Educational Testing Service (ETS) and British Council are two major bodies responsible for designing the test pattern of The International English Language Testing System (IELTS). IELTS Test Pattern is designed to reflect real life use of English in different scenarios - at study, at work, and at play and results are graded on the unique IELTS 9-band scale. Both the versions of IELTS pattern - IELTS Academic and IELTS General Training version of IELTS test - are made up of four sections, namely, Listening, Reading, Writing and Speaking. While every candidate is required to take the same listening and speaking components in both the versions of the IELTS test pattern , it is the reading and writing components that differ for the two versions - IELTS Academic and IELTS General Training. The total duration for the IELTS test is 2 hours 45 minutes. Listening, reading and writing tests are done in one sitting while speaking test may be taken on the same day or within 7 days before or after the IELTS test.