Sometimes a student will ring, and say, “Can you guarantee an IELTS 7?” Many schools and teachers will glibly say, 'Yes, definitely'. Well, you need to be aware of the risks here. You could easily waste a lot of time and money, and send your IELTS mark downwards. In this post (and the next two), I’ll look at the …

“I guarantee you will get IELTS 7” // ‘The Guaranteed IELTS 7 Course’ // 'This takes you from 4 to 7' syndrome.

When a student asks, our response is, “No one can guarantee that”, and then the phone sometimes goes ‘click …. buzzzzzzzz …”. Well, that student will find out the HARD way, spend a lot of money in the process, but the motivation will eventually go, and the IELTS mark is unlikely to be any different.

Here’s the very obvious truth. This truth is so obvious I’m surprised that I have to say it, and it’s so obvious that I can say it strongly, without any hesitation. Here goes.

In IELTS, it is impossible to guarantee anything, and anyone who does so is msleading you.

A truer statement could be ... 

'Pay a certain amount of money, and you can study here, doing the IELTS courses again and again and again as long as you like, and keep doing the IELTS Test every month, and maybe, eventually, in time, you will get an IELTS 7'.

That doesn't sound as nice, does it? That doesn't draw in students. That 'again and again and again' part could mean a VERY long time. So, why not guarantee everything in a single course. One course; IELTS 7; guaranteed? Hmmmm. This would be a blatant lie.

But how do I prove this? Well, let’s think about it. What factors contribute to students getting an IELTS 7? Actually, I CAN guarantee that all student can get an IELTS 7, and that I’m by far the best person to help them do it, but those students need to give me a few guarantees in return, based on five factors. Here are these factors.

Factor A

Starting Level/Intelligence

Those students need to guarantee they …

  1. have a starting level of English that is realistic (when aiming for an IELTS 7),
  2. have not memorised a mess of bad IELTS methods and models, and …
  3. are open-minded, informed, aware of the world, enquiring, and really interested in knowing more.

Factor B

Work Ethic

Those students need to guarantee they will …

  1. focus on the material,
  2. come to every class,
  3. arrive on time,
  4. work hard, both in and outside, the classroom,
  5. do all the homework (from the books, and the research, and the writing assignments),
  6. review the carefully corrected (error-coded) IELTS Writing Assignments to improve their grammar, and …
  7. after the course is finished, keep reading the selected portions from my books (and not try to immediately sell them with the comment, “I’ve only written on three pages”.

[To be continued in the next post.]

 

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

  • to guarantee (v)
  • glib (adj)
  • blatant (adj)
  • factor (adv)

 

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