I've been lurking here for the past 3 weeks of my IELTS Academic preparation, and have found this sub to be a source of incredible practical tips, and inspiration. I want to pay it forward to future test takers.
My profile: English is not my 1st or 2nd language, but it's the main language of instruction at my university. I prepared for about a month for the IELTS Academic Test, and booked through IDP. I structured my practice according to my perceived strengths and weaknesses. Throughout my self-study sessions, I realized I needed to spend about 50% of my time for Writing, 25% for Listening, 20% for Reading, and 5% for Speaking (so I'm not surprised with my score here at all lols). I only needed a 7 overall score, so this is indeed a welcome surprise!
My top tips:
Focus on a few legitimate sources for your IELTS preparation. British Council and IDP are of course top tier, but IELTS Liz and IELTS Advantage both have excellent FREE resources that I consider more than enough if you already have a good base (6 or 6.5).
Make the most of FREE mock tests from the websites above for Listening and Reading. The British Council website, for example, has 12 FREE Listening mock tests as well as 12 FREE Reading mock tests, all of which you can easily access once you create a BC profile. I answered 12/12 of the Listening mock tests and 10/12 of the Reading mock tests during my prep. These are fantastic materials to practice your receptive skills.
For productive skills, you'll need someone to assess your work who can be objective about scoring. I showed my husband the band scoring from both IDP and BC, then asked him to rate my writing. He outright failed my first few writing outputs, but couldn't give me a solid score, so I started out with estimated 5.5-6 in writing task 1, and 6.5-7 in task 2. Writing practice ate up most of my time because I had a lot to unlearn. Following recommended formats really improved my writing scores in both task 1 and 2. On the other hand, I only did Speaking mock tests three days leading up to my test day, so I'm unsurprised by my result.
Individual skill practice is great however you'll need endurance during your test day, because you're going to take the Listening-Reading-Writing (LRW) test in one go. You can take a bathroom break in between but that break consumes your own time. Therefore, it's important to take one or two days of "mock test day" where you do your LRW in 2 hours and 35 mins. Practice having NO bathroom breaks, you can have sips of water in between tests but I truly believe that managing your bladder is a strategy worth mentioning here.
If you have questions, feel free to ask me anything: