openIELTS: a zero cost IELTS study plan with a real score log

What the plan assumes about the reader

The README opens by stating the assumption explicitly, and it is worth restating because it determines whether the plan fits. The audience is students with an average foundation, not aspiring for a high band, who already have some English reading and writing experience and are not planning to sit the test cold. The target is an overall score of 6.0 to 7.5 with no sub-score below 5 to 6. The author's own stated reasoning is that a score of 6.5 covers almost all undergraduate and postgraduate English requirements for schools outside the United Kingdom and the United States, and that for engineering students 6.0 already covers a large part of the range. The point being made is that the score does not need to be high, it needs to be sufficient, and the reader is told not to be influenced by institutions selling anxiety about how hard IELTS is. Everything else in the repository follows from that framing.

The claim is zero cost, and the exceptions are listed

The project describes itself as a full set of zero cost IELTS materials and a preparation schedule, and it lists what it includes: recommended course videos, notes, documents, practice websites, essay correction, an AI speaking prompt set, and an IELTS scoring sheet. The cost claim is qualified in a specific way rather than vaguely, since the aim is zero cost preparation apart from the exam fee, and the promise is reaching the target without pain. The README gives a personal estimate of the time involved, preparing for the IELTS at the same time as a graduate entrance exam in mathematics, with usually no more than three hours a day. The documents in the repository root are described as worth reading, with a separate folder of full documents described as good quality as well, and the author is candid that they did not read much of that folder themselves while preparing, suggesting that readers with time can look at it and readers without time can skip it without guilt. That framing, explicitly telling the reader to relax, is unusual in a study resource and it is deliberate.

A score log that records the failures as well as the passes

The centrepiece of the repository is a practice log, a table with one row per exam date and columns for listening, reading, writing, speaking, an overall figure and a comments field. The dates run from 2025-03-04 to 2025-04-26, and the source material for each row is a Cambridge IELTS practice test, running backwards from test 19 down to test 15 and then the real test on 2025-04-26. The scores climb unevenly. An early row shows 5.5 listening, 7.0 reading and a 6.0 overall. A later row shows 5.0 writing, which is the worst single band recorded before the real exam, alongside 6.5 reading and a 5.5 overall. The real test row is 6.0 listening, 7.0 reading, 6.0 writing, 6.5 speaking and 6.5 overall. What makes the log valuable is the comment column, which is where the actual method lives, and it records things like the Not Given definition being that there is no information or it is impossible to say what the writer thinks, that the number of words in a bio should not be over-analysed, and that the writing needed three minutes of grammar checking with only three left.

The comments column is where the method lives

Because the notes are written after each sitting, they read as a running log of what actually changed the score, and they are far more specific than generic advice. On listening, the notes cover using articles and quantifiers to decide whether a noun is singular or plural, hearing the plural ending and taking what you hear as given, and writing the singular when the grammatical form cannot be determined. On reading, they describe parallel reading, where you track the first paragraph and the main idea before answering, and a confidence rule for choosing between two options where the text does not state either directly. The writing notes record specific grammar rules, such as adding a comma before respectively when the meaning needs emphasis, and the observation that respectively usually sits at the end of a sentence. There is also a stated reading speed of 15, 20 and 20 minutes for the three sections, and advice to leave twenty minutes or more for the passages that are hard to understand. The tone throughout is a working note to a future self rather than a rulebook.

The daily plan, and the three markers that organise it

The daily routine section explains a labelling scheme that is the clearest thing in the README for anyone adopting the plan. Items marked as a daily task with an hour estimate are not required every single day, they are the routine you do as a habit, and the hours indicate roughly how long each one takes. Items marked as a one time task take a few hours to read through once. Items marked as read a few times are for things you should revisit. The reading section is built around a course video on parallel reading, with a ten minute introduction recommended, and the note that while it may not add many points it should improve your speed given how the test is timed. The daily reading practice is Cambridge IELTS 16 to 19 on a practice website, and the vocabulary list is a 538 word key point list, with the instruction to stop working through it once you recognise about eighty percent of the words. The listening section points at a different course and a list of 350 base answer words, and the writing and speaking sections collect the PDFs in the repository root.

The resources in the repository, and what they are for

The top level of the repository is mostly PDF files, and their names say what each one covers. For writing task two, the big essay, there is a prediction document for the January to April 2025 window, a document of ten sentence patterns, another of ten topics with the related vocabulary, a set of four task type templates with sample answers, and a shorter document on the flow chart words used in task one, which is the small essay, together with a general set of sentence patterns and vocabulary and a detailed walkthrough with sample answers. For speaking there is a January to April 2025 question bank, a Notion document of speaking notes organised by part, and a list of 900 practical sentences. For listening there is a document of 350 base answer words taken from Cambridge material and a high frequency vocabulary document. For reading there is the 538 key point word list. The writing task two files are all dated to the first quarter of 2025, which is the main thing to know about them before you rely on them.

The logistics of the real test, and where the plan is weak

The README also records the practical side of sitting the exam, which is the part most study plans leave out. Registration is through the British Council, which supports Master and VISA applicants, at a cost of roughly 1200 CNY, with an IDP being essentially the same. Test centres on the Chinese mainland redirect to the education examination authority, and the author chose the A class, the academic one, since it is generally used for school applications, partly because the author's handwriting is poor and computer testing suits that. The exam sat was at the EIKEN IELTS Test Centre Dojima in Osaka, with the computer test in the morning and the interview in the afternoon. Results arrived twenty two hours after the test finished. The candid weak point in the final row is the listening, which the author describes as having a part that felt like a CET six difficulty, and a writing where only three minutes were left to check grammar, with the pie chart task taking twenty five minutes and the essay on sport as business hard to argue. A plan that publishes its own weakest scores is more useful than one that does not.

What this repository is and is not

The limits are clear once you read what kind of thing it is. It is a personal preparation diary with a resource bundle attached, and it is written almost entirely in Chinese, so an English speaker will need translation to use the notes, the vocabulary lists and the writing PDFs, and the file names are in Chinese as well. The licence is recorded as unknown, which for a repository of material derived from commercial Cambridge books and courses is worth thinking about before you redistribute any of it, and the resources include a course video, a vocabulary document taken from a published book and a set of predicted topics that come from commercial preparation products. It is also dated. The prediction documents cover the January to April 2025 window, the practice log stops in April 2025, and there is no release history, so the repository is a snapshot of one preparation cycle rather than a maintained curriculum. The last push was on 2026-10-07, so it is still being touched, but the content that matters was written for an exam sitting that has long passed. Finally, the plan targets the academic test, and there is nothing here for the IELTS General Training variant.

Editorial conclusion

openIELTS is worth reading if you are preparing for the IELTS academic test, want a schedule you can fork and adjust, and want to see what the plan actually produced rather than a set of aspirational tips, because the score log is honest about the weak sessions as well as the strong ones. It is the wrong resource if you need the general training, if you need the test in another language, or if you need a guaranteed result, since this is one person's preparation diary rather than a validated method. Before you follow it, read the score table to see which techniques actually moved the bands for the author, and note that the resources are dated to the 2025 January to April prediction cycle. The last push was on 2026-10-07, the repository publishes no GitHub releases, and the licence is listed as unknown.

Frequently asked questions

Official sources

1. Issues
2. mcxiaoxiao/openIELTS on GitHub
3. README