IELTS syllabus: there is no syllabus, and what to study instead

Why there is no syllabus, and why that is good news

A content exam can be revised by covering everything on the list. A proficiency test cannot, because the passage you meet on the day may be about mineralogy, urban planning or the history of tea, and none of it is knowledge you are expected to hold. Nothing in IELTS rewards having read the right book.

What it rewards is being fast and accurate at a small number of repeating task types, and knowing what the examiner is counting. That is a much shorter list than a syllabus, and it is completely learnable.

Listening: what to study

• The question types — form and note completion, matching, map and plan labelling, multiple choice, sentence completion.
• Word limits. "NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS" is marked strictly; a right answer in three words scores zero.
• Spelling and numbers. Answers are marked wrong if misspelled. Dates, prices and phone numbers need their own drilling.
• Accents. The recordings use British, Australian, North American and other accents. Exposure is the only fix.
• Signposting language — "however", "on the other hand", "actually" — which is where the answer usually changes.

Reading: what to study

• Skimming and scanning, because sixty minutes for forty questions is ninety seconds each including transfer.
• True / False / Not Given. The difference between False and Not Given is the single biggest score leak in the section: False contradicts the text, Not Given is simply absent from it.
• Matching headings, which is about what a paragraph DOES rather than what it mentions.
• Paraphrase recognition — the question never uses the passage's words, and finding the link is the skill being tested.
• Not finishing. Every unanswered question is a mark lost with certainty, so the last minute is for filling blanks.

Writing: what to study

Both tasks are marked on four equally weighted criteria, and studying the criteria is more useful than studying model answers:

• Task 1 Academic needs an overview — the one or two sentences saying what the data does overall. Without it the band is capped however good the detail.
• Task 1 General Training is a letter, with a register (formal, semi-formal, personal) that must match the prompt.
• Task 2 is worth twice Task 1. Twenty minutes and forty is the right split.
• Word counts — 150 and 250 — are minimums and are penalised below.

Speaking: what to study

• Part 1 topics — home, work, study, food, weather, hobbies — which repeat, and which you can prepare content for without memorising scripts.
• The Part 2 long turn: one minute to plan, one to two minutes to speak. Practise the planning minute, not the speaking.
• Part 3 abstract discussion, where opinions have to be justified, compared and extended.
• Fluency over perfection. Self-correcting every second sentence costs more than the errors do.
• Pronunciation, not accent. Intelligibility is marked; where you are from is not.

A four-week shape, if you need one

1. Week 1 — diagnose. One timed practice set to find which skill is actually behind, not which one feels hardest.
2. Week 2 — task types. Work through the question types of your weakest two skills until the instructions stop surprising you.
3. Week 3 — under the clock. Full sections at real pace. Pacing, not knowledge, is what limits most bands.
4. Week 4 — full length and review. A complete sitting, then time spent on why each wrong answer was wrong.