A 4-week IELTS study plan (for people who work or study full time)

Four weeks is enough to raise a band by half a point in one or two skills if you know where your marks are going. It is not enough to "improve your English" in general. This plan is built around that difference.

It assumes about an hour a day on weekdays and two to three hours on Saturday or Sunday. If you have more time, add it to your weakest skill.

Before you start: one full practice test

Sit a full test under real timing, in one go. Write down:

• Your band in each skill.
• In Listening and Reading: which parts and which question types you lost marks on.
• In Writing and Speaking: your score on each of the four criteria.

Then pick your focus skill: the one furthest below your target. If you need 7 in each and you're at 7, 7, 6, 6.5, Writing is your focus.

Week 1: diagnose and set up

Week 2: work on the focus skill

Spend about half of each weekday session on your focus skill, and rotate the other three.

• If Writing: one Task 2 every second day in 40 minutes. The next day, correct it using your error log, then rewrite one paragraph.
• If Speaking: 15 minutes a day of recorded answers. Listen back and note hesitations and repeated errors.
• If Listening: one part a day, with Part 4 at least twice a week.
• If Reading: one timed passage a day, plus 15 minutes of reading academic articles for speed.

Weekend: second full practice test. Compare to week 1.

Week 3: accuracy and speed

By now your error log should show patterns. This week is about eliminating them.

• Before each Writing task, read your top five errors. After it, check for those first.
• In Listening and Reading, write the evidence for every answer you check. If you can't say why it's right, you were guessing.
• Speaking: practise extending answers in Part 1 and keeping going for two minutes in Part 2.

Weekend: third practice test.

Week 4: test conditions

Less new learning, more full-length timed practice.

• Mon–Wed: timed sections in your focus skill and one other.
• Thu: a full Listening and Reading under exam conditions.
• Fri: light review of your error log. No new material.
• Day before the test: rest. Check your ID, the test centre location and your start time.

How to tell it's working

Your practice test scores should move by the end of week 2 or 3 in your focus skill. If they haven't, the approach is wrong, not the amount of practice. Common reasons: practising without checking mistakes, writing essays without feedback, or doing short exercises when the problem is concentration across a full section.

Tools that help

• A full timed practice test every weekend. The AIL practice tests give a raw score and band for Listening and Reading, and criterion-level scores for Writing and Speaking, so you can track exactly what's changing.
• The free Writing Task 2 checker for quick feedback on extra essays between practice tests.