Hey, I took my exam on 7th May and to be honest, I was freaking out afterwards since the writing part got me off guard. Long post incoming.First I had to compare two floor plans – that was the only type of exercise I really didn’t practice beforehand so it took me ~30 minutes to write and even then I didn’t have time to proofread. My strategy with writing was always to complete the second task first because for some reason, it’s way easier for me and I takes me only 15-20 minutes to put my ideas on paper. That was the strategy I used on the exam day as well – wrote the essay about postgraduate research practices, took 10 minutes to make corrections etc and then went on to the floor plan comparision which took me forever (30 minutes) because for my brain, there was just too little information to compare. I couldn’t shine with my vocabulary either, really, since as I mentioned I only practiced different charts, graphs and similar tasks.
Anyway, the essay part felt good. I’m currently applying for postgraduate research in “soft” sciences so the topic was pretty much on spot for me. The question it had was something along the lines of “To what extent do you agree with the statement?” Basically I started reading how other people structured the essay addressing a similar question and I found out that in many cases, people built the whole text up on their (dis)agreement with the statement. Well, I didn’t and I thought I screwed it. I started with a normal introduction, paraphrasing the statement. Then I gave a supporting paragraph (why science > other fields) supported with 2 arguments. Second main paragraph was showing why other subjects deserve attention+funding as much as science and then, in the last concluding paragraph, I told that I think all the fields are important (basically agreeing with the previous paragraph) and gave an example of how my “soft” field could help with certain global issues. I know it’s usually pretty bad to come up with new ideas/examples in the conclusion but I guess it wasn’t gamebreaking.
TLDR; I though I messed up the structure part completely for the essay since most people seemed to have built the essay on their (dis)agreement with the statement whilst I gave both sides and agreed with the last side given in my concluding paragraph.
Anyway, today I got a preview for my results which I hope are correct –
Listening – 9.0
Reading – 8.5 (I often get confused between Not Given and False)
Writing – 7.5 !!
Speaking – 8.0
Overall – 8.5
Sorry for the long rant, my main reason for posting all this is actually to thank you, Atul, for all the videos and guidelines you provided. Easily the best source of information and practice materials on IELTS available (I only started revising ~2 weeks before the test, so I’m sure if I actually had the chance to watch all the videos and read all the materials, I would have done even better – e.g practiced comparing the maps and such, hehe).

 

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