IELTS Academic
The International English Language Testing System (IELTS) is intended to measure the language competence of candidates who need to study or work in countries where English is the primary language of communication. IELTS is necessary for university admission in the United Kingdom and other nations.
What is the IELTS Academic test like?
The Academic version of IELTS is harder than the general version. All candidates do the same Listening and Speaking sections.
The test has four sections:
Listening
- 4 sections, 40 questions, 30 minutes
- Section 1: a conversation between two people set in an everyday social context.
- Section 2: a monologue set in an everyday social context, e.g. a speech about local facilities.
- Section 3: a conversation between up to four people set in an educational or training context, e.g. a university tutor and a student discussing an assignment.
- Section 4: a monologue on an academic subject, e.g. a university lecture.
Each section is heard once only. They include a range of accents, including British, Australian, New Zealand, American and Canadian.
Speaking
- An interview, 11-14 minutes
- Part 1 Introduction and interview
- Part 2 Individual long turn - you have to talk about a given topic for up to 2 minutes.
- Part 3 Two-way discussion (The examiner asks further questions which are connected to the topic of Part 2.)
Reading
- 3 long reading passages, 40 questions, 60 minutes
Each section contains one long text. Texts are from books, journals, magazines and newspapers.
Writing
- Part 1: describe, summaries or explain the information in a graph, table, chart or diagram
- Part 2: write an essay in response to a point of view, argument or problem
Level and scores
Multi-level. You get a score between 1 and 9. Half scores such as 6.5 are possible. Universities often demand a minimum IELTS score of 6.0 or 7.0. They may also demand a minimum score of 6.0 in each of the 4 sections.
For the listening test, which contains 40 questions, the approximate band scores can be calculated using this table.
| Band Score | 9 | 8.5 | 8 | 7.5 | 7 | 6.5 | 6 | 5.5 | 5 | 4.5 | 4 | 3.5 | 3 | 2.5 |
| Score / 40 | 39-40 | 37-38 | 35-36 | 32-34 | 30-31 | 26-29 | 23-25 | 18-22 | 16-17 | 13-15 | 10-12 | 8-10 | 6-7 | 4-5 |
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