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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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  My IELTS Classroom Podcast Episode 57: IELTS Punctuation

  27 April 2021

  IELTS Punctuation OK, I am going to be honest, punctuation isn’t the sexiest topic. But, if you are trying to achieve a 7.0 or higher in your IELTS writing test, then you have to make sure that you are able to use commas, capital letters, and full stops accurately. Sadly, this is not always the case, and nothing makes me sadder than having to award a candidate a 6.0 for GRA because their punctuation was totally uncontrolled. So, join Nick and I today for a whistle-stop tour of the most important IELTS punctuation rules. Trust me, it’s not as boring as it sounds!

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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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  My IELTS Classroom Episode 47: How to write good examples for your IELTS essay

  02 March 2021

  How to write good examples for your IELTS essay Hey! Following on from last week’s episode, in which Nick and I explained how damaging fake examples are, today we look at how you can come up with good examples for your IELTS essay quickly and easily. The key is taking your own life experience or an observation that you have made in the real world, and turning it into universally accepted statement. Imagine that there are 100 people in front of you – a good example will be clear and accepted by 99 of them without question! Still confused? Then listen to find out more! Below, you can find a summary of the episode, which includes all of the links[…]

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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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  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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  IELTS Letter Topics 2020 Archive

  07 January 2021

  IELTS Letter Topics 2020 Archive Hey! The following IELTS general training task one questions were reported to have appeared in the real exam this year. I have edited the tasks to be as close as possible to the real questions. However, I want to make it very clear that these are only reproductions. It is highly unlikely that you will get one of these questions in your exam and even if you do, you should check the bullets as they may differ form those here. Use my IELTS letter topics 2020 archive as an extra source of practice, but stick to the Cambridge books for any work that you wish to be assessed by our marking service. IELTS Letter Topics 2020: Informal[…]

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  My IELTS Classroom Podcast Episode 41 – IELTS Band 7 Essay Checklist

  05 January 2021

  IELTS Band 7 Essay Checklist Today, Nick and I want to give everybody self-studying for the exam a head-start by sharing our IELTS Band 7 essay checklist. When you are learning to write IELTS essays, it’s really important that you constantly check that your writing satisfies the IELTS Band Descriptors .  If you can tick every box on the  checklist then you will be very close to achieving a 7.0 for Task Response, Coherence and Cohesion, Lexical Resource and Grammatical Range and Accuracy. In short, if you can complete my IELTS Band 7 essay checklist, you have a high chance of acing the exam and moving forward to the next stage of your life in 2021 🚀 You can download a copy of the IELTS Band 7 essay[…]

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