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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. 

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  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!

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  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!

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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.

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  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.

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  6 IELTS essay questions reported from exams in January 2021

  26 January 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.

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  IELTS Letter Topics 2020 Archive

  07 January 2021

  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.

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  IELTS Band 7 Essay Checklist

  05 January 2021

  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. 

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  Generating Ideas for IELTS essays

  17 November 2020

  One of the main problems that students face when they start IELTS Writing is generating ideas for IELTS essays. Today, Nick and I look at one way that you should definitely NOT use to find ideas, and then look at two simple approaches that you should. I also have a great blog post that discusses idea generation that you might want to read first before you listen.

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