A Personal Roadmap · B1/B2 → Band 7
The IELTS Roadmap
for the Patient Learner
A 16-week progression from intermediate English to a confident Band 6.5–7.5 IELTS performance. Click any node to expand it. Tick the box when you're done. Your progress saves automatically.
Must do
Recommended
Optional
Completed
Click any node to expand · Click ☐ to mark done
The Habits
Best Practices
- Study 6 days a week, rest 1. Burnout sets you back further than a missed day.
- Touch all four skills weekly. Even 20 minutes of speaking on a "reading day" keeps it warm.
- Keep an error journal. Every wrong answer gets a line — pattern recognition over time.
- Mock conditions matter. No pauses, no dictionary, single attempt — that's the real shape of the test.
- Speak aloud daily. Even alone, even 10 minutes. Mouth muscles need rehearsal.
- Build a topic bank. Education, environment, technology, health, work — 3 examples each, ready to deploy.
- Sleep is study. 7+ hours fixes vocabulary into long-term memory better than another hour drilling.
Beware
Common Pitfalls
- Memorising whole essays. Examiners are trained to detect this — instant low band.
- Ignoring instructions. "ONE WORD ONLY" means one word. Two words = zero marks.
- Spelling errors in Listening. The audio gave you the word — losing the mark on spelling is avoidable.
- Going off-topic in Writing Task 2. Address the prompt directly. Brilliant prose on the wrong question scores poorly.
- Speaking too quickly to seem fluent. Clarity beats speed every time.
- Skipping the overview in Task 1. No overview, no Band 7. It's a non-negotiable criterion.
- Translating in your head. Slow and inaccurate. Train yourself to think in English on the easier tasks first.
The Toolkit
Core Resources
- Cambridge IELTS 16–19. Real past papers. Non-negotiable. Buy or borrow.
- IELTS Liz (free). Best free site for question-type strategies and band descriptors.
- IELTS Simon (free archive). Model Task 2 essays from an ex-examiner.
- BBC 6 Minute English. Daily listening at the right level for B1–B2.
- Magoosh IELTS Vocabulary. Free app, 600 high-frequency words.
- italki / Cambly. Pay an English teacher 30 min, 2× a week. Worth every cent.
- The Guardian / BBC News. Daily reading at academic level.
- Write & Improve (Cambridge). Free AI scoring on your writing — instant feedback.