Should you take IELTS Academic or IELTS General?

Jenson 4 years ago
If you're aspiring to clear IELTS, you must have already familiarized yourself with the terms, IELTS General and IELTS Academics. These are the two formats of IELTS available for candidates to go to English speaking countries. Even though they serve the same purpose of qualifying candidates from non-English speaking countries to successfully migrate to an English speaking country, the difference between both the test relies on the purpose of the candidate and the degree of difficulty.
Let's talk about each of it one by one and then breakdown which one you need to take for a successful migration.

IELTS Academics vs IELTS General
Purpose:

IELTS Academics- This test is intended for candidates seeking admission in universities of English speaking countries. Apart from this, there are medical and a few specific job profiles that require you to take IELTS academics.
Unlike, general training test, IELTS academics tests candidates on their reading and listening test but exclude public conversation that is part of everyday life of an English speaker.

General IELTS suits the need for all those who want to settle in English speaking countries like Canada, the USA, UK, Australia, and New Zealand, etc.
IELTS General test scores are also referred by many MNC's to check their employee's English speaking abilities.
If you're willing to migrate to any of the English speaking countries to settle with your family or for work purposes, the general test is ideal for you.
  
Formats:

The two adaptations of the test have a similar form: Four Skills, Four Tests. Your English reading, speaking, writing, and listening skills will be tested independently regardless of which test you take. There is no contrast difference between the speaking and listening sections by any stretch of the syllabus. In both general and academic tests, the listening and speaking section remains more or less the same.
The other two sections, reading, and Writing also have a similar format for both the tests. With two writing tasks in the Writing section and 40 questions in the Reading section, both the test follows the same format. The only difference is in the content type and problems of both these sections.

Content:

IELTS Academics- English used in journals, academic purposes, textbooks, and related magazines and newsletters is used to test comprehensive skills in academics test. English communication and composing will be evaluated to ensure candidates are sufficiently able to compose college-level papers.

IELTS General- Those taking the General Training IELTS will experience the sort of English language that would show up in advertisements, magazines, guidebooks, or what working individuals may experience in employee manuals. A test taker's English will be tested on general tasks, for example, letter composing or basic essay writing.

Score Comparison:

The significant difference between these two variants of the test perhaps is on how they're scored. Without a doubt, IELTS Listening, Speaking, and Writing is scored similarly for the two criteria. But for IELTS Reading, which accounts for a full 25% of your score, is evaluated differently for IELTS academics versus IELTS general.
For instance, assume you get 30 out of 40 questions right in the IELTS Reading section that is a raw score of 30. For IELTS general, that is an IELTS Band of 5.0, but the same rating for IELTS academics will give you a band score of 6.0 in the reading section. Your raw scores have an entirely unexpected result for the reading section, relying upon whether you're taking IELTS academics or general test.

Conclusion-

With such close similarities between both of these tests, it's tough to determine which one is more challenging or more comfortable than the other. There is no doubt that reading and writing are different in nature and difficulty for both the tests, but a mass survey suggests that people who have taken both the tests find one slightly challenging than the other.
The makers of the test, however, claim that the IELTS academics are harder than IELTS general as writing letters comes more natural to candidates than summarizing a complicated graph or table. Also, the test reading section has more straightforward questions in IELTS general when compared with IELTS academics, and the scoring is done accordingly.  

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