Tran Anh Khoa, a teacher of English at an English center in HCM City, scored 9.0 on the IELTS exam in late December 2024, with a perfect score of 9 in Listening and Reading, and 8.5 in Speaking and Writing. 

Khoa started learning English very early, mostly through watching cartoon videos and learning simple words like "elephant" and "monkey."

"This helped me practice English. However, it was unstructured and not a methodical accumulation of knowledge," Khoa explained.

Khoa became an English major student at Le Hong Phong High School for the Gifted in HCM City and won third prize in a national competition for excellent students in English.

This achievement gave him direct admission into the English Language Department of the HCM City University of Social Sciences (without having to attend the university entrance exam).

Before taking IELTS, Khoa had already achieved good results in exams like Flyers, TOEIC Bridge, and TOEFL iBT. 

While giving private tutoring as an extra job during his university years, Khoa decided to take IELTS to gauge his English proficiency. He took IELTS four times, scoring 8.0 on his first attempt.

Khoa got a perfect score in Reading and Listening on the first attempt. He said that Vietnamese examinees can easily get high scores for these two skills. However, he pointed out that examinees need to pay attention to some points about reading.

Candidates should focus on reading comprehension rather than skimming texts for keywords, because IELTS often sets "traps" by using words similar to words in reading passages. If examinees don’t understand the meaning of the words, and they simply choose similar words, they will make a mistake.

For texts with difficult vocabulary, Khoa suggests using the "simplification" principle, which means turning complex sentences into simpler ones, which allows the reader to quickly understand the main ideas and answer questions, and "read connections”, which means noting relationships between sentences to find out important information and guess unfamiliar words when necessary.

For the Listening section, Khoa said it is better to practice listening to various topics. If examinees only listen to their favorite topics, they will face difficulties with unfamiliar topics.

"I encountered an archeology topic during my exam, but, fortunately, I had previously read about it, so I wasn't thrown off by the unfamiliar content," he said.

Reading skills also help listening comprehension, because if examinees can read quickly and find main ideas from questions and options, they will be better at identifying key points and dismiss distractions.

For the Speaking section, Khoa recommends practicing thinking and talking in English directly, rather than thinking in Vietnamese and then translating the thoughts into English. When thinking in Vietnamese, examinees have to spend more time to translate to speak out full sentences, which causes delay and affects fluency. This was the method he applied to build reflexive speaking skills.

Khoa believes the Writing section is the most difficult skill and not many Vietnamese examinees can get a perfect score in Writing, because this requires many skills, including a rich vocabulary, excellent grammar, good task response, and writing coherence and cohesion. So, examinees need to craft logical and connected ideas to avoid rambling.

To practice writing skills, Khoa applies Linear Thinking and Specify principles to develop ideas and stay focused on the major topics.

"A common mistake that many Vietnamese students make is overusing vocabulary and not paying attention to developing ideas. This makes the essay appear impressive but lacks substance and coherence, and can even stray from the subject,” he said. 

“I made such a mistake on my first attempts. However, later, I changed my method and prioritized logic and connectivity in my ideas, and ensured a natural usage of vocabulary and grammar," Khoa said.

Khoa said that even if people follow effective learning methods, they need to practice skills every day.

"Examinees shouldn't expect high IELTS scores with cursory preparation. Obtaining IELTS high scores is not as easy as obtaining a driving license,” he said, adding that one needs to practice long enough to see considerable improvement.

Khoa said his next goal is a perfect score of 1600 on the SAT.

Thuy Nga