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  Podcast – Improve your IELTS Coherence and Cohesion score by removing “people” from your essay

  13 July 2021

  Improve your IELTS Coherence and Cohesion Score One of the great things about working at My IELTS Classroom is that it gives me the chance to collaborate with a range of great highly-qualified teachers. Juliet has been working with us for over 3 years now and, as a teacher who specialises in Cambridge exams that are not IELTS, she always brings a fresh approach to her teaching. One particular point that Juliet has been focussing on recently in marking is encouraging students to move away from using “people” repeatedly in their essays. This is not something that I had considered before, but once she had pointed it out, I realised that doing this can make a massive difference to a[…]

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  Podcast – What do we think of the essay questions in Cambridge IELTS 16

  29 June 2021

  Hey! On July 8th, the latest edition of the Cambridge series will be published. In celebration of this, Nick and I explain what makes these books such a powerful resource for IELTS test takers. Then, we will go through the 4 essay questions reportedly included in Cambridge IELTS 16 (Academic) to give our verdict on the new topics. Trust me – you want to listen to this, as one of them is unbelievably difficult! Below, you can find a summary of the episode, which includes all of the links to useful materials and the times of each part of the discussion (so you can go directly to the part you want to listen to) 🚀 Subscribe to My IELTS Classroom podcast[…]

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  6 IELTS lexical errors you probably make if you are Indian, Pakistani, or Bangladeshi!

  24 June 2021

  Hey! Here at My IELTS Classroom, we work with students from all over the world. In fact, one of my favourite things is keeping a list of all of the countries that our students come from. There are well over 100 now, which is absolutely mind-blowing! The great thing about working with such a wide-range of test-takers is that you start to see patterns in the mistakes that they make as a result of the influence of their first language. So, today, we are launching a new series of blog posts that focus on one region and their specific language errors. In this first post, we are going to look at the lexical errors made by our students who come from[…]

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  How to band IELTS Essays

  25 May 2021

  How to band IELTS Essays Hey! This week I got an email from a student which made me stop in her tracks. She had send her essay to a  teacher who had given her a  score of 7.5 and she wanted to know if this was correct. Usually, I don’t like to get involved with other teachers’ marking, but out of curiosity I had a look at the essay and the “marking”. What I saw shocked me. Clearly the “teacher” had no idea how to band IELTS essays (and no morals based on the feedback that they gave!) So, in today’s episode Nick and I go through that essay together to discuss what score we would have awarded it for[…]

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  Analysing Difficult IELTS Essay Questions!

  13 April 2021

  Analysing Difficult IELTS Essay Questions! Every 3 or 4 months Nick and I sit down to review 6 recently reported IELTS essay questions that we think are interesting. Usually, this means choosing questions that focus on topics that we have never seen before, or questions that are in a new format (for example, new types of 2-part questions). However, this week we are doing something different. We are looking at 6 difficult IELTS essay questions. And by difficult, I mean so difficult that even after 30+ years experience teaching IELTS between us, Nick and I struggled to come up with ideas. So, we challenge you to join us in planning these IELTS questions from hell! In fact, why not scroll[…]

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  3 reasons why you should NEVER use fake examples in IELTS essays

  22 February 2021

  3 reasons why you should NEVER use fake examples in IELTS essays Did you know that recent research at Cambridge University has shown that 100% of My IELTS Classroom students are satisfied with their course? I know – it surprised me too! What surprises me more, however, is that students continue to use fake examples in IELTS essays to “support” their ideas. I cannot express strongly enough how depressed this makes me feel. So, in today’s episode, I want to present my case as to why inventing fake statistics is pointless at best, and damaging to your writing score at worst. Below, you can find a summary of the episode, which includes all of the links to useful materials and[…]

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  My IELTS Classroom Episode 44: IELTS Letters 2021

  09 February 2021

  IELTS Letters 2021 Hey – welcome to our IELTS letters 2021 episode! Every time one of my students emails me their IELTS results, the fist thing I ask them is “What questions did you have in the writing exam?” There are two reasons for this: First, it helps me understand if our students are performing better in some type of questions than others (so I can support future students better). Second, it allows me to build a bank of recent exam questions that I can give to my students to use for high-quality practice. This week, I updated my recent IELTS letters blog post to show 20 prompts that have been given in exams this year. Today, Nick and I[…]

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  20 Recent IELTS General Training Task 1 Questions

  07 February 2021

  20 Recent IELTS General Training Task 1 Questions Since publishing my blog post 50 recent IELTS essay questions (General Training and Academic), I have been flooded with requests for similar posts for Task One questions. So, today, I want to share some recent IELTS General Training Task 1 questions that appeared in the January 2021 exams.

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  6 IELTS essay questions reported from exams in January 2021

  26 January 2021

  IELTS Essay Questions 2021 Today, Nick and I take a first look at IELTS essay questions 2021. Yes, even though it is only the start of January, we have already collected and published over 50 essay questions that have been reported in the exam this January. You can find the full list in this blog post, but today we focus on 6 that I think are most interesting. Why? Well, it could be that the topic is new, or the format of the question is slightly different to usual, or it could be that it is difficult to generate ideas to address the topic fully – you will need to listen to the episode to find out! In fact, why[…]

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  50 Recent IELTS Essay Questions

  24 January 2021

  50 Recent IELTS Essay Questions  Hey! It is so important that when you sit down to practice IELTS writing, you only use questions that are “genuine”. This means using either questions that come from the IELTS Cambridge 1 – 15 series or those that have been created by an exam writer like those in my 100 IELTS essay question blog post. However, many students like to practice recent IELTS essay questions i.e. topics that have been reported by recent test-takers.

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