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In the last post, I mentioned the …

“IELTS Ten Super Instant Easy Everything Magic Book” syndrome.

Let’s look at another aspect of these books. Part of the ‘Magic Book Rule No.5 (= having a title which guarantees an impossibly high band scores in a very short time) is a claim on the front cover that the books are ‘approved by IELTS examiners’, ‘recommended by IELTS examiners’, ‘endorsed by all IELTS examiners’, and so on, and so on.

Hmmmm. An interesting claim. Time to think, everyone. Do you really believe this? Really? I mean REALLY? I hope not, since straight away you would have to find a good answer to the following questions.

 

  1. How did all the IELTS examiners in the country even know about the book?
  2. How did they all get the book?
  3. Why would they want to read it?

 

There are no good answers to these questions. And if the IELTS magic book uses (1) memorisation and is (2) written in Chinese, you have to immediately puzzle over more questions.

 

  1. How did all the examiners in the country read the Chinese writing?
  2. Even if they knew about the book, and could get it, and could understand it, and did read it, would they really like such a book?

 

Time to think more about Question Five. To become an IELTS examiner, one must have a recognised TEFL qualification – such as the Cambridge TEFL Certificate, and have at least 3 – 5 years experience (preferably more) of teaching to adults in accredited teaching centres. This means that IELTS examiners are products of modern TEFL methods.

So, what does this mean? It means that there is not a single IELTS examiner in the world who would ever endorse a ‘memorisation’ approach given in a book, since this approach plays no role in modern teaching theory, and is not considered acceptable in the classroom. Any teacher who used this in their training course would be automatically failed. Remember, I’m a Cambridge-accredited teacher trainer, and I have failed trainee-teachers before (when I conducted Cambridge CELTA teacher training courses at Monash University).

So, I can provide an answer to Question Five, about whether IELTS Examiners (even if they knew about the magic book, could get it, could understand it, and did read it) would really like such a book.

 

The answer is that not a single examiner in the world would EVER recommend these magic books. They would tell you to burn them, and bury the ashes in a deep hole where they can’t do damage.

 

So, that’s one question definitely answered. I’ll try to answer some more in the next post.

[To be continued in the next post.]

 

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

  • to guarantee (v)
  • to endorse (v)
  • to puzzle over (v)
  • accredited (adj)
  • ashes (n)
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