2. What do IELTS candidates have to do?  Candidates must do all four test modules:  Listening  Reading  Writing  Speaking

3. Test Format Listening 30 minutes, 4 sections, 40 items General Training Reading 60 minutes, 3 sections, 40 items Academic Reading 60 minutes, 3 sections, 40 items General Training Writing 60 minutes, 2 tasks Academic Writing 60 minutes, 2 tasks Speaking 11 - 14 minutes, 3 parts

4. Listening Module  Tests:  specific and overall comprehension  inference  salient information  Same for Academic and General Training candidates  Variety of contexts (general and study)  Variety of formats (dialogues and mini-lectures)  Tape played only once

5. Reading Module  Tests detailed and general comprehension  Academic and General Training Modules  Academic Module: academic texts  General Training module: general and study-related texts

6. Writing Module  Academic and General Training Modules  Tests:  ability to write English appropriate to context and task  use of language in a variety of contexts and topics  skills at sentence, paragraph and whole text level  Candidates rated on:  task fulfilment  coherence and cohesion  communicative quality  vocabulary and sentence structure

7. Speaking Module  Same for Academic and General Training candidates  Tests ability to communicate through speech in general English contexts  One-to-one interview  Range of topics and contexts  Range of skills and patterns of interaction  3 parts:  question and answer on personal topics  unassisted short talk on a given topic  two-way discussion on more abstract issues

8. What do the bands mean?  9 band scale  9 - expert user  8 - very good user  7 - good user  6 - competent user  5 - modest user  4 - limited user  3 - extremely limited user  2 - intermittent user  1 - non-user