IELTS practice tests: how accurate they are and how to get the most from one

A practice test is the closest thing to the real exam you can do at home. Used well, it tells you exactly where your marks are going. Used badly, it's just a score that makes you feel good or bad.

What makes a practice test useful

• Real timing. 30 minutes of Listening heard once, 60 minutes of Reading, 60 minutes of Writing, then Speaking. Practising without a clock doesn't show you timing problems.
• The right format. If you're sitting IELTS on computer, practise on a screen with the same layout.
• The right version. Academic or General Training Reading and Writing, matching the test you will sit.
• Proper conversion. Raw scores converted to bands with the IELTS tables, and the overall band rounded the official way.
• Feedback you can act on. A Writing band is useful; a band for each of the four criteria is much more useful.

How accurate is a practice test score?

Listening and Reading: if the practice test is of similar difficulty to the real test and you sit it under real conditions, your score is usually within half a band of your test-day score.

Writing and Speaking: these are judged against the band descriptors, so any score outside the real test is an estimate. AI marking against the public descriptors is consistent and fast, and is usually within about half a band of a trained teacher. Pronunciation is the hardest thing to estimate from a recording.

The biggest source of inaccuracy is the candidate, not the marking: pausing the audio, checking a dictionary, or giving yourself extra time. Treat it like the real thing.

When to take one

• At the start: to find your weakest skill.
• Every week or two: to check that what you're doing is working.
• Seven to ten days before the test: as a full rehearsal, at the same time of day as your test if you can.

Doing a practice test every day isn't useful. You need time between them to work on what they show.

How to review a practice test

This is where the improvement happens. Allow at least an hour.

1. List every wrong answer in Listening and Reading. For each one, decide why: vocabulary, distractor, spelling, word limit, timing, or misreading the question.
2. Count the categories. One or two categories usually cover most of your errors.
3. For Writing, read the feedback on each criterion. Pick the lowest criterion and one specific thing to change, such as "add an example to every body paragraph".
4. For Speaking, listen to your recording or read the transcript. Mark where you hesitated, repeated words or gave very short answers.
5. Write three actions for the next week, based on the above.

Signs your preparation is working

• The same type of mistake appears less often.
• You finish Reading with time to check.
• Your lowest Writing criterion moves up.
• Your Part 2 Speaking answers last the full two minutes.

About the AIL practice tests

The AIL practice tests were written by teachers at Australian Institute of Language, an official IELTS test centre in Melbourne. There are five Academic and five General Training papers, each with all four skills, in a layout based on IELTS on computer. Listening and Reading are scored instantly using IELTS conversion tables. Writing and Speaking are marked by AI against the public band descriptors, with comments and corrections for each criterion. You can try any skill free for 15 minutes before buying a full test.