Charles Martinez's Blog: Mandana raised her IELTS score from Band 6.5 to 7.5, here is how:

Mandana H. is a lovely lady from Iran, a native Farsi speaker. Her IELTS score (Overall Band 7.5) got her on our list of winners in IELTS results competition in September. What is remarkable about Mandana’s success is that she has been able to increase her score from 6.5 (first attempt) to 7.5 with an 8 in Listening (second attempt). There are quite a few handy tips in Mandana’s IELTS story – so have a look what YOU can change today in your preparation, to get a better score.

“I received my certificate and I would like to express my gratitude to IELTS-Blog.com for supporting me during preparation for IELTS exam. Here are some strategies that helped me to overcome the difficulty of IELTS exam. I hope I can help other candidates.

To be honest, the first time I took the IELTS exam, in spite of trying hard, I got the Overall band score of 6.5 with 6 in listening and 6.5 in speaking, listening, and writing. I was disappointed with the result because I needed to get at least 7. After that, a friend of mine recommended IELTS-Blog.com. I registered and received exam tips and recent IELTS exams that I found very useful for preparation. I also used writing samples provided by the website to assess my own writing. However, what helped me to increase my overall band score to 7.5 the second time I took IELTS exam was using “Target Band 7″ book. I would like to call it “Target Band 7.5″ book because it really worked for me. Using this book, I was able to increase my listening score to 8 – that had been a dream for me.

I suggest using “Target Band 7″ book to future candidates for a couple of reasons. First, it includes all you need for IELTS exam and answers all your questions. Second, the way it categorizes the writing tasks can really help you not to be confused during writing. Because the book provides a specific structure for each task type, you can organize your writing quickly so you can save your time. Lastly, tips for reading and listening can definitely help you to be focused during the exam.

In addition to using IELTS-blog.com, I also took advantages of some strategies to overcome the difficulty of IELTS exam. Based on my experience, for listening, the most important point is to follow the conversation and listen to all the details. Although paying attention to key words is useful, but only relying on the key words cannot help you answer the questions.

For reading, the strategy that helped me to save time was paying attention to the question types. Since in a passage the answers of some question types such as multiple choice, Yes/No/NG, and True/False/NG usually appear in sequential order, I could easily find them and go the next question. Therefore, I was able to finish the three passages in time.

For writing, as I said before, I had the structure of each task type in mind. While writing, I was just matching what I wanted to write with the pre-determined structure.

For speaking, instead of getting stressed out, I carefully listened to the examiner’s questions and answered accordingly. I tried to look relaxed and considered the speaking test as a friendly talk.”