Applying for permanent residency in Canada was never easy, there are a lot of things to consider and documents to gather. One of the most important documents in applying for permanent residency is your IELTS result.
There are two different types of IELTS: IELTS General Training and IELTS Academic. To apply for Canada PR, it’s important to remember to take IELTS General Training.
The IELTS General Training exam might be overwhelming for some as it evaluates your abilities to use English in everyday contexts. In this article, we will give you an overview of the IELTS General Training Test Format.
Four Parts of the IELTS General Training Exam
There are approximately 2 hours and 45 minutes to take all four parts of the exam which are Reading, Writing, Listening, and Speaking.
The first part of the test is Reading. It consisted of 40 questions divided into three sections that should be taken under 60 minutes.
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- Section 1 (Social Survivor) – This exam is consisting of several short texts that are relevant to basic linguistic survival in English such as advertisements for a hotel or accommodations, educational courses, or notices.
- Section 2 (Workplace Survival) – This section focuses on workplace context. For example, the text relates to machinery instruction, work conditions or wage schemes.
- Section 3 (General Reading) – It consists of the complex text of general interest and usually one text which is quite long.
The second part is another 60-minute-long exam that focuses on Writing which consisted of two parts.
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- Task 1 (Letter Writing) – You will be asked to write a letter explaining the situation or requesting information based on the situation presented to you. You should write over 150 words. The task will be marked based on task achievement, coherence & cohesion, vocabulary, and grammar.
- Task 2 (Essay Writing) – There will be a given topic of general interest and you will be asked to respond to a point of view, argument, or problem. You should write over 250 words and it will be marked the same as the criteria of task 1.
In the third part of the test, you will be Listening to recordings of native English speakers with a variety of accents and will be asked a series of questions. There are 4 parts to the test:
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- Part 1 – Conversation between 2 people
- Part 2 – A speech with just one person
- Part 3 – Conversation between up to four people
- Part 4 – A talk by one person on an academic subject
The last part of the test will be Speaking which will be taken under 11 to 14 minutes. It’s a face-to-face interview with an examiner consisting of 3 parts.
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- Part 1 – The examiner asks you questions about your daily life and other everyday topics.
- Part 2 – You will be given a topic to talk about on a task card and you are given 1 minute to prepare your talk, which should last between one to two minutes.
- Part 3 – The examiner starts a discussion with you that is related to the topic you talked about in Part 2. You will be asked to give opinions about things and justify them.
To achieve the score that you need to apply for permanent residency, it is essential that you familiarize yourself with the format of the test. Take time to study and spend time improving your language skill. Take it as a challenge and your first step in reaching your dream destination, Canada.