Preparing for the English language proficiency requirement for Australian international students
For most people, the pursuit of studying in Australia starts with obtaining evidence of English language proficiency.
There are several English language proficiency tests out there but based on our survey of Australian educational institutions, professional regulatory bodies, the Australian Department of Home Affairs, and Australian state and territory governments, three (3) are consistently recognised. They are (in alphabetical order):
a) International English Language Testing System (IELTS). It comes in 2 versions – General and Academic, but for the purpose of this article we are discussing the IELTS Academic because that is what’s relevant to students.
b) Pearson Test of English (PTE). Like IELTS, it also has Academic and General versions and again, we’re confining our discussion on the Academic version.
c) Test of English as a Foreign Language – Internet-based Test (TOEFL-iBT). Unlike IELTS and PTE, it only has one version, meaning no separate Academic and General versions.
All of them test your ability to use the English language to Listen, Read, Write, and Speak, although they differ in their scoring algorithm.
| TEST | IELTS | PTE | TOEFL iBT |
|---|---|---|---|
| Listening | Score range between 1 – 9 | Score range between 10 – 90 | Score range between 0 – 30 |
| Reading | Score range between 1 – 9 | Score range between 10 – 90 | Score range between 0 – 30 |
| Writing | Score range between 1 – 9 | Score range between 10 – 90 | Score range between 0 – 30 |
| Speaking | Score range between 1 – 9 | Score range between 10 – 90 | Score range between 0 – 30 |
| Overall Score | Average of the scores above, rounded to the nearest half point | Determined by an algorithm based on whole of test performance, ranges between 10 – 90 | The sum of the scores above |
In this first of a two-part series article, we’re going to take a closer look at IELTS, its format, test mechanics, and we’ll also discuss some tips on preparing and dealing with the listening, writing, reading, and speaking tests.
Test mechanics – IELTS Academic
Test goes for roughly 3 hours. It comes as computer-based test (meaning you go to a testing centre and take the test using a computer), online (you take the test from the comfort of your home and using your own suitable computer over an internet connection), or paper-based (you attend a testing centre and write down your answers on paper).
IELTS’ listening, reading, and writing sections are always taken in the same day or session. If you’re taking the computer-based test, the speaking test may also happen in the same session. Otherwise, the speaking test maybe be given before or after the rest of the tests.
The speaking test may be conducted via a face-to-face chat with an examiner or via video conferencing with an examiner.
Provisional test results are available 3 to 5 days after taking the online or computer-based tests and 13 days after sitting the paper test. Official Test Report Form (TRF) will be mailed or can be picked up from the test centre.
| TEST | IELTS | PTE | TOEFL iBT |
|---|---|---|---|
| Paper-based | Y | – | Y |
| Computer-based | Y | Y | Y |
| Online | Y | – | Y |
| Speaking test delivery | Face-to-face or via video call with an examiner | Recorded response to computer prompts | Recorded response to computer prompts |
| Sessions | Listening, reading, & writing tests given in same session, speaking may or may not be given on the same session | Listening, reading, writing, and speaking tests given in same session | Listening, reading, writing, and speaking tests given in same session |
| Duration | About 3 hours | About 2 hours | About 3 hours |
| Test result availability | 3 – 4 days after online or computer-based test; 13 days after paper-based test | 2 days after the test | 6 days after the test |
Test format – IELST Academic
(You’ll find IELTS’s official description of the test format HERE)
Listening
• You’ll listen to 4 recordings and answer 10 questions per recording for a total of 40 questions.
• The questions appear in the order they are heard in the audio recording. The question types are a mix of multiple choice, matching, plan/map/diagram labelling, form/note/table/flow-chart/summary completion, and sentence completion.
• The audio recordings will only be played once.
• 1st recording is a casual conversation between two people
2nd recording is about one person talking
3rd recording is an academic conversation between up to 4 people
4th recording is a monologue academic lecture
• You have 30 minutes to listen and jot down your answers on the question paper and 10 minutes to transfer them to the answer sheet.
• The difficulty of the questions gets progressively difficult, meaning the 1st recording usually is the easiest and the 4th recording is usually the hardest.
Reading
You’ll be reading 3 passages. Questions per passage varies but there are a total of 40 questions that you need to answer in 60 minutes.
Question types or task types are a mix of:
• Multiple choice
• Identifying information
• Identifying writer’s views or claims
• Matching information
• Matching headings
• Matching features
• Matching sentence endings
• Sentence completion
• Summary completion
• Note completion
• Table completion
• Flowchart completion
• Diagram label completion
• Short answer
Writing
There are 2 writing tasks involved, the first task will ask you to describe, summarise or explain a graph, table, chart, or a diagram using at least 150 words in 20 minutes. The second task involves writing an essay in response to a point of view, argument, or problem using at least 250 words in 40 minutes.
Speaking
Contains 3 parts. In the first part, the examiner will engage you in a general conversation about your yourself, home, family, studies, etc. This goes for 5 minutes. In the second part, you’ll be given a card containing a prompt. You’ll be given a minute to prepare a response, after which you need to talk about it for 2 minutes. Lastly, the third part involves expanding the discussion covered in the second part. This lasts around 5 minutes.
Tips – IELTS Academic
Listening
- There is no penalty for wrong answer, so don’t leave a question unanswered. Make a best guess if you need to.
- Some words, like proper nouns, need to be capitalised. For example, if the answer is ‘Australia’, and you spelt it as ‘australia’ it will be marked wrong. To prevent this, consider writing your answers in CAPITAL LETTERS.
- Pay attention to instructions on word limits. If it says the answer should be no more than two words, giving an answer that’s 3 words will be marked wrong.
Remember, a number like 1 or 1,000 counts as one word, time like 9:30am is one word, hyphenated words like anti-thesis are one word, contraction like it’s (short for it is) is one word, compound word like bookstore is one word, number with a symbol like 100% is one word, etc. - Pay attention to answers that are plural. They are with an “s.”
- Pay attention to the signpost words or phrases such as:
– “Today we are….”
– “Let’s move on to…”
– “To summarise…”, etc.
They help you follow the progress of the talk in the recording.
Other signpost words or phrases such as:
– “The difference between…” (comparing)
– “I think…” (giving an opinion)
Help you become aware of what the speaker is doing.
6. While listening and jotting down your answers, use quick shorthand writing but be sure your answers are spelt out correctly when you transfer them in the answer sheet. Remember, wrong spelling means wrong answer.
7. In multiple choice question type, you’ll be asked to write down the letter of the correct answer. So, write the letter, not the word/s contained I the letter.
8. Familiarise yourself with the different question types, so you’ll know how to handle them in the test.
9. Look out for keywords and their synonyms. For example, someone who likes to be in wide open spaces means someone like the outdoors, or if someone likes going eating vegetables and exercising means he or she likes being fit, etc.
10. The preposition word before a blank space can give you clue on what kind of word or words you need to watch out for.
“Let’s meet at ______”: Preposition “AT” precedes time, part of day or week, place, and pronoun. Note that when “AT” precedes a place you must include the word “THE”, for example, “Let’s meet at the shop”. You don’t need to include “THE” for others, for example, “The movie starts at 7:30pm”.
Preposition “IN” precedes period of time, month, year, or season, For example, “Come back in one week”.
Preposition “ON” precedes day or date, for example, “It happened on December 9, 2020”.
11. This is important – be sure to keep up with the recording. Remember, the recording is going to be fluid and will play continuously. If you missed the answer to a question and you dwell on it too much, you will find yourself left behind. If you missed a question, don’t worry about it. Move on and be ready to answer the next. Missing a few questions is not the end of the world for your desired score. But if you allow yourself to be left behind, you’re liable to miss the rest of the questions. Also, don’t forget that after the recording you’ll have time to transfer your answers to the answer sheet, that’s the time to make best guesses on the questions you’ve missed.
12. PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE.
Reading
- Unlike in Listening test, no extra time is given to transfer the answer to the answer sheet so be mindful of this.
- Like in Listening test, it’s very important that you read and follow the instructions carefully.
- Errors in spelling and grammar are penalised, so again, be mindful of your answers.
- We purposely didn’t explain in detail the types of question or task because it’s your job to do so. Familiarising yourself with them, including the techniques on dealing with each question/task type, doing do will help you tremendously.
- Develop speed reading skills and other reading techniques such as skimming and scanning. Except for Matching headings and identifying the writer’s views/claims question types, most questions will not require you to understand the full passage. Skimming is getting the general gist of the paragraphs and the passage. You don’t necessarily need to get immersed with the details but do underline keywords for referencing. Scanning is the technique of looking for specific information in the paragraphs. Read the question first, depending on the question type, you’ll know whether to employ your skimming or scanning techniques.
- Improve your vocabulary by reading. Download a thesaurus ort dictionary. Have a little vocabulary note. Start reading academic articles or essays and jot down words you don’t know and look it up. Use the word in your own sentence so it has a good chance of sticking in your head. But don’t stress, you cannot possibly know every word. And more often than not, you can deduce or best guess the meaning of a word from the context by which it is used (thru the words or sentences immediately before or after the word). Consider this passage, “The professor found his report unsatisfactory because of many ‘superfluous’ words in it”. Even if you don’t know the exact meaning of the word ‘superfluous’, you can tell it’s something not good, and this can help you narrow down your possible answers.
- Like in Listening test, you won’t lose marks for incorrect answer. So, don’t leave a question unanswered.
- PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE.
Writing
- You’ll be penalised:
- If your answer doesn’t have the prescribed minimum number of words. By practice you should develop an idea of what constitutes 150 or 250 words without actually counting the words.
- If you’re off-topic, your written response is incomplete or if you use bullet points or list. For example, if you’re asked to describe a graph about the prevalence of Covid among certain demographics like sex, age, and economic status, don’t write about your government’s response to the pandemic.
- You’ll be severely punished if you plagiarize somebody else’ work. So be original.
- One of the criteria by which your work is assessed is Task Achievement, and you could satisfy this criterion by carefully reading the question or instruction and following it, and sticking to the topic. For example, in Task 1, when asked to describe facts or figures presented in graphs, charts, or tables, stick to describing what you’re seeing and avoid interpreting. By interpreting what you’re seeing and not describing, you’re not following the instruction and you’re wasting time because interpretation is not graded.
- Another criterion by which your work is assessed is Coherence and Cohesion. This means your written response should have structure and your ideas are properly put together. Familiarise yourself on simple essay structuring technique and practice writing down your ideas in clear and logical manner.
- Lexical resource simply means the use of a range of words or vocabularies and is one of the four criteria by which work is assessed. Avoid repeating words and sentences and use synonyms or paraphrase instead. For example, if you’ve already used the word school and you still need to pertain to school use university instead or educational institution. Paraphrase is also part of Lexical resource. Practice your ability to write down a phrase or sentence using different wordings. Finally, collocation is the predictable combination of words that makes sentence construction easier, look it up and familiarise yourself with it.
- Last of the criteria is Grammatical range and accuracy. Simply put, this pertains to how you mix up your sentences structure and the correctness of your punctuation, tenses, etc. For example, instead of saying – According to the chart, Melbourne’s population is on the rise, increasing at a rate of 1.5% every year. While Sydney’s population is also on the rise, increasing at a rate of 1% a year – say, according to the chart, Melbourne’s population is on the rise at a rate of 1.5% every year. This is also true for Sydney which has seen a yearly increase of population of 1%. Also, if you want to achiever a high score, IELTS advises to avoid writing in short sentences for the sake of avoiding grammar errors. You have to mix it up with short and complex sentences.
- If you’re doing the computer or online test, practice writing on computer, if it’s the paper test, practice writing on paper.
- PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE.
Speaking
- Like the Written test above, Speaking test is also assessed using several criteria. The first criteria is Fluency and Coherence. Fluency does not necessarily mean being smooth, spontaneous, or automatic like a native English speaker. Rather it means being able to speak English without awkward long pauses and hesitation. It means being able to say things with clarity and with sense that facilitate understanding by your listener.
- The Lexical resource criterion, just like in Written test above, means being able to use a range of words through the use of synonyms, paraphrases, pronouns, etc., in your talk. That way you don’t use too much repetitive words.
- Grammatical range and accuracy are another criterion being used to assess your speaking performance. The tip here is like the tip in Written test above.
- Pronunciation is the final criterion and it’s not about accent. Accent is irrelevant to the Speaking test. This criterion is about you being able to correctly pronounce English words with simple vowels, clustered vowels (e.g., sour, flour, their, pious), clustered consonants (e.g., which, stitch, high, sign), silent letters (e.g., debt, muscle, scene), etc. It’s also about knowing the word stress (or knowing which syllable to stress) in a word, like in eCOnomy, exTEND, OUTput, etc. It’s about sentence stress, where a sentence can have different meanings depending on which word you put stress on. For a detailed explanation of what sentence stress is go look it up. Then there’s the intonation, which is the change of pitch (up or down) as you pronounce words in a sentence. For example, close questions (what when, why, who, which, how) usually have falling intonation – How much is this? Open question like yes or no questions usually have rising intonation – Are you coming?
- If you don’t fully understand the question or prompt feel free to ask the examiner to repeat or clarify the question or prompt. You do not lose points for doing so. This is also useful when you really just need a bit more time to think about your response.
- Feel free to speak liberally and avoid the opposite which is to give very limited response.
- The examiner doesn’t expect you to be an orator so don’t panic or be discouraged if you make occasional mistakes.
- Pretend the examiner is just your friend or acquaintance. He or she is not your crush, not your boss or potential employer, not a police investigator, not a debt collector. You’re not in trouble, you’re just talking. So don’t be intimidated. You’ll have much more clarity in your thoughts and in your speaking this way. Also, aim to create a positive impression. Sometimes when we are too stressed we inadvertently make subtle body gestures that come across as being aloof, unfriendly, or unpleasant. And because examiners are just human beings like you and me, their impression of you can inevitably influence the way they see your speaking performance.
- PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE.
Resources to help you prepare – IELTS
There’s an abundance of materials online that can truly help you prepare for IELTS. Some are free, some are for fee. Most are a combination of both wherein they give free tips and practice tests but if you really want to get serious you need to buy the materials. It is not impossible to achieve your target score just by using free resources, but on the other hand, some paid resources are truly worth the money. Your starting point is Google. Some examples of good IELTS resource sites are:
- IELTS Liz – The site offers many free helpful resources. The author also sells her more advanced preparation materials.
- IELTS Podcast – Also has many useful materials that can help you prepare for IELTS. For more serious preparation, author also offers paid courses.
- Exam English – The site mainly offers free practice test
- IELTS-up – The site has not been updated lately but there are still useful free tips and materials.
- The English Bureau – Has insightful blogs that can be valuable to test takers.
- IELST Simon – Another useful blog that has thousands of sample IELTS questions plus, of course, blogs.
- IELTS Online Test – Lots of free mock tests, with free live online lesson information sessions.
- IELTS Jacky – Free lessons and practice resources
- Magoosh – A highly rated paid comprehensive IELTS preparation course covering all the four tests including mock test, assessments, and consultations. With target band score guaranty.
- IELTS Advantage – Another highly rated paid IELTS preparation course provider
These are just a sample of the many websites and blogs offering IELTS help. Google is your friend. And of course, visiting IELTS’ official website should be on your list.
Achieving a 7.5 band score across the IELTS test is very doable. You put in a one-time effort and its utility extends to applying to school, VET school or university, to professional organisations and government agencies, and with English as the world’s lingua franca, to your personal, professional, and business dealings. Good luck on your preparation and test. Cheers!
