I don’t know if the place for posting this is appropriate, but I have been asking MS to get a category for this for a while, and since there was no response, I have taken the liberty to post it here as IELTS and TOEFL are pretty similar. If you are reading this, then you would be aware what IELTS is, but for the benefit of others who are not, it stands for International English Language Testing System. The exam is conducted at regular intervals in India by the British Council and IDP Edu Australia at quite a few places. You will get all the information at https://ielts.com and the british council websites. There are quite a few other sites that give you the information and forms for this.
I plan to give you people the methods I used to crack the exam. This part shall be exclusively for the writing module. First of all, get serious about it. There is nothing much to it, but if you want a high score, one has to be very careful. There are opportunities to repeat the exam, but I would urge you to get it over and done with once for all. Start about 20 days before. You do not need to go to a ’coach’ for all this. You may want to send me the 3000 bucks they charge! ok, maybe a fraction of it will help too, lol. Take the Times of India and head for the editorial page. Everyday without fail read all the editorials and the centre article there. Especially whenever there are two points of view expressed. Be very critical about the english used and the points that emerge. Make a summary or a precis if you want to call it that; of them- daily. Sounds very painful, but it will get interesting as you start peaking in time for your exam. Learn five new words everyday, their pronunciation, their usage and make a sentence with them. This is best done through the Oxford English Dictionary. Now try and use these words during the course of the day. At the end of the 20 days, theoretically you will have learnt 100 new words. Even if you can use about 10 of them during the course of your writing and speaking modules, you have arrived!!
Next the writing module. I am only covering the General Applications module, the modus operendi will be applicable to the Academic one too. Use a pencil for this part. The letter part is pretty simple, make sure that you do practice a couple of letters before you go to write the exam. Do not mention things like, ’how is auntie (ji!!), regards etc. Get straight to the point. Make sure that you cover all the points that have been asked for in the setting. The first paragraph should state why you are writing the letter, the next should explain the problem (or the setting) and the third should round up the solution or what you expect to be done. The weightage for the letter is low, so do not spend more than 15 minutes on it, and remember, do not exceed 150 words, 155 at the max! You get penalised for it.
The most important part of the writing module is the essay. You need to practice this well. It is 250 words, not 245, not 255. Be precise. Pick out some topics, ask others to give you topics of general interest. The educational system, health services, crime, movies, population control, censorship, technology advancement, computers etc could be some topics. The topics generally are of two types, whether you agree/disagree with the statement given or an analytical kind. You need to have an introduction of about 50 words..count the words per line..and multiply by the number of lines..simple lol. List out three reasons/points and cover them in the next three paras..50 words each. The conclusion is next, add another 40-50 for that and voila, you are home! Make the whole thing neat, use of the pencil and eraser helps in this. You should spend about 30-35 minutes for this task. Check and doublecheck the spellings and the grammar. If you have the time, count the number of words manually. If you have practised well during the run up, you will have the ten minutes as I had. I intended to write more, but seems that I have extended. I will write more on the speaking modules the next time. Watch this space! By the way, I had managed a 8 band score, with 8.5 in the reading section!