Secret Key #1 – Time is your greatest enemy.
To succeed on the IELTS, you must use your time wisely. Many students do not
finish at least one module. The table below shows the time challenge you are
faced with:
Module Total amount Number of Time to answer
of time allotted questions each question
Listening 30 min 40 .75 min
Reading 60 min 40 .67 min
Writing 60 min 2 30 min
Speaking 11-14 min N/A N/A
As you can see, the time constraints are brutal. To succeed, you must ration
your time properly. The reason that time is so critical is that every question
counts the same toward your final score. If you run out of time on any passage,
the questions that you do not answer will hurt your score far more than earlier
questions that you spent extra time on and feel certain are correct.
On the Reading Module, the test is separated into passages. The reason that
time is so critical is that 1) every question counts the same toward your final
score, and 2) the passages are not in order of difficulty. If you have to rush
during the last passage, then you will miss out on answering easier questions
correctly. It is natural to want to pause and figure out the hardest questions, but
you must resist the temptation and move quickly.
Success Strategy #1
Pace Yourself
Wear a watch to the IELTS Test. At the beginning of the test, check the time (or
start a chronometer on your watch to count the minutes), and check the time
after each passage or every few questions to make sure you are “on schedule.”
Remember that on the Listening and Reading Modules you have a little over half
a minute for each question. If you can work quickly, you can pace yourself at half
a minute per question, which makes it easy to keep track of your time.
If you find that you are falling behind time during the test, you must speed up.
Even though a rushed answer is more likely to be incorrect, it is better to miss a
couple of questions by being rushed, than to completely miss later questions by
not having enough time. It is better to end with more time than you need than to
run out of time.
If you are forced to speed up, do it efficiently. Usually one or more answer
choices can be eliminated without too much difficulty. Above all, don’t panic.
Don’t speed up and just begin guessing at random choices. By pacing yourself,
and continually monitoring your progress against the clock or your watch, you will
always know exactly how far ahead or behind you are with your available time. If
you find that you are a few minutes behind on a module, don’t skip questions
without spending any time on it, just to catch back up. Spend perhaps a little less
than half a minute per question and after a few questions, you will have caught
back up more gradually. Once you catch back up, you can continue working each
problem at your normal pace. If you have time at the end, go back then and finish
the questions that you left behind.
Furthermore, don’t dwell on the problems that you were rushed on. If a problem
was taking up too much time and you made a hurried guess, it must have been difficult. The difficult questions are the ones you are most likely to miss anyway,
so it isn’t a big loss. If you have time left over, as you review the skipped
questions, start at the earliest skipped question, spend at most another half a
minute, and then move on to the next skipped question.
Lastly, sometimes it is beneficial to slow down if you are constantly getting ahead
of time. You are always more likely to catch a careless mistake by working more
slowly than quickly, and among very high-scoring test takers (those who are
likely to have lots of time left over), careless errors affect the score more than
mastery of material.
Scanning
For Reading passages, don’t waste time reading, enjoying, and completely
understanding the passage. Simply scan the passage to get a rough idea of
what it is about. You will return to the passage for each question, so there is no
need to memorize it. Only spend as much time scanning as is necessary to get a
vague impression of its overall subject content.
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