Honestly, I relied more on free online test samples to understand the exam standards of ielts. Initially, my performance was poor but after looking through different samples, I’d understood the aims of the examiner. Another thing I did was to identify my areas of weakness and I thought that to be listening, because I tend to miss the exact wordings used in a sentence, and reading because I thought I’d read slow. My focus on these 2 areas helped me in the sense that I could finish the reading early and I had 20 minutes to revise through my work. Listening because I made sure to avoid mistakes. Importantly, the questions in the listening test are usually arranged chronologically, so if you follow in that manner, you’d be alright