IELTS COURSES

IELTS stands for the International English Language Testing System and is jointly administered by the British Council, the University of Cambridge and IELTS Australia.

You can join one of our full time IELTS courses from 9.00 – 12.10 Monday to Friday or our part time course on a Monday and Wednesday evening from 6.30 – 8.30. You can start any Monday and enrol for the examination when you are ready. We suggest a minimum stay of one month for our full time classes, 12 weeks for our part time evening classes, to ensure that you are introduced to all the topics and question types you are likely to meet in the exam and you stand a good chance of finishing the paper. To ensure that you attain the score you require without having to re-take the test, we suggest you do not enter until you are scoring well in our tests on a regular basis.

Non-native speaking students wanting to take up both undergraduate or postgraduate university places, are normally expected to show their competence in the English language by scoring an overall grade in this examination, the minimum being 5.5. We like our students to leave us with a good chance of getting a 6.5. For more information on scoring and more detailed information, please visit IELTS’s own website at www.ielts.org. Those in the medical or dental profession or indeed anyone wishing to undertake other professional courses may be required to attain a grade of 7.0 or more.

Students should ideally be at least Upper Intermediate level in order to join our courses. However, we will also consider those below that level provided they have already taken the test and wish to improve their score.

The test consists of four papers, Listening, about 40 minutes, Reading and Writing, both one hour and Speaking, about 20 minutes. There are no breaks between the first three papers but there is normally a break between Writing and Speaking. We suggest you do not make any arrangements for the evening of the test, taken on most Saturdays throughout the year.

We use several dedicated texts as well as supplementary materials, all of which should prepare you adequately for the exam, which now costs £110. You will normally get your result about two weeks after taking the test. During the course you will have lots of practice in all four papers. You will have the opportunity of developing your general vocabulary but IELTS courses are mainly intended to introduce you to the technique of how to maximise your chances, with particular reference to timing. Sample topics are: education, work, leisure and the family. IELTS is not a test of your general knowledge. However, since you are going on to higher education, there is an expectation that you are also aware of current issues and can discuss them on an intellectual level.