got 8.5 overall in first attempt with 1 week of preparation

[anandc]

Listening 9.0
Reading 8.5
Writing 8.5
Speaking 7.5

Attempted on 17th May
Listened to Ryan's tips on structure of essays and other sections

Used Barron's, Cambridge series 8 & 9, and browsed through essays and letters of each band from the forum

[AntonS]

Really? This is awesome result! Congrats! Where are you from, by the way and how long did you learn English before the preparation to the IELTS?
Would you mind to help me with speaking via Skype a little bit? Just a few times would be great.

[Ryan]

Listening 9.0
Reading 8.5
Writing 8.5
Speaking 7.5

Attempted on 17th May
Listened to Ryan's tips on structure of essays and other sections

Used Barron's, Cambridge series 8 & 9, and browsed through essays and letters of each band from the forum

Hi anandc,

Thank you for sharing. Those are some tremendous marks. Congratulations!

What do you attribute the remarkable results to? Had you spent time in an English speaking country?

Please get in contact if you'd like to share the details in an IELTSCast.com interview.

[anandc]

Hi Anton,

I am from India, and my entire education and 15 yrs of IT career has been in English.

Let me know, the kind of inputs that you need.

Thanks,
Anand

[anandc]

Well Ryan, due to my educational background I have always been comfortable with spoken and written English.

The only thing was to understand the format well, see what works for you, and practice a few tests till one is comfortable with the format and the scores.

Also one needs to focus on weak areas within a test format.

Actually had a bad day, worse than expected on speaking, but knew my overall strong areas would push me over 7 as I needed 7 in each test and overall scores wouldn't have sufficed.

Using a few unique words to pep up your vocabulary in the essay, letters or speaking does help. But nothing should sound artificial, and it should come naturally.

Hope that helps, most importantly one needs to relax and go to bed early on the night of the tests.

[anandc]

Hi Ryan,

Let me know how to be in touch with you. Have a few assignments to finish, once those are done, shall get back to you for the interview if you believe my inputs would help.

Regards,
Anand

[Ryan]

The only thing was to understand the format well, see what works for you, and practice a few tests till one is comfortable with the format and the scores.

Also one needs to focus on weak areas within a test format.

Using a few unique words to pep up your vocabulary in the essay, letters or speaking does help. But nothing should sound artificial, and it should come naturally.

Hope that helps, most importantly one needs to relax and go to bed early on the night of the tests.

Great advice, anandc. The strategies you suggest above seem to be pretty common among most successful candidates. I also appreciate you bringing up the importance of not sounding artificial in the writing section. It's not enough for candidates to simply have the lexical resources, cohesive devices and grammar. They need to know how to demonstrate these in action appropriately and with fluency.

Thank you for sharing.

[anandc]

Absolutely, I entirely agree with what Ryan has summarized above.

Also I practiced all listening tests with my noisy AC on,without headsets , so I knew if I could consistently score 8 or more within those circumstances, I should be fine for the actual test.

Always tried to finish the whole reading section academic or general within 25-30 min, and revisit answers where I wasn't too sure and re-skimmed the contents for confirming the correct answer. Remember the sequence of the answers is maintained in the contents, and is the same in which the questions are posed. In the actual test I did finish the reading section in 30 min.

I always wrote long letters,essays, during practice, almost 300 or more words, but as long as I could see a definitive flow, structure and conclusion in the essay, I felt confident.

That's about it from my end, and hope this helps everyone taking the test, always aim for a grade higher than you need while practicing, and just to repeat, sleep well and early the night before.