Hello everyone, I am Abishek Pathak, a Systems Administrator at GradConnection. I graduated from Central Queensland University on February 27, 2012, in Bachelor of Information Technology. I've been in Australia for 4 years now and like many international students I'm happy here and want to stay for the long term.
Coming to Australia was full of excitement but I was worried, as I am from non-English speaking country, Nepal. I had to sit an English test known as IELTS for international students. I achieved satisfactory mark in my first IELTS exam, which was back in Nepal, but I had to sit the IELTS test for my immigration purposes in Australia mulitple times as I was unable to get the required score, to be precise, I needed to score at least 7 in each band - there are 4 bands in an IELTS test. I was not able to score 7 in my writing module even though I scored above 8 in the rest of the other modules.
Fortunately, Dave, one of the directors of GradConnection helped me find a private tutor for improving my writing skills, she was Vanessa Moore. She help me achieve my goal in passing IELTS.
I took classes with her for 8 days, 2 hours a day and I improved my writing skill significantly. My usual score in writing was 6.5 but after those classes I was able to score 7.5, isn't that awesome?
She got me to write a letter and an essay everyday and she picked out the spots I was weak in, like missing apostrophes and my grammar, simple sentences and their structure as they made no sense in an essay or a letter. Moreover, she helped me construct a good complex sentence, use of polite and formal words for formal letters and how to construct an essay; introduction, body and conclusion, which could boost my writing score and those tips did help me a lot in passing my IELTS.
When my results came through we had a celebratory drink!
I know that a lot of international students have been in the same situation as me and my advice to them would be to get help from a tutor. Having someone take you through the test and where you're going wrong makes a huge difference in the final results.
Good luck to all international students sitting their IELTS!