Today I received my IELTS academic test results – and they made me very happy. Here they are:
Overall the results are very good and they show I am at the moment at a C1 level, except for listening skills where I’m at C2 and writing where I am at B2. I think these results are quite good, but I wouldn’t put a huge weight on them either. It was not a great day to take the test as I had a terrible migraine, as I mentioned in my previous post, and it forced me to close my eyes in the test situation for plenty of time. I think this affected my reading and writing tests, but probably the result still represents my skills quite well. I also think that I had some marks deducted from the writing bit as my focus was shifted to another issue in the question, than the one actually asked.
The question was to interpret a table and make comparisons of the numbers presented in it, but I had to take some time to criticize the issue within the table and the information behind it, which to me is very crucial but seems to be less so for the language testing part of the question. The table was about tourism in various areas, which I thought weren’t defined well at all, and that is what I then focused a little bit too much on. I think it was very important for the sake of the information the table conveys, but maybe it was a little bit off the point in the examiners opinion. Anyway I think I need to work on my English writing skills more, so I will try to be a little bit more active on the blog during the spring. After all, I am very happy with my results, they easily allow me to continue on my exchange application process. New Zealand and University of Canterbury here I come!
This week will be all about reading Shantaram – the book I chose to read for this course, watching documentaries in English and doing some grammar tasks online. I found a nice site to do them in and have been working on that for some hours already when studying to the IELTS test and yesterday I did some of them as well. It was fun, and it certainly will help improve my writing as well.