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My IELTS Blog!

Here you’ll find our posts and podcasts on a wide range of subjects to help you on your IELTS journey! Join us at My IELTS Classroom today for our video courses, marking service, 1-2-1 lessons and so much more…

Our posts & podcasts

• All Posts, 
• Writing, 
• Speaking, 
• Listening, 
• Reading, 
• Grammar, 
• General Advice, 
• Podcast

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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 Help – Listen to our Q&A!

  16 February 2021

  Hey! Last week we asked you to email us any questions that you have about the IELTS exam, and boy did you deliver! Today, Nick and I try to answer as many as we can, which was a lot! If you are looking for general IELTS help, then this is the episode for you!

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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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  Speaking Part 2: The Problem with the IELTS PPF method!

  02 February 2021

  Speaking Part 2: The IELTS PPF method There is no doubt that Speaking Part Two can be challenging for many students. After all, talking continuously for 2 minutes is not something we do very often in every day life! However, is using the IELTS PPF method the best way to keep going until the examiner interrupts you? Nick and I think that it is definitely NOT for three reasons (that sounds like a To What Extent essay!) Listen to today’s episode to find out why we would never recommend this method and to find out our alternative suggestions.

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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 Teacher Training Success Story, Alisa!

  19 January 2021

  IELTS Teacher Training Success Story, Alisa! Hey! Students take the IELTS exam for a range of reasons, but most are either migrating to an English-speaking country or planning to study in one. However, occasionally, we get to work with a student who has a totally different and much simpler goal – to improve their own teaching. Alisa is such a student. Having achieved a very respectable 7.5 in the academic exam in her first attempt, Alisa decided to try to better herself and managed to climb from a 6.5 to a 7.5 in writing, and from a 7.5 to an 8.5 in speaking after preparing with us at My IELTS Classroom. Today, you can listen to her full story to[…]

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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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  The Best and Worst of IELTS 2020

  29 December 2020

  Hey! I think that we can all agree that IELTS 2020 has not been easy. COVID has meant that many of us have had to spend weeks or months indoors, with test centres around the world closing, university courses moving online, and future plans being put on hold as we all try to ride the storm into 2021. However, despite of the hardships of this year, there have been bright spots.

Posts navigation

• All Posts, 
• Writing, 
• Speaking, 
• Listening, 
• Reading, 
• Grammar, 
• General Advice, 
• Podcast