Best online courses for IELTS general training

1. IELTS Advantage

2. IELTS-up

3. IELTS-Exam.net

4. GlobalExam

5. IELTS Mentor

6. TED-IELTS

7. IELTS Buddy

8. Road to IELTS

9. IELTS Live

10. IELTS Liz

No matter how proficient you are in the English language, I recommend you spend time training for the general (and academic, of course) IELTS Exam. You need to become familiar with the structure of the IELTS test and what type of questions to expect. Understanding the structure and the type of questions is essential to achieving a high band score, which is 7.0 or higher. In this article, I compare 10 of the best online courses for IELTS general training.

What does IELTS stand for?

IELTS stands for The International English Language Testing System, which measures the language proficiency of people who want to study or work in countries where English is used as the official language of communication. The IELTS exam uses a 9 band scale to identify levels of proficiency and stretches from non-user (band score 1) through to expert (band score 9).

The IELTS test has 3 co-owners who work on the development of the IELTS exam: Cambridge English Language Assessment, British Council, and IDP. You can find more information about what the IELTS is on the official IELTS website.

Here are the best online courses for IELTS General Training

1. IELTS Advantage

IELTS Advantages' primary focus is on IELTS vocabulary. This website is very user-friendly, which contains many videos and tips on how to learn vocabulary appropriately. As they say, vocabulary "makes up 25% of your total mark in the Writing and Speaking tests". Therefore, it is crucial to improve your vocabulary. The advantage of this website is that for those who haven't decided to take the IELTS test yet or who are a little confused about the test, they have an IELTS Preparation page.

For the writing and speaking parts, IELTS Advantage also offers a correction service, but there is a fee for it.

2. IELTS-up

IELTS-up provides exercises for each part with explanations and highly useful tips. For instance, they have 10 tips for the IELTS listening part of the test. It also has content for both General IELTS Training and Academic IELTS Training. What I like about this website is that they have a so-called "score maximizer." The purpose is to send you an individual strategy based on your skills, your objective, and also the time you have left before taking the IELTS exam.

3. IELTS-Exam.net

On IELTS-Exam.net, you find a relatively large number of free IELTS practice tests and other useful tips. What makes it a bit different from other websites is that it also gives you information about test centers and which books to choose for IELTS test preparation. The answers for the Listening and Reading parts are available, but there is no correction for the Speaking and Writing parts as there is with the IELTS Advantage website.

4. GlobalExam

GlobalExam is an online platform that, like other websites, not only provides some tips and sample exercises, also gives immediate corrections with an explanation. You can also take a full IELTS practice test in real exam conditions as the test includes a timer. You can check your progression later, as your results are saved automatically and work on potential gaps with their grammar and vocabulary study sheets. Another specialty available is the option to create a "training schedule." It can help you organise your time to prepare for the IELTS test by giving you a program to follow.

For you to see how the website looks, they offer you a trial option. Then you can choose a Premium version among 4 different offers: weekly, monthly, quarterly, or annually.

5. IELTS Mentor

IELTS Mentor offers sample questions with answers for both the IELTS General Training as well as The IELTS Academic Training. Many sample questions are available for each task. Each sample question comes with a sample answer to help you identify your weaknesses and strengths. That way, you can compare different "good" answers to a given question. They also give you tips for each section of the IELTS exam, along with vocabulary to learn.