Using mock tests well: when to take them and what to do after

Many learners take a mock test, look at the number, feel pleased or gloomy for an evening and take another one. That wastes most of it. A full mock is about two hours of evidence on how you perform when nobody pauses the clock, and the headline score is the least useful part of that evidence. The two days after the mock decide whether the two hours were worth spending.

When to take one

Not on your first day. A mock taken before you know the task formats mostly measures confusion: which button does what, how the timer behaves, what the instructions mean. Spend several days on the formats first, then take a baseline mock and read the result as a starting point.

After that, one mock every one to two weeks is about right. Weekly suits the last stretch before your test, and every second week suits a longer plan. Any more often and you spend your time measuring when you should be fixing.

Take your last full mock about a week before the real test, so that there is still time to act on what it shows.

Set the room up like test day

A mock only tells you something if it is run like the real thing.

• A quiet room, door closed, phone silent and out of reach.
• A headset and microphone you have already checked, ideally the kind you will use on the day (headset, microphone and a quiet place to practise has the details).
• Timers left running as the test sets them. No pausing, no replaying, no looking anything up.
• One sitting, start to finish.

If the doorbell rings, note the time and carry on. Restarting teaches you that a bad moment can be undone, and the real test will not agree.

Notice, too, when you start to slip. Two hours of concentrated English is tiring in a way that a 30-minute drill is not. If your typing errors or missed words cluster in the last stretch, you have found a stamina problem as well as a skills one, and longer timed blocks in your normal practice are how you train it.

The two-day review

1. Straight after: read the overall score and the skill breakdown and write down three things you notice. Do not open individual tasks yet. You are tired, and you will argue with the marking.
2. Next day: open the weakest skill and go through it task by task. Put every error in your error log, with its cause.
3. Two days later: redo the weak items, or fresh items of the same type. After a gap you find out whether you learnt the fix or only remembered the answer.
4. At the next mock: check the log. Did the errors you worked on get smaller?

Keep a one-line record of every mock: the date, the overall estimate, the four skill scores and one lesson. After three mocks that line shows a trend, whereas a single mock shows only a point. Compare like with like, too. A mock sat with a faulty headset or a noisy room is not a fair comparison with one sat cleanly.

Here is an illustrative example. Suppose a mock shows Listening ten points below your other skills. Going through it, you find that most of the lost marks come from Write from Dictation, and that they cluster in the final stretch. Now you know two things to practise: dictation drills, and staying sharp late in the sitting. A dictation answer draws on listening and spelling at once, so fixing it can lift more than one skill (one answer, several skills explains how).

Mocks versus drills

A mock shows you where the problem is, and drills repair it. A tennis player who plays a match every day and never works on the weak backhand collects plenty of match experience and keeps the same backhand. A reasonable balance is one mock to several days of focused practice.

Our practice tests run on credits that our team or your teacher adds, so it is worth using each attempt on purpose. They give AI-estimated scores and feedback, not official results, so compare your mocks with each other and not with the number you are hoping for. What a practice score can and cannot tell you is worth reading before you do.

This week

Choose a date in the next ten days and write "mock" in your calendar, with the review days after it. Then clear the room, test the headset and put your phone in another room. When the day comes, run the whole thing on the practice tests on this site without stopping the clock.