How To Master The IELTS: Over 400 Questions For All Parts Of The International English Language Testing System, by Chris Tyreman

There are in general approaches that a book can take when it comes to teaching mastery of a given subject, especially something like a high-stress exam like the IELTS, or a mixture between the two. On the one hand, an author can seek to illuminate for the candidate (or an instructor) the theory behind the test, so that one can get in the mind of the people making and scoring the test, so that one not only knows what sort of answers to give but why. Alternatively, a book can be rigorously practical in its approach, giving practice questions and topics without making any pretense to help someone understand the test. This book takes the second approach, providing, as it says, more than 400 questions for all parts of the IELTS. As is the sometimes the case, this book is more focused on making its subtitle accurate than its title. This book does not discuss how one is to master the IELTS at all, as strange as it may seem. It assumes and implicitly presents a view that practice is how one masters the exam, and provides enough practice that someone who can succeed at the practice exams included in this book would be able to handle the real test when they go to take it, and that they will not be surprised by the material that they find on the test.

This book is 240 pages long and has a very clear structure. The book begins with a short introduction that answers a few FAQs about the IELTS, discusses the book’s format, provides instructions for the four sections of the IELTS (listening, reading, writing, and speaking), and that gives ten tips for the test, most of which amount to advice on time management, as well as the somewhat obvious advice to keep practicing speaking until one sounds fluent. Most of the remaining part of the book is filled with four practice IELTS that include four listening sections, three reading samples, two writing tasks, and three speaking tasks. After that there are two samples of a general reading and writing test. This is then followed by audio-scripts for the listening tests, an answer key for all of the sample test questions, expanded answers for the reading section, and two appendices that include reading section vocabulary as well as British and American spellings. The book also includes a free .mp3 download for the listening section of the test.

Whatever one can say about the value of a practical approach to the IELTS, as this book takes, there are definitely a few aspects of the book that were less helpful to this reader of the book that may not be everyone’s experience. Despite the fact that I read a library copy of this book, one previous reader (who knows who it was at this point) made a point of filling the answer sheets despite the fact that this is a book that is meant to be read by many people, instead of making a copy of relevant pages that one wants to use as a worksheet. This is no fault, of course, of the author of this book, if a reader of the book deface a book and makes it comparatively worthless to later readers, but it is a problem if a writer writes a book whose sole value is in providing practice examples of tests and thus, if the book happens to be defaced, has almost no value whatsoever as a book that can be profitably read for its contents even if one cannot fill out the answers.