IELTS 8

According to this IELTS form (which is so bad I felt compelled to scribble down some notes on what I think is wrong with it), I passed the IELTS academic test with a score of 8. The university of Reading requires at least a score of 7 to enter the class, otherwise one would have to take language lessons – for a cost – while in Reading.

The whole IELTS experience has been terrible. At first I tried avoiding it by qualifying my knowledge of English in my application form: I’ve been studying English since I was in secondary school, took exams at the university, lived in the UK for six months during my Erasmus in Bristol, worked for a company in Bath for 5 months, been reading and writing English daily since I’ve been in business – almost ten years, etc.

That was not considered enough though, they really wanted me to provide evidence so I had to take either the TOEFL or IELTS test. I was told by Emanuela (currently attending the MATD) that the IELTS was slightly preferred, so I enrolled for that. After a clumsy application procedure – their Web site doesn’t work – I had to resort to a postal payment, something I hadn’t been doing in almost twenty years. I then faxed (yes) all my papers and sent some of them by email too (never got a single reply or notice of receipt).

Material for preparing for the IELTS test abounds on the Web, unfortunately most of it is for pay. I gave a cursory glance to what kind of tests we had to attend then decided it wasn’t worth preparing for, in the sense that the tests always change but once you understand how they work I think you’re pretty much done. Apparently they have some known criteria for marking your tests, like giving you extra points if you have an introduction and conclusion in your written essays, etc.

I thought it was silly to try to reverse-engineer the tests and decided to try and just walk there and do the best I could. They’re testing my knowledge of the English language, not of the IELTS test, after all (or so I thought).

The test was on the 28th of June in Bologna, at the Associazione Culturale Italobritannica. I had to wake up at 6 AM to be there in time since they required you to be there by 8:45 AM or so. The room I was assigned to had the air conditioning system broken and we couldn’t open the windows because the first test was a listening test and the road noises outside the window would have made it a nightmare. Humidity was incredible, I felt like I was in Hanoi in one of the Vietnam War movies!

I would also say the people running the test where pretty rude to us but thinking back to it I just think they where trying (too hard) to be very strict about following the rules, ending up in some pretty comic situations. They where just doing their work anyway, and it’s not like I was forced to enroll so I don’t think I can complain too much on this one.

By the way: people, remember to write down somewhere, somehow your candidate number, even if you aren’t allowed to bring paper or anything with you during the test. Without it you won’t be able to check your results online. But to be honest that won’t be much of a problem, since checking the results online is a nightmare anyway. Better to just wait for the results in the mail, eventually.

And that’s it, IELTS done, score 8: I messed up the listening test pretty hard, 7.5, and I don’t know or care why but the writing test was pretty bad as well, 7.5. I did well in the reading test, 9 (how fitting!) and OK in the speaking one, 8.

Reading, here I come!