IELTS practice tests: using them properly

This site's numbered practice bank — the /practice-test-… pages, the listening and reading quizzes, the mock tests — is offline, and it is not being rebuilt. The links still arrive daily, so this page is the honest replacement: where real practice material comes from, and how to use it so that sitting tests actually raises your band.

The one-minute version: official material only for scoring, one full timed test a week at most, and the error log is the product — not the score. A band figure from an unofficial test is not a band.

Where real practice material comes from

Official free sample questions. IELTS publishes samples for every section and both versions — sample test questions, plus the wider preparation resources. Start here, because it is free and it is real.
The Cambridge official practice test books. The numbered series (IELTS 1, 2, 3… each with Academic and General Training papers) is retired real test material, which is why it is the only set that matches the actual difficulty. If you buy one thing, buy a recent volume of these — see Cambridge English.
The test partners' own preparation material. IELTS is run jointly by the British Council, IDP and Cambridge, and each publishes free practice and familiarisation material; IDP's preparation pages are a good entry point, and the British Council's own Road to IELTS material is worth looking up through your test centre.
Familiarisation in your test mode. If you are sitting computer-delivered, work through the official familiarisation material before test day. The first time you meet a reading passage in a scroll box should not be in the exam.

What to be wary of

Free IELTS tests are everywhere and most of them are not calibrated. The recurring problems: answer keys that are simply wrong, passages pitched well above or below the real difficulty, listening audio at the wrong speed, and invented raw-score-to-band tables. A "band 7.5" from a random site is a number someone made up.

The same caution applies to "band 9 model answers" for Writing and Speaking. Plenty of them would not score 9, and some would not score 7. Trust models that come with the official examiner commentary attached.

How to sit one

A practice test only tells you something if the conditions are honest:

Whole section, one sitting, timed. Sixty minutes for Reading, including transferring answers. Thirty minutes of Listening audio, played once.
No pausing, no rewinding, no dictionary. Pausing Listening is the single most common way people convince themselves they are ready.
Match the mode. Paper on paper with an answer sheet and ten minutes of transfer time; computer on a screen, typing.
Mark it honestly. "I would have got that" is not a mark. Count the raw score out of 40 for Listening and Reading.

Raw scores and what they mean

Listening and Reading are marked out of 40 and converted to a band. Two things to keep straight: the conversion is different for Academic and General Training Reading (General Training needs more correct answers for the same band), and only the official tables mean anything. Do not average bands across different question sources, and do not convert a score from an unofficial test at all — see how the scores work for the overall-band arithmetic.

Writing and Speaking cannot be self-scored to a number in any meaningful way. What you can do is check your own work against the published band descriptors as a checklist, which is covered on the writing and speaking pages.

The error log, which is the actual work

The score of a practice test is the least useful thing it produces. The log is why you sat it. For every wrong answer, record four things:

The question type (Not Given, matching headings, sentence completion, map labelling…).
What the text or audio actually said — the exact words.
Why you chose yours. Be specific, and it is nearly always one of: I never heard or found it; I found it but misread the qualifier; I did not recognise the paraphrase; I knew it and broke the word limit or spelled it wrong; I ran out of time.
The fix, in one line.

After three tests the pattern is normally two or three question types and one or two causes. That is a training plan you can act on in a week, which "I got 28/40" is not. Drill the weak types on their own — twenty minutes of nothing but matching headings — rather than sitting another whole test and rediscovering the same thing.

How often

One full timed test a week is plenty, and many people do better with one a fortnight. Full tests are for calibration and stamina; they do not teach you anything by themselves, and burning through the official books early leaves you with nothing calibrated for the run-up to test day. Keep at least two complete papers unopened for the final fortnight.

The days in between are where the band moves: single sections, the error log, vocabulary from the paraphrase pairs you missed, one piece of writing marked properly, and one recorded speaking card.

When you are ready to book

A reasonable bar: two consecutive official practice tests at or above your target band, sat under real time in your test mode, with no single section dragging the average down. Hitting the target once can be the paper; twice is a level.

If only one skill is short, look at the One Skill Retake before booking a whole test again — availability depends on your centre and mode. Results timing differs by mode too: computer-delivered comes back in days, paper in about a fortnight (your results). Build that into the application deadline you are actually working to — if that deadline is a Chinese university, the Study in China guide has the timeline.

The rest of this section

Each skill has its own page, and the practice-test page covers how to use them together. The section overview has the band-score arithmetic and the Academic/General Training split.