Short answer: As of today there are five full tests in each of the four sections, and the Quick Mock Test draws from 7500 combinations instead of 6000. Test 5 is new material from the first word to the last: four recordings you have never heard, three passages you have never read, a Task 1 you have never written and a cue card you have never answered.
When this site opened, each section had three tests. In July we made it four, and rebuilt the Listening so that the recordings behave like the exam: the narrator, the reading time, the questions appearing as the audio reaches them, one play and no pause. Since then the most frequent message we get has been a variation on one sentence: "I have done all four, is there another one?" There is now.
What Test 5 contains
| Section | Test 5 | What to expect |
|---|---|---|
| Listening | A membership enquiry at a sailing club; a volunteer induction at an open-air museum, with a plan; a tutorial about a local history podcast; a lecture on the history of the lighthouse. | Four recordings, three accents, a correction in every section, questions that appear on screen as the speaker reaches them. |
| Reading | The Long Life of the Pencil; The Case for Rewilding; Why Languages Fall Silent. | Three passages at exam length, forty questions of five types, and a wrong answer that shows you where in the passage the right one was. |
| Writing | Task 1: a process diagram, how used paper becomes new paper. Task 2: more people are choosing to live alone, causes and judgement. | The first process on the site, and a Task 2 of the two-question type, both marked in seconds. |
| Speaking | Cities and community: four Part 1 questions, a cue card about a building in your town or city, four Part 3 questions. | Recorded in the browser, transcribed, and scored on fluency, vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation. |
Nothing in it existed before this week. The passages were written for this site, the recordings were produced for it, and no sentence has been lifted from an exam or from another provider. That matters for two reasons: you cannot have seen the material anywhere else, and we can put the full answer key and every passage on its own page without borrowing anything.
Why a fifth test rather than a sixth feature
Because the people who write to us are not asking for features. They are asking for the one thing a practice site can never have enough of: material they have not seen. A test you have done twice teaches you less each time, not because you remember the answers but because you remember the shape, where the correction comes, which paragraph holds the summary. Fresh material is the only cure for that, and it is expensive to make properly, which is why most free sites recycle. We would rather add a test every few weeks than add a button.
The Quick Mock Test benefits as well. It draws one Listening section, one Reading passage, one Task 1 and one cue card at random from the full tests, so every new test multiplies the combinations: 7500 now, from 6000 last week and 3072 in July. If you use the Quick Mock as a daily warm-up, you will meet Test 5 material in pieces before you sit it whole.
How to use it
- Sit it cold, in one go. Do not open the answer keys, do not read the passage pages, do not look at the Task 1 before you start the clock. The full mock test runs the four sections in exam order with the real timings; if you have an exam date, that is the version to use, and the closer to the date the better.
- Review it section by section, with the pages that exist for that. Each Listening and Reading test has its own page with the answer key, each Reading passage has its full text on a page of its own, and the Writing and Speaking results come back with the transcript and the criteria. A wrong answer is worth ten minutes the day after the test and nothing a month later.
- Sit it again in two weeks. The second sitting tells you whether the review worked. A section that improves by three or four marks is a section where you fixed a habit; a section that does not is the one to read the guide for.
If you are preparing over a month, the 30-day plan already has slots for two full mocks; Test 5 is the natural second one, because you will not have seen it in week 1.
Thank you, and what comes next
Every test on the site is shaped by the messages sent from the result pages: the voices that were too alike, the recording that crackled, the Reading that was too easy, the Task 1 types that were missing. Test 5 answers several of those. Keep sending them. The next things on the list are more short guides on the question types that cost the most marks, one at a time, and a sixth test when the fifth has been used enough to tell us what it should contain. Until then: five sections, five tests each, and one of them you have never seen.
Quick answers
What exactly is new in Test 5?
Everything in it. Listening: a call to a sailing club, a volunteer tour of an open-air museum with a plan to label, a tutorial about a local history podcast, and a lecture on the history of the lighthouse, four recordings with British, Australian and American voices. Reading: three Academic passages on the pencil, on rewilding, and on why languages disappear. Writing: a process diagram in Task 1, the first on the site, and a Task 2 on people who live alone. Speaking: a cue card about a building in your town, with Part 1 and Part 3 questions on cities and community.
Is Test 5 harder than the others?
It is pitched like Tests 2 and 4, which were tuned a notch harder than the first ones after feedback from candidates who found them accessible: the Listening has a correction in every section and a slightly faster tutorial, the Reading passages are the length of the exam, and the Task 1 is the type candidates find hardest. If your score on Test 5 is half a band below your score on Test 1, that is expected, not a bad day.
Do I need to do the tests in order?
No. Every test is independent and the score of each is kept on your dashboard separately. If you have already done Tests 1 to 4, start Test 5 without looking at anything else; if you are new, Test 1 is the gentlest introduction and Test 5 is the one to keep for a full rehearsal a week before the exam.
Is the band I get official?
No. The bands on this site are estimates: Listening and Reading are marked against a key and converted with the same kind of table as the exam, Writing and Speaking are assessed by an AI examiner on the four criteria. They tell you where you stand and whether you are moving. Only an official test gives an official band. The site is independent and not affiliated with IELTS, the British Council, IDP, or Cambridge English.
The short version: five full tests per section, one new mock waiting for you, and a plan: sit Test 5 cold, review it section by section, and sit it again in two weeks.