In the IELTS, every word counts, so pay close attention to your prepositions- you’ll need to have them at your fingertips in the reading and writing sections and, naturally, on the tip of your tongue when you begin your Speaking test. Take a piece of A4 paper and fold it in half lengthways.

Once that’s done, write tricky verbs on one side and their illogical prepositions on the other. Keep testing yourself until you know them by heart, and if you get stuck you can easily unfold the paper- no cheating! A few of the worst culprits are: deprive of, conform to, congratulate on (did you know that at a wedding you should congratulate the groom on having a beautiful wife?), consist of and arrive at (or arrive in for countries and cities) but never arrive in.

In the Writing test, high-scorers recommend starting with task 2. Even though this might sound illogical, it’s actually a very smart strategy because this part is worthy far more marks than the first part. I recommend giving task 2 about 40 minutes, and task 1, 20 minutes of your precious test time.

At the end, allow yourself a few minutes to read through everything you have written very carefully and look for mistakes that like to creep in. During the read-through, focus on spelling, grammar and punctuation. Do I need a comma? Should it be ‘there’ ‘they’re’ or ‘their?’ Do I need that apostrophe? Sometimes the small things make a big difference!

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