January 9, 2025 • 35 mins
She needed to score 7.5 in IELTS to practice medicine in Ireland. You know how tough that is, right?
Here's the crazy part: She did it with just 4 DAYS of preparation.
No, that's not a typo. 4 days.
But wait - before you think "that's impossible" or "she must be a genius", here's what you need to know:
This wasn't her first try. She failed twice before. But on her third attempt, she:
- Scored 8.0 in Reading
- Scored 8.0 in Listening
- Scored 8.0 in Speaking
- Got exactly what she needed overall: 7.5
Her secret? She stopped wasting time on:
✗ Random YouTube videos
✗ Outdated textbooks
✗ Generic advice from non-experts
Instead, she used our AI essay checker and followed our proven system.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:05):
You are now listening to the IELTSpodcast. Learn from tutors and ex
-examiners who are masters of IELTSpreparation. Your host, Ben Worthington.
Hello there, IELTS students. In thistutorial, we are talking with Patricia,
and she's got some great results from herlatest IELTS test. So before we jump into
(00:28):
it, Patricia, could you tell me a bitabout yourself and why you're taking the
IELTS, please? Um, so I just graduatedmedicine, and I was exploring my options,
where can I go and practice medicine. Andsince I didn't really get that much
interested in doing medicine, being adoctor in Poland, I started exploring my
(00:54):
options where I can use my English. And Ifound Ireland as an option for continuing
practicing medicine. But I had to do IELTSto do that. I also explored a bit about
medical practice in the UK. And I trieddoing IELTS for the UK. But it's my fault
(01:20):
that I kind of explored it too late.Because the score is very high, which I
have to get there. I have to get 7 .5 ineach section and to have 7 .5 overall.
Right. Which is super hard in a shortperiod of time, because I was still a
medical student. So depends how much timeyou devote for it. But for Ireland, it was
(01:46):
slightly lower. I had to get 6 .5 in eachsection and have 7 .5 overall. So I
managed to get that score this this year.Excellent. Okay. And just a quick
question. Was the English route, theSpanish route, was it the to uh instead of
ireland was the route to england was itslightly more uh bureaucratic because of
(02:11):
brexit and all of that um yeah there's uhthere's a lot of documents that you have
to gather um for example i think some somevisa visa documents uh but i think it's
very well organized um with with thehospitals because you're assigned for the
hospital for two years i think i i have nochecked information about that so much um
(02:37):
because i depended um depended a lot onthe opinions of my friends uh that friends
i i found those people online uh and i iasked them what do you think about the
ukfp program do you think it's worth it doyou think because i i kind of have in mind
which doctor i want to be um and i want tobe a gynecologist and i found out that
(03:02):
it's not so easy uh to to get into thatspecialization exactly uh they are trying
to kind of fill in blanks uh in the systemand it's not gynecology so oh i see yeah
so i uh i was thinking a lot about it thatit's a lot of effort for probably doing
bureaucratic work for two years and inireland it's just one year of um like kind
(03:29):
of it's we call it stage in poland it'skind of a postgraduate uh 13 months of
practice as i like an internship which iswhich is still paid um but um yeah like
there's a lot of documentation alsotogether for ireland but for a shorter
period of time for for our internship isee yeah yeah that's interesting and then
(03:53):
as you said before both routes the one toireland and the one to the uk required our
ielts exam uh but the irish route was uhrequired slightly slightly lower level and
i remember you you worked with us beforedidn't you and you took the ireland
(04:14):
general yeah yeah and then what whatresults did you get when you worked with
us before so i took first my first ieltsexam was academic and i managed to get i
remember I think I got seven, I don'tremember, because it was like two years
ago, and I kept studying for another IELTSalready, so I think I got seven from
(04:39):
writing, but I was practicing, I was goinglike mad woman, really, I was writing, I
was trying to find a resource that isgoing to tell me, okay, you're writing
this well, you're using the goodvocabulary, because as I told you before,
I'm also a tutor, but my vocabulary stayson the level of A2, B1, maybe B2
(05:05):
sometimes, but most primary schoolstudents are based on this vocabulary for
A2, so for me, it was hard to jump intovocabulary immediately, like C1, just B2,
just like use very high vocabulary, sowhen I was using your website, every time
it was telling me, you know, you can use alittle bit higher vocabulary, higher
(05:26):
level. I was like, no, I but I'm just soused to the vocabulary that I'm using with
my students, it was so difficult at thebeginning, but I did a lot of writings, I
think that's the clue, you just have to,even if you feel that you have no idea
what is an essay, what you are reading,you just have to go with the flow, and
(05:49):
even now, when you have this AI feature,it's going to kind of give you the idea
what they are looking for, so it's reallygood. Right, so that was the main problem
that you were looking to solve, was thevocabulary, and you realised that the
vocabulary was the issue, because you wereusing the AI essay checker on ios .cat
(06:12):
.com, yeah? Right, I see, I see, excuseme, so you took the academic, and that's
when you said you were like a mad woman,just writing, writing, writing. Yeah,
yeah, yeah. Using the AI essay checker,getting that instant feedback, and just
realising vocabulary was the issue, andthen, once you realised the vocabulary was
(06:37):
the issue, what steps did you take toimprove your vocabulary? I had some
American book with vocabulary, which is,it's basically, you have a list of words,
and then they are used in reading text.So, it was, sometimes I tried really, this
(07:03):
is actually what I teach my students, tojust don't look for the translation in
your own language, because each languagehas different vocabulary, so there's no
sense in translating exactly to this word.At the beginning, it's good, but, you
know, when you go on, it's good tounderstand it in another language. So, I
had a list of vocabulary from some topicsthat I felt weak. So, for example, family
(07:29):
and relationships, I didn't feel bad aboutit, because also my boyfriend is Italian,
so we use English every day, and for me,that topic wasn't a problem. But when I
had a science environment, I tried also tostay in medical vocabulary. Sometimes it
(07:50):
was like my, my safe, my safe point, evenwhen speaking. Yeah. Yeah. So, I tried to
connect everything to medicine, and, like,every time going to the topic, yeah. Yeah,
that's interesting you said that. I havementioned to do something similar before
on a previous tutorial. I said, look, ifyour specialization, if you know a lot
(08:15):
about, say, for example, technology, inyour case in medicine, then there's no
harm in diverting the conversation to thatkind of subject. Yeah. So, I think that's
something to do. And go a little more indepth to that subject in English, because
I think that's an important, because wehave been in this field, what we have
seen, is that there are so many languagebehemoths, and in the right language,
(08:35):
there's so much that can be said to betrue, And that's the thing that was
interesting about that topic. Yeah. Andthe other thing that I wanted to mention
was, just to clarify, so, when you'reexpanding your vocabulary, you don't look
for the direct translation in your ownlanguage. You look for the description,
the meaning in English. Yeah. That's true,yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah,
yeah. tutor said exactly the same you knowand then she's saying oh and then you look
(08:59):
for the meaning and then you find otherwords that you don't know and then you go
look for the meaning for that yeah butthat's that's a yeah it is a really
effective way to uh even in the context ofreading when you when you do the reading
and you you go into the read and you'relike oh okay this is this one i remember
the word myriad right now and i had noidea what is a myriad and uh and then i
(09:24):
looked um and it meant like something likea lot of like you have plenty of and you
can use myriad instead and then i found iti was watching a tv show and there was a
myriad i was like okay this word actuallyexists i'm not going crazy yeah so in the
context just like uh kind of gettingaccustomed to this word and then it's good
(09:47):
beautiful i love it i love it so you tookthe ielts academic that's when you said
you were like a mad woman that was a wildand you was taking exam after exam after
sorry not taking exam after exam afterexam we'd probably be bankrupt if we were
taking then general
yeah okay then you took the general yeahis that right yeah i talked with some
(10:11):
friends that were applying for ukfpbecause the two years ago i uh i found the
the offer for the uk without any exploringi was just okay i'm gonna give it a shot
if i get in i'm gonna start thinkingbecause there was very little time uh for
everything and um my friends were likeokay you got seven from writing you get
(10:32):
you need 7 .5 so let's try to do 7 .5 fromwriting but in general because they also
accepted the general training exam rightum but um so i got the 7 .5 and right i
was very happy because there was theletter it's kind of more um i wouldn't say
it's easier it's just a different formatin the academy it's just a different
(10:54):
format it's just a different format in theacademic there's the there's the charge to
describe and this is this is somethingthat might be a bit difficult uh because
you just need to kind of get um get usedto the vocabulary like rise increase and
and that kind of things so that was mystudy also for academic uh studying this
(11:15):
specific words for to describe it um butfor for let's say it was easier because i
felt like it's kind of like a monologuewith somebody but you have to just
describe it in the letter yeah i managedto get 7 .5 but because i was so focused
on writing i think that i uh i didn'tpractice enough from reading and from
(11:38):
other um sections yeah so uh listening wasokay i got the and then i received five
from reading and that was that was my i ifelt completely i was so shocked about it
because i saw i saw first 7 .5 writing andi was like wow okay that i have and then i
(12:01):
i saw the reading and i was completelyshocked i uh i even wrote to to ios and i
i asked them to verify it again becauseit's not possible that i got i think i had
like nine or eight from academic and justa month later i get five from general yeah
yeah it was completely i i i have no ideawhat happened really because i also felt
(12:24):
very confused about it and i was like ohmy god i'm confident about reading
afterwards yeah and nothing reallyhappened which was a bit uh disappointing
and i kind of um lost hope for it it wastoo late for you kfp for me uh i see i see
yeah i kind of kind of lost hope at thatmoment uh also i got stressed on uh
(12:46):
speaking because i was i told you i wasreally focused on writing and uh i lost to
0 .5 points on on speaking and i was uhbecause i remember uh and this could be a
good advice for some other people um thati was so focused on um not saying i like
(13:07):
too much or not saying in my opinion toomuch sorry i'm still after i i had a kind
of like a flu or a cold before um so um ii was so focused on saying not not don't
say too much i like not too much in myopinion just yeah use a lot of vocabulary
(13:28):
and i was so focused on this that i i kindof forgot that there's the time limit and
then that all of the factors combined yeahand i was like okay this is not going well
oh no i'm so sorry so yeah let's summarizeyou you then took the academic that was
for the uk route you possibly focused alittle you were just 100 focused on the
(13:53):
writing yeah you achieved your goal in thewriting but unfortunately the other three
were kind of pushed to the side becauseyou were so but you got the goal in in
writing but the other ones slipped yeahand i see i see so that's why you took it
a third time is that right for the irishroute yeah exactly i had my sixth year of
(14:16):
medicine because when you apply to whenyou apply to the uk you have to apply
after your fifth year of medicine and forfor ireland kind of similar you can apply
during your sixth year but i said it wastoo much i already took two times ielts i
have the sixth year if i'm graduatingthere's too much going on i'm gonna wait
(14:38):
uh so i waited this until the end of thesixth year to to decide what i'm gonna do
and then i i saw that um i had to do ieltsagain for for ireland uh with uh with a
lower with my lowest course but i didn'tknow what to do so um so that's what i did
i understandable i got a lot of just thenremembered about reading i was like no you
cannot just like focus just on the readingum so um what happened is that the
(15:07):
deadline last year was okay you have to doit until the end of february but then this
year they withdrew the option um theywithdrew the test that is also a part of
qualification so in my mind i was i waslike okay so how are they gonna qualify on
the first step probably everyone is gonnahave to have the ielts that's what i
(15:31):
thought yeah yeah and i was like okaylet's wait until they publish actually
actually every requirement but i'm gonnastart studying slightly uh and then i got
the requirements and that was the aislethat i have to do it until the 18th of
november wow so yeah i kind of kind ofpredicted it but i was on the i was on the
(15:54):
truck uh already for the for the wholeyear i see i see wow and so you had to do
it and you were kind of you had thesuspicion you were yeah you have to take
the ielts and then uh you startedpreparing for it the third time yeah and
what resources were you using and and likehow did you approach it because you
(16:15):
learned probably from last time not toneglect yeah with the other disciplines
yeah how did you prepare this time so um iknew that i i have very limited time there
was limited number of dates i alsocouldn't take it in poland so i had to go
to to italy to to my boyfriend who was abit uh yeah there was a lot of effort into
(16:36):
this into this take um and i i knew that ialso i i was also working i was tutoring
so with reading i thought that i'm reallyon track i'm just gonna have a few tests
and i'm just gonna have the idea how itlooked like what i have to look for uh
with listening i um i honestly justchecked a few tips uh on the um i remember
(17:03):
it was pinterest i think just like what tofocus on um just like just find the
similarities i i think with with listeningyou kind of have to just know what the
questions look like just yeah maybe thisone uh know that you have to find
similarities um in words so for examplethey are not gonna say a bottle of water
(17:25):
they are gonna say bottled water orsomething like this you you kind of yeah
so i i had this one and then i just triedto kind of listen to the radio just like
kind of surround myself with this higherum english vocabulary which is not sadly
instagram pages scrolling around no it'snot this one like you you to avoid easy
(17:51):
vocabulary very much so i i try to avoidit um can i ask what radio programs did
you listen to um bbc bbc radio um or bbcwhen they talk about the weather i have
the itune i i tune in i think or somethingthis app which is i think yeah but i try
(18:16):
to use the bbc even the bbc time is alittle bit uh more of like a podcast i
guess um it's afred the tab the으 heelectricity yeah we they they publish some
news then i try to read it as well for forfor the sake of reading for example yeah
and when you was doing the the listeningand and the reading when you was reading
in the news or listening to the the radiowere you was it all passive like were you
(18:39):
doing the washing up or tidying up orsomething or were you sat down with a pen
and writing things down uh i had my noteson my uh on my iphone open and when i
found the when i heard the word i tried towrite it down and just check for the for
the meaning and i also just now rememberedthat i downloaded um downloaded audiobooks
(19:01):
instead of reading a book i was idownloaded ever and i'm not sponsoring
anything i just know that this is a goodresource but uh yeah it's it was a really
good um idea to start listening toaudiobooks because i and i tried to focus
on british english because i thought okayamerican english is just fast but for me
(19:22):
being fast is not a problem uh for me theproblem was the accent sometimes when i
was listening to it uh but yeah i thinkaudiobooks helped a lot excellent yeah and
were they was it fiction non-fiction or umyeah i think it was just like a romantic i
(19:45):
i stayed with jojo moise the the thebritish writer it was very um i like her a
lot because that i feel like vocabulary isnot too too too complex it's just simple
relationships but it's kind of um it's notdiscouraging because some of the books are
(20:05):
um i don't know you you find so manydescriptive words yeah that it's um it's a
bit difficult to keep track yeah exactlyyeah i've had the same when i've been
learning languages like some books i'll belike oh this one's going to really push me
but there'll be there's only a certainamount of vocabulary that i can
(20:26):
misunderstand or i don't know i don't knowi don't know i don't know i don't know i'm
just listening i'll misinterpret and theni start tuning out yeah and then it's just
sound then and i'm just it's a waste soyou went for audiobooks um that weren't so
challenging but it was more a case of likekeeping yourself in in the story and
keeping yourself listening right exactly ijust want to re-mention what you said
(20:50):
about the listening uh because i thinkthat's a great point what you said about
how the questions are phrased get to knowthe structure of the questions um it
becomes a lot easier so you did a practicetest for the reading and then you did
practice did you do practice tests for thelistening as well no i didn't have the
(21:10):
time no okay yeah i just looked through mybook because i have this set of iodes i
don't know how they are called now uh butit's like the set of i think three very
thick books and uh they are like americani think right yeah i i bought them some
time ago when i was studying for theprevious iodes and they have some tests so
(21:33):
i just looked okay this one is constructedin this way and for the first iodes i was
listening already to um i did thelistening a few times just to have the
idea and i remembered how it looked likeso i see that's why i had the idea already
gotcha and then for the writing you wereusing the essay checking uh service yeah
(21:55):
on the ios podcast right yeah yeah at thebeginning of the when i was studying for
the last time i uh it was already twoyears uh like two years past so i i didn't
remember the name of the page and i wasvery frustrated and i remember this one
evening i was just right i was like youknow i'll check i don't i don't remember
(22:16):
how how was it called and i was trying tofind it there was some other website that
i tried to find and i was like i don'tremember how it was called and i was
trying to find it to use but i don't knowthey i didn't feel like it's not it like i
i knew it's not this thing i don't icouldn't describe what it is but um just
uh how i could see that okay this essay isbeing checked or uh underlining the words
(22:37):
or what grammar grammatical structure iwas using and it was just better i don't
know it's just um keeping the track ofthis and not not to brag about the page
but really it was it i uh i really ireally found this was a good resource for
me really excellent okay yeah and just forthe listeners can you break down how you
(23:02):
use the essay checker like did you have aa system like it said okay this vocabulary
needs upgrading and then you went and didxyz how did you use the checker to um to
improve your writing so at the beginning itried to write the topic obviously because
there's the frame for the topic and thenstarting to write the essay uh but then uh
(23:29):
when i started to do it on the page and iput the timer it was so stressful to see
the timer that i i i i couldn't do it umlike starting on the page so i just opened
the docs document and i um i i started torealize that it was very difficult when i
was writing the topic from the bookbecause i was doing the topics from the
(23:53):
book not from the internet because i knowthat on ielts you when you write something
you already have the idea what's the topicso you have kind of this extra time so i
was trying trying to make a photo uh butwith scanning the the text so i can just
copy the the text later to to the to thechecker right and then just writing it in
(24:17):
the docs and having a quick look at it andthen just pasting it on the page and
checking it i see okay so you you youdidn't use the checker to write the essay
because it was stressful you wrote thequestion in in a word document then you
copy pasted it into the checker yeah andthen you hit submit yeah and then what was
(24:40):
your next step patricia so then i was thenyou have to wait for the checker to to to
verify everything because the first mark ialways i i always got this first mark
immediately but it was always lower thanthe the mark that that got like with that
that arrived with time oh um i was likeokay i'm just gonna give it a five five
(25:06):
minutes i'm gonna like i'm gonna makemyself some tea i'm gonna i'm gonna chill
for this five minutes and then i'm gonnacheck and and then i was checking the
essay uh what i did was i was looking atthe words that it had underlined which
were repeated and if i can change thembecause i remember my biggest struggle was
(25:26):
the word children and there was the wordyouth there was the word toddler and i
think that i love this research for thisbecause i didn't have to like look around
all of those pages on on the internet andfind synonyms for the word children yeah
it just gives you the um it gives you theidea immediately which word you could use
(25:47):
um it also helped me on the on theofficial um ios i had the topic about i
think education or something and i had touse the the words students uh toddlers uh
i don't know pupils i was trying to divertmake it make it more diverse and the ai
was also helpful because it not didn'tchange my um essay completely um on the on
(26:15):
the website but it kind of likeparaphrased my my sentences and they were
better and i was sometimes writing themdown and just like um comparing them with
with mine how could it be better gotchaokay so there's two things there you um
(26:35):
when you were using the essay checker youwere using what it underlined words that
were repeating synonyms like almostinstantly once it had done the detailed
check and then um the extra ai one it kindof paraphrased it and gave you some more
sentences with new vocabulary is thatcorrect yeah yeah excellent excellent and
(27:01):
that speeded up everything when you werepreparing for the writing yeah yeah
because i had about four days so it wasyeah i was i was writing if i said i'm
going to be writing i'm just kind of doingquotations like that i'm really bad mean i
(27:21):
know everything i'm
like but i still had to write i had to doit for the first time so i had to do it
for the first time and it was the firsttime i had and i wrote it for my last book
and after two days it was done and i hadto do i had to do it for the last part of
the book because i was doing all of thewriting so i had to do it again so i had
to do the whole thing had to do it againso the first time I was doing it. see so
(27:42):
what did you score uh actually before weget into the score yeah yeah um is there
anything that we haven't covered that youwould like to share that could help a
student pass the ielts exam hmm i i havenothing on my mind right now okay no
worries i did my job i've asked enoughquestions all right um right then so um
(28:09):
what scores did you get then in your inyour latest exam um i got eight from each
section uh except for writing where i got6 .5 oh yeah okay but uh i'm still
satisfied because i think there was verylimited time to prepare and i was just
yeah it was still good and 7 .5 overallright i see and that's got you enough um
(28:36):
that's a high enough grade for the irishroute for medicine yeah yeah yeah i wanted
to talk about that because i know that alot of people have not been able to take
it as soon as possible it was i rememberthat the requirements for the for the
medical truck for for the for ireland waspublished about 22nd 23rd of um october
(28:56):
and i took ielts on the 27th for 28th ofthe wow okay i was like i'm just gonna go
for it because there was a very limitedtime and you know you never know when they
will publish your results i got mine intwo days i have to say it was very quick
yeah yeah yeah but I'm still verysatisfied speaking for eight I was I was
(29:19):
very shocked I that's great yeah use thespeaking test simulator no no no no you
didn't have time you just yeah I just Ijust focus on writing and I'm still
satisfied because on the when I was doingit with there with the page it was also
telling me I have six point five seven andif you if you add the stress when you are
(29:43):
on the time pressure and everything I Iwas still very satisfied with the with the
overall score yeah I mean yeah days that'sit that's crazy and seven point five
overall yeah really really impressivescores there so finally as my last
question what would you say to anyone whois considering taking the IELTS exam soon
(30:08):
I think that they it's a very difficultquestion because there's a lot of factors
to consider but if it's a person thatalready wants to take the IELTS not to
yeah maybe just surround yourself withEnglish and be aware that you already know
(30:32):
know a lot of things because you you tookthis first step so if you know that you
can take the exam you already have theknowledge because not the same person is
going to take IELTS if they don't knowanything true just just to uh stay on
track and keep doing what you're doing andif you know that you already uh you
(30:55):
already know a lot of you understandspeaking let's say um you uh when you're
listening to somebody you have no problemsjust focus on your weak points and depends
how much time you have if you can focus oneach part but if there's just if you have
limited time and you can focus on one partjust just focus on this one part and this
(31:17):
one part can also give you the extravocabulary for reading for um for every
part of IELTS I think yeah yeah that's agreat point that's a great point like you
learn new vocabulary doing reading examsthere's no reason why you can't use it in
your speaking in your writing yeahabsolutely okay super and maybe about
(31:40):
speaking i also have this thing in mindtry not to think about this person that
you're talking to because it's only youand this person and the thing that records
you uh try to think of this person assomeone who really wants you to you to get
the high score i get i thought i i hadthat experience i feel like um this person
(32:01):
is not your enemy because sometimes wefeel like the examiner is the one that
wants to like uh wants us to fail um but ii had a very good experience i i have to
say that my examiners it's not like theywere doing the face expressions that
really encouraged me to speak more uh butjust imagine it it's like a normal
conversation and even if you don't knowthe answer just tell them oh it's a
(32:24):
difficult question i don't know i don'tknow the answer yet i'm gonna think about
it and just keep on talking so show themthat you are capable of what you're doing
right now that's true genius yeah yeahi've said very similar on previous
tutorials and other and uh x i elseexaminers have said the same like an
examiner is looking for opportunities togive you points yeah so as you said if you
(32:51):
think of this person as your friend ratherthan your enemy and you know it's your
opportunity to shine in the exam exactlyit it gets the whole your whole mental
mindset is going to be so I'm going tofail this examiner is making it difficult
but yeah so i love i love your uh point ofview there patricia that's genius that's
(33:16):
genius all right so um if you are going totake the ielts exam soon uh then you can
head over to ieltspodcast .com we've gotthe ai essay checker the exam simulator
and a big thank you to patricia forjoining us today and i'm wishing you all
the best in ireland patricia thank youthank you very much i should have asked
(33:39):
this at the beginning but am i pronouncingyour name correctly um well in poland they
say patricia um but i got used to so manyversions of my name because as you know
i'm i'm both in poland and in italy allthe time so it's patricia patricia
patricia it's a so i'm looking forward tohearing something else in ireland yeah i
(34:05):
might call you paddy we'll see yeah yeahyeah exactly i think so so i guess english
speakers say patricia your native polishfriends and family will say patricia yeah
yeah and then what do you and what do theitalians say patricia yeah there's
something like this we sometimes stay withpot it's easier international
(34:34):
my wife has a similar experience yeah yeahyeah i should have asked at the beginning
so i do apologize no no problem no okayall right then well thank you very much uh
patricia and i'm wishing you all the bestin ireland thank you thank you very much
you're welcome thanks
(35:05):
for
You are now listening to the IELTSpodcast. Learn from tutors and ex
-examiners who are masters of IELTSpreparation. Your host, Ben Worthington.
Hello there, IELTS students. In thistutorial, we are talking with Patricia,
and she's got some great results from herlatest IELTS test. So before we jump into
(00:28):
it, Patricia, could you tell me a bitabout yourself and why you're taking the
IELTS, please? Um, so I just graduatedmedicine, and I was exploring my options,
where can I go and practice medicine. Andsince I didn't really get that much
interested in doing medicine, being adoctor in Poland, I started exploring my
(00:54):
options where I can use my English. And Ifound Ireland as an option for continuing
practicing medicine. But I had to do IELTSto do that. I also explored a bit about
medical practice in the UK. And I trieddoing IELTS for the UK. But it's my fault
(01:20):
that I kind of explored it too late.Because the score is very high, which I
have to get there. I have to get 7 .5 ineach section and to have 7 .5 overall.
Right. Which is super hard in a shortperiod of time, because I was still a
medical student. So depends how much timeyou devote for it. But for Ireland, it was
(01:46):
slightly lower. I had to get 6 .5 in eachsection and have 7 .5 overall. So I
managed to get that score this this year.Excellent. Okay. And just a quick
question. Was the English route, theSpanish route, was it the to uh instead of
ireland was the route to england was itslightly more uh bureaucratic because of
(02:11):
brexit and all of that um yeah there's uhthere's a lot of documents that you have
to gather um for example i think some somevisa visa documents uh but i think it's
very well organized um with with thehospitals because you're assigned for the
hospital for two years i think i i have nochecked information about that so much um
(02:37):
because i depended um depended a lot onthe opinions of my friends uh that friends
i i found those people online uh and i iasked them what do you think about the
ukfp program do you think it's worth it doyou think because i i kind of have in mind
which doctor i want to be um and i want tobe a gynecologist and i found out that
(03:02):
it's not so easy uh to to get into thatspecialization exactly uh they are trying
to kind of fill in blanks uh in the systemand it's not gynecology so oh i see yeah
so i uh i was thinking a lot about it thatit's a lot of effort for probably doing
bureaucratic work for two years and inireland it's just one year of um like kind
(03:29):
of it's we call it stage in poland it'skind of a postgraduate uh 13 months of
practice as i like an internship which iswhich is still paid um but um yeah like
there's a lot of documentation alsotogether for ireland but for a shorter
period of time for for our internship isee yeah yeah that's interesting and then
(03:53):
as you said before both routes the one toireland and the one to the uk required our
ielts exam uh but the irish route was uhrequired slightly slightly lower level and
i remember you you worked with us beforedidn't you and you took the ireland
(04:14):
general yeah yeah and then what whatresults did you get when you worked with
us before so i took first my first ieltsexam was academic and i managed to get i
remember I think I got seven, I don'tremember, because it was like two years
ago, and I kept studying for another IELTSalready, so I think I got seven from
(04:39):
writing, but I was practicing, I was goinglike mad woman, really, I was writing, I
was trying to find a resource that isgoing to tell me, okay, you're writing
this well, you're using the goodvocabulary, because as I told you before,
I'm also a tutor, but my vocabulary stayson the level of A2, B1, maybe B2
(05:05):
sometimes, but most primary schoolstudents are based on this vocabulary for
A2, so for me, it was hard to jump intovocabulary immediately, like C1, just B2,
just like use very high vocabulary, sowhen I was using your website, every time
it was telling me, you know, you can use alittle bit higher vocabulary, higher
(05:26):
level. I was like, no, I but I'm just soused to the vocabulary that I'm using with
my students, it was so difficult at thebeginning, but I did a lot of writings, I
think that's the clue, you just have to,even if you feel that you have no idea
what is an essay, what you are reading,you just have to go with the flow, and
(05:49):
even now, when you have this AI feature,it's going to kind of give you the idea
what they are looking for, so it's reallygood. Right, so that was the main problem
that you were looking to solve, was thevocabulary, and you realised that the
vocabulary was the issue, because you wereusing the AI essay checker on ios .cat
(06:12):
.com, yeah? Right, I see, I see, excuseme, so you took the academic, and that's
when you said you were like a mad woman,just writing, writing, writing. Yeah,
yeah, yeah. Using the AI essay checker,getting that instant feedback, and just
realising vocabulary was the issue, andthen, once you realised the vocabulary was
(06:37):
the issue, what steps did you take toimprove your vocabulary? I had some
American book with vocabulary, which is,it's basically, you have a list of words,
and then they are used in reading text.So, it was, sometimes I tried really, this
(07:03):
is actually what I teach my students, tojust don't look for the translation in
your own language, because each languagehas different vocabulary, so there's no
sense in translating exactly to this word.At the beginning, it's good, but, you
know, when you go on, it's good tounderstand it in another language. So, I
had a list of vocabulary from some topicsthat I felt weak. So, for example, family
(07:29):
and relationships, I didn't feel bad aboutit, because also my boyfriend is Italian,
so we use English every day, and for me,that topic wasn't a problem. But when I
had a science environment, I tried also tostay in medical vocabulary. Sometimes it
(07:50):
was like my, my safe, my safe point, evenwhen speaking. Yeah. Yeah. So, I tried to
connect everything to medicine, and, like,every time going to the topic, yeah. Yeah,
that's interesting you said that. I havementioned to do something similar before
on a previous tutorial. I said, look, ifyour specialization, if you know a lot
(08:15):
about, say, for example, technology, inyour case in medicine, then there's no
harm in diverting the conversation to thatkind of subject. Yeah. So, I think that's
something to do. And go a little more indepth to that subject in English, because
I think that's an important, because wehave been in this field, what we have
seen, is that there are so many languagebehemoths, and in the right language,
(08:35):
there's so much that can be said to betrue, And that's the thing that was
interesting about that topic. Yeah. Andthe other thing that I wanted to mention
was, just to clarify, so, when you'reexpanding your vocabulary, you don't look
for the direct translation in your ownlanguage. You look for the description,
the meaning in English. Yeah. That's true,yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah,
yeah. tutor said exactly the same you knowand then she's saying oh and then you look
(08:59):
for the meaning and then you find otherwords that you don't know and then you go
look for the meaning for that yeah butthat's that's a yeah it is a really
effective way to uh even in the context ofreading when you when you do the reading
and you you go into the read and you'relike oh okay this is this one i remember
the word myriad right now and i had noidea what is a myriad and uh and then i
(09:24):
looked um and it meant like something likea lot of like you have plenty of and you
can use myriad instead and then i found iti was watching a tv show and there was a
myriad i was like okay this word actuallyexists i'm not going crazy yeah so in the
context just like uh kind of gettingaccustomed to this word and then it's good
(09:47):
beautiful i love it i love it so you tookthe ielts academic that's when you said
you were like a mad woman that was a wildand you was taking exam after exam after
sorry not taking exam after exam afterexam we'd probably be bankrupt if we were
taking then general
yeah okay then you took the general yeahis that right yeah i talked with some
(10:11):
friends that were applying for ukfpbecause the two years ago i uh i found the
the offer for the uk without any exploringi was just okay i'm gonna give it a shot
if i get in i'm gonna start thinkingbecause there was very little time uh for
everything and um my friends were likeokay you got seven from writing you get
(10:32):
you need 7 .5 so let's try to do 7 .5 fromwriting but in general because they also
accepted the general training exam rightum but um so i got the 7 .5 and right i
was very happy because there was theletter it's kind of more um i wouldn't say
it's easier it's just a different formatin the academy it's just a different
(10:54):
format it's just a different format in theacademic there's the there's the charge to
describe and this is this is somethingthat might be a bit difficult uh because
you just need to kind of get um get usedto the vocabulary like rise increase and
and that kind of things so that was mystudy also for academic uh studying this
(11:15):
specific words for to describe it um butfor for let's say it was easier because i
felt like it's kind of like a monologuewith somebody but you have to just
describe it in the letter yeah i managedto get 7 .5 but because i was so focused
on writing i think that i uh i didn'tpractice enough from reading and from
(11:38):
other um sections yeah so uh listening wasokay i got the and then i received five
from reading and that was that was my i ifelt completely i was so shocked about it
because i saw i saw first 7 .5 writing andi was like wow okay that i have and then i
(12:01):
i saw the reading and i was completelyshocked i uh i even wrote to to ios and i
i asked them to verify it again becauseit's not possible that i got i think i had
like nine or eight from academic and justa month later i get five from general yeah
yeah it was completely i i i have no ideawhat happened really because i also felt
(12:24):
very confused about it and i was like ohmy god i'm confident about reading
afterwards yeah and nothing reallyhappened which was a bit uh disappointing
and i kind of um lost hope for it it wastoo late for you kfp for me uh i see i see
yeah i kind of kind of lost hope at thatmoment uh also i got stressed on uh
(12:46):
speaking because i was i told you i wasreally focused on writing and uh i lost to
0 .5 points on on speaking and i was uhbecause i remember uh and this could be a
good advice for some other people um thati was so focused on um not saying i like
(13:07):
too much or not saying in my opinion toomuch sorry i'm still after i i had a kind
of like a flu or a cold before um so um ii was so focused on saying not not don't
say too much i like not too much in myopinion just yeah use a lot of vocabulary
(13:28):
and i was so focused on this that i i kindof forgot that there's the time limit and
then that all of the factors combined yeahand i was like okay this is not going well
oh no i'm so sorry so yeah let's summarizeyou you then took the academic that was
for the uk route you possibly focused alittle you were just 100 focused on the
(13:53):
writing yeah you achieved your goal in thewriting but unfortunately the other three
were kind of pushed to the side becauseyou were so but you got the goal in in
writing but the other ones slipped yeahand i see i see so that's why you took it
a third time is that right for the irishroute yeah exactly i had my sixth year of
(14:16):
medicine because when you apply to whenyou apply to the uk you have to apply
after your fifth year of medicine and forfor ireland kind of similar you can apply
during your sixth year but i said it wastoo much i already took two times ielts i
have the sixth year if i'm graduatingthere's too much going on i'm gonna wait
(14:38):
uh so i waited this until the end of thesixth year to to decide what i'm gonna do
and then i i saw that um i had to do ieltsagain for for ireland uh with uh with a
lower with my lowest course but i didn'tknow what to do so um so that's what i did
i understandable i got a lot of just thenremembered about reading i was like no you
cannot just like focus just on the readingum so um what happened is that the
(15:07):
deadline last year was okay you have to doit until the end of february but then this
year they withdrew the option um theywithdrew the test that is also a part of
qualification so in my mind i was i waslike okay so how are they gonna qualify on
the first step probably everyone is gonnahave to have the ielts that's what i
(15:31):
thought yeah yeah and i was like okaylet's wait until they publish actually
actually every requirement but i'm gonnastart studying slightly uh and then i got
the requirements and that was the aislethat i have to do it until the 18th of
november wow so yeah i kind of kind ofpredicted it but i was on the i was on the
(15:54):
truck uh already for the for the wholeyear i see i see wow and so you had to do
it and you were kind of you had thesuspicion you were yeah you have to take
the ielts and then uh you startedpreparing for it the third time yeah and
what resources were you using and and likehow did you approach it because you
(16:15):
learned probably from last time not toneglect yeah with the other disciplines
yeah how did you prepare this time so um iknew that i i have very limited time there
was limited number of dates i alsocouldn't take it in poland so i had to go
to to italy to to my boyfriend who was abit uh yeah there was a lot of effort into
(16:36):
this into this take um and i i knew that ialso i i was also working i was tutoring
so with reading i thought that i'm reallyon track i'm just gonna have a few tests
and i'm just gonna have the idea how itlooked like what i have to look for uh
with listening i um i honestly justchecked a few tips uh on the um i remember
(17:03):
it was pinterest i think just like what tofocus on um just like just find the
similarities i i think with with listeningyou kind of have to just know what the
questions look like just yeah maybe thisone uh know that you have to find
similarities um in words so for examplethey are not gonna say a bottle of water
(17:25):
they are gonna say bottled water orsomething like this you you kind of yeah
so i i had this one and then i just triedto kind of listen to the radio just like
kind of surround myself with this higherum english vocabulary which is not sadly
instagram pages scrolling around no it'snot this one like you you to avoid easy
(17:51):
vocabulary very much so i i try to avoidit um can i ask what radio programs did
you listen to um bbc bbc radio um or bbcwhen they talk about the weather i have
the itune i i tune in i think or somethingthis app which is i think yeah but i try
(18:16):
to use the bbc even the bbc time is alittle bit uh more of like a podcast i
guess um it's afred the tab the으 heelectricity yeah we they they publish some
news then i try to read it as well for forfor the sake of reading for example yeah
and when you was doing the the listeningand and the reading when you was reading
in the news or listening to the the radiowere you was it all passive like were you
(18:39):
doing the washing up or tidying up orsomething or were you sat down with a pen
and writing things down uh i had my noteson my uh on my iphone open and when i
found the when i heard the word i tried towrite it down and just check for the for
the meaning and i also just now rememberedthat i downloaded um downloaded audiobooks
(19:01):
instead of reading a book i was idownloaded ever and i'm not sponsoring
anything i just know that this is a goodresource but uh yeah it's it was a really
good um idea to start listening toaudiobooks because i and i tried to focus
on british english because i thought okayamerican english is just fast but for me
(19:22):
being fast is not a problem uh for me theproblem was the accent sometimes when i
was listening to it uh but yeah i thinkaudiobooks helped a lot excellent yeah and
were they was it fiction non-fiction or umyeah i think it was just like a romantic i
(19:45):
i stayed with jojo moise the the thebritish writer it was very um i like her a
lot because that i feel like vocabulary isnot too too too complex it's just simple
relationships but it's kind of um it's notdiscouraging because some of the books are
(20:05):
um i don't know you you find so manydescriptive words yeah that it's um it's a
bit difficult to keep track yeah exactlyyeah i've had the same when i've been
learning languages like some books i'll belike oh this one's going to really push me
but there'll be there's only a certainamount of vocabulary that i can
(20:26):
misunderstand or i don't know i don't knowi don't know i don't know i don't know i'm
just listening i'll misinterpret and theni start tuning out yeah and then it's just
sound then and i'm just it's a waste soyou went for audiobooks um that weren't so
challenging but it was more a case of likekeeping yourself in in the story and
keeping yourself listening right exactly ijust want to re-mention what you said
(20:50):
about the listening uh because i thinkthat's a great point what you said about
how the questions are phrased get to knowthe structure of the questions um it
becomes a lot easier so you did a practicetest for the reading and then you did
practice did you do practice tests for thelistening as well no i didn't have the
(21:10):
time no okay yeah i just looked through mybook because i have this set of iodes i
don't know how they are called now uh butit's like the set of i think three very
thick books and uh they are like americani think right yeah i i bought them some
time ago when i was studying for theprevious iodes and they have some tests so
(21:33):
i just looked okay this one is constructedin this way and for the first iodes i was
listening already to um i did thelistening a few times just to have the
idea and i remembered how it looked likeso i see that's why i had the idea already
gotcha and then for the writing you wereusing the essay checking uh service yeah
(21:55):
on the ios podcast right yeah yeah at thebeginning of the when i was studying for
the last time i uh it was already twoyears uh like two years past so i i didn't
remember the name of the page and i wasvery frustrated and i remember this one
evening i was just right i was like youknow i'll check i don't i don't remember
(22:16):
how how was it called and i was trying tofind it there was some other website that
i tried to find and i was like i don'tremember how it was called and i was
trying to find it to use but i don't knowthey i didn't feel like it's not it like i
i knew it's not this thing i don't icouldn't describe what it is but um just
uh how i could see that okay this essay isbeing checked or uh underlining the words
(22:37):
or what grammar grammatical structure iwas using and it was just better i don't
know it's just um keeping the track ofthis and not not to brag about the page
but really it was it i uh i really ireally found this was a good resource for
me really excellent okay yeah and just forthe listeners can you break down how you
(23:02):
use the essay checker like did you have aa system like it said okay this vocabulary
needs upgrading and then you went and didxyz how did you use the checker to um to
improve your writing so at the beginning itried to write the topic obviously because
there's the frame for the topic and thenstarting to write the essay uh but then uh
(23:29):
when i started to do it on the page and iput the timer it was so stressful to see
the timer that i i i i couldn't do it umlike starting on the page so i just opened
the docs document and i um i i started torealize that it was very difficult when i
was writing the topic from the bookbecause i was doing the topics from the
(23:53):
book not from the internet because i knowthat on ielts you when you write something
you already have the idea what's the topicso you have kind of this extra time so i
was trying trying to make a photo uh butwith scanning the the text so i can just
copy the the text later to to the to thechecker right and then just writing it in
(24:17):
the docs and having a quick look at it andthen just pasting it on the page and
checking it i see okay so you you youdidn't use the checker to write the essay
because it was stressful you wrote thequestion in in a word document then you
copy pasted it into the checker yeah andthen you hit submit yeah and then what was
(24:40):
your next step patricia so then i was thenyou have to wait for the checker to to to
verify everything because the first mark ialways i i always got this first mark
immediately but it was always lower thanthe the mark that that got like with that
that arrived with time oh um i was likeokay i'm just gonna give it a five five
(25:06):
minutes i'm gonna like i'm gonna makemyself some tea i'm gonna i'm gonna chill
for this five minutes and then i'm gonnacheck and and then i was checking the
essay uh what i did was i was looking atthe words that it had underlined which
were repeated and if i can change thembecause i remember my biggest struggle was
(25:26):
the word children and there was the wordyouth there was the word toddler and i
think that i love this research for thisbecause i didn't have to like look around
all of those pages on on the internet andfind synonyms for the word children yeah
it just gives you the um it gives you theidea immediately which word you could use
(25:47):
um it also helped me on the on theofficial um ios i had the topic about i
think education or something and i had touse the the words students uh toddlers uh
i don't know pupils i was trying to divertmake it make it more diverse and the ai
was also helpful because it not didn'tchange my um essay completely um on the on
(26:15):
the website but it kind of likeparaphrased my my sentences and they were
better and i was sometimes writing themdown and just like um comparing them with
with mine how could it be better gotchaokay so there's two things there you um
(26:35):
when you were using the essay checker youwere using what it underlined words that
were repeating synonyms like almostinstantly once it had done the detailed
check and then um the extra ai one it kindof paraphrased it and gave you some more
sentences with new vocabulary is thatcorrect yeah yeah excellent excellent and
(27:01):
that speeded up everything when you werepreparing for the writing yeah yeah
because i had about four days so it wasyeah i was i was writing if i said i'm
going to be writing i'm just kind of doingquotations like that i'm really bad mean i
(27:21):
know everything i'm
like but i still had to write i had to doit for the first time so i had to do it
for the first time and it was the firsttime i had and i wrote it for my last book
and after two days it was done and i hadto do i had to do it for the last part of
the book because i was doing all of thewriting so i had to do it again so i had
to do the whole thing had to do it againso the first time I was doing it. see so
(27:42):
what did you score uh actually before weget into the score yeah yeah um is there
anything that we haven't covered that youwould like to share that could help a
student pass the ielts exam hmm i i havenothing on my mind right now okay no
worries i did my job i've asked enoughquestions all right um right then so um
(28:09):
what scores did you get then in your inyour latest exam um i got eight from each
section uh except for writing where i got6 .5 oh yeah okay but uh i'm still
satisfied because i think there was verylimited time to prepare and i was just
yeah it was still good and 7 .5 overallright i see and that's got you enough um
(28:36):
that's a high enough grade for the irishroute for medicine yeah yeah yeah i wanted
to talk about that because i know that alot of people have not been able to take
it as soon as possible it was i rememberthat the requirements for the for the
medical truck for for the for ireland waspublished about 22nd 23rd of um october
(28:56):
and i took ielts on the 27th for 28th ofthe wow okay i was like i'm just gonna go
for it because there was a very limitedtime and you know you never know when they
will publish your results i got mine intwo days i have to say it was very quick
yeah yeah yeah but I'm still verysatisfied speaking for eight I was I was
(29:19):
very shocked I that's great yeah use thespeaking test simulator no no no no you
didn't have time you just yeah I just Ijust focus on writing and I'm still
satisfied because on the when I was doingit with there with the page it was also
telling me I have six point five seven andif you if you add the stress when you are
(29:43):
on the time pressure and everything I Iwas still very satisfied with the with the
overall score yeah I mean yeah days that'sit that's crazy and seven point five
overall yeah really really impressivescores there so finally as my last
question what would you say to anyone whois considering taking the IELTS exam soon
(30:08):
I think that they it's a very difficultquestion because there's a lot of factors
to consider but if it's a person thatalready wants to take the IELTS not to
yeah maybe just surround yourself withEnglish and be aware that you already know
(30:32):
know a lot of things because you you tookthis first step so if you know that you
can take the exam you already have theknowledge because not the same person is
going to take IELTS if they don't knowanything true just just to uh stay on
track and keep doing what you're doing andif you know that you already uh you
(30:55):
already know a lot of you understandspeaking let's say um you uh when you're
listening to somebody you have no problemsjust focus on your weak points and depends
how much time you have if you can focus oneach part but if there's just if you have
limited time and you can focus on one partjust just focus on this one part and this
(31:17):
one part can also give you the extravocabulary for reading for um for every
part of IELTS I think yeah yeah that's agreat point that's a great point like you
learn new vocabulary doing reading examsthere's no reason why you can't use it in
your speaking in your writing yeahabsolutely okay super and maybe about
(31:40):
speaking i also have this thing in mindtry not to think about this person that
you're talking to because it's only youand this person and the thing that records
you uh try to think of this person assomeone who really wants you to you to get
the high score i get i thought i i hadthat experience i feel like um this person
(32:01):
is not your enemy because sometimes wefeel like the examiner is the one that
wants to like uh wants us to fail um but ii had a very good experience i i have to
say that my examiners it's not like theywere doing the face expressions that
really encouraged me to speak more uh butjust imagine it it's like a normal
conversation and even if you don't knowthe answer just tell them oh it's a
(32:24):
difficult question i don't know i don'tknow the answer yet i'm gonna think about
it and just keep on talking so show themthat you are capable of what you're doing
right now that's true genius yeah yeahi've said very similar on previous
tutorials and other and uh x i elseexaminers have said the same like an
examiner is looking for opportunities togive you points yeah so as you said if you
(32:51):
think of this person as your friend ratherthan your enemy and you know it's your
opportunity to shine in the exam exactlyit it gets the whole your whole mental
mindset is going to be so I'm going tofail this examiner is making it difficult
but yeah so i love i love your uh point ofview there patricia that's genius that's
(33:16):
genius all right so um if you are going totake the ielts exam soon uh then you can
head over to ieltspodcast .com we've gotthe ai essay checker the exam simulator
and a big thank you to patricia forjoining us today and i'm wishing you all
the best in ireland patricia thank youthank you very much i should have asked
(33:39):
this at the beginning but am i pronouncingyour name correctly um well in poland they
say patricia um but i got used to so manyversions of my name because as you know
i'm i'm both in poland and in italy allthe time so it's patricia patricia
patricia it's a so i'm looking forward tohearing something else in ireland yeah i
(34:05):
might call you paddy we'll see yeah yeahyeah exactly i think so so i guess english
speakers say patricia your native polishfriends and family will say patricia yeah
yeah and then what do you and what do theitalians say patricia yeah there's
something like this we sometimes stay withpot it's easier international
(34:34):
my wife has a similar experience yeah yeahyeah i should have asked at the beginning
so i do apologize no no problem no okayall right then well thank you very much uh
patricia and i'm wishing you all the bestin ireland thank you thank you very much
you're welcome thanks
(35:05):
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