Rendezvous avec Anglais

I have booked June 02 for IELTS exam. Given 1 month of prep time, 24 May and June 02 were available. June 02 being saturday, I felt comfortable in lot of ways.

IELTS Exam format

The exam consists of four parts: Listening, Reading, Writing and Speaking.

Listening - 30 minutes ( + 10 minutes transfer time )
There are 40 questions with equal weightage. They are spread among 4 sections with 10 each.
1. Conversation between 2 people in an everyday life context.
2. Monologue on an everyday life context.
3. Conversation among more people in an academic context.
4. Monologue on an academic context.
Every section would begin with a period to read questions. This would give a clue on what to hear for.

Reading - 60 minutes
There are 40 questions with equal weightage. They are spread among 3 passages with increasing difficulty level.
1. It contains 2 or 3 short factual texts related to everyday life.
2. It contains 2 short factual texts related to work life.
3. It contains 1 long complex test on a general topic.

Writing - 60 minutes
There are 2 tasks and British Council recommends to spend 20 and 40 minutes respectively on tasks 1 and 2. At least 150 and 250 words are expected in tasks 1 and 2 respectively.
1. A situation would be provided for which a letter needs to be written. Writing style could be personal, semi-formal or formal.
2. Essay must be writen in response to a point of view, argument or problem.
Task 2 is worth twice as much as task 1.

Speaking - around 30 minutes
There are 3 parts.
1. Introduction and pleasantries exchange followed by general discussion would happen.
2. Need to speak about a topic. 1 - 2 minutes would be given to collect your thoughts.
3. Discussion about part 2. A chance to convery more about part 2 topic.

While other tests happen one after another without a break, speaking test is scheduled independent of other tests. British Council promises to schedule speaking test within 7 days before or after. Typically, it is scheduled on the following day.
Prep books might give more information about each tests such as types of letters in writing task 1. It needs to be taken with a pinch of salt. The information written above is faithfully taken from British Council site.

Source

Exam Preparation

Competitive exams aren't new for me. In the past, I have appeared for CAT and GMAT, in that order. I wouldn't include IELTS in the list despite appearing for it nearly a decade back. Thanks to my GMAT preparation, it took only cursory glance of IELTS exam format and I could get good results.
I was a massive failure in CAT and it taught me invaluable life lessons. Focus, single-mindness, clarity in thought and hard work are more important than raw talent.
GMAT was a different story. I got the basics of exam preparation right and was successful (730 is success in my book, others might differ). Having gotten reminiscential, these are what I recollect about my way of preparation. It was relevant then and must be now.

• Understand the exam format.
• Collect the study material.
• Setup a plan and get a timeframe to go along with it.
• Stick to plan no matter what.

Important philosophy - Given the infinite resources in the internet, it is tempting to include more and more study materials and extend your preparation time. Please don't do that. One's preparation should be like plank exercise. It is amazing exercise to improve your core strength. Once you start doing 1 minute plank comfortably, there is no extra gain you get by doing the plank for additional minutes. Beyond a point, more is not good.

When, how much, what

Contrary to popular perception, its difficult when one is spoilt for choice. To choose a date for taking IELTS is easier than expected given there are seemingly infinite dates available. Questions pop up in your mind make it even tougher.

•     When is the correct time?
•     How much preparation is enough?
•     What should be the target score?

In such cases, the approach should be to look out for constraints & invariables, create them if there aren't any, imagine where you want to be given those and backtrack to arrive at the exam date.

Attempts at finding constraints::

• When do you want to start working in Canada? (This is too broad a question to be useful)
• How much time would be required to prepare for the exam? (Forever!!, Again very subjective)
• Is timing the application relevant? (Hmm.. we are getting somewhere)

Looking at previous year's updates on Ontario PNP, the province has been opening up for ICT kind around July. Assuming the same this year, finishing the express entry profile around July is a good gamble. This leaves me 3 months. I don't want to keep the exam waiting whilst I scamper around for getting the documentation complete. A general opinion on the time, it takes for WES to be completed, is around 2 months (worst case. given I studied in a government institution, its safer to assume the worst). This leaves me a month for the exam.

A month or less than that is too close for comfort. May be just more than a month but less than 2 months would be ideal. British Council tells me 12 and 24 of May are available. So, the plan is set. Coming weekend, I would apply for exam on 24th of May.

Starting again

It has been years since I blogged. Although getting back at writing is the short term goal, I have decided to blog again for true blogging reasons i.e to keep a journal. While a personal diary would be the old school way, there are certainly drawbacks associated with it. Blogging is easy, reminds you to keep your "personal" details private, allows you to network with people and gives a platform for sharing your thoughts.
Hopefully, I would keep blogging!