Two layers of training: the real syllabus from Toàn's IELTS Class (10 weeks · 30 sessions · Writing / Speaking / L&R / TED Talks) plus an intensive 30-day sprint with drills, mock tests, and saved progress. Use the syllabus as the spine; use the sprint to push the score over the line.
At 5.0 you understand main ideas but break down under length, speed, and complex grammar. At 6.5 you handle complex texts, write with clear cohesion, and speak with reasonable fluency and a range of structures. The gap is real but very crossable in 30 days if you train daily.
You need 30 correct out of 40 in each. Today you're around 21–23. That's 7–9 more right answers per skill — entirely about technique and stamina.
You must write 250+ words with clear position, two developed body paragraphs, and accurate complex sentences. Most 5.0 essays are short, repetitive, and grammatically simple.
A coherent two-minute monologue from a cue card. 6.5 means range of vocabulary, linking phrases, occasional complex grammar. No long silences.
Below 2.5 hours/day and one band in a month is unlikely. Above 4 hours and you'll burn out by week 3. The plan below targets the sustainable middle.
Below is every session in Toàn's IELTS course, lifted directly from the class syllabus spreadsheet. Each card shows the in-class focus, homework, and the TED Talk discussed that week. Tick a session as you finish it — your progress saves to this browser. The class folder lives on disk at ~/Downloads/Toàn_s IELTS Class.
Each week has one dominant theme. Skills overlap, but the priority of the week tells you where to spend the marginal hour when you're tired.
Click any day to expand. Check tasks as you finish them — your progress is saved to this browser. Don't aim for 100%; aim for never missing two days in a row.
The four skills don't reward the same techniques. Listening rewards prediction; Reading rewards skimming + scanning; Writing rewards a templated architecture; Speaking rewards fluency over perfection. Drill each one on its own terms.
total ≥30/40 gives you band 7 listening — buffer for the other skills.
Skim (60 sec) the passage for structure — read titles, first & last paragraph, first sentence of each middle paragraph. You should know: what is this about, what's the writer's stance.
Scan only after reading the question — locate the keyword (or its synonym) in the passage, then read just those 2–3 sentences carefully.
Most 5.0 readers read every word. That's the trap. You don't have time.
band 6.5 = "good" in 2 + "competent" in 2
Body paragraphs follow PEEL: Point → Explain → Example → Link back.
No conclusion. No opinion. Just data + comparison language.
At 6.5, examiners want you to keep talking with reasonable grammar and a range of vocabulary. Pauses, "umm", and self-correction are mostly fine. Silence is not.
If you don't know a word: paraphrase. "It's a kind of…" / "The thing you use to…" — this shows language strategy and helps your score.
A simplified comparison across bands 5 → 7. Your job is to consistently land in the middle column for every criterion.
| Criterion | Band 5 (now) | Band 6.5 (target) | Band 7 (stretch) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Task Achievement | Addresses task partially; format may be unsuitable; some main features missing | Addresses all parts; clear position throughout; main features covered but with some inadequate detail | Fully addressed; clear, well-developed ideas with relevant support |
| Coherence & Cohesion | Limited cohesion; cohesive devices used inaccurately or repetitively | Logical overall progression; cohesive devices used effectively, with occasional faults | Information sequenced logically; manages all aspects of cohesion well |
| Lexical Resource | Limited range; noticeable errors that may cause some difficulty | Adequate range; some less common words; occasional errors in word choice or spelling | Sufficient flexibility & precision; less common items used with some awareness of collocation |
| Grammatical Range | Limited range; frequent errors; punctuation often faulty | Mix of simple & complex structures; majority of sentences error-free | Variety of complex structures; frequent error-free sentences |
| Speaking · Fluency | Hesitation, repetition, self-correction; over-uses connectives | Willing to speak at length; some hesitation related to language; uses range of connectives | Speaks at length without noticeable effort; occasional hesitation only to think |
| Speaking · Pronunciation | Mispronunciation causes some difficulty; limited range of features | Range of features used but not sustained; generally understandable | Range of features sustained; flexible use; easy to understand throughout |
A high-frequency academic + topical set. Click each card to see the meaning and an example. Aim to use 2–3 of these per writing task, 3–5 per speaking section.
You don't need exotic grammar to hit 6.5 — you need consistent control over six structures, used in a mix of simple and complex sentences. Read each mini-lesson, then run the quiz at the bottom. Answers + explanations save automatically.
Past simple = action finished at a specific past time. Present perfect = action connected to now (still relevant, unfinished period, or experience).
I lived in Hanoi for 5 years (I don't live there anymore)
I have lived in Hanoi for 5 years (I still live there)
Signal words: yesterday, in 2019, ago → past simple. since, for, already, yet, ever, never → present perfect.
1st (real future): If + present, will + verb
If it rains, we will stay home.
2nd (hypothetical present/future): If + past, would + verb
If I had more time, I would travel more.
3rd (regret about the past): If + past perfect, would have + p.p.
If she had studied, she would have passed.
Tip: in formal writing, If I were beats If I was.
a/an = singular, non-specific. Use an before a vowel sound (an honour, but a university).
the = specific, mentioned before, unique, or in a known group. the sun, the government, the rich.
zero article = general truths, abstract nouns, plurals as general. Education is important. Dogs are loyal.
Trap: musical instruments take the (play the piano); sports take zero (play football).
Use passive when the doer is unknown, unimportant, or obvious — common in academic and Task 1 writing.
Active: Scientists discovered a new species.
Passive: A new species was discovered (by scientists).
Form: subject + be (correct tense) + past participle (+ by agent)
For 6.5: aim for ~2 well-used passives per Task 2 — not every sentence. Overuse sounds wooden.
Defining (no commas, essential info): The book that I bought is great.
Non-defining (commas, extra info): My brother, who lives in Paris, is a doctor.
Pronouns: who (people), which (things), whose (possession), where (places), when (times).
A career which combines passion and stability is rare. → instant complex sentence.
Adding: furthermore, moreover, in addition, what is more.
Contrast: however, nevertheless, on the other hand, in contrast, whereas.
Cause/effect: as a result, consequently, therefore, hence, owing to.
Concession: although, despite + noun, even though, in spite of + noun.
6.5 warning: don't start every sentence with a linker. Vary placement: mid-sentence with commas works too.
Read the passage, then work through the questions below. Aim for 20 minutes total. Answers and explanations are revealed when you click "Check answers" — and your progress saves to this browser.
A For most of human history, the octopus has been regarded as little more than a curious sea creature — slippery, alien-looking, and best appreciated on a plate. Yet over the past three decades, a quiet revolution in marine biology has overturned that view. Researchers now consider the octopus one of the most intelligent invertebrates on Earth, possessing problem-solving abilities that rival those of dogs, crows, and even some primates. What makes this remarkable is the evolutionary distance involved: the last common ancestor we share with the octopus lived more than 600 million years ago, well before nervous systems as we know them existed. The octopus, in other words, evolved its intelligence entirely independently of vertebrates.
B The octopus brain is unlike anything found in mammals. Of its roughly 500 million neurons — a count similar to that of a dog — only about a third are housed in the central brain located between the eyes. The remaining two-thirds are distributed throughout the eight arms, each of which can taste, feel, and respond to stimuli with a degree of autonomy. A severed arm, in laboratory experiments, will continue to reach for and grasp food for nearly an hour after separation, suggesting that "thinking" in an octopus is not a strictly centralised activity. Some researchers have proposed that this distributed nervous system represents a fundamentally different model of cognition — one in which the boundary between "brain" and "body" is blurred.
C Among the best-documented examples of octopus intelligence is tool use. In 2009, a team working in Indonesia filmed veined octopuses (Amphioctopus marginatus) collecting discarded coconut shell halves from the seafloor, carrying them across open ground, and reassembling them into protective shelters. Tool use of this kind had previously been observed in only a handful of species, all of them vertebrates. Equally striking are the puzzle-solving studies conducted in aquaria worldwide: octopuses have been shown to unscrew lids, manipulate latches, and even navigate small mazes to reach a food reward. Several individuals have reportedly figured out how to short-circuit aquarium lights by squirting jets of water at them, leading staff to suspect a kind of mischievous problem-solving rather than mere coincidence.
D Yet the octopus also presents a puzzle that complicates simple comparisons with mammals. Unlike dogs or chimpanzees, octopuses are largely solitary and short-lived; most species die within one to two years, often shortly after reproducing. Intelligence, in the animal kingdom, is typically associated with long lifespans and rich social environments, since both provide opportunities to learn from others. Why an animal that lives so briefly, and rarely interacts with members of its own species, should have evolved such cognitive flexibility remains unclear. Several hypotheses have been proposed — including the pressures of predation in a body without a shell, and the demands of hunting a wide variety of prey — but none has been definitively confirmed.
E Equally mysterious is the question of consciousness. Recent neurological studies have suggested that octopuses experience pain in ways analogous to vertebrates, and that they show signs of associative learning, short-term memory, and possibly even something resembling play behaviour. In 2021, partly as a result of this research, the United Kingdom officially recognised cephalopods — the group that includes octopuses, squid, and cuttlefish — as sentient beings under animal welfare law. The decision did not establish that octopuses are conscious in the human sense, but it marked a significant shift in how science views the inner lives of invertebrates.
F For biologists, the octopus is not just a charismatic animal; it is also an invitation to rethink fundamental assumptions about the mind. The fact that complex cognition evolved twice — once in vertebrates and once in cephalopods — suggests that intelligence may be less a unique product of human-like brains than a recurring solution to certain ecological problems. As philosopher Peter Godfrey-Smith has argued, encountering an octopus may be "the closest we will come to meeting an intelligent alien" — a being whose mind, although built from familiar biological parts, operates by rules we are only beginning to understand.
Section 4 of the IELTS Listening test is the hardest: a single 5-minute academic lecture with no breaks. The transcript below mimics one. Read it carefully — in the real test you only hear it once. Then complete the notes and answer the questions.
"Good morning, everyone. Today we're looking at a phenomenon that has grown rapidly over the past two decades: urban beekeeping. As recently as the early 2000s, keeping bees in cities was either illegal in most places or simply uncommon. Today, by contrast, the number of registered urban beekeepers in Paris has risen from around 300 in 2003 to over 1,300 in 2023. Similar growth has been seen in London, New York, and Melbourne."
"There are three main reasons cited for this expansion. First, awareness of pollinator decline has pushed many city residents — particularly those between the ages of 35 and 50 — to take direct action. Second, urban honey commands a premium price, often selling for two to three times the cost of rural honey. And third, rooftops and small balconies, which were previously regarded as wasted space, are now seen as viable apiary locations, especially in dense neighbourhoods."
"Now, you might assume that cities are bad for bees, given the pollution and lack of green space. The data suggests otherwise — at least up to a point. Studies in Berlin and Toronto have found that city bees often produce more honey per hive than their rural counterparts. The reason is a combination of two factors: cities have a wider variety of flowering plants across a longer season — gardens, balconies, park borders — and they typically use fewer agricultural pesticides than the surrounding farmland. The downside is that as the number of hives per square kilometre rises, competition for nectar can intensify, sometimes pushing out native wild bees."
"That brings us to the most important debate in the field today. Researchers like Dr Anne Wessels of Munich argue that beyond a density of roughly seven hives per square kilometre, honeybees actually begin to harm pollinator diversity, since they outcompete solitary species such as the red mason bee. Her recommendation — controversial among hobbyists — is that cities should cap registered hives and channel new interest toward planting pollinator-friendly flowers instead."
"Finally, before we close, a quick word on the threats facing city bees specifically. The single greatest threat is not, as you might expect, traffic or pollution. It is a parasitic mite called Varroa destructor, which infects hives almost everywhere it has been studied. Effective control involves regular inspection — typically every two weeks during the active season — and treatment with organic acids such as oxalic acid, which is now favoured over older synthetic chemicals. Next week we'll look at colony-level immunity and what makes some hives more resilient than others. Thank you."
Templates aren't memorized phrases — they're shapes. Examiners penalize memorized sentences but reward clear structure. Adapt the phrasing every time.
Below are 40 IELTS prompts (25 Task 2, 15 Task 1). Click any to load it. The draft area has a live word counter and saves your essay to this browser between sessions. Two band-7 model answers are below for reference.
It is increasingly debated whether foreign languages should be introduced in primary school or postponed until secondary education. While both approaches have merit, I firmly believe that an earlier start is more beneficial for the majority of learners.
Those who advocate delaying language learning often argue that young children should first consolidate their mother tongue and core literacy skills. Introducing a second language too early, they claim, may cause confusion, especially in households where standard English is not spoken. Furthermore, primary schools in many countries already face crowded curricula, and adding another subject could place excessive pressure on both pupils and teachers.
However, the case for early exposure is, in my view, considerably stronger. Younger children acquire pronunciation and intonation patterns with a fluency that becomes much harder to develop later, a phenomenon supported by decades of research in neurolinguistics. In addition, early language study fosters cultural openness at an age when attitudes are still highly flexible. Countries such as the Netherlands and Sweden, where English is taught from age six or seven, consistently produce graduates with near-native proficiency, suggesting that the benefits clearly outweigh the workload concerns.
In conclusion, although delaying foreign-language instruction may simplify the primary curriculum, the cognitive and cultural advantages of an early start are substantial. Provided that the teaching is age-appropriate and engaging, primary school is the right place to begin.
The line graph illustrates how the proportion of households with internet access changed in four European countries — the UK, Germany, France, and Italy — between 2000 and 2020.
Overall, internet access expanded dramatically across all four countries over the two-decade period, rising from minority adoption to near-universal coverage. The UK and Germany led the trend throughout, while Italy remained the slowest adopter despite making considerable gains.
In 2000, household internet access stood at roughly 25 per cent in both the UK and Germany, compared with approximately 15 per cent in France and just 10 per cent in Italy. Over the next decade, all four countries experienced a sharp upward trajectory, with UK and German figures climbing past 70 per cent by 2010. France followed closely, reaching around 65 per cent in the same year.
By 2020, internet access in the UK and Germany had levelled off at approximately 95 per cent, with France close behind at around 88 per cent. Italy, although it continued to grow, reached only 80 per cent — a gap of roughly 15 percentage points behind the leading countries.
Treating all three parts the same is a 5.0 mistake. Part 1 wants short fluent answers; Part 2 wants a structured monologue; Part 3 wants discussion-style argument.
30–45 second answers. Don't go on too long, don't go too short. Always extend: answer + reason + example/contrast.
Weak: "Yes, I like cooking. I cook every weekend."
Stronger: "I do, actually — although I'd say I'm more enthusiastic than skilled. I cook most weekends, mainly Vietnamese dishes my grandmother taught me, because it's the one part of the week where I can completely switch off from work."
Use the prep minute to scribble the bullets, not full sentences. Plan a story or example for the longest bullet — usually "why".
Bullets prompt you to say what it is, why you want it, how you'd learn it, and how it would change your life. Spend 50% of your time on why + how it would change.
Examiner pushes you to argue both sides, give reasons, speculate. Use "It depends on…", "On the one hand…", "I'd argue that…"
Frame: "Well, I think it largely comes down to economic demand and visibility — skills that are scarce and highly visible, like surgery or coding, get rewarded more than equally difficult ones like teaching."
Click any question to reveal a band-7-ish model answer. Don't memorise — extract the patterns: how the answer is extended, where examples come in, which connectors stitch ideas together.
A compressed version of the full IELTS — 5 listening questions, 5 reading questions, 1 writing prompt, 1 speaking prompt. Total budget: 35 minutes. Use this twice a week from Day 15 onward.
Hit start. The timer counts down through four stages. Don't pause, don't look up answers. When time's up, mark each stage and log the gap to your error tracker.
Most 5.0 candidates fail on the clock, not the questions. Practice every drill against the real allowance. Pick a preset, hit start, work through it.
You don't need a paid course. You need consistent practice with authentic materials. The list below is enough.
The gold standard. Past papers written by the actual test makers. Do them in order — 15 is easiest, 19 hardest.
Sample tests for all four skills with answer keys. Run by the test owners.
Short, transcripted, topical. Perfect for daily 20-min listening with focused vocab. New episode each week.
Closest in register and length to IELTS academic passages. Read one per day; underline 5 new words.
The 570 word families that account for ~10% of academic text. Drill via Quizlet decks (free) or Anki.
Three-month rotating question banks (Jan–Apr, May–Aug, Sep–Dec). Search "IELTS speaking forecast" for your test month.
Post anonymized essays to r/IELTS for free peer review. Run drafts through Grammarly to catch the obvious errors before submitting.
Search any word and hear native speakers say it in real YouTube clips. Best tool for fixing stress patterns.
Free strategy videos for every question type. Watch the one matching today's drill — don't binge.