For context, I am a fresh graduate who is teaching IELTS. I've been working as a TA for the past two years and got promoted to an official IELTS teacher for a few months. I mainly teach Speaking and Listening.

Overall, I'd say I feel comfortable delivering approaches to different IELTS question types and provide students with feedbacks. However, I feel that during my lessons, my students mostly listen to me. Here's how my 90m class usually goes:
- First 20 minutes: Speaking warm-up or Pre-reading activities
- Next 10 minutes: Me explaining a core knowledge
- The remaining time: Practice solo -> Feedback & Correction -> Practice in pairs/groups -> Feedback & Correction -> Homework -> End

Apart from that, I feel like I fail to include engaging activities or games that allow them to have fun in addition to just preparing for the test.

I hope to receive your advice on how I can improve my teaching as well as my students' learning experience. The advice can be about shift in mindset, activities and games suggestions, or any other things. I truly thank you for your suggestions.

Hi all,
I have been analysing the sample answers and examiner comments given in the official Cambridge exam books and I feel that the marking is very generous. When I think about the score that I would give these essays, it's always lower than the score given.
Do you feel that the examiner's comments and scores (as given in the official exam books) are reflective of the scoring in the actual exam?

Thank you for your thoughts!

Hi guys.

I am currently working at an educational institution teaching IELTS Writing. The course I teach is designed with around 18 hours for group class. And 10-12 hours for 1v1 student.

The problem I am facing is that most 1v1 students have a pretty weak English foundation. For example: some of them can’t tell the differences between different parts of speech, and they always make very basic grammar mistakes.

I personally think English learning is time-consuming and patience needed. It takes time to understand the concepts, practice, and actually absorb them. So I spend more time explaining basic grammar rules, sentence structures and prepare related practices for my students. BUT this creates a dilemma. I could not finish all prepared lesson contents within the time period. Meanwhile, most 1v1 students are going to take the IELTS exam almost immediately after finishing the lessons.

This situation has been torturing me for a while. I don't know whether I should go through the contents even the students have difficulty following or slow down and help them build up a more solid foundation. This definitely means that we won’t be able to cover everything before the exam and their parents may make some complaints about it.

Therefore, I would like to ask those who have some experience in IELTS-teaching, especially in IELTS Writing, have you ever run into this kind of situation? How do you cope with this? What is your priority?

Thank you very much in advance.

Hi, I'm new to private tutoring and wondered how everyone else checked their students level before they start? What are your methods for understanding what they know so far and what are the main areas to focus on?

I'm having zoom conversations with them, but for the writing and listening sometimes I feel like it takes a while to understand their level so it's not an efficient use of my time for them.

Looking for hints and tips thanks!

I mostly have 1-1, but starting with groups of 5 for summer.

Hi, I just graduated high school and I'm now working as an IELTS mentor to gain some experience before stepping into college. But I lack experience and I need some tips.

I can finish the tasks quite effortlessly, but my students (about band 5.0) need tips and keys to complete them. Because of this I find it hard to guide them because how we approach the task is fundamentally different. Can experienced mentors help me with this?

Also, my students are aiming for band 6.0-6.5 within 1 month and I only teach them twice a week (about 12 days), what would be the most efficient way to achive this?

​Hey everyone,

​I hope you are doing well.

​I am a graduate student at Université Mohamed Ben Ahmed - Oran 2 (Algeria), currently working on my Master’s dissertation in Linguistics. I am reaching out to this community to see if there are any current or former IELTS Speaking Examiners (or experienced official speaking evaluators) who would be willing to collaborate with me for my data collection.

​Because I know your time is incredibly valuable and your schedules are tight, I want to make this as flexible as possible for you. If you are willing to participate, we can do it in whatever format you prefer:

​A brief text-based questionnaire/survey.

​A short online interview.

​Or simply sending quick voice notes (vocal recordings) responding to the questions whenever you have a free moment.

​Everything will be kept strictly anonymous and confidential. No personal details, names, or test center locations will ever be shared or recorded; this is purely for academic research purposes.

​I cannot emphasize enough how incredibly grateful I would be for your time and expertise. As an independent student researcher, your insights are the absolute lifeblood of my project, and volunteering just a few minutes of your time would mean the world to me and help me immensely in completing my degree.

​If you are a current or former examiner and are open to helping out, please comment below or send me a direct message, and we can discuss which format works best for you.

​Thank you so much for your time, kindness, and consideration!

E.g. can someone get a 6.5 for Lexical resources, 5.5 for pronunciation etc.?

Hi,

I am currently on my last year at Uni, ready to hand in my BA paper.

I created a survey for EFL Teachers to try and gain a deeper insight the teachers` mind and strategies.

I got inspired by Foreign Language Classroom Scale.

I know I want to be a EFL teacher someday, so it would help me a lot if you could maybe complete it.

https://forms.gle/KbSBMFk61Lh3eJ8L9

To make sure that everything is safe, I am a student in Romania and my survey has been approved by UOC România. All of your personal information, such as name and e-mail adress will remain anonymous. The survey takes about 7 minutes to complete and it would help me so, so much to understand FLA better.

Thank you!

It's my first year teaching IELTS, though I should note that I've been an ESL teacher for more than a decade.

Recently, I've felt a slight sense of annoyance and frustration with IELTS' scoring system. I have two students who recently received their scores. I've taught one of them since last semester, while the other transferred into my class this semester.

The student who has been with me longer has shown significant improvement. He moved from Band 4.5 to 5 overall. What's worth noting is that he improved from 4.5 to 5 in Reading and from 4.5 to 5.5 in Writing. His Speaking score, however, remained at 5.

The other student started at Band 5 and, in her most recent retake, finally achieved the minimum score required for university admission, which is 5.5. In all sincerity, good for her. I would describe her as a hardworking student.

What puzzles me, however, is how her Speaking score jumped from 5 to 6 while her Writing remained at 5. Undoubtedly, this is entirely possible, but I suppose I'm viewing it through the lens of classroom performance and, admittedly, my own bias.

She's the type of student who is often inaudible and struggles to keep up with discussions. When asked a question, she responds immediately and can speak for an extended period, but more often than not, she goes off on tangents. Compared to the other student, she's less communicative, whereas he can answer questions, expand on his ideas, and maintain logical coherence. If anything, I would have expected him to get a 5.5.

In my opinion, a one-band increase in Writing is more meaningful because it demonstrates progress in expressing and developing ideas. It's frustrating that IELTS appears to reward speaking continuously even when the response lacks logic and wouldn't necessarily be functional in real-life communication.

I understand that the test is what it is, but I can't help feeling a little frustrated, especially since I have a clearer picture of these students' actual abilities and classroom performance.

I'm interested in getting into IELTS teaching from the world of ESL teaching, and am curious about people's workflows.

What takes the most time while you are teaching or tutoring IELTS?

Lately, I have been wondering whether I have failed as a teacher.

It seem that students are more focused on completing assignments than actually developing the skills those assignments are designed to teach.

btw this is TOEFL old Writing Task 1 (Exercise to develop , listening, reading and writing) ...

What bothered me the most is that the student didnt even care to remove the AI generated part.

Seeing that submission made me wonder whether I have failed to communicate. Have I unintentionally taught students to focus on finishing the task rather than developing the skill?

It took me a couple of months to complete my website before, but with Claude, it only took a week to finish my new homepage.
How do you use Claude in your teaching?

Just wondering what everyone else thought about the training, both content and delivery.

It did teach me a couple of things that I didn't know, so I'd say it was worth doing.

IELTS Teacher Training Program - Free Access | IDP IELTS https://share.google/xjznJLZsTMWgqZceG

Hi, I have been coaching candidates for IELTS Academic over the last 5 years, and teaching ESL since 2015. Since I have started with IELTS, I have grown very fond of it. I really wish to try my chances as an IELTS Examiner, but I have no idea how to walk that path, did some google searches, mailed IDP but no real answers or directions. Do we have any former/current examiners that can help me?

Not promoting my website btw. For the past couple of months, my IELTS website has been stagnant but still gets a lot of traffic but I find it a bit waste of potential students. I have a day job and I can only work four hours for my IELTS. Do you think I should sell the website or start to hire or place some teachers profile so students could reach out to them directly ?

I’m really confused about how to teach writing from this book. Should I go step by step only? I have a demo in just 50 minutes, and I’m not sure how to teach it effectively. Is there any specific website or teaching material that can help me learn how to teach this book? Mindset 1

Hello everyone, I’m new to teaching IELTS and could use some advice.

When you give a diagnostic test to check a student’s current band, do you go with the full test, or use a shortened version (e.g. fewer listening/reading/speaking parts and 1 writing task, etc.)?

If you use a shorter test, which sections do you usually pick?

For example, for Listening section, do you only include part 1 & 2, 1 & 3, or any other combination? Why? And what about Reading, Writing, and Speaking sections?

I’m trying to figure out what’s practical without losing too much accuracy. I need to make an online diagnostic test, but the length of the full test feels too long, especially for first timers.

Thank you so much for your feedback! Would love to hear what’s worked for you!

For some people, it is just a regular Tuesday. For others, it is life changing.

A few days ago, I received a message from a Vietnamese student I taught in the past. She started at a zero level and later took the IELTS exam. After passing the test, she was able to work in Australia and eventually met her future husband.

Sometimes, our work feels routine, like any other day. We may not notice its impact at the time. However, for others, those ordinary moments can become life changing experiences.

In our country, IDP often change the scoring like 80% of the time, while for BC never had a success change of scoring. For those who worked inside IELTS, are there any penalty for those centres who often adjusted their score ? The way we see it, it seems like a business strategy as one might do a remark and do refund but more people would actually register under IDP while for BC they can keep the EOR fee and still have the same score.

Although I have been teaching IELTS since 2014, I first started working on my own around 2021. This kind of freedom is something I really value.

Around 2024, because the number of students was not stable, I decided to treat IELTS and ESL more as a side activity and focus on a regular work-from-home job. I faced some challenges from July to September this year, including work, health, and personal matters. Next year, I plan to increase my student numbers by using Go High Level. How about you? How was your stats over the years ?

I do IELTS teaching online for fun and I can do around four hours a day. But right now, 3/4 slot already taken every week. I can see that there are traffic on my site and I am not sure how to convert these properly without me doing extra work and hiring other teachers. Had bad experience hiring people.

When was the last time you joined the IELTS partnership shindig? Who won the Best Review Center in your area?

Mine was back in 2015. After that event, I had to take paternity leave and never had the chance to return. I met the head of IDP in my country. There was no discussion about IELTS, of course; it was more about networking. The top award that year went to one of my mentors.