What should you pay attention to when taking IELTS in Norway?

What should you pay attention to when taking the IELTS test in Norway? Many candidates are confused about taking the IELTS test in Norway. IELTS is nothing for people with good English scores, but the rules are different in different regions. Here are the Please share with us the detailed information you need to pay attention to when taking the IELTS test in Norway.

Personal situation

The newly released scores: total score 8, speaking 7, writing 8, listening 8.5, reading 8.5

The exam location is Norway (Norway official The language is Norwegian). The author is a third-year undergraduate student and has been an exchange student in Norway for half a year. He took the IELTS test at the end of the exchange period.

I took the IELTS test once when I was a sophomore. I got a score of 7 and a score of 6 in both speaking and writing. The score improvement has been very good this year.

Experience Sharing

Test abroad or domestically?

The author was very confused for a while about whether to return to China and take the IELTS test again, but in the end he took the IELTS test in Norway. Based on the author’s personal experience this time, compared with China, Norway’s points are more lenient. The author thought that his writing level should be 7 to 7.5, but Norway gave it an 8. I was very surprised. Considering that Southeast Asia has begun to conduct frequent spot checks due to the large influx of Chinese candidates, European and American exams may be a good idea. Of course, if you are going just to take a test, the difficulty of applying for a visa and the cost of air tickets and accommodation are a level higher than those in Southeast Asia. I would like to suggest that if you are planning to go abroad for business or personal reasons, you may consider taking IELTS during your stay abroad. Lose.

Can you improve your English by being an exchange student in a country with a small language? The author thinks it depends on the situation. In countries like Norway, Sweden, and the Netherlands, the overall English proficiency of the citizens is very good. If you go to a big city, the degree of internationalization is also high. From completing procedures at school to chatting with roommates, everything is done in English. Over time, English has improved a lot. Obvious. The author also has a personal experience: because he is no longer affected by the wall, and Google's search capabilities are objectively better than Baidu's, in the past six months since I was away, I have become more accustomed to searching English websites for everything, and I usually visit the Q&A (Zhuangbi) community. Visiting Zhihu has become visiting Quora. Going around these will greatly improve your writing and reading.

When you first learn a small language, it does have a negative impact on your English proficiency. I mean, if you become proficient in both languages, they will definitely benefit each other, but when you first learn them, they can easily interfere with each other. If you want to learn a minor language when you go out as an exchange student, you have to carefully arrange the progress of learning the minor language and preparing for the IELTS test.

The original poster did not learn Norwegian, but he did learn some German. When he was speaking English in Norway, he was actually asked if he was German. His accent became so weird that he was most addicted to the part of the German musical. During the time, I was doing IELTS speaking exercises and German words popped out of my mouth, and I was speechless.

However, when traveling, I obviously feel that certain cities in certain countries, such as some relatively exclusive cities in Germany and some areas in France, are not suitable for practicing English because they do not like to speak English. , if you ask for directions in English, you will be answered in German/French, which is a great hindrance to the improvement of English ability.

Related to listening experience

When the original poster took the IELTS test for the first time, his listening score was 8.5. That time, he relied entirely on listening to improve his score. The experience with high scores is the combination of intensive listening and extensive listening. Just listening and extensive listening is useless, like the wind passing through the ears. Intensive listening can take many forms. The most common is dictation or listening once and reciting the content orally, and then listening again to see what was missed.

I think IELTS Listening has several characteristics. One is that the vocabulary is not big. Basically, the vocabulary of Level 4 and Level 6 is enough. There are almost no professional vocabulary or difficult words. The other is that there is no slang at all. , both are very formal English. (Combining the first and second points, I think everyone should still work hard to get high scores in listening. To be honest, if you work hard here, you will definitely not suffer when going abroad. I didn’t understand anything in the listening test. , but when living abroad and in class, there are still things that you don’t understand from time to time, no matter how hard you try, the third is that the information is not dense. Generally, after an answer appears, you will say at least one or two sentences before the next answer. There will almost never be a situation where you don’t even have time to write the answer, so the level of concentration can also be targeted. Be nervous when you need to be nervous, and relax when you need to be relaxed.

In addition, if you find a question difficult (such as multiple-choice questions in Sec4), you can allocate part of your time in sec1 and skip over to read that type of question first. Anyway, sec1 is less difficult and less stressful. Not that big.

Spoken language experience related

The poster’s spoken language is not very good because he is introverted and has never been the eloquent type. He can’t speak Chinese clearly and he can still speak English. What is the oral exam for us introverts? There are occasional losses, but there are ways to remedy them.

Spoken English does not need to be eloquent, but it is good to be able to communicate with others and communicate smoothly, instead of jumping out word by word or memorizing.

The poster’s experience is that in the IELTS speaking test, fluency is far more important than vocabulary richness. The poster used only two or three non-CET-4 or CET-6 vocabulary words this time, and he got a score of 7. I know a guy who took the IELTS exam in Australia. He had no difficult words in the whole process but was extremely fluent, and he also got a score of 7. Therefore, the most important thing during daily training is to speak smoothly. Even if you find something is wrong, you must have the ability to continue talking.

As for content selection, the author concluded that the genre cannot be wrong. For example, if the topic is a movie, you cannot talk about comics, but within the scope of the topic, you can be more casual, and you do not have to follow the outline from beginning to end. , just like a normal chat, for example, asking about your favorite vacation spot, just say the last two sentences, there are many people like me who like this place very much, this is also normal content. It’s easy to run out of words if you just follow the outline.

The most noteworthy aspect of grammar is tense. Tense expression is very important, but it is easily overlooked by native Chinese speakers.

Reading and writing experience

A big feature of IELTS listening and reading is that 95% of them are factual questions, which means that there must be a unique answer in the original text. If you I feel that the answer to that question is not unique, and there is a 95% chance that you made a mistake.

The remaining 5% possibility is that there is indeed an element of ambiguity, such as the eternal pain in the poster’s heart, the subject question

Try to do the questions according to the idea of ????factual questions. , don’t rely on checking. Make sure you do each question before moving on to the next question. Just finish it within the exam time. There is no need to rush the progress. Leave time for the second brush.

When it comes to writing, it is still very helpful to write English papers abroad and change English papers. The only thing I want to say is that if I want to score higher, I must not memorize the template. The template I memorized for the first exam had extremely gorgeous sentences, and I got a score of 6. I didn’t even read the composition book for the second exam, so I paid a little attention to the changes in the sentences. , write it down step by step, and the score is a little higher than 8. You can memorize some common phrases for small essays, but it is really easy to get low marks for memorizing whole sentences for big essays

Can I learn language?

Compared with many people around me, I , I really lack talent in the language. Others have practiced a lot and speak English casually. I have practiced over and over again to remove confusing grammatical phrases and cannot remember the pronunciation patterns.

But I think there are a few points.

First, this is just an exam, and the exam is easier than actual combat, so don’t give up on treatment.

A second language does require talent, but its threshold is actually very low. To a large extent, it is still hard work and reward. Unlike some more difficult mathematics, the language threshold is still Much lower. In terms of listening, I used to listen for two hours a day for more than half a year, and then I easily reached 8.5.

The level of the third native speaker

We who learn foreign languages ??as adults really cannot catch up, but English is an international language, and the purpose is communication, not showing off skills. , your speaking doesn’t need to be perfect before you can speak, and your writing doesn’t need to be perfect before you can write. If you practice for a while, you will find that you are at least more perfect than before.