IELTS Life Skills B1 training style

The UKVI Life Skills B1 is for those who want to apply for indefinite leave to remain in the UK or citizenship.

Life Skills B1 is a secure English-language test (SELT) accepted by the United Kingdom Visa and Migration Department as proof of your English-language proficiency. The test looks at your listening and speaking skills in the 22-minute test with an Examiner and one other test taker. The second test taker’s performance will not affect your test results.

An IELTS examiner will look at your English speaking and listening skills, and your ability to obtain and convey information, speak to communicate and engage in discussion. There are no band scores with any of the Life Skills tests, your results will be given as a pass or fail.

You will be assessed on your ability to listen and respond to spoken English where you have to obtain and convey basic information and communicate on familiar topics.

The examiner might ask you to describe a topic, give opinions or preferences and justify those, and explain and expand on a topic. You will also be expected to communicate with both the examiner and the other test taker.

In the IELTS Life Skills test, your results are given as a pass or fail mark.

There is no pass or fail in IELTS Academic or General Training test. Scores are graded on the 9-band system. Each educational institution or organisation sets its own level of IELTS scores to meet its individual requirements.

Everyone speaks with an accent and you are not expected to change your accent for the IELTS test. Instead, focus on speaking clearly and at a natural pace so that the examiner can understand you. Practising your English every day and listening to different native speaker accents will help you to more clearly pronounce difficult words.