IELTS or Another English Exam: 15 Minutes a Day

In short: spend 2–5 minutes on review, about 8 minutes reading real English, and 5 minutes speaking. Once a week, get feedback on one piece of writing.

First check which IELTS your university, employer or visa needs: Academic or General Training. Some UK visas need IELTS for UKVI. Choosing the wrong one costs a full exam fee.

Your first 10 minutes

1. Open the app. On the first screen, choose English as the language you learn and your own language for translations. When the vocabulary estimate opens, scroll to the point where the common words stop looking familiar, tap OK, and stop a little early rather than late.
2. Open Feeds on Home. BBC News is already there, and so are Nature and EurekAlert!. For IELTS Academic, read these as well: science and research news is closer to Academic reading topics than general news. Tap an article to read it.
3. Unknown words are coloured and have a small translation above them. They are also listed in the dictionary panel beside the text.
4. Want to keep a word? In the panel, tap its translation, then tick Memorize. It will come back in your daily reviews.
5. Select one paragraph. Tap ⋮, then Train speech. Read the paragraph out loud. You get a pronunciation score from 0 to 100 and tips.

That is all for day one.

A daily routine (15 minutes)

1. 2–5 minutes: do your daily reviews: tap the Exercise card on Home and go through your words. Tap Again, Hard, Good or Easy. The app brings a word back when you're likely to start forgetting it. Reviews grow as you add words; if they pass 10 minutes, add fewer new words.
2. 8 minutes: read one article. Do not look up every word. Stop only when you lose the meaning.
3. 5 minutes: read one paragraph out loud with Train speech. Or open Ask AI and tap Speaking practice to talk about the article.

Once a week (AI): write a short essay or letter, like an exam task. Open Ask AI on Home, paste it, and ask: "Check my writing. Show my mistakes and a better version." Keep the corrections you want to remember as notes.

For real exam practice, use the official IELTS website. It offers free practice tests. Do one every few weeks to see how you are doing.

What it won't do

• It won't give you a band score. AI feedback is a guide, not an exam result. If the AI offers a band or score anyway, treat it as a guess: it is not an IELTS result and it can be wrong.
• It has no official IELTS papers. Use the free tests on the official site.
• It won't plan your exam day or check your timing. Do timed tests on your own.

Reading, translations, feeds and daily reviews (the Exercise card on Home) are free; speaking practice, scores and writing feedback use AI, which is part of pimReader Plus. When you open an AI feature, pimReader offers Try free for a month: no card, no account, nothing renews. Tap Not now to carry on without AI.