A. Choose your materials wisely.
It is the most important advice I can give, and not just because we sell the most comprehensive IELTS materials on the internet! Too often students come to me with strange books they have purchased and studied from (some of them even look like comic books these days), or tell me about practice tests they have downloaded for free from the internet (some of them even have questions written in English that I can't understand!), or cheap eBook .pdf pages they have bought. This is not the way to study for a major test that can change your life. Even when they spend good money, they can fail to score well.
And they ask me why.
Usually, it is because the materials they use are not the best they could have chosen. Most knowledgeable publishers don't only recommend their own publications. They recognise the strengths of other authors. There are some very good IELTS books on sale these days – but maybe fewer than you think.
Basically, buy IELTS books originally written for the English market, by native English-speaking teachers with a good deal of IELTS experience, and published by respected international publishing companies that know what they are doing.
Avoid eBook publications that are not also published in book form (it takes a lot more effort than these marketers are prepared to make!). There are good reasons for this: they usually contain information that is either incorrect, or taken from good books but not explained well or given within the original context.
Avoid websites that advertise aggressively and make stupid claims such as giving guarantees of easy success without hard work etc. Avoid website publications that look like marketing scams. The sort of web marketing pages I am referring to are those that are selling IELTS practice like diet or gambling systems and get-rich-quick schemes. They only want your money. They are not teachers; they are marketing experts.
The idea that you can summarise a valuable textbook and expect the summary to have the same beneficial effect as the original is wrong. It just makes money for the scammer. They get rich; you fail the test.
If you can finish a tips "book" in an hour or two, what lasting value is there in that? Tips can be useful, yes, but they are just tips after all. For IELTS prep you need meat and vegetables, not just ice-cream.
Books from the major book publishers – including ours – contain all you will ever need to know about IELTS, written in ways that help you without so-called shortcuts. There are no shortcuts.
TRUE / FALSE / NOT GIVEN
| 1 | Free practice tests are useless. | ||
| 2 | Most published books are useful for IELTS study. | ||
| 3 | EBooks are not effective for IELTS study. | ||
| 4 | Beware of IELTS materials
sold to you with claims that cannot possibly be true for everyone. |
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| 5 | Summaries of textbooks can be more valuable than the original books. | ||
| 6 | IELTS tips have little value. |
