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  How will the examiner score your IELTS speaking Fluency and Coherence?

  06 December 2022

  In the IELTS Speaking exam, the examiner will give you a score in 4 areas: Fluency and Coherence, Lexical Range, Grammatical Range and Accuracy, and Pronunciation. Your final score will be the average of these four scores rounded down (yes, you read that correctly, the scores will be rounded down, so you will need an average of at least 7.0 to achieve that score). However, recently I realised that that there is a lot of confusion among students as to exactly what the examiner is looking for when they grade IELTS speaking Fluency and Coherence.

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  A new type of IELTS reading MCQs?

  29 November 2022

  IELTS reading MCQs have always been one of the most difficult to tackle in IELTS. That is because they can either test your understanding of the information given in the passage of your understanding of the writer’s purpose or aim. Until now, 90% of questions have focussed on the former, but I noticed that in Cambridge IELTS Academic 17, almost ALL of the questions asked you to analyse what the writer was doing. This is obviously a massive change and one that could be challenging for many students.

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  5 IELTS Cue Card Topics 2022 Analysed

  16 November 2022

  Hey! IELTS is well-known for recycling the same topics for Speaking Part 2 again and again. However, they do sometimes introduce new topics into the exam, which can confuse some students. Today, Nick and I analyse 5 new IELTS Cue Card topics 2022 to show you how you can come up with ideas quickly for ANY topic. Plus, we will provide model answers for two questions.

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  IELTS Listening Part 3

  09 November 2022

  Many students find IELTS Listening Part 3 difficult. There are a number of reasons for this, which you hopefully remember from our IELTS Listening 101 episode: there are more than two voices, the questions usually focus on the outcome of a discussion in which many views are offered, and you may also be asked to locate a person’s feelings (and we all know that feelings are much harder to find than facts!).

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  What is the new IELTS One Skill Retake?

  01 November 2022

  Last week, IELTS IDP announced that they are planning to introduce a new test called the IELTS One Skill Retake. This will give students the opportunity to retake only one section of the four skills (Listening, Reading, Writing or Speaking) in the IELTS test if they did not achieve the score they aimed for the first time around. 

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  How to improve your IELTS spelling!

  26 October 2022

  One component of your score for Lexical Resource in the IELTS writing exam is spelling. I am often asked how many IELTS spelling mistakes a student can make and still receive a 7.0. The answer is “it depends”. There is no fixed number of errors that automatically results in you getting a 5, 6, 7, or 8 for lexical resource. This is simply because not every spelling error is the same.

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  What is parallelism and why do you need to use it in your IELTS writing?

  19 October 2022

  Yes! That’s right – this week Nick and I are looking at a grammar point – parallelism! This is not a topic that is widely discussed in the IELTS world, but if you are looking for a score of 7.0 or higher in Writing, it is definitely something that you should pay attention to.

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  All Cambridge IELTS 17 Letters Analysed

  11 October 2022

  Hey! Today, Nick and I take a look at what we think are new Cambridge IELTS 17 letters. In other words, although the book was published in July, we were unable to get our hands on a copy, so we are hoping that these are the real questions as we got them from a third source!)

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  Perfecting your IELTS Informal Letter

  04 October 2022

  Hey! I have noticed over the last few years that IELTS test-takers really struggle to write letters that are genuinely informal. Even good students who follow all of the language rules for an IELTS informal letter send me one to mark that feel “cold” and “stiff” and simply still “too formal”. Why is that? Well, that is what I sat down this week to ponder, and the result is this podcast! Today, Nick and I will show you how you can turn your good IELTS informal letters into great ones by making PERSONAL COMMENTS.

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  Top 5 IELTS Writing Errors

  27 September 2022

  Hey! Every week, Nick and I mark at least a dozen first assessment essays from our students. This is the first essay that students send as part of their writing package, and gives us an opportunity to see what their current score is and what areas we will need to work on to help them reach their target score. Obviously, all students are unique and have their own problem areas, but time and time again we see students making the same mistakes. Today, Nick and I want to show you what the top 5 IELTS writing errors are, and explain how you can avoid them.

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