Charles Martinez's Blog: Kunal’s journey to IELTS Band 8

Today we would like you to meet Kunal – a young man from India, who speaks Marathi. The remarkable thing about him is that he prepared and got Band 8 in just 2 weeks (with a perfect 9 in Listening!). Kunal took the first place in our monthly results competition, and of course we asked him about his preparation.

In his winner’s interview Kunal explained how he did so well, in such a short time. Here is what he said:

My Band 8 story

Module – Academic
Preparation Time – 2 weeks.

In my opinion anyone who has two weeks and prior English knowledge since primary school can easily score Band 8 like I did.

Preparation Material

To make the most of my time I read all I needed from http://www.ielts-blog.com, ‘Target Band 7‘ is the recommended book. I used Cambridge IELTS 12 book for practice as well.

Methodology

I read ‘Target Band 7‘ start to end in 4 days. I highlighted the tips given for each section. They help a lot, especially for Reading & Writing sections.

Then I started with the tests. I solved 4 full Length Tests within given time limit. Listening won’t be an issue as such, if you can understand English movies easily. Reading has few tricky questions. But those highlighted tips in the book can help here.

For writing you should be a good reader. I, for instance, sometimes read articles, newspaper, blogs, etc. It helps you write well and also the tips tell you how to cover all the points.

Speaking seems easy, but it isn’t. Many factors are considered in evaluation, so the more you practice the better chances you have – that’s all I can say.

Overall, I planned on scoring the most in listening & reading to balance the score in writing & speaking, which I knew would be tough to score.