TIPS for ITLTS learners
My native language is Russian, so I am going to write mostly for Russian speaking people.
When we talk about learning a language surely we have to take differences between native and target languages into consideration. What is the most significant difference between Russian and English? It is that Russian words are usually longer than English, especially in speaking. Take any Russian two or three syllable word and you will find out that it is mostly a one syllable word in English. That’s why they actually speak faster than we do and it seems like we have to learn to think faster. While we say äåâóøêà in Russian, English girl will get married. Again, they speak faster because their words are shorter. It might be not so noticeable in reading and writing but there is a big difference in speaking and listening.
Understanding this makes it easier to overcome difficulties caused by differences between the native and target languages.
So what to do about this?
It sounds very banal but practice listening and speaking as much as possible. Although it sounds banal I can give you some tips to make it funnier and do it in a pleasant way.
First learn singing English songs. It does not mean that you have to have a good voice or musical ears, not at all. Remember, you are not going to entertain others but only yourself. Start with slow songs and move to faster ones. If you practice it hard soon you will manage to learn even Eminem songs. That will be great. By doing so, you will gain natural pronunciation which is quite important because the more natural your English sounds the better you understand native speakers. You are expecting them to pronounce the way you pronounce it and of course you misunderstand native speakers if you are expecting to hear something different. By listening to songs you will find so many words you pronounced incorrectly. It will seem like you are learning a new vocabulary. What I am saying here is that in the beginning stage many Russian learners studied English by BONK (sorry for this spelling, I just think it is the best for Russian “Áîíê” – the author’s name of the most known English language text book in Russian speaking countries) or other similar text books with no audio or visual complements and learned to pronounce with so called transcription (written representation of sounds). I do not believe that any symbol can represent a sound exactly. Transcription for pronunciation was invented long time ago when there were no means for sound recording and they had to have something to learn to speak a target language. But nowadays there are so many audio and video courses that transcription has died already and it is still in dictionaries just because it has been there for so long. My strict recommendation is – use a speaking dictionary, do not trust your good knowledge of transcription. Listen to a new word having your eyes away from the written word, taste the new sound of a word, smell it, feel the movement of your tongue, possess each new word like a new ten dollar banknote, be greedy – it is not difficult because we are greedy by nature.
If you want to get high score in IELTS test you have to plan your time thoroughly, actually now you have no time to read or watch anything but in English. The good thing is that nowadays you can find almost everything, you might be interested in, in English. Devote every second of your free time to studying it. What I mean is that they require higher and higher score for entrance to university or emigration purposes. Those times when someone with 5.5 could get something or somewhere he wanted have passed away. Nowadays even 7.0 in IELTS test, which can be achieved by really hard work, does not guarantee that you will be accepted. It is certainly not easy for a young man to do so when there are so many other much more pleasant things around but if you remind yourself about the benefits you will have after realizing your plans you will definitely encourage yourself to work hard. Do it every time before you open an IELTS text book, make it like a prayer.
About preparation material for IELTS test. There are a lot of sources where you can find books on IELTS preparation and many of them are free, for example INTERNET. But the abundance of them makes it hard to pick up the good or best one. My advice is: the book which is in front of you open and you are learning is the best. Just try to get the newest you can. I mean it is better to study a book which was published in 2007 than that of 2003. It does not mean that old books are bad; it just means that newer books are better. Many inexperienced learners fail to work productively just because they start a book then after a short time they give it up and try another one and on and on with no noticeable result. I think this is familiar to many of you too.
What can I tell you in such situation? Find a good instructor or a course for the first stage of your study. Then, when you feel that you understand clearly what to do with IELTS preparation books you can turn to a self-study. But even in this case it is good to have a good instructor. It will not be expensive if you make a good agreement with him/her. For example, the schedule should be flexible, or you can have lessons when you think you have a number of questions enough to cover during the lesson. Personally, I had a few smart students who got high score in IELTS. In the beginning they had two lessons a week regularly and after a few months we agreed on having lessons just when they had done enough work to be analyzed or checked. With time they just had a lesson a month or even rarer and they worked hard at home. How can just having a lesson a month be effective? Because preparation for the test mostly means practicing. For a two hour test you have to practice hundreds hours. If you want to improve your listening skills you have to listen, and so for reading or writing. No teacher can lend you their ears for listening. You have to manage to hear by yourself. When you find out that you cannot hear certain this or that after listening many times or you have some other problems you cannot solve by yourself, it is just time to see your teacher. Good IELTS preparation teachers are rare and so expensive and they charge much for their time, but if you have a schedule like 20 hours of self-study and 2 hours with the teacher it will not be expensive for you.
Especially a good instructor is necessary to improve your writing because it can be difficult for you to judge or estimate your own writing. Actually, to get a high score you have to write in English better than you do in your native language. We are not taught to write as it is required in IELTS test. It does not mean that our schools are worse; it only means we are taught differently. There are some techniques we have developed in our courses to help those having difficulties with writing and they have been proved to be effective, but they are a bit complicated to be described in such a short article. I am sure that if you are looking for a preparation course for IELTS test LTS is the right place for you. To get there needed three letters and extention for uzbekistan.
You may have written already but if not, there is an article called “êàê ó÷èòüñÿ” that can be useful for you in this site. You can find it through navigation on the left frame of.
