What do IELTS candidates have to do?

2. What do IELTS candidates have to do? • Candidates must do all four test modules: • Listening • Reading • Writing • Speaking

3. Listening 30 minutes, 4 sections, 40 items Academic Reading 60 minutes, 3 sections, 40 items General Training Reading 60 minutes, 3 sections, 40 items Academic Writing 60 minutes, 2 tasks General Training Writing 60 minutes, 2 tasks Speaking 11 - 14 minutes, 3 parts Test Format

4. Listening Module • Tests: • specific and overall comprehension • inference • salient information • Same for Academic and General Training candidates • Variety of contexts (general and study) • Variety of formats (dialogues and mini-lectures) • Tape played only once

5. Reading Module • Tests detailed and general comprehension • Academic and General Training Modules • Academic Module: academic texts • General Training module: general and study-related texts

6. Writing Module • Academic and General Training Modules • Tests: • ability to write English appropriate to context and task • use of language in a variety of contexts and topics • skills at sentence, paragraph and whole text level • Candidates rated on: • task fulfilment • coherence and cohesion • communicative quality • vocabulary and sentence structure

7. Speaking Module • Same for Academic and General Training candidates • Tests ability to communicate through speech in general English contexts • One-to-one interview • Range of topics and contexts • Range of skills and patterns of interaction • 3 parts: • question and answer on personal topics • unassisted short talk on a given topic • two-way discussion on more abstract issues

8. What do the bands mean? • 9 band scale • 9 - expert user • 8 - very good user • 7 - good user • 6 - competent user • 5 - modest user • 4 - limited user • 3 - extremely limited user • 2 - intermittent user • 1 - non-user