How to teach IELTS - a guide for novice IELTS teachers

Hello! I have been teaching IELTS for six years now and got over 1000 students. They have had their exams between 6 and 8, and the average score is 6.82.

It is a short guide, but in the future I will write more.

1. overview of ielts

describe the ielts exam to your students. show the tasks, explain the grading system briefly. for example, you can do like I did here:

2. speaking practice

start your lessons with speaking practice. find a list of questions (i will attach an example here). spend 20-30 minutes of the lesson on speaking, give feedback. you can write the students' words and sentences while showing your screen, then correct mistakes.

primarily, your task is to eliminate language barrier. you will of course try to improve the students' grammar and vocabulary, but the main thing is fluency - so make the students speak a lot.

https://ieltsliz.com/ielts-speaking-part-1-topics/

3. writing practice

this requires a more comprehensive approach. firstly, take a look at different types of essays (task 2) and reports (task 1). describe the samples (examples of examiners, written on a good level). you can do it like I did here:

4. reading and listening practice

I find "mini-ielts.com" convenient to give reading and listening tasks. the service does everything for you. but, if a student struggles, you can do some reading and listening tasks together with the student.

I did an example:

5. table with results

I find it extremely important to maintain control - so I make a google sheet/excel table and put all topics, links, dates of lessons, homeworks - so that it is easier to track the student's progress or regress. also, it is easy to show to their parents in case they ask.

it is a good way to ensure the students will do at least the minimum - because they will be aware of the control that you do.

do not skip filling the table.

6. mock tests

once in a while, for example once a month, take a full mock test. you can use Cambridge IELTS 5-14, each book has 4 full tests. take it inside the lessons, the students will be happy to see their results.

sincerely yours, Rizabek.

if you have any questions, contact me:

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