IELTS AT A GLANCE-1
IELTS stands for International English Language Testing System which was established and launched in 1989. There are five major stakeholders or organizations which are actively and closely working with the IELTS development and promotion worldwide: Cambridge Assessment English, British Council, IELTS Australia, and the IDP [(International (Development Program) Education Specialist)]. It was basically established to diagnose English language proficiency for people who would like to emigrate to English-speaking countries for academic, residential, or professional pursuance. In other words, IELTS is like a gateway for these people to meet their aspirations of enrolling in a university of their choice or work and reside where English is the lingua franca like in the UK, Australia, the USA, Canada, New Zealand, and even other European nations which receive international students and permanent residents.
Presently, there are over 1200 IELTS centers including the USA which has over 50 centers alone. Annually, IELTS tests are conducted on 48 different dates all over the world.
IELTS is basically set for two categories of people who go to these countries either for higher studies or those who want to join professional organizations and those who go to these English-speaking countries as workers, trainees, or permanent residents. It is usually a paper-based test but recently they have introduced Computer-delivered IELTS as well only in some countries now. This C-IELTS processes the examinations and the results in nearly half the time the paper-based test has been taking. The scores for C-IELTS are ready in 5-7 days’ time while the paper-based takes about 13 days.
Format-wise, there are two categories of IELTS, viz. Academic IELTS is meant for the students who apply for higher studies in these foreign colleges and universities, and General Training IELTS is meant for those who go to these countries in pursuance of their professions and as permanent residents.
Each format tests all the four skills of the English language including receptive skills like listening and reading and productive skills like speaking and writing. A total of 40 mark questions are asked in each of these language skills which are later both individually and collectively converted into a band of 9 as the maximum marks. An average of 7 to 9 bands is more likely to get considered in foreign colleges and universities.
Let us see these formats in a table to get things even more precisely.
Listening and Speaking test items are the same for both the IELTS categories. There are 40 questions worth 1 mark each in all the language skills testing except for the Speaking Test
