As a school student, one of the best ways to prepare for future competitive exams is to start early. The Olympiads organised by the Science Olympiad Foundation can be highly beneficial in helping you realise your potential and interest in any particular subject. It can also help you realise your passion and help you choose a career path in the future. The International English Olympiad (IEO) is one of the olympiads organised annually by the SOF, and it is done in partnership with the British Council.
As an international olympiad, IEO is open to students across the world. So, if you want to test your English skills, appearing for IEO can help you greatly. The olympiad can help you get an idea of your skills compared with the data of other regional and international students. As aspirants, once you are done registering for IEO, you will have to prepare extensively for the test. The IEO tests a student’s ability and grasp of the English language for expression and a bit less on grammar. So, it’s hard to ace the test without a study plan. So, let’s explore how you can best prepare for IEO to ace your olympiad.
Also Read: IOQM Preparation Tips: Check How To Crack Indian Olympiad Qualifier in Mathematics
Study Plan to Help You Ace Your SOF International English Olympiad
Given that IEO has its syllabus, you need to prepare with a study plan just as you would for other competitive examinations. But, while you are already busy preparing for your school curriculum, how should you work around that to effectively prepare for the olympiad? To understand that, you need to know what’s the task of IEO and prepare accordingly, so let’s dive into a detailed study plan that you can easily follow to ace your IEO test.
1. Actively Work on Your Language Expression Skills
As you would already know, IEO does not focus deeply on rote learning skills or grammatical knowledge of the student. The test instead focuses on a student’s ability to express themselves using the English language. So, one of the key aspects that will immediately help you be prepared for the test and improve your English skills is if you have/can create a reading habit. Reading is a great way to relax and can help you improve your vocabulary, language, and expression skills significantly. And also, the best part is that you can keep working on your reading habit regardless of whether IEO is close. This will help you improve your skills the best and learn new things even when you are relaxing.
2. Glance At Previous Year’s Papers
As olympiads might be your first experience of appearing for a competitive examination, the best way for you to help get prepared for it is to study the previous year’s question papers. What are you looking for in them? There are a few things in particular; let’s review them.
How Much Can You Answer Just At First Glance Without Any Prior Preparation?
This will help you know your starting point for your IEO preparation. Additionally, you will also get an idea of the difficulty level of the test. These things can help you understand your strong and weak points, which you would work on accordingly to prepare for your IEO test.
Understanding the Question Pattern and Sections of the Paper
Once you have tried out solving the questions casually, the next thing for you to do is to understand and study the question paper pattern. The various sections, especially the marks and weightage each of them carries. This is a great rule of thumb for all competitive examinations, which is always to have the paper format in your mind. This will help you stay focused on your preparation and prepare for sections individually so as not to get overwhelmed by the entire paper while preparing.
(C) Use Them to Test Your Preparation Progress Along the Way
Preparing for a competitive examination requires you to test yourself regularly for two reasons. First, it always shows you exactly how well-prepared you are. Second, you can allow yourself to get used to the examination pressure so as not to get nervous on the day of your IEO test. Keeping yourself prepared and calm during your examinations is highly necessary for you to ace your test, and mock tests can help you get there.
3. Keep It Simple, Your Study Plan
Competitive examinations are known for having vast syllabuses, all of which are impossible for students to study before the test entirely. So, how do you prepare then? The trick is to keep it simple, starting with managing expectations. Having an achievable goal based on your performance at mock tests will help you best prepare for the examination. It is key that you set a goal for yourself that you can achieve. This way, you can simplify your preparation process and break it down into short goals, which will help you prepare for the examination.
4. Incentivise Yourself Along the Way
For many students, preparing for a competitive examination is often exhausting, and it causes burnout under the pressure of completing the syllabus in time. To tackle the issue of burnout, you first need to set a goal for yourself, which was elaborated on in the last point. The next thing to do is to be consistent in your efforts, and lastly, make sure you incentivise yourself when you meet the small goals you set out.
This will help you feel accomplished and ready for your next challenge. The key takeaway that you should always remember with any competitive examination is that it is more like a marathon than a sprint. So, focusing on many short-term goals will help you complete the journey better than focusing on just one big goal.
5. Use Your Time Wisely
The challenge with any competitive examination is doing a lot of work in little time. So, time management is crucial for you to ace your paper. How do you manage your time? It starts with being consistent, which can be achieved when you set out small achievable goals for yourself. When you know the topics you need to cover in a said week, you can plan and ensure that you meet your goal by the end of your week.
Conclusion
So, that’s all you need to get started preparing for SOF IEO 2022. With this guide, you can start preparing for IEO by yourself at your pace. This will also help you prepare alongside your regular school curriculum without hindrance. If you can adapt the guidelines of this study plan, they can also be very helpful for future competitive examinations. However, if all of this seems a bit too difficult to manage by yourself, you can easily check out Vedantu’s dedicated IEO preparation course, which will help you best prepare for the test as well.
