IELTS Energy 1474: IELTS 5-Month Study Plan
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This is an IELTS Energy Podcast, Episode 1474, IELTS 5-Month Study Plan.

Welcome to the IELTS Energy Podcast from All Ears English, downloaded more than 22 million times with former IELTS examiner Jessica Beck and Aubrey Carter, the IELTS whiz. If you are stuck with a low score, our insider method will help you get the score you need to unlock your dreams. Get your estimated band score now with our two-minute quiz. Go to allearsenglish.com

Do you have an IELTS study plan? If not, you need one. Today, you'll find out what you need to do to prepare for the IELTS scores you need. Whether you have five months, three months, or 30 days, you have to do these specific things before test day.

Do you know your English level? Knowledge is power, as they say, and knowing your English level is the first step to actually reach your goals. Take our free two-minute specialized quiz to discover where you're at now and get custom tips for how to reach the next level. Go to allearsenglish.com slash fluency score, answer eight questions, and get your results immediately. Go now to allearsenglish.com slash fluency score.

Aubrey, how you doing? I'm great. How are you, Jessica? I'm so good. I'm excited to talk about study plans for IELTS today. We haven't talked about, we haven't done like a deep dive into how to prepare overall for the IELTS exam in a while. Yes, this is going to be so useful. And if you are listening to this and thinking, huh, I didn't think

think about having a study plan following a study plan i'm excited that you now are thinking about it because it's so helpful it's vital to be following a study plan i cannot imagine preparing for something as enormous as the ielts exam without a study plan because as you'll see today guys it doesn't matter if you have one month or five months like there is so much material to cover um

while improving your overall English because it is an English test. - Yeah, I think it would almost be more tricky for people who do, we got a question about, so I'll just read it. This is from Hassan who said, "What is your recommendation for IELTS in five months?" And I think this might be even trickier 'cause it's like, what do I focus on first? What should I, are there things I should wait for? Whereas if you have 30 days, it might be a little more clear to you what you need to dive in and start tackling right now. - Yeah, that's true.

our online ielts course guys allearsenglish.com keys k-e-y-s we do have a 30-day study plan and a 60-day study plan that is very detailed every single day what to do when to start doing test practice for each skill you know etc etc um because again there is so much to cover you really need an organized plan um to to reach your goal in time

Yes, especially if you are the type of person that if you don't have sort of laid out what you need to do and things you can check off, you find yourself going several days without doing much at all. You really need to get organized.

you know i have a neighbor who we're very similar uh very productive right and i was shocked i've been really good friends with this person for like three years at this point and i was shocked just last month she's like i don't really make any lists or write anything down i keep it all in my head i was like how how do you do that like i

I would be very surprised if there are a lot of people with those brains listening because most people are like Aubrey and I, right? Like you need to have things written down. You need a plan to follow. Well, and I remember when I was more like that and I definitely missed deadlines. Like things would fall through the cracks sometimes.

because it's inevitable. Like you're going to, you can't keep everything in your head and you can't be kind of sporadic about things you're setting dates for and alarms. It just, if it's not systematic, you're going to miss stuff. Especially if you're doing IELTS in addition to being a partner, a parent and employee like us. Which most of you are. Yeah.

So let's get into this guys. Let's say that you are going to do IELTS in five months, right? So we're five months out. This is our first month of IELTS preparation. Aubrey, what should we be focusing on? Yeah. So at five months you want to focus on overall English fluency, reading

books, choose a novel you love so that you're actually spending time reading in English. You don't want it to be drudgery and misery. You want to look forward to what you're reading. And then you should also be listening to podcasts, right Jess? Yes, but podcasts made for native speakers. Keep listening to this podcast.

podcast of course because we help you prepare for the exam but you really need to be developing a strong foundation at this stage right five months out which by the way this term five months out five months ahead of time we covered this vocabulary in our last episode so if you missed that scroll up for sure but anyway this is the time to establish strong habits that you're going to continue up until and through the exam

by immersing yourself in English. So these podcasts, comedy podcasts, movie podcasts, news, knitting, whatever you're interested in, there is a native speaker podcast made for you. Absolutely. Right. Find it so that you look forward to listening to it. You can do it while you're doing other things, going for a walk, doing chores, and then you are killing multiple birds at the same time.

I think every time we say that idiom as language teachers, we kind of chuckle because it's like it's so violent, but it's such a positive idiom. Anyway, also another thing to start doing, guys, is to speak out loud, speak English out loud every day, even if it's just to yourself. So often I'll have a one-on-one with an IELTS student, and if their speaking is like about band six or lower, I know that they have not been speaking out loud.

You'll look at their writing and their writing will be great, right? Because they'll have practiced that. Their reading and listening scores will be great because they'll have practiced that.

But somehow they just skip the part where they do have to practice speaking out loud in order to speak well. Yes. And you don't have to just answer. You don't need to answer IELTS speaking questions yet. You can speak out loud about what you are reading, what you're listening to on podcasts. Summarize it aloud to yourself. Have a conversation in English with a speaking partner about it. Talk about something that interests you. Yes, I love it.

Because again, guys, this is about general fluency. And if you don't meet the general fluency standards, you're not going to get above a six in any section. You're just not. Because we need reading fluency, listening fluency, as well as writing and speaking fluency. And that is a well-rounded skill approach. It's not just IELTS. All right. So at this stage,

in conjunction with these other activities you have to start a vocabulary journal aubrey what's a vocabulary journal yeah so whether you do this on paper on a notebook or in like a spreadsheet whatever works best for you you whenever you are listening to a podcast reading a book whatever you do

Add four to five vocabulary words to a vocab journal. Organize it in the way that makes the most sense to you. And you want to add these words with the definition and the sentence you heard them in. You want to make sure to learn them in context so that when you're using them on IELTS writing, IELTS speaking, you can use them correctly.

And then when you are practicing IELTS speaking and writing later on in this plan, you need to keep this journal in front of you and make yourself use the words you're looking at, right? Okay, so now that's the first month. What do we do in the second month? We're four months out from our IELTS exam. What are we doing?

So everything we suggested you start doing at five months out, you're going to continue doing once you hit four months. And then you're also going to start studying IELTS listening and reading. Start these first. You want to learn strategies and then practice using them. You can start with specific question types, work on them until you have that one mastered and move to the next one.

Exactly. Know what the exam looks like. Know what they want. Know what kind of questions, what kind of reading passages, listening passages you're going to be faced with. Right. Familiarize yourself with the test itself. Business taxes was stressing about all the time and all the money you spent on your taxes. This is my bill.

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All right. So at three months, you're going to continue with the general fluency activities we've already described. And then what do we start adding now? Now you're going to add IELTS listening and reading practice tests. So instead of focusing on individual strategies and question sets, you're going to complete an entire test using the strategies you've learned. Yeah, I would say one test a week is good for that at this point.

And in this month, three months out, you're going to start studying IELTS writing and speaking. So again, you need to know everything the examiner wants to hear. What other sort of test specific things do students need to start studying now? Yeah, you for sure need to be very familiar with the band descriptors for both speaking and writing. Like Jessica was saying, you need to know what the examiner is listening for.

And for each scoring system, right, for vocabulary, fluency and coherence, grammar, pronunciation for speaking, you need to know exactly what that means. If it's just sort of a vague idea to you, then you're going to waste a lot of time possibly studying the wrong thing or not targeting specific skills.

- Totally. And if all of this sounds like a lot to do on your own, guys, remember we do have everything that you're hearing now. We do have it all in our online course, allearsenglish.com/keys. It's all in one place. It makes all of this a lot easier. Okay, so two months out, you're continuing the general fluency of course, and then what? - Yeah, then you also want to take IELTS practice tests

that have all four sections so that you can build up your test taking endurance. It's no joke to take all of these tests back to back. Practice that. Yeah, totally. Once or twice a week is good. And you do want to include the test timing at this stage two months out. So know how long the, the, um, my brain just went away for a second.

Know how long the speaking test is. Know how long you have in the writing test. Know how long exactly for reading and listening. Everything should be exactly like it's going to be on test day.

Yeah, if you are taking five, six hours to complete a reading exam, this is not authentic practice because you're probably reading the articles in detail and you just won't have the time to do that. So it's not forcing you to practice the strategies you'll need on test day. Yeah. Don't take six hours to write an IELTS essay, guys. That is not what you get to do on test day. So it's worthless practice. Yeah.

All right. One month out. We're getting close. We have 30 days until the exam. What should we be doing this month? Yeah, we're going to up our test practice. So taking those IELTS practice tests, all four sections, three times a week.

And you're wanting to keep timing yourself, right? Give yourself one hour for the entire reading exam, right? One hour total for both of your essays. So you're timing your essay writing and don't use your notes. See what essays you can write without your vocabulary notebook.

without your notes. And if you're really struggling, you haven't made this vocabulary part of your active vocabulary that you can access when not looking at your notes, then you need to target that more. This vocab needs to be accessible to you without your notes. Nice, nice. And just to backtrack a little bit, guys, if you are doing this test practice and what

one to three months before your exam, and you notice that you're getting a lot of multiple choice questions wrong, or whatever the question type is, then go back to the strategies, right? Review those strategies. So you make sure to fill in any blanks, right, that might be in your test practice.

Yes. And if you're feeling like, do I know strategies? You must use strategies. We've shared a ton of them here on the podcast, but all of them are in one place in our course. Like Jessica said, allersenglish.com slash keys. Awesome. All right, guys. Thank you so much for being here with us today and we'll see you next time. Awesome. See you next time. Bye. Bye. Bye.

Thanks for listening to IELTS Energy. Hit subscribe now and don't forget to find your estimated band score at allearsenglish.com slash myscore.