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IELTS: Facts Not Many People Know There are many aspects in IELTS that people find surprising, usually when it hits them hard. It is quite a paradoxthe information is right there, available to everyone, yet people are still in the dark. Allow me to draw your attention to several facts you dont want to be surprised about. Usually extensive answer is considered a very good one, but not in IELTS. When instructions say give one answer or answer in 3 words, it means give us two answers or 4 words and well fail you. The reason for this limit is quite simple and obviousthere is not enough room for more than 3 words on Answer Sheet. By the way, articles a and the count as one word, while common assumption is that they dont. People tend to forget that they are graded by Answer Sheet and not by what they wrote in IELTS booklet. Any correct answer not copied to Answer Sheet will result in exactly 0 points. There is an option of submitting appeal and requesting to read your answers from the booklet, but it takes time and costs money. Not many people think about what they are going to write with, pen or pencil. Yet there are rules: the Listening and Reading answers are to be written in pencil and Writing - in pen. This is another example of how small details can be very significant in IELTS. Writing and Speaking are graded differently from Listening and Reading. There is no half band grade, which means it is impossible to get 6.5 in either Writing or Speaking. The reason is the way examiners are currently trained, but hopefully it will change in the future . | 
