After your long turn, the IELTS examiner closes Speaking Part 2 with one or two short questions on the same cue card topic. These rounding off questions aren’t printed on the cue card, and a short, direct answer is all they need. This page covers only those closing questions; the cue card, preparation minute and […]

For a free, official start, install IELTS by IDP, then add one app for your weakest skill. Each IELTS preparation app below delivers practice tests, lessons or AI feedback for the four tested skills on a phone or browser. Apps are grouped by publisher, not ranked: IDP and Cambridge University Press & Assessment first, independents […]

Your IELTS speaking speed, counted in words per minute (WPM), shapes how easily the examiner follows you and how fluent you sound. Average conversation runs at about 120-150 WPM, and IELTS sets no official words-per-minute target, because the examiner marks Fluency and Coherence rather than a speed number. At that pace, a two-minute long turn […]

At least 150 words for Task 1 and at least 250 for Task 2, with no maximum at all. Those are the only word count numbers the exam board publishes. Its own page ranks second for this search and publishes zero counting rules — hyphenated, compound, contraction and date all return zero across its 975 […]

Thirteen pages rank for this search and one of them answers the length question. Writing more does not raise your band, and the only page that says so adds that a longer essay opens you to more criticism. This guide defines concise writing, names the wordiness sources, and supplies the phrase deletion list the search […]

Eight pages teach you how to change words in a source sentence. Not one publishes a list of the words you must not change. That gap is expensive, because over-paraphrasing is the failure that keeps candidates at band 6. Word substitution applied to every word produces poor choices and shifted meaning, and both cost more […]

All three IELTS partners publish a passive voice page. Not one of them connects the passive form to the marking, and only two pages in eight warn that overusing it is a problem. Google’s own summary of this search leads with exactly that warning. The voice decision is made sentence by sentence, and it turns […]

Most IELTS writing mistakes advice arrives as a flat list. Nine pages were read for this guide, five of them IELTS-partner properties, and not one mistake appears on three of the four test-owner assets. There is no agreed list to hand you. So this page sorts every mistake by criterion cost: what it takes off […]

The opening paragraph of a Task 2 essay does two jobs. It shows you understood the question, and it states your answer. Two sentences can carry both. Three decisions make the paragraph, and the twelve pages ranking for it disagree on all three: how many parts, whether to open with a general statement, and how […]

The AI summary above these results says five. The British Council says five. IDP publishes four pages on this question type and states no number on any of them, listing three, three, three and seven. The count is disputed, and the exam will never tell you which essay type you have been given. This guide […]

IELTS Writing Task 2 asks you to answer a point of view, an argument or a problem in a formal essay, and it is the same task in the Academic and General Training papers. Two figures govern it: a 250-word minimum, and a 40-minute allowance inside the 60-minute paper. One number reframes the whole Writing […]

Twelve pages on this search publish a category list and they run from five items to twenty-two. Neither exam board publishes one at all. Four subjects appear in all twelve, namely education, environment, health and technology, and no other topic category is agreed. This guide defines the object, counts the published lists, and names the […]