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IELTS Brighton: Everything You Need to Know
This page will explain everything you need to know about IELTS in Brighton. From basic IELTS information, to choosing an IELTS preparation course in Brighton, to taking your IELTS exam.
Malvern House Brighton is a part of the Malvern International group and for many years now with our values of;
- Integrity: A Reliable Partner – Trusted and Assuring.
- Customer Focus: Customer Centric – We Care & Support.
- Accountability: Responsibility – We take Ownership.
- Resilience: Determination – Failure is just another start.
- Excellence: Quality + Professionalism – Exceed the Expectations
We have been supporting our students to successfully achieve their IELTS goals in Brighton, allowing progress in academic, professional and social areas of life. Our Brighton school is fabulously located in the centre of Brighton, under 5 minutes walk from the Station and just 10 minutes walk to the incredibly famous shopping streets the Laines, and the iconic Brighton Beach.
We are also just a short stroll from the IELTS exam centre here in Brighton and so perfectly located for you to stop in and say hello. We offer many different types of classes and courses, all flexible to suit your lifestyle, goals and schedule. As well as our highly-reputed IELTS exam preparation courses we offer General English, Business English, closed groups, speciality courses and 1:1 VIP lessons.
What is IELTS?
The International English Language Testing System (IELTS) is designed to help you work, study or migrate to a country where English is the native language. It’s an exam and certificate that is recognised world-wide to show your ability to communicate effectively in English for business, academic or social purposes.
There are four parts to the test: Listening (30 minutes), Reading (60 minutes), Writing (60 minutes) and Speaking (14 minutes). The total test time is 2 hours and 44 minutes. There are two types of IELTS exam that you can take: the Academic IELTS and the General IELTS. The exam itself can be taken as a written and in-person test or you can do IELTS on computer: the same IELTS test, delivered via computer.
What’s the difference between the IELTS Academic and IELTS General exams?
The Speaking and Listening components of the exam are exactly the same, but the Reading and Writing components differ between the Academic and General exams. This is so the subjects you read and write about are more relevant to your personal situation – whether you are studying for academic or general reasons. For example, the Academic test has topics suitable for anyone entering university and professional or business organisations. Whereas, the General Training test includes topics based on general interest.
IELTS Reading Paper
Both General Training Reading and Academic Reading papers are 1 hour / 60 minutes long and consist of 40 questions. In both papers there are different question types that you must answer. The exam is designed to test a wide range of reading skills such as, reading for gist, reading for main ideas, reading for detail, skimming, understanding logical argument and recognising writers’ opinions, attitudes and purpose. When you take the test, you’re required to transfer your answers to an answer sheet during the time allowed for the test. No extra time is allowed for transfer. You should also be careful when writing answers on the answer sheet as poor spelling and grammar are penalised.
For the General Training Reading Paper: Texts are taken from books, journals, magazines and newspapers, notices, advertisements, company handbooks and guidelines. These are materials you are likely to encounter on a daily basis in an English-speaking environment.
Paper format: There are three sections. Section 1 may contain two or three short texts or several shorter texts. Section 2 comprises two texts. In Section 3, there is one long text. The test is 1 hour long.
Text Sources:
- The first section, ‘social survival’, contains texts relevant to basic linguistic survival in English with tasks mainly about retrieving and providing general factual information, for example, notices, advertisements and timetables.
- The second section, ‘Workplace survival’, focuses on the workplace context, for example, job descriptions, contracts and staff development and training materials.
- The third section, ‘general reading’, involves reading more extended prose with a more complex structure. Here, the emphasis is on descriptive and instructive rather than argumentative texts, in a general context relevant to the wide range of test takers involved, for example, newspapers, magazines and fictional and non-fictional book extracts.
The IELTS Academic test includes three long texts which range from the descriptive and factual to the discursive and analytical. These are taken from books, journals, magazines and newspapers. They have been selected for a non-specialist audience but are appropriate for people entering university courses or seeking professional registration.
Paper format: Three reading passages with a variety of questions using a number of task types. The test is 1 hour long.
Sources: Texts are taken from books, journals, magazines and newspapers, and are written for a non-specialist audience. The topics deal with issues which are designed to be engaging and appropriate for test takers entering undergraduate or postgraduate courses or looking to enter the world of work.
The passages are written in a variety of styles, for example narrative, descriptive or discursive/argumentative. At least one text contains a detailed logical argument. Texts often contain non-verbal materials such as diagrams, graphs or illustrations. If texts contain technical terms and non general vocabulary a simple glossary is provided.
IELTS Writing Paper
Both Academic and General IELTS writing papers are 60 minutes long and are made up of two writing tasks. Task 1 is 150 words and approximately 20 minutes of the allocated time whereas Task 2 is 250 words and 40 minutes of the test time. Test takers should make sure that they complete the task carefully and provide a full and relevant response.
You should organise your ideas clearly and make sure to support your arguments with relevant, detailed and supported examples (including from their own experience where relevant). For this writing paper, test takers need to be able to communicate more abstract and complex ideas and use a range of vocabulary and grammatical structures. Task 2 contributes twice as much to the final Writing band score as Task 1. Therefore, test takers who fail to attempt to answer this task will greatly reduce their chance of achieving a good score. Both tasks in both papers are assessed on the following.
- Task achievement (25%)
- Coherence and cohesion (25%)
- Lexical resource (25%)
- Grammatical range and accuracy. (25%)
General IELTS Writing Paper
In this paper the topics you will write about are general. There are two tasks:
- Task 1 – you are presented with a situation and asked to write a letter requesting information, or explaining the situation. The letter may be personal (informal), semi-formal or formal in style.
- Task 2 – you are asked to write an essay in response to a point of view, argument or problem. The essay can be fairly personal in style.
Academic IELTS Writing Paper
Topics are of general interest suitable for test takers that plan to enter into undergraduate and postgraduate studies or seeking professional registration. There are two tasks:
- Task 1 – you will be presented with a graph, table, chart or diagram and asked to describe, summarise or explain the information in your own words. You may be asked to describe and explain data, describe the stages of a process, how something works or describe an object or event.
- Task 2 – you will be asked to write an essay in response to a point of view, argument or problem. Responses to both tasks must be in a formal style.
Why is IELTS important?
IELTS is taken by people seeking educational and job opportunities in English-speaking countries so that their ability to overcome the linguistic gap and communicate efficiently in a foreign country can be assessed.
IELTS is an internationally-recognised qualification in academic English, with very wide recognition throughout the world. It is a standard qualification for university entrance and some professional bodies, and also gives proof of your English abilities for employment and visa purposes.
The IELTS qualification opens the door to many academic and professional opportunities around the world.
- IELTS is an internationally recognised qualification that helps you to gain entry to university programmes, demonstrate your language level in job opportunities, and can even help towards gaining an entry visa to many countries.
- Preparing for the IELTS exam will also boost your confidence in using English in day-to-day situations – at school, at work, or socially.
Introduction to Brighton IELTS courses at Malvern House
In a typical class, our experienced IELTS teachers will cover all sections of the IELTS exam in detail. We know that each learner is different and so our highly-qualified teachers will focus on you and your linguistic needs and abilities. Our teachers will also help you to understand how you can demonstrate your best English on exam day.
We use a wide range of the most up-to-date IELTS preparation resources, as well as practice tests to make sure that we focus on your personal strengths and weaknesses. You will also be given homework to study at your own pace in your own time to consolidate the learning points covered in class.
At Malvern House Brighton we pride ourselves on our adaptability. We do our best to enable our students to study in a way and at times to suit your schedule. We have morning afternoon and evening classes Malvern house Brighton partnered with Malvern Online Academy giving you flexibility to suit your lifestyle.
As one of our recent students quoted:
“The lessons have been immensely helpful in my study for IELTS.” Billy, Taiwanese, 24, IELTS candidate
Why choose Malvern House Brighton to successfully achieve your high IELTS certificate?
We focus on each still individually as well as providing extensive exam practice and tuition focused on your language needs. By tailoring the preparation to your specific requirements, we can ensure you have the language and exam techniques to achieve success in the exam and therefore reaching your goals. We offer student hosting with local families. We offer IELTS evening courses as well as in the daytime. You can study full-time or part-time.
There are undoubtedly exam features that a candidate needs to be aware of in order to successfully navigate and master the exam. In our IELTS classes we focus on specific exam strategies and techniques specific to each paper as well as skills that can be applied across the different skill areas. Amongst many other things we cover synonymy, reading skills of scanning and skimming, summarising, paraphrasing and developing spoken and written answers according to the General or Academic style of the exam you are taking
As mentioned previously the Reading Paper features 90 questions of various types that you must answer within a one hour time limit, that’s just 90 seconds per answer. This is quite the challenge, even for a native speaker! In order to successfully complete and navigate this paper you need to develop reading skills and deploy strategies and techniques.
There’s a range of task types for the reading paper (both Academic and General) including; multiple choice, identifying information, identifying the writer’s views/claims, matching information, matching headings, matching features, matching sentence endings, sentence completion, summary completion, note completion, table completion, flow-chart completion, diagram label completion and short-answer questions.
Through guidance from our highly-experienced teachers you will gain skills and expertise in locating key parts of the text and subsequently answering this range of questions efficiently and accurately. Knowing which questions to leave for later and not waste time on, knowing how to use time efficiently, quickly locating answers within a large body of text; these are just some of the specific IELTS strategies and techniques that our teachers will show you and train you in, here at Malvern House Brighton.
We’ll develop your spoken production of English and the key skills needed for success in the Speaking paper; developing answers, paraphrasing and using synonymy and natural expressions, range of lexis (vocabulary) appropriate for many different topics as well as giving an extended answer and engaging in complex and abstract discussion with the examiner. For the Listening paper we will support you to navigate the exam and questions. These skills are particularly essential as you are only able to listen once, meaning the strategies that we will teach you are vital for exam success.
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Summary of IELTS in Brighton
We hope you’ve enjoyed this overview of the IELTS exam and our IELTS preparation classes. All our team here at Malvern House Brighton are here waiting to welcome you and help you reach IELTS success! Watch this space for our next blog on Conversational skills in the classroom coming soon…
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