Is IELTS a barrier or blessing for students?

You can make this test a tremendous advantage for you and an opportunity to hone your English skills, or suffer and lag behind in your university education or migration process due to your inability to prepare well, and/or achieve your desired score.

It is indeed an interesting question and a bit difficult to answer. If you ask me, the simplest answer to this question is that "IELTS, in fact, is a blessing for you and would work in your favour unless you take too long to prepare for the test, and at last not take the test at all". Moreover, if you fail to score what you deserve or need, it can be a frustrating experience.

Let me explain, you should not take more than a few months to prepare for the test and then take some mock tests (if you like) before you take the original test. Some students, surprisingly, take more than a year just to prepare for the test, and even after years of preparation, they are not confident or capable enough to take the test. This is certainly a barrier because, in such scenarios, students are absolutely convinced that they have to get a good score in IELTS first, and then move ahead. Since they do not take the test and get stuck with a score below their requirement, this is certainly a bad thing for them.

On the contrary, if you prepare for the exam within a few weeks or months, and then achieve your desired score on the first or second attempt, you are set to go to catch your dream of higher education, training programme in a first world country or proceed with your plan for migration to your favourite country.

IELTS is designed to give your a flavour of the study materials that you are likely to get when you enrol in a foreign university. You will need to finish many writing assignments, listen to hours of lectures, takes notes, and talk to other students in academic and personal life. So your preparation for the IELTS test actually prepares you for your academic life in a country where people speak a different language and university, possibly, employs different teaching and evaluation methods than that of your native country. So preparing for IELTS is certainly a blessing for you.

Finally, the IELTS test is designed to test your ability to handle the language in a real-life scenario, and that is why your preparation for the test make you ready for that. So, take the opportunity to make IELTS work for you, not the way around.

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