It was my first time and, with my 9X6 job it was difficult to manage a study pattern. Here are some tips that can be useful for you. I appeared for the IDP IELTS on 22 Nov 2014.
1. Don't be nervous about speaking test as its quite general & with a little Command over speaking you can score really well. there might be Situations like the test center might not have noise insulation, But that's a fault from IDP or British council side. Its there responsibility to arrange a noise free location for proper voice recording. I got a 7 in speaking juss bcoz the examiner keep doing hand gestures askin me to raise my voice. that was something very irritating and i tend to loose my concentration. But the good thing is you can complain about that after your L-R-W exam. Unfortunately when they ask us to complain I was busy attending natures call(they don't allow washroom breaks during test), and i came to know about that from a friend after we left the center.
2. Listening section was the easiest & high scoring section in my opinion. With some practice n conc., you can do really well in that, therefore I got 8.5 In Listening. Try not to loose your focus as it gonna cost you some much needed score you want. test centers in Mumbai, India, provide you with Headphones. You can adjust the volume and they gonna play a sample audio for that too. Any other noise that can be disturbing(for eg. AC compressor or fan or anything else), You can complain about that & they will manage.
3. Reading section is a bit tricky & during practice my score use to vary a lot . But the key to a success in reading section is to use methods like underlining the important parts of passage so you can browse them quite easily & quickly while attending question. All questions are in sequence so its quite easy if you know the ans of 1 & 3, because ans of 2 lies between them. there might be certain types of question you might feel difficulty in attending, like i was having in giving matching one sentence or matching appropriate heading to the paragraph sort of questions. I watched Ryan videos & some other you tube videos whose links you can find below can help. Bdw i got an 8.5 in reading too(cloud 9 feeling).
4. Writing section was my weakest as i am not a huge fan of writing long articles or essays. I Practiced writing section a bit & watched a lot of videos that helped me a lot. The good thing is that there is a certain structure that you need to follow & your essay should be coherent, Means it should have a an Introduction, A body or Explanation & a clear conclusion. Try to keep it simple with some good vocabulary & Use connecting verbs in sentences. In my test i did many mistakes like bad time management(task1- 30 mins
). You should complete Task1 in or less than 20 mins or else try to do task 2 first as it got more points. I was left with less time for Task-2, so my essay was not so great. But by sticking to these tips (In italics), I was able to get a 7.0 (not so happy abt it). My grammar skills were quite average so i didn't engage in forming complex sentences and kept everything simple.I like to thanks people with whom i have practiced my speaking tests. Ryan's Blog helped a lot in finding the study partners & answering many of my doubts. for tutorials you can refer to Ryan's videos on youtube, others links i will be posting in comments below this post. for any other query or doubts you can email me on imranahmad5738@gmail.com.
All the best for your Preperations
Imran Ahmad
.. I like sharing my Exp. & tricks that helped me a lot ... because I too was a don in distress few weeks back, but now i do have better understanding about the exam & will keep on sharing so more & more people can benefit from that.