 We've helped thousands of students get a band nine in reading and listening over the years, and there are three key things that separate band nine students from the rest of you. And it's all to do with how they use these practice tests. Practice actually makes most students worse, not better. But if you wanna join the 1% of students that get a band nine in reading and listening, all you have to do is just learn the three key differences that separate band nine from everyone else. They understand where to find real practice tests and how to use them. They understand these key practice principles and they use practice tests completely differently. Every single minute a band nine student is using practice tests, they are improving. And I'm gonna show you using these real practice tests exactly what they do in this video. Okay, so point number one, they know where to find real practice tests and they know where to find them for free. There are only five places in the world where you can find real reliable practice tests. They are Cambridge.org, IELTS.org, IDP, the British Council and these Cambridge books. Now for the first four, all you have to do is just go onto Google, put in IELTS practice tests and then put in Cambridge, IELTS.org, IDP or British Council into the search bar and Google will take you directly to those free practice tests. All of these are real and reliable. The Cambridge books are not free but I would actually consider them to be free. So which is more expensive, $200 or $20? $200 is the average cost that you will waste if you fail the test. You're never getting that money back but if you invest $20 in this you're far more likely to get the score that you need. So which is more expensive, $200 or $20? When you think about that, they pretty much are free or an investment. But don't be a naughty boy or girl and go online and try and find the free soft copies of the free PDFs. Most of the PDFs, the vast majority of them are not actually the real tests, they are fake and highly misleading and will lead to failure, so don't do that. So now that they've got their practice tests what they do is they don't just go and practice as much as possible, they follow these five key practice principles. Number one, practice does not make perfect. Let me illustrate this by telling you a little story, a true story about a friend that I went to school with. He lived on a farm and his dad bought him an old car when he was like 10 years old and he drove around the farm every day in this car. When it came time to doing our driving test when we were 17, all of the other friends that I had that were doing the test did about six weeks of practice. He had seven years of daily practice. Six weeks, 90% of them passed first time. The guy who drove for seven years, practiced every day, he failed multiple, multiple times. This is because he developed bad habits and every time that he drove that car he was making these bad habits worse. This is exactly the same what I see with IELTS students. They have bad habits, they're doing things wrong and by doing lots and lots of practice tests they are getting worse, not better and they're wasting their time. But don't worry, we're gonna show you a technique in this video that guarantees that every second you are practicing you're constantly improving. Number two, most practice tests are fake. As I said, these are the only five sources that are trustworthy. More than 90%, probably closer to 95% of tests that you find online are produced by people who don't know what they're doing which means that they are one, fake and number two, they are unreliable. Because these people don't know what they're doing they either produce tests that are way too easy or way too difficult. If they're too easy, you will be overconfident, you will go and do the test thinking that you are going to get a high score and you will fail. If they are too difficult, you will give up too early. You will just think these are way too difficult, you'll get very, very stressed and most students just give up in that scenario. So it doesn't matter if the website is called Real IELTS Practice Test, we promise they are real, we are experts.com doesn't mean that they are. These are the only five sources that you need. Band 9 students also understand that improvement comes after practice. So I want you to imagine that you're going to the gym and you're trying to build your muscle. When you are lifting weights in the gym, do your muscles instantly increase in size? No, your muscles don't increase in the gym. Your muscles increase after you leave the gym. This is a concept that IELTS Band 9 students understand about practice. You are not improving while you are practicing. In fact, to go back to the gym analogy, if you lift weights too much, your muscles will get smaller, not bigger. We get hundreds of emails a week saying, I've done every single practice test in the world and I'm not improving. It's like, yes, because practice does not make you better. It is what you do after practice that makes you better. And that's what we'll show you in the rest of this video. Because Band 9 students understand the real purpose, the real goal of practice is not to get better, it is to establish weaknesses. So once you do imagine you are sick, you go to the doctor. What does the doctor do? Does the doctor immediately treat you? No, they normally diagnose your problem. They will run tests. But once they establish what the problem is, they don't just keep giving you tests until you get better. They treat the problem. This is exactly the same approach that Band 9 students use. They do practice tests in order to establish what their key weaknesses are and then they can improve those key weaknesses. This is where the real improvement comes. After practice, outside of practice, they turn those weaknesses into strengths and then they are constantly improving and they only do practice tests again to establish if they improved and what their new weaknesses are. And we're gonna show you exactly what students do, showing you real tests in this video. Number five, Band 9 students understand the difference between slow practice and fast practice. So when you are doing your driving test, in lesson one, does the driving instructor take you on to the main road and tell you to drive at 100 miles an hour? No, you would both die if that happened. This is exactly the same principle that we apply to our VIP students. When they are learning new strategies, you are going to use these and go very, very slowly. So for example, let's say you are trying to improve true, false, not given and you're using a strategy, a step-by-step strategy and don't worry if you need those, I'll give those to you in a video at the end. When you're learning that strategy, you might take 20 minutes, 30 minutes, 45 minutes, just to do these seven questions because your goal is learning the strategy. Your goal is not to do everything as quickly as possible and then you will speed up bit by bit by bit. But when you are establishing your weaknesses, when you're trying to get where you are, you're going to practice fast under exam conditions and that's what we're gonna show you now. So here's exactly what our bar nine students do when they are doing fast practice. Number one, don't cheat, all right? Make sure that you have never seen these questions before. Don't use questions that you have used in class or you've practiced like 10 times. Don't get the books and just flick through them and see what questions are going to come up. We want to recreate the real test as much as possible. So don't cheat and look at the test before you do them. Number two, do it under exam conditions. Go into a room that is quiet, where you will not be distracted and time yourself using the exact same time that you would use on test day and don't cheat, don't go 30 seconds over. Number three, honest correction. If you spelt the answer wrong, it is wrong. Don't give yourself, oh, I'll do it better on test day. If it is wrong, it is wrong. Now the fourth thing you're gonna do is you're going to establish what your score actually is. So you're going to go to the book, you're going to go to the back, you're going to count how many you got correct and you're going to establish your band score. I'll put a link below the video where you can check your band score, but it's pretty easy. Just use Google, what does 35 out of 40 equal in band scores? Now the rule that we give our VIP students is if you are half a band more than the score that you need and you can do that three times in a row, you are ready to do the test. So let's say for example, you need a band eight. If you are getting 8.5 or over three times in a row, you are ready to do the test. But let's say you need a band eight and you get 7.5 and then you get eight and then 7.5 again. It's highly likely you're going to get seven or 7.5 in the real test because most people don't perform better in the real test not because the tests are more difficult but because it's just a very stressful environment. Now you might think that that's a lot of work. It is, but it's not as much work as failing the test two, three times in a row. It is much cheaper and more cost effective to actually improve before you even book the test. More than 99% of the students that we work with that don't get the score that they need, the number one reason that they fail is they book the test before they're ready. But if you are consistently getting these scores that you need before you book the test, then you're pretty much guaranteed to get the score that you need. So you might be thinking now, well, how do I improve? How do I work on my weaknesses? That's what we're going to work on next. So really what you're doing now is you're doing real tests under exam conditions in order to establish your weaknesses. So what you're going to do is you're going to go to the answer key at the back of the book and you're going to honestly evaluate and give yourself a real score. If it's wrong, put an X beside it. If it is right, put a TIC beside it. And then what you're going to do is you're going to look at each of these mistakes and establish why you made each of these mistakes. So let's go through each of the five key mistakes, the most common ones, how you find them in both the reading and listening test and then how to improve them. So the first one is very straightforward, spelling. Don't cheat and correct the spelling or anything. If you're consistently spelling words incorrectly, you are going to fail. You're going to get a lower score than you're hoping for and you need to address that. But that is very, very easy. Just look at exactly what you wrote and then look at the spelling, compare the spelling and the answer key. If it is different even by one letter, it is wrong. Market is wrong. You're not aiming to get the score that you need right away. You're establishing weaknesses. So be totally 100% honest. Number two is not reading instructions. So for example, if you go and look at some questions that say write a letter and instead you write the word like this example here, then that is going to be wrong in the real test because not because the Cambridge people are horrible people or the tests are unfair, don't blame the test, blame yourself. It is quite easy to read the instructions. You decided not to do that or you just don't have the skill yet. You will, we're going to show you how to improve it but you haven't established or you haven't improved that skill and it is a cognitive skill, reading things carefully. Number three could be reading skills or listening skills. For reading, this might be skimming or scanning but the most likely skill that you're lacking in will be reading for detail. So if we look at a true false not given question for example, one of the key skills that it is testing is can you find the location of the correct answer by scanning? If you really struggle with finding the location then that is probably a scanning issue. If you find the location but you find it very difficult to find the correct answer within that paragraph then that is a weakness on reading for detail. Listening could be the same. Maybe you find it difficult to listen to multiple people speaking at the same time or maybe you really struggle with focusing for long periods of time on one person talking about an academic subject for example. Those are all skills that you need to improve and by thinking about why you got that question wrong that will establish what skills you need to work on. You'll also be able to look at the video that I'll show you at the end of the lesson that gives you strategies for all the different types of questions and what you can do is go through those strategies and think where you messed up. So if it says skim and you didn't do that or you find that difficult that could be a skimming issue. If it says scan or read for detail or whatever they're telling you to do and you're not good at that thing that's a skills issue. Now number four is a big one vocabulary. If you are reading things and you're thinking I don't understand this or this is difficult or the text is difficult or I'm getting lost. Or when you're listening, you're getting lost or you think the people are speaking too quickly or you can't keep up with what they're saying that is probably a vocabulary issue. You simply do not understand the words. There is no magic fix for this. There aren't any common words that you can memorize. You just have to improve your vocabulary. Huge difference between a band nine student and a band seven student is the range of the vocabulary that they understand. But don't worry, we'll give you a link to a vocabulary improvement plan below the video. The last one is particular question types. So let's say for example, you're looking at the answer key and you notice that most, if not all the yes, no, not given questions that you get and you do two or three different tests every time these questions come up you're getting them wrong. That is not a vocabulary issue or a reading skills issue or a spelling issue. That is, you're just not comfortable with those questions yet. What you need to do in that scenario is you need to familiarize yourself with a strategy, practice that strategy slowly, learn the strategy, become more comfortable and then you will improve. So as I said at the beginning of the video, what band nine students do is every minute that they are practicing they are constantly improving because they are establishing their weaknesses and then they're working on those weaknesses. So let's say for example, you need help with spelling. I'll put a video at the end that'll help you with that. Not reading instructions, this is just about being more careful and actually just practicing reading the instructions. You cannot magically tell yourself, read the instructions and then you'll do it in a stressful situation like an IELTS test. You need to practice that multiple times, always read the question. Reading and listening skills. I'll give you a free course. I'll put it below in the description that will help you with that. I'll put a vocabulary improvement plan and I'll give you access to that video with all of the different strategies. You actually do need to sit down and practice those strategies if that is a weakness. Finally, I would recommend focusing on your biggest weakness first. I know that's difficult but it is far easier to tackle your biggest weakness first, get that out of the way and then everything becomes much, much easier. Here are the videos that I promised you. Check out the description where you'll get that free course, all the other stuff and I hope that you enjoyed this video.