IELTS Energy 1478: Why Are My Scores Getting Lower on Practice Tests?
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This is an IELTS Energy Podcast, Episode 1478. Why are my scores getting lower on practice tests?

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

forward slash my score. Have you done a lot of IELTS practice tests? Are your scores increasing, decreasing, or fluctuating? If you answered yes to any of these situations, listen to today's episode to find out why and what you can do to keep making progress towards your IELTS goals.

You listen to this show to be ready for the IELTS exam. But what happens after you achieve your target score? You need to be ready to convey confidence when you use professional English. That's why we created Professional English Level 1. Lock in your lifetime access today and save $100 off the normal price.

AllEarsEnglish.com/professional. Offer ends April 20th at midnight. Feel confident in meetings, interviews, presentations, and when you socialize with your coworkers. AllEarsEnglish.com/PROFESSIONAL. Hello, Aubrey. How's it going? I'm great, Jessica. How are you?

I am excited because today's episode is very motivational, right? We are addressing a problem that a lot of students have that frankly, there would be no resources to find out the answers to this question. Right. And this would be extremely discouraging to be experiencing and not be able to really find out why or get the answers you need.

Exactly, exactly. We've seen this happen. And so we're going to use our experience and expertise to help you guys out with this question today. Aubrey, what is today's question? Yes, the question is, why are my scores getting lower on practice tests? And this was asked during one of our IELTS webinars from Bea Adal. Okay, yeah. Oh my gosh.

How discouraging would that be? Like you've been practicing and prepping for IELTS for so long and you start to notice that your scores are not increasing. In fact,

they're not even plateauing. They are going down. So we have four possible reasons for this today, guys. So listen up and find out if one of these could apply to you. Even if your scores aren't going down, these things could lead to them going down. So listen up today, guys. All right. What is our first possibility here?

Yeah, the first thing might be that you are experiencing test burnout. I think we have all been there. I studied for an exam similar to the IELTS for French, the French content specialty exam. And I experienced test burnout because I was taking practice exams over and over and over. And then I started performing poorly because I was just so sick of taking practice tests.

Yes, right. And I've seen this happen with IELTS students. Sometimes we'll get IELTS students who have been preparing for like a year, right? They haven't taken the exam yet. They're just perpetually preparing. And this happens to them in every single instance, guys, if you're preparing for IELTS for too long.

You experience diminishing returns, which means there's only so much preparation and practice you can do before you hit a point where it's diminishing returns, right? You're going to stop seeing progress.

Yeah, maybe you stop using the strategies as much because either you think you know better, you've found something that works better, or you're just simply tired of using these strategies and doing it over and over. And so your actual test performance becomes more, you know, worse.

I think that happens a lot that we just, we simply lose our capacity to focus and function at our best if we're doing this thing that we've done so many times and we're so sick of. Like, of course you're not going to perform your best with that attitude.

Yeah, a lot of you have likely experienced this at work. If you have very repetitive tasks that you have to do, you might find that your performance on them is worse. You know, after having done it for years, you get tired of it, you get burned out. It's the same with test taking. Exactly, exactly. So the lesson here, guys, is to

book a test date. Do not put that off. Do not be afraid of booking a test date. You have to give yourself a deadline. You have to have a contained period of time where you have a clear timeline. Like now I'm going to start timing myself. Now I'm going to start doing two test practice sessions a week, right? You need that deadline in order to not practice too long and sort of take the test at the height of your ability.

Yes, absolutely. And if you don't have that deadline, it's amazing how much that end goal, having the light at the end of the tunnel will motivate you and will make you feel more excited for the results at the end. If it's like you said, perpetually just studying, you don't have that drive, that motivation. Right. Exactly. Exactly. All right. What is the next possibility, Aubrey?

All right, the next possibility is that you are using the wrong practice tests. You might not be using authentic ones with real question types or valid material. So then the scores you are getting really might not be indicative of what you would get on test day.

Exactly, exactly. There are so many IELTS practice test sites out there. And I mean, mostly you're going to be tackling these from the standpoint of reading and listening, right? Because that's where you can score yourself immediately and understand what you did right and wrong. However, because there are so many possible free resources for IELTS practice tests, there are a lot

of invalid ones out there. And frankly, they're just not good. I have seen free IELTS practice tests with wrong answers, right? So even maybe you are getting the right answers, but whoever prepared this wrote the answer wrong or incorrectly. And so you think you got it wrong. I mean, there are so many possibilities for

the tests to be invalid, that you really have to be careful about what you're choosing. Yeah, that happens a lot or maybe it's too easy or too hard so the results are just sort of skewed and there's not really any way for you to know. So make sure that the practice tests you're taking are valid IELTS practice tests so that you have a lot more accurate idea of what you would score if you took the test today. Totally.

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Okay, so what is reason number three that practice test scores might go down? Yeah, it's possible that you haven't practiced the strategies enough that you have learned. This even happens to students in our own course where they will learn our three key strategies and then immediately take a practice test and their score might be lower than they were taking before because these practices

strategies have to be practiced. You can't just know what they are and immediately be able to use them effectively. So any strategy you learn for the different question types, you're going to need to focus on each question type one at a time until you've really mastered using that strategy quickly.

Exactly, exactly. And like reading, for example, when you first learn the strategies, don't time yourself. Give yourself extra time to make sure that you're doing each step correctly, that you are intentional and understanding why you're doing the step and how it helps you. That takes time and practice to perfect. I've seen this exact thing happen a few times, especially with students who are

come into the course and they're already at a 6.5, right? But they do need a 7, 7.5, 8. So their overall English fluency has gotten them this far, right? To a 6.5. And then they learn our strategies and it's different than how they've approached the test before. So like you said, initially, when they apply this new system,

they're not seeing the same scores or maybe they're plateauing at the scores they got before. And so they're like, well, I tried this once. It doesn't work. Right.

Right? So yeah, I think this is a really important perspective that when you do learn a new system of how to do things, give it time. Give yourself time to understand the system and practice. Absolutely. All right. And number four here is more about speaking and writing because the student didn't clarify. Likely, a lot of you, it's listening and reading that you might see scores very different. But this also might be about

your IELTS test in general or speaking and writing feedback that you've received. - Exactly, exactly. Aubrey, have you seen, so you give a lot of personal feedback to students in our IELTS courses, right? On their speaking and writing. Have you ever seen it happen where these feedback scores consistently go down from session to session? - Good question. No, but I have had students- - Right, no.

But I definitely have students be very surprised with the scores I give them on either their essays or their speaking because a previous teacher gave them much higher scores or maybe much lower score. You know, something seems really off to them. And then we have to sort of dive into, you know, was this an IELTS expert? Is this just an English teacher that really doesn't know that much about the exam? The feedback and the scores they're giving you might not be accurate.

And honestly, 100% of the time, that is the answer, right?

Whoever assigned them these IELTS scores previously had no examination experience, had not been trained in how to assign scores. So yeah, I think today's episode, I think the takeaway guys is just to encourage you guys to be intelligent and analytical and critical about what you're choosing to do and how you're choosing to practice.

Yes, absolutely. Right. It's vital to get speaking and writing feedback, but don't waste money on the wrong feedback. Make sure that it will be valid scores, valid feedback. The worst thing is to waste time or money in the wrong way. Right. So we want to make sure that you are your practice is effective. Exactly. Exactly.

Awesome motivational episode today. Guys, if you're curious about our Three Keys course, check it out. allearsenglish.com slash keys. That's K-E-Y-S. Awesome. We'll see you next time, Jess. Bye. Thanks for listening to IELTS Energy. Hit subscribe now and don't forget to find your estimated band score at allearsenglish.com slash my score.