His 6.5 blocked him going to Canada
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You are now listening to the IELTS Podcast. Learn from tutors and ex-examiners who are masters of IELTS preparation. Your host, Ben Worthington.

Hi there and welcome to IELTS podcast. In this tutorial we are going to be talking with Rohan from India who got some very high scores in the IELTS exam. So could you please introduce yourself Rohan and tell us where you're from and why you are taking the IELTS exam.

Hello Ben, this is Rohan here from Mumbai, India. So my actual purpose was to get immigrated to Canada for some kind of work because that's what I'm looking out for, for my near future. And for that, ILTS is one of the important examinations.

I've been giving this examination for quite some time now, but I was very skeptical about the writing part because I was not getting the exact grades which I needed as per my age. And that is how I came up to ILTS podcast. It was just a

small Google search about IELTS examination and I searched for, I mean I looked onto this website for IELTS podcast. I just went through some of your articles or let's say the essays that had been written by maybe some of your colleagues or maybe students but I like them and I started digging deep.

And what I did is then I thought it's better if I take some guidance by choosing one of the courses. So I first took a sample guidance course, you can say, where I wrote an essay and that was being reviewed. So firstly, I liked the review because honestly, I had also tried another website which also gave me a lot of grades and asked me how I can repair this.

But the best part about Altius podcast was that you provide a video where I can go through it, that you know what is wrong, what is right and what should be improved. So I was very impressed by that. And that is where I decided I should go for a course, which is much lengthier. And then I can do a couple of essays and which will help me improve. And finally, at the end of the day, it has helped me.

Excellent. Okay, super. Thank you very much for that, Rohan. Yeah, just to expand on that for the students listening, what happens is we give you a question, you type out your answer, you send it in, and then we make a video of us correcting it, going through it, reading it, and it works really well, and a lot of students find that they improve

quite quickly with this type of feedback except the other day a student who was deaf bought this essay correction and so yeah so it wasn't that much good for it wasn't that

much use for her because she couldn't hear the corrections unfortunately there's captions probably on the YouTube video however yeah I offered her a refund so for like 99% of the people they find it very valuable so anyway Rohan can you tell me the specific problem well no before we jump into that you said you took IELTS a few times before or you were preparing for IELTS for quite a while

How many tests did you take beforehand? I think before ILTS podcast, I think maybe if I remember that correctly, I think it was three or four times. Wow, okay. And how were you preparing for the writing before?

I think I was just doing some random essay writings so as to use and choose topics so I knew the formats of various topics like you know agree disagree and various other topics so I knew about the topics so as to practice them one by one but I think these were the small nuances in each of the essays which I think I was missing somewhere and that is why I needed some guidance okay interesting interesting so

So the specific problem that you were looking to solve with the writing was like how to construct an essay would you say or was it something else?

I think I will go a bit back on this question because you know when I started with ILTS podcast I actually came to know what are my problems because that's what happened with me when I started seeing the reviews I understood what the problems are otherwise if you just practice writing your essays you'll always feel that you're writing it in the correct manner because that is what I did even at the examinations but when the review happened

through the videos I came to know where I'm going wrong. So to give you a couple of examples on this one, there was a review which talked about that if you're mentioning some points, which is a fact or something, maybe you can give some relevant examples to it. So that was one thing. Secondly, the usage of articles.

and thirdly I think the overall construct of you know the number of ideas that you're trying to put in it has to you know gel with one another from start to the end so I think these were two or three things which I was missing and which I'll just podcast helped me and yeah yeah yeah it's surprising like

I see essays every single day and what you said about getting the points to work together or to gel together as you said yeah that's like the ability to write cohesively you know so it all connects with each other and then

putting and giving examples to the points you make that's building your arguments and as you said very correctly that all has to gel together it all has to be cohesive and what I want to zoom in and on is the use of articles because I see this day in day out students struggling with this specific area and in your case

the team, our team of essay correctors, they identified that this was an issue for you. Okay, so this was part of the problem solved and then how did you work on this? How did you improve this? I think more than the problem, they highlighted that you know maybe you can make lesser use of the articles because this is also one of the tutorial videos that ILTS podcast provides.

So to give you an example, let's say most of the times when I used to write an essay, I used to use the article or let's say the word 'the' most of the times while writing some simple sentences. But through IELTS podcast, I came to know, let's say that, you know, for some of these sentences, we can use full plurals where we don't need to use the word 'the'.

You can construct sentences in a way that, you know, you don't need articles, but, you know, you can present beautifully. So it's more presenting it in different ways. So even the examiner knows that, you know, you know, different kinds of sentences, maybe complex compound, et cetera, and try to use the articles in, or, you know, do some lesser usage of the articles. Not that we just need to vanish them totally, but, you know, don't try to repeat it too much. Yeah, that's excellent. Yeah, that's an excellent point.

and to be honest I had forgotten about these sort of like the ways we teach in the course and how to sidestep the use of articles because like you say of course we do need to use them in the essay but there are a variety of sentences we can use and a variety of different techniques we can use so that we can avoid it and then we

decreased the chances of mistakes and as you said changing the sentences to plurals is definitely I remember it's definitely a good way forward because you just reduce the opportunity for error and it's grammatically just as good as the sentence with articles but without the mistakes so excellent point there excellent point now

So you said you had essay corrections beforehand. Yeah, you had essay corrections with other services. Why didn't you carry on with those other services?

I think both the, so I had taken a survey guidance or let's say survey article review or the essay review for both the websites, that is the other website and for yours. I wouldn't say that the other one was not too good. It was quite good in terms of the oral report that they provided. But as I said, I liked the video format. I felt as if it was more of a person.

that you are talking to because when a video starts you try to relate to it because someone is talking to you about the different problems that you have created in the essay and then how do you need to improve it more than a report is something that you know you're just reading something and

You also need to, you know, improve on that. So you don't know where you need to improve. And part of the videos when I came to know the issue, I also had some email support. So if I had a question, I was able to ask that person, the dedicated person who was able to help me from start till end. So I think it was more personal experience for me overall. Yeah, yeah, that's a good point. I always try to explain it. It's like a teacher looking over your shoulder while you're writing your work.

or while you're preparing. Whereas if you get the PDF,

it can be copy-paste you know because a lot of students have problems with articles so you can just write a copy-paste sentence just saying okay you need to improve the use of articles check out these resources copy paste and that's the same for for Rohan for Mark for David for anybody you know they just copy paste that and also I was looking at some essay corrections some Chinese students sent me and

I even saw some grammatical mistakes or some phrases that the teacher had given to them that wasn't even like native English speaker you know so I think a lot of these services it's not corrected by well you cannot be 100% certain that it's corrected by a native English speaker whereas ours you hear the person and it's pretty obvious you can so anyway moving on now

Let's move on from the writing and let's talk about the other areas. So what were your scores in listening and reading, for example? So for listening, I had 8.5. Wow. For reading again, I think, yes, it was 8.5. Wow. How did you get those scores, Rohan? That's crazy.

I think it was just self-practice. I mean, for reading, I just kept on practicing the book specifically that ILTS provides you. So I just went through all the chapters, tried to do the reading practices, some of the reading things from ILTS podcast.

And same for listening. I think practice is the key for it. I just kept practicing. For listening, the thing is that you need to understand the accent, firstly. Some part of my work also contains a lot of international calls. So that helped me in a way to understand the accents and, you know, keep on going with the listening part, try to understand the small things within...

whatever the overall exercise is going on within listening and correct and I mean mark the correct answers there. So I think yeah, practice helped me there. Interesting, interesting. And what a good point there that you mentioned is that if you said you're on the phone all the time with your work, listening to different accents, is that correct?

Yes, I wouldn't say all the time, but you can see, you know, most of my period has been, you know, being in touch with, let's say, some of the European nations. So I could understand the accents there, which helped me somewhere. Yeah. Which country, which European countries was the most difficult to understand?

I wouldn't say any country is difficult to understand. I think everyone has their own accent because, you know, I can give an example that, you know, sometimes human people can feel that, you know, people from India have a different accent and it's difficult to understand. So I wouldn't say it's difficult, but, you know, just people have different accents and that's it. Fair enough. Okay. Okay. That's a very diplomatic answer there, Rohan. Yeah.

You can tell you've got experience on the phone. Yeah. I would be tempted just to jump in with both feet and say, these people are these people. But yeah. I would say I love all these people. I've worked with them, so I wouldn't hurt anyone. So it has been a good experience to live. Okay, good, good, good.

Yeah, much more diplomatic than myself. I think I've got the diplomacy of a bulldozer sometimes. But anyway, let's move on. So you were doing plenty of, well, you've got not only with the listening, you've got plenty of listening experience through your work and lots of communication and speaking experience as well. And plus, what I find that when you're on the phone,

with another person and you don't have the visual clues you know you can't see the facial expressions you can't read their lips you can't watch their arms you can't see their body I find it's sort of like the next level of communication because then it's purely just auditory would you agree?

I would agree to that because the only point of communication is your voice so you need to be very careful about what you're speaking and what you're listening at the same time. Exactly, yeah, exactly. I remember when, because as you know I'm from England but when I was in Spain and then I started communicating, well I had to communicate on the phone sometimes

and it was really taxing and I realized I've got to step it up a little bit so yeah yeah it's probably good training so you did not only did you have this experience from your work but also you said you did practice tests is that right? yes yeah okay where did you get the practice test from?

Some of them I would say ILTS podcast but to be honest there was also a website which is I think if I'm not wrong it's ILTSonlinetest.com which has all these tests uploaded online so you can just randomly go and they have whole lot of tests there not only for listening but also reading and writing and you know all of them for ILTS. So most of the listening one I chose from them, I took up from them.

and the rest of the ones which are already there in the IELTS book, which is the IELTS 12 book, which I was referring to. So the four tests out of them. So I think that was enough to practice. Excellent. Excellent. And for the in your test, which you just recently completed, do you remember the accent that you had to listen to in your listening test? Uh,

I don't exactly remember, but just to go back, I think it was more of a UK accent, if I'm not wrong, actually. Okay, cool. Cool. Just out of curiosity, because yeah, it says on the official site it's going to be

a range of accent it could be any accent from an English-speaking country but from my understanding a lot of the times it's the British accent even though they say it could be Canadian it could be Australian, Kiwi, whatever but from my understanding it's usually British right then now then so and the speaking what was your score in the speaking

Speaking, I had 7.5. Oh, good, good. Was it a comfortable test? Was it an easy experience or was it stressful and horrible?

I wouldn't say too much of stress there because I already had a couple of tests done for speaking as I mentioned previously. So it was quite cool. But I think it was an okay test. I think I could have scored more maybe if I could have practiced more. But I think I'm satisfied with what I scored I got on speaking. So it was quite okay.

Excellent. Okay. So you said you'd done the test three times before. Each time were your scores like pretty high for the listening, for the reading and for the speaking? Yeah.

I think reading has been good from the start. Listening, I think I progressed over the period of time. The first one wasn't too good, but I think the second, third, fourth and even the final one which I gave it was quite good. The same goes for speaking. Speaking was good from the start. It was only with writing that I was not able to progress. I see. What were your previous scores in the writing?

I think I was stuck at 6.5 from the start itself. I was just not able to, you know, go ahead. So, you know, you can say my life was full of stress only for 0.5 and I realized, you know, what 0.5 can do to your life.

Wow, yeah, that's a very good way of putting it. At 0.5, it has such a massive impact, doesn't it? Exactly, exactly. Wow. When I started watching some motivational videos and where I saw that, you know, there are athletes who are failing even 0.1. So I think that, you know, 0.5 was too much and I need to start working harder. And that is where I'll just podcast help me.

Wow, wow. Let's zoom in on this. Let's focus on this a bit. So you watch some sort of like motivational videos on YouTube and they were talking about athletes. Yeah, exactly. I think, I mean, these were like most of, you know, the accidental videos. I would say that, you know, I accidentally came across these videos because I was just watching some random stuff. So I just thought, you know, let's see what this video says. And that is where I saw that, you know, if you see some of the histories of some of the athletes,

They are losing by point few seconds and something and then they have to work for the whole year again and come back to another event or something to again test and try themselves. But at least in IELTS you can just go back and give your exam the very next month or very next few days. So we have been luckier to do this. The only key is keep working harder. Very interesting viewpoint and I would totally agree with it and

I know exactly what you mean. Like in Formula One with the race cars, it's hundredths of a second, you know? And they only get something like 21 races a year or per season. And, you know, they've got one chance or 21 chances basically. But...

the margins are so small but yet it has such a massive impact and yeah like you said IELTS is a similar game I mean obviously we're not at professional athletic levels but the margins are still pretty small except

you've got the opportunity to go back and back again and do it. Or, as you've done, get professional help first and then come back and then walk away with that seven. So, yeah, well done there, Rohan. That's a very, yeah, well done. And, yeah, I'm pleased that you took that route, you know, and that you compared yourself and you said, look, if these athletes have got it, then I surely can do it. No? Would you agree that that was your...

thinking at the time? Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. Gotcha. That's what I understood. So finally, it's my last question. What would you say to anyone sitting on the fence right now about whether to join, whether to start with IELTS podcast with the sentence guide with the online course?

I would say that for anyone who is sitting on the fence and struggling with any of the part, be it listening, writing, reading, specifically for writing because I had a great experience with IELTS podcast. I would say that even before you go for your next test, because there's a certain fee that IELTS charges for and it's a whole big good amount. So even before you go for that, I think you need to look into what are your problems, study them clearly, practice it.

take some professional help from ILTS podcast because I had a good experience with them and then only go for the next exam because then you won't need to do a couple of trials in your very next trial I'm sure that you know you should be able to score some good grades and that would be my suggestion or you know advice to these people excellent excellent point yeah I think a lot of students they get

tied up in what I call like the IELTS casino where it's test after test after test hoping for a different grade whereas yeah it's much it's much wiser to do practice tests get some professional help find out where you are and then once you're confident you

that you're at a certain level then put in for a test after you've received the guidance and you've improved and you've got the feedback and and everything like that so Rohan last question promise you said you've applied for Canada whereabouts in Canada and what position are you hoping to do

To be honest, you know, I'm still working out with this thing with a couple of my, you know, colleagues or friends or, you know, someone who is trying to help me professionally. So I'm still planning on that. I don't have a right answer to it right now. Okay, okay. But it's definitely going to be Canada though. Yes, I mean, that's what I'm looking out for. Gotcha, gotcha. And is there any city specifically that you'd like to go to?

I'm not sure. There are one or two of my friends there and I think they are registered Ontario. But I've just read about it online. So maybe that's one of them on the list. But I'm still figuring out what could be the other possible options. Interesting. Yeah, interesting. I know one or two people that...

they applied for places way out in the sticks so to speak you know just like way out in the countryside where there's hardly anybody because nobody was applying there and the doors were open because the country because that county or state was pretty much just a province that's it that province was just empty and so the doors were open but anyway yeah that's uh that's another point so

Well done, Rohan, for getting the scars you wanted. And yeah, and thank you very much for doing this interview with us. And I hope and I'm pretty certain you will have inspired a lot of students to take action.

Also, just to remember that, you know, you only fail if you give in. You've just got to keep at it, keep trying, keep working hard. And yeah, eventually you'll get there just like Rohan did. Is that right, Rohan? Absolutely. I would like to do it, Ben.