Free IELTS study resources
300+ short, practical vocabulary, grammar, and strategy guides for Reading, Listening, Writing, and Speaking — not another question bank.
Reading Passage Types: General Interest and Opinion
General-interest passages argue a position through everyday examples rather than data or narrative — here's how to separate the writer's own view from views raised only to be complicated.
6 min readReadingGT Reading Section 1: Everyday Texts
GT Reading Section 1 is a genuinely different, shorter, and more functional genre than an academic passage — here's how its notices, ads, and instructions are built and how to read them fast.
6 min readReadingGT Reading Section 2: Workplace Texts
GT Reading's workplace-focused middle section in depth — its typical texts, its conditional, procedural style, and the question types that specifically pair with it.
6 min readReadingGT Reading Section 3: General Interest Texts
GT Reading's final and most demanding section in depth — its essay-like structure, argumentative vocabulary, and the question types that mirror Academic Reading.
6 min readListeningListening Section 1: What to Expect
Listening's opening section in depth — its two-speaker transactional format, its plain but detail-heavy vocabulary, and how self-corrections and recaps specifically test accuracy.
6 min readListeningListening Section 2: What to Expect
Listening's practical-information monologue in depth — its spatial and scheduling content, its pairing with Plan/Map Labelling, and how to track a single continuous speaker.
6 min readListeningListening Section 3: What to Expect
Listening's multi-speaker academic discussion in depth — its negotiated, evolving structure, how opinions get attributed and reversed, and how to track a conversation to its actual conclusion.
6 min readListeningListening Section 4: What to Expect
Listening's toughest section in depth — its single unbroken academic lecture, its densest vocabulary, and how its layered, structurally reordered sentences differ from everything before it.
6 min readWritingAnatomy of a Band 9 Task 2 Essay
A structural walkthrough built around one full, dissected Band 9 sample essay — not just abstract advice about "good vocabulary," but the actual structure examined sentence by sentence.
7 min readWritingAnatomy of a Band 9 GT Letter
A structural walkthrough built around one full, dissected Band 9 sample letter — showing exactly how tone, bullet coverage, and register work sentence by sentence, not just in the abstract.
6 min readWritingAnatomy of a Band 9 Academic Task 1 Report
A full invented chart and a complete Band 9-level report responding to it, dissected sentence by sentence to show exactly why each choice earns marks.
8 min readSpeakingAnatomy of a Band 9 Speaking Part 2 Answer
A full invented cue card and a complete Band 9-level spoken answer transcript, dissected to show exactly what makes it sound natural and score high.
7 min readReadingCommon Mistakes: Reading
A consolidated checklist of over a dozen procedural, avoidable mistakes that cost Reading marks independent of genuine comprehension ability, each with a concrete example and fix.
7 min readListeningCommon Mistakes: Listening
A consolidated checklist of over a dozen procedural, avoidable mistakes that cost Listening marks independent of genuine comprehension ability, each with a concrete example and fix.
6 min readWritingCommon Mistakes: Writing Task 1
A consolidated checklist of over a dozen procedural, avoidable Task 1 mistakes across both Academic and General Training, each with a concrete example and fix.
6 min readWritingCommon Mistakes: Writing Task 2
A consolidated checklist of over a dozen procedural, avoidable Task 2 mistakes, independent of raw vocabulary or grammar ability, each with a concrete example and fix.
6 min readSpeakingCommon Mistakes: Speaking
A consolidated checklist of over a dozen procedural, avoidable Speaking mistakes across all three parts of the test, each with a concrete example and fix.
6 min readWritingCohesion vs. Coherence, Explained Simply
Two words that sound nearly identical and are often confused — here's the genuine, practical difference between them, with worked examples of each going wrong.
6 min readWritingHow Paragraphing Affects Your Score
A structural, mechanical choice that genuinely affects Coherence & Cohesion — here's why paragraph breaks matter more than they might seem to, with a before-and-after example.
6 min readWritingUsing Synonyms Without Changing Meaning
Vocabulary variation is rewarded, but only when the substituted word means the same thing — here's how to vary vocabulary safely, with examples of synonym swaps that quietly change a claim.
6 min read