face during reading
section. This app also has free IELTS preparation material updated every day.
My Translator - Android Apps on Google Play