Can you guarantee my IELTS exam result?

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This is the kind of message I get from students quite often:

“Can you give a guarantee or refund money if I do not achieve the desired score”

When students ask me if I can guarantee their result if they work with me I am always a little ‘amused’ as to how can I guarantee your result. I can guarantee my own work and the support I give and the quality of the programmes I write for IELTS students.

I have a proven track record of getting students through the exam but the exam itself is not my work. I am not even there! No, the actual work done both before and on the day of the exam is yours and yours alone.

If you ask someone to guarantee that you will pass the exam then you are not taking responsibility for your work, and if you don’t take responsibility for your work then how can you hope to get the score that you want?

So if you are tempted to ‘outsource’ what is your duty be warned this is not a good space to be in to go into the exam and get the score that you want.

I am not avoiding my responsibility here, what I am worried about is the way in which the student who asks this is seeing their own role in the exam process. I can understand that if you have taken the exam many times and haven’t got our result then you will be worried about putting even more money behind it (‘throwing good money after bad’ – is the expression we use for this) and I have been in this situation myself before with training courses and exams (like the driving test for example) but whereas a watch or phone or computer may have a guarantee and this is because these objects are the results of someone’s work – your exam is your work and therefore your responsibility. Your teacher cannot write for you or speak for you – if I were able to do this then I could absolutely guarantee you a band 9!!

Unfortunately this is not allowed 🙂

However, joking apart, the question of guarantee signals that you are not fully committed to the task of getting our band 7 or 8 or whatever you want. There are doubts here and these doubts will clearly stop you from getting that band.

If you are feeling as though you need a guarantee then I would suggest that you are not quite ready for the exam. A better question to ask your teacher is ‘Do you guarantee YOUR WORK?’ If the teacher can guarantee their work then you will be in good hands.  Your job then is to follow what they tell you. Do all the work you are given; on time and to the best of your ability. Take your teacher’s advice and follow it well. In this way you are taking responsibility for your own work in the IELTS exam and then you will be able to guarantee your own result and will not need to ask your teacher that question.

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