Quiz

IELTS is easily the most popular English proficiency test. It’s robust structure, and integrity is making it a valuable language assessment tool. Familiarity breeds contempt, and prevalence breeds misconception. Here are a few common misconceptions about IELTS.IELTS is difficultIELTS is neither tricky nor difficult. It starts off easy, and as you progress, so does the level of complexity. This is designed to gently take the test taker into higher levels of language without the test taker feeli

One of the most troublesome sections in English exams is reading comprehension. The challenge is that most of us are not used to reading, let alone reading with full concentration. If you are looking for a 'tip' to improve your RC performance, here it is - read more often. It does not sound much like a tip, but you will be surprised at how beneficial following the tip can be. Putting in an effort to read, for even 30 minutes each day, can dramatically improve your levels of concentration and und

We at First Academy have the fortune of learning on the job. As teachers of English, we are naturally among the first to encounter the most common mistakes people make and encounter them on a regular basis. The one mistake that usually takes the cake is the difficulty most people face in understanding the difference between there, they’re (they are) and their.Here is a short primer on what these words mean and how to use them correctly. Be it IELTS or PTE or CELPIP or any other English test wh

Hope you have all had a great Valentine's day! 💕Especially the cardiologists among you! 😉We get a lot of queries about coaching for OET, and unsurprisingly, many who wish to take coaching only want to do so because they are not always aware of the nuances of the test. They have command over language in general, and they have been dealing with patients and already know what it is to be a medical professional. However, the fact that they would be soon taking a test, no matter how simple, som

Wondering about what the right phrase would be in the context? This quiz is for you. Be it for speaking in the IELTS test, or understanding the meaning of a piece of written text, knowing how subtle differences in usage can alter meaning can be vital.

A quick recap before you take the test This week’s session was about the Critical Reasoning component of the GRE. The GRE Critical Reasoning questions are an extension of the Argument task in the Analytical Writing Assessment section of GRE. These questions test your ability to assess a situation that has been presented to you. Assessing a situation includes your ability to identify flaws, weaknesses, and areas for improvement. Quite often, the questions contain answers options that are cor

The listening test contains multiple choice questions. As with most multiple choice questions in most listening tests, the answer options will have words and phrases that are a part of the conversation. This is a [tooltip tip=”Done on purpose; intentional; planned”]deliberate[/tooltip] measure to force candidates to focus on the understanding of the passage rather than marking an answer based on words or sounds of words that have been heard. As always, read the instructions thoroughly before

From understanding inference, to identifying a flaw, to figuring out the intricacies of a situation, critical reasoning questions in the GRE can test you on several skills. The test here looks at a set of questions that test you on lines similar to those that you are tested on in the actual GRE test. This is an untimed test. In the actual GRE test, all the sections are timed. Many test takers completely ignore the critical reasoning section or worse still are unaware that something like this exi

The GRE Reading Comprehension Section. This section of the GRE looks at three question forms. The multiple choice question – There are five answer choices from which you have to pick one The select any question – Three answer choices are presented. You are expected to choose all the correct answers. Select a sentence – A question is presented and you are asked to choose a sentence from a selected area of the text that best satisfies the conditions in the question.These question look at tes

Active to passive conversions (or vice versa) are more than a grammar exercise that we do in school. While we are never taught the purpose of these conversions, knowing how to convert a sentence from active to passive and back is essential for being able to score well on the ‘Grammatical Range’ parameter of tests like PTE, IELTS, OET, and TOEFL. Grammatical range looks at the variety of sentences you can construct to convey precise meanings and opinions. This is helpful not just in t

The picture was inspired by a quote by Jack London

If there is proof that certain aspects of English appeal to the aesthete, it is parallel structures. Parallel structures can make what you write and what you say memorable. If you closely observe most the quotable quotes, you will start noticing that most of them have parallel structure hidden in them. Take a look at this for instance:So, how are these relevant to IELTS, GRE, or PTE coaching? For language tests, they will help you get a better score in speaking and writing. And in tests like GRE

Now, for the quiz. If you are taking the quiz on a mobile, click below (it will open in a nice pop-up window that is unobtrusive)  Mobile Quiz  If you wish to take the quiz on the desktop, here you are:

This quiz has 10 questions. The suggested completion time is 20 minutes. The quiz is NOT timed.THE NEXT STEP IN BRAIN EVOLUTION Emily Feld is a native of a new planet. While the 20-year-old university student may appear to live in London, she actually spends much of her time in another galaxy – in the digital universe of websites, e-mails, smart phones and social networking sites. The behavior of Emily and her generation, say experts, is being shaped by digital technology as never before.

Want to take up the challenge that GRE offers? Want to see if you can make the cut, and get an admission into one of the top universities? You are in all probability already looking at learning a million words and then some. And, if you are among the unlucky few, you have joined a GRE coaching that does not focus on things you need, then you would also be blissfully falling asleep in the session while wondering why you did not just buy a dictionary and stay the hell home. At First Academy, we un

Do you want to Read for your IELTS and GRE right? Sometimes, small differences in a sentence can make huge differences. Understanding this is a vital aspect of any language. If you are here, and are reading this, you are in all probability looking to take an exam that tests your proficiency in English (IELTS, GRE, etc), or are looking for material to train students for such tests.  The changes in sentence structure often change the part of speech a word belongs to. Let us look at a garden p

This quiz is the third installment of our eight part series focusing on sentence variety. Hope you find it enlightening! For those of you who have missed the first two tests, the links are at the page below!InstructionsFor the questions in the set, complete the second sentence so that it has a similar meaning to the first sentence, using the word given.Here is an example:  It's true that the company might go into liquidation if it's not careful. DANGER  There is a danger of the company

Be it for IELTS, GRE, OET, or any other test you wish to take, knowing words is only one very small part of the fight. If you want to be better than most, you need to be able to both understand and construct a variety of sentences. This quiz looks at your ability to use words in different contexts (GRE) and your ability to construct different sentences with the same meaning (IELTS). Take this quiz and see how you score! If you are new here, and want to look at the earlier test, you can take

In the second part of the series, we will look at use of Another and Other, and along the way also take a look at use of Articles. Most of us already know that A and An are articles to indicate non specific nouns, while the is used for specific nouns. Extending from this, Another simply is the combination of the two words an and other. So, when we are using Another or other, it means we are looking at nonspecific noun.  Ex: This pen is not writing well. Give me another. (Any other pen) Howe

Reading in the IELTS, GRE, PTE, OET, TOEFL tests is not about reading aloud but being able to understand the texts. Sometimes understanding texts can be difficult due to unfamiliar words or challenging sentence structure.There are various reasons why words might be  unfamiliar to a reader. One of them could be culture. An American, for instance, might not immediately figure out what lorry is, since Americans use the word truck. The same goes with biscuits and cookies. This could be a hurd

The test is in 4 Parts. Answer the questions as you listen. Fill in the answers in the blanks below!Audio : https://firstacademy.in/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Paraphrase-Listening.mp3?_=1The full PDF of the test is available here:  https://firstacademy.in/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/FULL-LISTENING-TEST.pdf

Understanding how sentences work is very important. For you to be able to do that, you will have to know how to construct them. This short quiz will present you with 8 different sentences. Try and reconstruct those sentences using the word in bold. You might have to use phrases and idiomatic expressions where necessary.

The only problem with my sister is that she is always splitting hairs. Does it mean that she’s a hair dresser? Or does her hair have split ends, and that she needs to visit a salon or a hairdresser? Not really. Expressions of this kind have become part of everyday English, and have naturally filtered into language that is used in tests. If you are not aware of what these expressions mean, there is a danger of you misunderstanding what has been presented. The 12 idioms listed here all fall

What is a collocationA collocation is a combination of two or more words which frequently occur together. If someone says, 'She's got yellow hair, they would probably be understood, but it is not what would ordinarily be said in English. We'd say, 'She's got blond hair'. In other words, yellow doesn't collocate with hair in everyday English. Yellow however collocates with flowers, or jacket, or brick road. It can be difficult for learners of English to know which words col