It cannot be denied that IELTS is one of the most popular English assessment test. Even TOEFL uses similar 4 section in its new test model, the TOEFL-iBT that is also considering 4 important skills in English.
IELTS
was the pioneer of four skills (listening, reading, writing and
speaking) English language testing and continues to set the standard for
English language testing today. Six thousand organizations and more
than 1.4 million test takers around the world each year trust and
recognize IELTS as a secure, valid and reliable indicator of
true-to-life ability to communicate in English for the purposes of
education, immigration and professional registration.
On
March 9, 2011, IELTS, calling itself “the world’s most popular high
stakes English language test”, announced that it had hit a whopping 1.5
million test-takers across the globe for the year 2010 alone. The
greatest number of registrants took the exam for academic purposes, but
many test-takers cited migration as their main aim for sitting for the
IELTS.
The
IELTS test is designed to assess the language ability of candidates who
study or work where English is the language of communication. It is the
preferred test of English for students intending to study in Australia,
Canada, New Zealand, the UK and, increasingly, the USA.
Although TOEFL, a North America-based test, is more popular in this region, over 3,000 institutions and programs in the USA accept the IELTS as proof of English language skills.
Seeing
how popular IELTS Test is can be an indicator for us that IELTS is
already accepted by the world to measure your ability in English. It
also means it is not an ordinary test that will be easy, you need quite
time to prepare before conducting an IELTS test. And that is, if you
want to get high score of course ;)
See you in the next articles !
Article Reference: http://www.idp.com/, http://www.icon-plus.com/
