In the previous post, I began looking at the ...

“Hi, I just got IELTS 8, and I’ll show you how to do it” syndrome.

Let's continue with this. In that post, I asked the question: ‘How does someone get an IELTS 9?’ If I (Teacher Andrew) did the IELTS Test, that’s the score I would achieve for all skills: listening, reading, speaking, and writing (although the last one is not so guaranteed). Well, one way to achieve that score is to simply do what I did – grow up and educate yourself in an English-speaking country for over 20 years! In addition, a lot of further study and an ongoing interest in literature and teaching will help guarantee that IELTS 9 (even in writing).

In the last post, I also mentioned a Taiwanese student of mine, who got IELTS 8 for Speaking, twice! She was a lovely girl, too natural and honest to claim that there was any technique involved, because she didn’t have any technique whatsoever. She was just herself, and was naturally good at English. Yes, the truth is that the IELTS Test is a test of English ability, and the higher your ability, the higher you’ll (probably) get. So, the person who gets an IELTS 8 has a very good ability at English, and this does NOT rub off onto others. You simply waste your time if you think it does.

However, it can get much worse than this. Remember, these ‘I got IELTS 8; I’ll show you how to do it’ people …

  1. are usually not trained TEFL teachers,
  2. have no real idea why they received their IELTS band score,
  3. may have got 8 despite their ‘techniques’ – that is, their ‘techniques’ risked losing the IELTS 8, or else took them down from a higher score (losing, for example, the IELTS 8.5 that they could have otherwise achieved).

A fourth very important points is .... did these people actually get IELTS 8 - that is, maybe it's all a complete lie!

You should always be skeptical, critical, and demand proof of any claim. Whatever the case may be, these people, in order to prove they are worth your attention, can posture as a pseudo-experts, recommending dubious IELTS sources, bad advice and embarrassing ‘tricks’, and weird and unnatural spoken and written memorisation that they claimed ‘worked’, all of which can take your IELTS mark down! Do you want that to happen?

 

Find the meaning of the underlined words, also repeated below.

  • guaranteed (adj)
  • to rub off onto [sb.] (v)
  • to posture (v)
  • pseudo (prefix)
  • dubious (adj)
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