I’ve been looking recently at some different approaches that I've seen students take to their IELTS preparation. This was triggered originally, by a conversation that I had with a student on Monday who was talking about several courses that he taken in IELTS with different IELTS teachers and that he felt he hadn't really got the help he needed to reach his bands. One of the things I noticed from what he was telling me was that he had not been given precise and supportive help. In the writing, for example, when he'd submitted his writing, the teacher had given him a band six, but the teacher hadn't explained to him how he could improve or develop his writing to get the band eight he was looking for.
So how do you move from band six to band eight in your IELTS?
That got me thinking about approaches to teaching IELTS, but also to studying IELTS, and how if you don't know how to fix the writing that is at band six level in order to move it to band eight, then how is that even going to happen? Surely it is important to know how to change and improve rather than just be given a spurious band?
Another student told me that he needed to improve his speaking.
I asked how much speaking he did on a daily basis, and he said hardly any. This approach clearly is not going to work. If you want to drive a car, you cannot learn how to drive a car unless you get in the car. You can't learn it remotely. There are a lot of problems like this in the different approaches students, and indeed some teachers, use for IELTS.
Firstly, you have to do it. You cannot get there without doing it. I looked over some of the methods that students were taking, and I've come up with a couple that I feel really don't work. And the one that does work, is an approach to learning English language, which has been practiced for decades, if not maybe centuries, in fact, but certainly since the modern way of teaching English language started to come on board in the 1950s and 1960s. It is an approach with a lot of science behind it, science in language acquisition and language learning and also in education more generally.
This is the approach to language learning which will take someone from beginner to intermediate to advanced. It is a proven method. So let me look first at some of the other approaches that you might be using, these might resonate with you.
The first one is The box of chocolates.
Random practice - you wake up and you think, okay, what shall I do today? Using resources that are all over the internet and easily available, you go around the Internet and you look for something. Okay, here's a reading. Let's do this reading. There's no real thought behind it.
I like to think of this like a box of chocolates. In the box of chocolates, you just pick one and hope that you like it. You may not like it and therefore what do you do? You throw that one away and you pick another one. It's very random and there's no kind of sustainability and there's no progression in it. I feel this is the one that a very large number of students use, they just go randomly online, find something, work on that for a bit.
Doesn't seem to be working? Let's go find another one - when you finish the box of chocolates, you may have discovered that you didn't really enjoy them. And even worse, you may find that you haven't actually made a great deal of progress.
Approach number two is the All you can eat buffet.
So that's where students sign up for everything, sign up for lots of different courses, and they just pile one on top of another. Just like an all you can eat buffet and you fill your plate with lots and lots of different types of food, and then you sit down to eat and you're not sure what you're eating because the foods that you're eating don't necessarily go together. They're just chosen at random and you're not really having a nice meal because you've got too many different choices on your plate. But the hope is that you'll enjoy it and you'll feel full. For IELTS the hope is that if you do 20 courses, maybe one of them is going to give you what you need, or two of them, or three of them, or maybe bits from each of them will help you to reach that magic score you want.
But it's not satisfactory because it's an all you can eat buffet. Also, different teachers have different approaches, and sometimes those approaches might clash with each other, or one teacher might tell you this information and the second teacher might say, no, ignore that, this is the way you do it. So, all you end up with in the all you can eat buffet, is confusion. And, you still seem to be going round and round in circles.
If you've watched a lot of my videos, you will know that I call this the headless chicken syndrome. Both the chocolate box approach and the all you can eat buffet keep you in that headless chicken mode. It's not giving you a way through. So here is the third approach:
The tried and tested step by step process
This is the one that has science and a lot of education research behind it, and it is the way that we normally teach a language. Remember, IELTS is about language and your language ability. Language learning does not go from zero to 60 in 10 seconds. It takes time to build up each level.
If you're a beginner at English, you start with simple sentences and words. Then you move to intermediate, where you get more input, longer sentences, more vocabulary, etc. Finally, you reach advanced. Now, if you're doing IELTS and you need band seven or eight, you will need to be at the advanced level and you cannot go from beginner to advanced easily without going through the intermediate stages. You will find that in your English there are gaps, and those gaps need to be identified because if you don't identify them and plug them, then there are always going to be gaps in your performance. That means in the exam you're unlikely to get the seven, because there will be things in what you do, what you say, what you write, perhaps even in your reading and your listening, which will cause you to fall below that level.
In the tried and tested step by step approach, these gaps will be identified and ‘plugged’. This is the kind of approach I teach because I am a teacher trained in this and I've been teaching for over 40 years. I know that many IELTS colleagues who have the same approach, are successful in this way of teaching, and the students we work with get their scores. Now, you may not get there in just a month because everyone starts out at different points, but you will get your bands if you stick with it.
The way this works is you learn something, then you practice it. Then where it goes wrong, you correct it and you keep practicing again until it's clear and correct. Then you learn something new and you practice that until you can use it well. There will be mistakes, but with good feedback and support you can learn why there are errors and what to do to fix them. It's like a building process, but you can't get it all at once just like in a construction you need a good foundation and good materials to raise up the building.
To do this you have to deal with each issue and each part of your progression at a time. As you do that, things start to fall into place. At first, things can be a little chaotic and students worry because they think everything's going wrong. But gradually everything falls into place and suddenly you know exactly what to do. It becomes simpler.
Once you start to focus on the small areas that are still preventing you from getting your band - it might be a little grammar point or some spelling, it will all start to develop and soon you'll know what you're doing. Taking this third, tried and tested step by step approach which will guarantee you your score will always require a certain amount of investment and I want to draw your attention to that.
I imagine you are taking IELTS for a specific purpose which is very important to you. That reason might be to join postgraduate course. It might be to register as a doctor or a nurse or some other kind of professional. It might be to move to an English-speaking country where you can develop your career. Whatever the reason, it will require a high level of IELTS. But you need to focus, not just on the exam but on the reward it will bring.
What is the reward? If you get your IELTS, it will be a new job. It will be the ability to attend a master's degree course or a PhD program, or to move and live with your family in a country where you can develop your career and achieve a higher standard of living. All of those things mean better earning. I'm pretty sure that in every case, it will increase your ability to earn more.
At this stage of IELTS, which could stop you in your tracks from doing any of those things, it is the key to that new life, to that better earning. If you don't invest in yourself, then that dream will not happen, because IELTS will either stop you forever, and I know lots of students who give up completely, or it will delay your ability to realise that dream. Furthermore, if you follow the box of chocolates approach or the all you can eat buffet then it's going to take you a lot longer to reach your goal.
So, look at your practice, look at how you're preparing, and if you're doing the box of chocolates or the all you can eat buffet, you need to consider changing to a more proven method.
If you want to talk to me about that, I'd be really happy to do that. I love speaking to students about where they're stuck and how they can overcome problems to get the result they want within a relatively short space of time. I tend to work with students generally over about three months and during those three months, we can improve every bit of IELTS, to get to those 7/8 band scores.
So please, if you want to speak to me about a method that will guarantee that you are able to get the results in the exam. Then follow the link below to book a call with me and we can explore the best way of getting your score within the next two to three months.
Finally, please, think carefully about how you are doing your IELTS preparation and how important a small investment now in your IELTS will be to your whole future.