Cracking IELTS

In the age of globalization and culture of abroad education, International English Language Testing System (IELTS) has become the default choice of many outgoing students around the world. Established in 1989, and jointly owned by the British Council, IDP: IELTS Australia and Cambridge Assessment English, IELTS is now a household name in many countries around the world. According to the data, the number of IELTS tests grew to a record 3.5 million in 2018.Nowadays this language testing has become an industry with more than 2 billion a year. The number of candidates taking IELTS exam is swelling every year because of its international recognition and acceptance from various countries around the world. Nepal too remains no exception in this phenomenon as in 2017 more than 23,000 Nepali students were studying in Australian institutions.

Getting good score in IELTS in really a daunting task for almost all candidates. As an IELTS instructor since couple of years, I can tell with evidence that why many Nepalese students get average grade despite having good English. While talking about the maximum average, one of the statistics shows that 29% of Nepalis students have scored between 5.5 to 6.0 in academic test and 21% students have scored 6.0 in general text. With my teaching experience I have identified three grounded reason that tent to push maximum students down to average every year. Firstly most of the Nepalese students think that they need to change their accent and sound more like British or American, which makes their accent more awkward to listen. Some of my students who had got excellent score in speaking were among those who kept up mild foreign accent and focused more on clarity of speech. Secondly I have identified a problem in students that they try to speak very fast and end up making unclear speech. The phrase “BBC tone” is popular among IELTS preparing students, which means speaking very fast like BBC news. Some students have habit of speaking very fast without considering the elements of speech like pause, pitch, facial expression and like. Such speaking spree will ultimately decrease the score. Instead if they slow down their speech it will help improve the fluency, grammar and vocabulary. In simple, IELTS speaking is not about copying the accent rather it’s about speaking clearly because they are not going to give extra marks for rapid speaking.

Similarly, another thing is in during IELTS writing students are instructed not to repeat same word in the passage. Owing to such instruction, some naïve students tend to think that they have to change every repeated word and end up using irrelevant words instead. Of course we can replace some words with synonyms but not all words are replaceable and in some cases, substituting many repetitions with synonyms may be difficult for students. How many synonyms can they think for same word? Thus, in course of replacing, many students remain prone to use irrelevant words which will yield nothing more than bad score. Likewise, during writing text I have observed many students obsessed with hard words to make standard writing. With such misconception in head, many candidates undeliberately make use of irrelevant words and ambiguous synonyms while making sentence.

While taking IELTS test the candidate should remember that good fluency in speaking and writing is not enough, of course its perks for getting marks but not enough in itself. For the test, candidates need to undergo special preparation and several mock tests to identify their lacks and mend it accordingly. If we compare the hypothetical case of well-prepared Nepali candidate and non-prepared Native American, I can guarantee that the well-prepared Nepali candidate can get better score. It’s because IELTS is more about techniques and pattern of dealing with question.

Many IELTS teaching consultancy and instructors around Kathmandu have been selling the optimistic narrative of tips and tricks to improve score in some days. One of the major irrelevant tips thriving in market is: memorising certain amount of vocabulary and using it during speaking and writing test. Even of the candidates memorized it all, it will be very difficult for them to use those words in right place because it needs years of writing and speaking practice to mastery such skill. So many students’ ends up using memorized words in wrong context.

Considering these entire scenario, it can be said that IELTS the sophisticated language testing system and only the tactful candidates can get good score. In case of Nepalese candidates, we need to overcome the conventional model of teaching-learning practice and adopt new methodology for improving overall performance in upcoming years.