Your first week on Speechful

The hardest part of IELTS preparation is knowing what to do first. There are hundreds of tips, practice tests and study plans, and without a starting point it is easy to spend your first week jumping between them without learning where you actually lose marks.

This checklist gives you a simple order for your first seven days. You will take a baseline Speaking test, read your feedback properly, fix one weakness, try a Reading test and a Listening test, and then retake the Speaking test to see what changed. On the last day you also get a fun break with a vocabulary game. Each day takes between 20 and 90 minutes, and every day ends with one thing to write down, so you finish the week knowing what to work on next.

The checklist uses Speechful’s practice tests, but the order works with any good practice material. Speechful’s tests are original practice tests, not official IELTS past papers, and the band scores from any practice tool are estimates, not official results.

Before you start (10 minutes)

• Create your Speechful account and open your dashboard.
• Decide which test you are preparing for: IELTS Academic or General Training. Speaking and Listening are the same for both. Reading and Writing differ.
• Write down your target band score and your exam date, if you have one.
• Check what your Speechful account includes. What each plan covers can change, so look at your limits before you plan the week.
• Find a quiet place, a working microphone and a pair of headphones.
• Open a notebook or a note on your phone. You will use it every day.

Put the seven sessions in your calendar now. A short session on the right day beats a long session you skip.

Your 7 days at a glance

Day	Focus	Time (approx.)	What you do
1	Baseline	30 minutes	Take a Speaking practice test
2	Feedback	20 minutes	Read your feedback and pick one weakness
3	Fix	25 minutes	Do a Skill Booster, then redo two answers
4	Reading	90 minutes	Take a full Reading test and review it
5	Listening	75 minutes	Take a full Listening test and review it
6	Retest	45 minutes	Retake Speaking and compare it with Day 1
7	Rest and play	30 minutes	Play Word Survivor, review the week and plan week two

If you reach a limit: see what Speechful’s plans include on the pricing page. You can also keep the order and use an official practice test from IELTS, the British Council or IDP for that day. The review steps on each day work with any practice test.

Day 1: Take a Speaking practice test

Goal: find out where you stand before you change anything.

• Open the Speaking section and choose a full test covering Parts 1, 2 and 3. See how it works on the IELTS Speaking AI grader page.
• Choose Exam mode for a realistic baseline: you finish the whole test first, then see your score and report. (Practice mode gives feedback after every question, which suits the later days better.)
• Speak naturally. Do not stop to correct yourself or restart an answer.
• When your report appears, save it or take a screenshot.
• Write down your estimated overall band and the four criteria behind it: Fluency and Coherence, Lexical Resource, Grammatical Range and Accuracy, and Pronunciation.

Remember: the score is an estimate for you to compare against next week. It is not an official IELTS score. Today is about a baseline, not a good result.

Day 2: Read your feedback properly

Goal: turn your report into one thing to work on.

• Go through the four criteria one at a time. Do not jump straight to the overall band.
• Find the criterion with the lowest score. That is your focus for this week.
• Copy down three examples from your own answers that cost you marks, such as a repeated word, a grammar slip or a word you mispronounced.
• Pick the one point you understand least and ask Speechy, the AI tutor, about it. Speechy cannot see your test, so type in the sentence and what the feedback said. For example: “My feedback says ‘The food was good’ is too vague. How can I say it better?”
• If the answer is still not clear, ask a follow-up question. Keep asking until it makes sense.
• Finish this sentence in your notes: “My focus this week is…”

Day 3: Fix one weakness

Goal: practise the fix, not just read about it.

• Open a Skill Booster exercise. It is built from the errors in your report, so choose the one that matches your weakest area, such as pronunciation, vocabulary or grammar.
• Complete the exercise and read the feedback on each answer.
• Choose two of your Day 1 answers and say them out loud again, using the fix.
• Pick one word, phrase or sound to use on purpose for the rest of the week, and write it down.

Remember: one fix is enough. Trying to repair everything in a single day usually means nothing changes.

Day 4: Take a Reading test

Goal: see whether your time or your accuracy is the bigger problem.

• Block 90 minutes with no interruptions: about 60 for the test and about 30 for the review.
• Take a full Reading test: 40 questions across three passages in 60 minutes. See the IELTS Reading practice test page for how it works.
• Do not pause the clock. Practise moving on when you are stuck.
• Check your estimated band score, then open the timing report to see the time you spent on each passage, question type and question.
• Check every wrong answer against the supporting evidence in the passage.
• Write down the question type that cost you the most marks, and the passage that took the most time.

Note: as of October 2026, Speechful’s Reading practice is Academic Reading, and General Training is coming soon. If you are sitting General Training, use official General Training sample materials from IELTS, the British Council or IDP for the test itself, and use the same review steps.

Day 5: Take a Listening test

Goal: learn how you lose answers, not just how many you lose.

• Find a quiet room and use headphones. The recording plays once. See the IELTS Listening practice test page for how it works.
• Use the time before each section to read ahead and predict the type of answer you need, such as a name, a number or a noun.
• Take a full Listening test: 40 questions across four sections.
• Check your raw score and your estimated band score.
• For each wrong answer, open the transcript and find the line where the answer was given.
• Name the mistake: a lost place, a changed answer, a spelling slip or a broken word limit.
• Write down the mistake type you made most often.

Day 6: Retake Speaking and compare

Goal: check whether your fix made a difference.

• Take another Speaking test in the same mode you used on Day 1. The questions will be different, which is expected.
• Read the new report one criterion at a time.
• Compare it with Day 1. Start with your focus criterion, not the overall band.
• Find one answer where you used your fix, and read it again.
• Write down what improved, what stayed the same and anything that got worse.

Remember: scores move for many reasons, including different questions, tiredness and how an answer happened to go. A small change in either direction after one week is normal. Look for patterns over several tests, and use the criteria rather than the overall number to decide what to practise.

Day 7: Rest, play and plan week two

Goal: take a break, then decide what comes next.

• Take a break from full tests. Today is for a game and a short review.
• Open the Arcade and play a round of Word Survivor, a vocabulary game. You have 2 minutes to guess as many words as you can. Each word comes with a definition and a row of blanks, sometimes with one or two letters already filled in as a hint. Skip a word or ask for more hints if you are stuck. It is a fun break and a quick check of your vocabulary, so treat it as a game, not a score.
• Write down any words you missed or did not know, and pick two to use in your Speaking answers next week.
• Open your learning history and look at your two Speaking tests side by side, along with your Reading and Listening results.
• Write three lines in your notes: what improved, what still costs marks, and your focus for next week.
• Plan week two. Repeat the same loop (test, feedback, one fix, retest) on your weakest skill. IELTS Writing is not part of this first week, so add a Writing task to week two.
• Put your next sessions in your calendar.

Track your week

Copy this table into your notes and fill it in as you go.

Day	Task	Done	Estimated band or result	One thing I noticed
1	Speaking baseline
2	Read feedback, pick one weakness
3	Skill Booster and two answers redone
4	Reading test and review
5	Listening test and review
6	Speaking retest and comparison
7	Rest, play Word Survivor, plan week two

If you cannot do seven days in a row

• Keep the order, not the dates. The order matters more than finishing in exactly seven days.
• Do not skip Day 2 and Day 3. They turn a test into a plan.
• If you only have 30 minutes a day, split the Reading and Listening days in two: take the test one day and do the review the next.
• If your exam is only a few weeks away, run this week once, then repeat the loop on your weakest skill.

Start Day 1 today

Day 1 takes about 30 minutes. Take a Speaking practice test, save your report and write down your baseline. Free to start.

Start Day 1: take a Speaking practice test