IELTS: common questions

The questions this section actually gets asked — most of them inherited from the old IELTS site, where several had an article of their own — answered plainly. That includes the last three, which are refusals, and why.

Academic or General Training — which one do I need?

Whichever the receiving institution asks for: Academic for degree-level study and most professional registration, General Training for migration, work and below-degree courses. Do not choose on difficulty, and check before you book, because you cannot swap versions after sitting the test. Listening and Speaking are identical either way; Reading and Writing differ, and General Training Reading needs more correct answers for the same band. See the section overview.

How do I get band 8?

Band 8 means consistent accuracy and range across all four skills, not a trick you are missing. Almost everyone asking this is sitting at 6.0–6.5, and at that level the answer is unglamorous: find your weakest of the four marking criteria and work only there, because they are equally weighted. The published descriptors are the actual specification — read the band directly above the one you keep getting, not the band you want. How the scores work has the arithmetic, which matters: one half-band on one skill can move your overall figure.

How long does it take to move up half a band?

Six to eight weeks of daily work is the honest typical figure, and anything promising a band in a fortnight is selling something. The real exception is a technique failure rather than a language ceiling — you ran out of time and left reading answers blank, wrote 180 words in Task 2, or answered a different question than the one on the paper. Those can be fixed in days, because your English was never the problem. One properly timed practice test tells you which of the two you are.

What does "Not Given" actually mean?

That the passage does not settle the statement either way. It does not mean the statement is unlikely, and it does not mean you disagree with it — your own knowledge of the world is irrelevant. The test: can you underline the words that make it true, or the words that contradict it? If neither underline exists, it is Not Given. It is a normal, frequent answer, so if you finish a set without using it, check again. Watch the qualifiers too — a passage saying "many researchers" does not support a statement saying "all researchers", and that makes it False rather than Not Given. See reading.

Is it compulsory to use the prompts on the Part 2 card?

No. The bullet points are a suggested structure, not a requirement, and you will not be penalised for covering them in a different order or going beyond them. They exist to stop you running dry, and in practice they are a reasonable plan, so use them unless you have a better one. What does cost you is stopping early — see speaking.

Is it a good idea to give long answers in Speaking Part 1?

No. Two or three sentences is the target: a direct answer plus a reason or an example. One-word answers give the examiner nothing to mark, but a ninety-second answer in Part 1 will be cut off, because the examiner has a scripted list to get through. Save the long turn for Part 2, where it is actually being asked for.

What do I do with a Part 3 question I have no idea about?

Use one of three tactics, all of which are ordinary educated speech rather than tricks. Narrow it ("that depends a lot on the country — somewhere like...") to turn an unanswerable generality into a case you can discuss. Compare two cases — then and now, cities and small towns — because comparison generates structure. Or answer the "it depends on X" way and then say what X is. You are also allowed to ask for the question to be repeated or to check you have understood it; doing that once costs nothing, while answering the wrong question for a minute costs a lot.

Can I use "I" in a Task 2 essay?

Yes. In an opinion essay the first person is appropriate and usually clearer than the contortions people use to avoid it — "it could be argued by some that" is longer, vaguer and weaker than "I think". Academic register means being precise and impersonal where that fits; it does not ban the first person from a question that asked you what you think.

My English is good enough for university work, so why did I get 6.0 in Writing?

Because the two tasks reward different things, and this catches experienced academic writers regularly. An IELTS essay has no research, no reading list and no citations; you get forty minutes with no redrafting; and the examiner spends a couple of minutes on your script. An assignment-shaped essay — slow build-up, position revealed late, hedged throughout — reads as an unclear position, which is exactly what the task-response criterion penalises. The target is a forty-minute argument with a visible structure and a thesis a marker can point at. See writing.

Is computer-delivered easier than paper?

Neither is easier: same questions, same scoring, same examiners. Three differences are worth planning around. On paper you get ten extra minutes to transfer Listening answers; on computer you type as you go and get roughly two minutes to check. Reading on paper means annotating freely, on computer it means highlighting and a notes box. And computer-delivered results come back in days rather than about a fortnight. Pick one and practise in that mode — the first time you meet a reading passage in a scroll box should not be in the exam.

How long is my score valid, and can I retake the test?

A Test Report Form is generally treated as valid for two years, but the rule that binds you is the receiving institution's, so check theirs rather than relying on the general figure. There is no limit on how many times you can sit the test. If only one skill is holding your overall band down, look at the One Skill Retake before booking a whole test again — availability depends on your centre and test mode.

What IELTS score do Chinese universities want?

English-taught degree programmes usually accept 6.0 and up, with competitive programmes asking 6.5–7.0, and a score attached to a scholarship application generally makes it stronger. The programme's own published requirement is the one that counts. If that is your route, the Study in China guide has the application timeline, and the deadlines are earlier than most people expect. Registration for the test itself in mainland China runs through the NEEA, not the global booking site — see the overview.

Where did the old practice tests go? Can I get the answers to one of them?

The numbered practice bank that used to live here — the practice-test pages, the listening and reading quizzes, the mock tests — is offline, and it is deliberately not being rebuilt. No answer keys are kept either. Uncalibrated practice material is worse than none, because a band figure from it is a number somebody invented. The practice-test page covers where genuinely calibrated material comes from and how to use it.

Will you mark my essay, or recommend a course or a correction service?

No, and that is deliberate rather than an oversight. This site sells nothing, takes no referrals, ranks no prep providers and offers no marking — the old site linked a third-party correction service and that link is gone with it. What is here instead: the published band descriptors are free, and the writing page sets out a fixed self-check to use against them. Unmarked practice does entrench errors, so if you can get real feedback from a teacher, that is worth more than any amount of reading about it.

Can you tell me what will be on the next test, or predict the writing topics?

No. Nobody legitimate can. What circulates as "predictions" or "recent exam questions" is either a recycled list of the themes that always come up — education, technology, environment, crime, work, health, urban life — or it is exam fraud, and material claiming to be leaked questions is a good reason to close the tab. Reading widely around those themes is genuinely useful preparation. Memorising essays is not: the real prompt will differ in some small way, a pre-written essay cannot bend to it, and examiners recognise memorised material constantly. It caps your task response, which is the opposite of what you wanted.

The rest of this section

Each skill has its own page, the practice-test page covers how to use them together, and the common questions take the ones that get asked most often. The section overview has the band-score arithmetic and the Academic/General Training split.