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[Rainbow Emily]

I'm happy to say that I have taken a job at Nanjing Institute of Economic and Trade at 7000yuan a month 

However, I will be teaching 17-21 year olds on this 'IELTS' program. Has anybody any experience with this?

I'm a little apprehensive as it seems quite challenging.

Any comments would be much appreciated.

[Fozzwaldus]

yes I have and yes it is tricky

my advice is to get yourself some good IELTS textbooks before you leave

here are some that we've used successfully:

McCartur - Improve your IELTS writing skills - MacMillan

Moore - Common Mistakes at IELTS advanced - Cambridge

Martineau/Short - IELTS Graduation Study Skills


of course you might just be teaching for the oral component which is much easier, loads of material can be found online, so get searching!

best of luck! 

[Pashley]

The actual IELTS site www.ielts.org is quite helpful, though you have to root around some to find information. They break things up by audience -- candidates, teachers, researchers. You should browse all of those.

Hong Kong Polytechnic has good material: http://elc.polyu.edu.hk/ielts/

[latefordinner]

Sometimes it's not the syllabus you're teaching but the audience you're reaching.
Not that it isn't important to know yer stuff. Fozzy and Pash have given links to some good material, and there's a lot more out there. Maybe too much, because a lot of the stuff your students will find on their own and gravitate towards is dreck.

<I am beginning to formulate a theory about Chinese education. The most successful business models are based on the lowest standards, because that's what reaches to the desperate. The incompetent shall lead the clueless. BTAS>

In my limited experience, a large part of your struggles will be, not with the material (you'll get a feel for what is band 6 long before your students get close to it), but with communicating to the little darlings what they're getting wrong, and what they need to do differently in order to achieve their goals.

[Raoul F. Duke]

First, congrats on the job.
Nanjing is a decent enough place, and the salary is not bad for a college job.

Not a big fan of teaching IELTS, myself. People in these classes don't often give a wet slap about learning English...they just want to pass a test.

Now, you might think that learning to speak English well might be the best way to pass a test in the English language, and you well might be right about that...but I can assure you that such an idea will not be well-received by students or administration, and it will be resisted. You're supposed to reveal tips and tricks for the test, reducing it to a formula they can use to pass it- by hook or by crook- so they can go Australia.

[Fozzwaldus]

Raoul's got it right there... there's the New Oriental school of exam taking which is to reduce them to a formula in order to appeal to students that are comfortable with rote-learning, and think that a lack English language skills is no obstacle to working and studying in a Western country... 

I hope your class turns out to be better! 

[JShep]

I "taught" IELTS for a year and I continue to have weekend IELTS training classes. I'm gonna second Pashley and say go straight to the IELTS website for more info. You can search Google for mock examinations. For me, they've been reeeeeeally helpful. I'm assuming you'll be teaching the spoken portion of the examination.

You could also find a number of IELTS examiners on this board and haunt them with hundreds of questions until their brains explode. 

[Pashley]

Not a big fan of teaching IELTS, myself. People in these classes don't often give a wet slap about learning English...they just want to pass a test.

Now, you might think that learning to speak English well might be the best way to pass a test in the English language, and you well might be right about that...but I can assure you that such an idea will not be well-received by students or administration, and it will be resisted. You're supposed to reveal tips and tricks for the test, reducing it to a formula they can use to pass it- by hook or by crook- so they can go Australia.

Of course the test is designed to actually test their English, and moreover communication in English. Memorized responses are scored as IELTS two in the speaking test, and obviously memorized chunks of excellent English ("In the first place it is clear that...") are completely ignored in scoring the writing if the rest of it is at an obviously lower level. Also, the questions in both speaking and writing change; there are completely new ones on every test. If the test works as designed, it should be impossible to do well just by memorizing.

That said, using fixed phrases like "In the first place it is clear that..." can help a student at the right level to produce a more coherent essay and therefore score higher. It's just that if you aren't actually at that level, then trying to fake it with memorisation does more harm than good.

Of course there are some test-taking skills that apply. None of these will raise your score above what your actual English competence allows, but they can help you avoid blunders that lower your score.

One big one is timing on the writing task. Part 1 is 150 words of description, Part 2 250 of analysis or argument. You have an hour for both; they suggest 20 minutes for 1 and 40 minutes for 2. Part 2 counts more in the scoring. Candidates that spend 30+ minutes on Part 1 (which is fairly common) are almost certain to get a lower score than they could with proper time management.

[The Local Dialect]

Not a big fan of teaching IELTS, myself. People in these classes don't often give a wet slap about learning English...they just want to pass a test.

Now, you might think that learning to speak English well might be the best way to pass a test in the English language, and you well might be right about that...but I can assure you that such an idea will not be well-received by students or administration, and it will be resisted. You're supposed to reveal tips and tricks for the test, reducing it to a formula they can use to pass it- by hook or by crook- so they can go Australia.

Of course the test is designed to actually test their English, and moreover communication in English. Memorized responses are scored as IELTS two in the speaking test, and obviously memorized chunks of excellent English ("In the first place it is clear that...") are completely ignored in scoring the writing if the rest of it is at an obviously lower level. Also, the questions in both speaking and writing change; there are completely new ones on every test. If the test works as designed, it should be impossible to do well just by memorizing.

That said, using fixed phrases like "In the first place it is clear that..." can help a student at the right level to produce a more coherent essay and therefore score higher. It's just that if you aren't actually at that level, then trying to fake it with memorisation does more harm than good.

Of course there are some test-taking skills that apply. None of these will raise your score above what your actual English competence allows, but they can help you avoid blunders that lower your score.

One big one is timing on the writing task. Part 1 is 150 words of description, Part 2 250 of analysis or argument. You have an hour for both; they suggest 20 minutes for 1 and 40 minutes for 2. Part 2 counts more in the scoring. Candidates that spend 30+ minutes on Part 1 (which is fairly common) are almost certain to get a lower score than they could with proper time management.

This is true. What I like about IELTS is that it is designed to defy those "test trick" New Oriental types. The best way to get a high score on the IELTS is to be able to actually communicate in English, which actually sets it apart from other tests, like TOEFL, where it is possible to get a decent score without actually being competant. I've done a load of IELTS teaching and even designed part of an online IELTS training course and the students who do the best are the ones who can get out of that whole "memorize answers" mode and are able to treat the exam, especially the spoken part (which is probably, if I had to guess, what you'll be teaching) as something more organic.

That said, I think Raoul is right in that students and school admins in China do expect to learn a magic formula and they don't really understand the nature of the IELTS exam.

[randyjac]

Imagine learning the material, not just focusing on a particular test. This is a foreign concept. I am currently trying to help one of my students prepare for an impending test (TOEFL, not IELTS). She needs to improve her ability to respond to oral questions, regardless of which test. No surprise there. The best I can do is to assist her in structuring her approach. I mean, first of all, silence is death. In a class of several students, an activity might be to put them into teams and draw subjects out of a hat to talk about for two to three minutes. If a student falls silent for four seconds, they are gonged. How to approach it as a student? Take mandatory retirement, for example. Discuss the pros. Then talk about the cons. Personal experience, like relatives affected? How does the issue relate to China? I think it's helpful for a student to think about a structure when responding.

[gregmcd101]

Teaching IELTS is not that hard - there are 4 sections, reading writing listening and the interview. My students have other teachers for the first three parts so i concentrate on Speaking lots of samples available online

 http://www.ielts-exam.net/


for example.  also endless books in your library or any book store.
The important thing to concentrate on is get them to keep talking. There is one section where a student is required to talk for two minutes on  a given topic - many struggle with this. find topic lists, go thru suggestions with them, get them to write bullet points 9in the exam they get a minute to prepare) encourage them to be inventive - i tell them to make stuff up if they cant think of any thing to say. I encourage lying!!! Most of all find topics and work thru them with the students

[JShep]

Just another standardized test to determine whether or not the snot is eligible to study in the/at the __insert uni here__.

[latefordinner]

Yes, JShep, but as standardised tests go it gives a pretty good indication of the applicant's language abilities. You may or not like the BC, but IELTS seems to have stood the test of time, and they continue to refine and develop it.

One aspect of this test that many of us have a love-hate fascination with is that Ch teachers still don't get it. Most of their students don't either, but a small minority are catching on. They still think a student can memorise 5,000 words and 150 model answers and they'll get a good score. They still haven't learned how to read the grading criteria, nor have they figured out what they need to do. As long as they keep getting things wrong, there's work for even the least competent among us.

[Foscolo]

I've seen a lot of IELTS scripts from around the world. They come in through my website www.IELTSwriter.com (I put it together to solicit scripts for use in a book about the most common problems IELTS students have with writing. Making the site was fun. Writing the book proved to be so fantastically boring that it seems to be permanently stalled.) Anyhow, there seem to be three main areas of difficulty.

1. Nuts and bolts grammar. I've seen otherwise OK scripts that would get miserable scores because of suprisingly basic grammar errors in virtually every sentence.

2. Structure. The info in Task 1 should be ordered in a cogent way. The structure for Task 2 can take various forms, but there's a lot to be said for the basic structure of:
- Para 1: introduction - elaborate on the question a little
- Para 2: one way of looking at the issue
- Para 3: an oppositing or alternative way of looking at it
- Para 4: a conclusion coming down one side or the other

3. Register. This means writing in a suitable formal style with fixed expressions such as "it can be argued that...", "a popularly held opinion is that..." etc. etc. and tending to use longer, latinate words where there's a choice.

These are not very hard concepts to get your head round, but it does take a lot of practice to apply them in the rush of the exam.

It's surprising how many candidates have never seen any formal academic writing in English. it can be a good idea to get hold of some (very easy on the internet), and go through it with the students, explaning how it works, and how it's different from conversational English.

[Calach Pfeffer]

And just while we're here, "Can you tell me where you come from?" is NOT an invitation to tell me about where you come from.  Technically I suppose it's not even an invitation to tell me where you come from, the truly technically correct answer apparently being only either yes or no, but if people would satisfy themselves with a simple "I come from X" then the rest of the script for part 1 of the speaking interview would be a bit less silly coming out of the examiner's mouth.

Ner: "Can you tell me where you come from?"
Nee: "I come from PoDunkYang, it's a beautiful small town in a vast collection of mostly remembered sentences the examiner mostly disregards because it's mostly equivocal in indicating your practical speaking ability."
Ner: "And can I see your identification, please?"

The ID admin question comes after the nationality/hometown question.  A long "hometown is beautiful" answer is relatively useless for getting a better score.  And in fact as presumably everyone should know, there's a whole bunch of questions that come after the ID questions that will let you talk about your hometown and its beauty to your and the examiner's heart's content.  And if you do it there in appropriate response to suitable questioning, it becomes part of your score.


On the other hand, in a monoculture setting like China, it's perhaps not too obvious that "Can you tell me where you come from?" is a nationality question, not a hometown question.  At least I assume it's a nationality question.  When the cohort of candidates are all of different nationality, they tend to answer the question by naming their country.