IELTS General Training for migration and work
IELTS General Training is the version required for skilled migration, most work visas, and some vocational study. It shares its Listening and Speaking modules with IELTS Academic, but Reading and Writing are different — and the differences matter enough that preparing with Academic material will cost you marks.
How it differs from Academic IELTS
Writing Task 1 is a letter, not a description of a chart. You may be asked to write formally to a company, semi-formally to a landlord, or informally to a friend, and choosing the wrong register costs marks even when the English is accurate.
Reading uses workplace notices, advertisements, handbooks and general-interest articles rather than academic journal extracts. The passages are easier, so the band boundaries are higher — you need more correct answers for the same band than you would in Academic.
Listening and Speaking are identical in both versions. If you have prepared for those already, that work carries over.
The letter task, in practice
You have twenty minutes and a 150-word minimum. The prompt gives you three bullet points, and all three must be covered — missing one caps your Task Achievement band regardless of how well the letter reads.
Register is decided by the recipient, not by your preference. A letter to “the manager of a company you have not met” is formal; a letter to “a friend who recently moved” is not. Opening and closing conventions should match.
Task 2 is the same discursive essay as Academic, weighted twice as heavily as Task 1. Most students should spend forty minutes there and protect that time.
The band you need
Most skilled migration pathways award points at Band 6 (competent), Band 7 (proficient) and Band 8 (superior), with the requirement applying to every module rather than the overall score.
That per-module condition is the reason many candidates retake. An overall 7.5 with a 6.5 in Writing does not meet a Band 7 requirement. We plan around your weakest module, because it is the one that decides your result.
How we teach it
General Training preparation runs as one-to-one sessions covering all four modules, with the balance weighted toward Writing and Speaking where bands move most.
Sessions include marked letter and essay practice against the published descriptors, timed Reading sets to build the pace the higher band boundaries demand, and recorded Speaking practice across all three parts.
Booking is flexible, which suits applicants preparing around full-time work.
Choosing between IELTS General and the alternatives
PTE Academic, IELTS, and LanguageCert are all accepted by the Department of Home Affairs for English proficiency. The right choice depends on how you perform under different conditions rather than on which is objectively easier.
Candidates who freeze in front of a human examiner often do better on PTE. Candidates who write well but struggle with rigid timing and machine-scored speaking often do better on IELTS. If you are unsure, book a free trial and sit a diagnostic in both.