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Q: Can IELTS actually be studied for, in the Chinese sense of the word?
And can a school really give a 100% guarantee of IELTS success?
Got any idea how much they ask students to pay when they sign them up for a 'guaranteed IELTS success' course?
8 years 20 weeks ago in Teaching & Learning - China
Royce, unlike icnif I understand exactly what you mean and I think the answer is yes... and no.
As a (former" IELTS teacher (although not in China) I struggled with this problem - students too often looking for the shortcut rather than doing the hard work of building up their mastery of the language. I would put noses out of joints by telling students point blank that they could not just hope to wing it and that if they did not understand the language and could not produce the language then they should not expect to sit through a few lessons and magically expect their deficiencies to be fixed.
That being said, the test is a complicated beast. It is easy for capable students to lose out on marks by poor time management, or by not understanding the structure of the test, or by not knowing exactly what is expected of them, or by not knowing how to structure their writing, or by getting bogged down in small details rather than focussing on overall meaning, or by panicking when they don't understand one individual word, or by talking too much, or by dumb punctuation or by a hundred other little issues. I did have students who 'failed' the test and then spent time intensively studying with me, took it again and 'passed' (these are of course, highly subjective terms, one person's 6 is a fail while another's 5 is a pass...)
My intensive classes would be about 30% 'teaching the test' and about 60% per cent capacity building in terms of their practical skills, vocab and, God help me, grammatical capability, and the remainder of the time was given to practice tests. That worked.
And of course no school can truly give a guarantee. That's just plain dumb.
royceH:
Thanks Miss. The teacher's lament. Oh for a student with a real interest in a work towards a goal ethic.. And a preparedness to adopt same. Sigh.......
I worked last year with 10 students on IELTS prep in International class at Public High School.
Enrollment in IC cost 40k Rmb/year, and curriculum was based on few Canadian books (Canadian History, Precalculus, CALM.....), which Chinese IC rep. got of some book salesman.
Interesting, 2014 Contract had note 'School is associated with Alberta University, and FT must conduct classes by the same standards' whatever that is.
They asked me to switch to IELTS in the middle of semester, after I wanted to know, what is the purpose students are studying Canadian books, if they won't enroll to Canadian Universities.
They told me, students will have IELTS exam in summer months what didn't happened. Rep. asked me to prepare an exam as 'subject exam', and then he took over the exam and evaluation.
I'm not sure, what is Chinese sense. They must pass exam with 5.5 grade or higher to be accepted to Western Unis and get student visas. I was convinced 5 of my students would achieve 5.5 or better.
royceH:
50% rate of 5.5 from a bunch of high school students?? My unusual, but interesting, little friend.... - ...You, sir, are a genius!
icnif77:
That was my assumption. I had half very good students, and another half late, sleeping, no assignments and similar.
None of them didn't go through IELTS exam for various reasons. Only one student is in UK, and I'm not sure how he got UK visa and admission.
royceH:
He got 5.5, his parents paid the money and now he's living a Chinese life in England.
3,4 or 5 years down the track he'll return to China and be none the wiser. And would struggle to be any better than a 5.5 even after spending all that time o/s. The only real thing that'll have happened is his parents, and likely wider family, will all be broke.
icnif77:
I think they told me, he has some relatives in Manchester, so his visa might be that way.
The biggest problem was school's management, not students. I was made an IELTS trainer, despite I've never seen an real exam or studied 'how to prep'. Was asking Shining and Ambi for help and suggestions.
Then IELTS exam didn't happened. We just had regular 'subject' final exam at our school.
Rep told me to prepare an exam, and day before the exam, he told me we'll switch; I must attend written exams in Chinese and Canadian History, and he'll conduct IELTS exam. Apparently, he down graded most of the students, as to show them they must study more.
Remembering of that is like a bad dream, but I don't argue how they want me to teach and which books I should use.
Shining_brow:
Royce - they'll be broke, BUT HAVE MORE FACE!!!!
*(and,yeah... years overseas, and English is no better... :( )
Icnif - remember - 5.5 doesn't mean they can actually say much, or write much... it usually means they can pick out the important words...and have memorised the right questions...
icnif77:
I didn't take job lightly last year (it was this year!), same as I take oral jobs at Primary School.
Chinese have difficulties with fluent English, because of differences/no similarities of both languages IMO, and I don't speak Chinese. I started to think about that, when I met few Africans, who were just fluent in Chinese. It must be because of similarities in their languages.
Royceh Q about 'Chinese sense..': I never bother myself with that. They must do things differently, if they want to get 5.5.
ambivalentmace:
i found a canadian history book published by penguin publishing, author is bothwell that has been translated completey to chinese for my students, now i dont spend the whole class with a dictionary and they acutally can learn some history.
icnif77:
I only have 2 girls left this semester. One student is in UK, and rest returned to regular classes/gaokao.
I don't understand Chinese. They manage things much different than we think. Don't have a clue, what was the purpose of last year's semester. So, I don't bother anymore. I do whatever they ask me to do.
I think translation from English should be done by students as HW, but if you hand them translation, it's less trouble for you.
Royce, unlike icnif I understand exactly what you mean and I think the answer is yes... and no.
As a (former" IELTS teacher (although not in China) I struggled with this problem - students too often looking for the shortcut rather than doing the hard work of building up their mastery of the language. I would put noses out of joints by telling students point blank that they could not just hope to wing it and that if they did not understand the language and could not produce the language then they should not expect to sit through a few lessons and magically expect their deficiencies to be fixed.
That being said, the test is a complicated beast. It is easy for capable students to lose out on marks by poor time management, or by not understanding the structure of the test, or by not knowing exactly what is expected of them, or by not knowing how to structure their writing, or by getting bogged down in small details rather than focussing on overall meaning, or by panicking when they don't understand one individual word, or by talking too much, or by dumb punctuation or by a hundred other little issues. I did have students who 'failed' the test and then spent time intensively studying with me, took it again and 'passed' (these are of course, highly subjective terms, one person's 6 is a fail while another's 5 is a pass...)
My intensive classes would be about 30% 'teaching the test' and about 60% per cent capacity building in terms of their practical skills, vocab and, God help me, grammatical capability, and the remainder of the time was given to practice tests. That worked.
And of course no school can truly give a guarantee. That's just plain dumb.
royceH:
Thanks Miss. The teacher's lament. Oh for a student with a real interest in a work towards a goal ethic.. And a preparedness to adopt same. Sigh.......
Chinese thinking towards Education: I'm going to give you a test. 100 questions out of a possible 1000 questions. They will then memorize the 1000 possible questions and the correct answers to those questions. In my opinion it would be easier to just develop an understanding for the material. But that would mean the teacher has a tougher task in getting the students to understand the material. We all know teachers here are lazy and incompetent.
The result is a student who can't think. A student with a dead brain. So when they are studying for the IELTS or any other exam, search the internet for past questions and memorize. If you try to actually teach them they will just ignore what you're saying.
I taught a student a month ago. For the first 3 sessions I told him, develop and practice thinking of what to say while organizing your thoughts. I taught him my method for doing this and practiced practiced practiced. Every session I told him he has to be able to answer questions he did not prepare for. Time for the practice test, after his 1 minute prep for part 2, I said begin your answer. He looked down at the question for a moment and then said, "I did not prepare for this question, where did you get it from?"
Englteachted:
Another thing that pisses me off. They wait until the last possible minute to study for an exam. And they are so dumb that they think their beginner English could pass the BEC Higher with 10 hours of studying. And schools are happy to oblige.
icnif77:
I had same feeling this year with my students. I try to 'sideline it' with loads of 'describe this' lessons (pics and questions).
It would might work with your student, if you'd give questions as an assignment, and then review of the same questions later.
I was generally drilling them with example/mock IELTS tests. 1000 Q spread in some 30 exams.
After they finished individual exam, each student would read Q and A, and I gave them correct answers with explanations. Students had to grade their own exam on the top of the exam, and save the paper. That followed up with 'read correct exams loud several times', and suggestion to rewrite the whole exam in the note book.
None of my chaps went through the real exam, so I'm not sure, how that would work in real IELTS world.
Shining_brow:
I suggest students "prepare"... so yes, they know what questions there are around, and have gotten some relevant vocab (and phrases, and idioms).. and maybe even sone grammar..
But NOT to memorise!
Cos it's an incredibly (sadistically) enjoyable experience to turn a perfectly memorised 7, into a blubbering 5 in Part 3 
ambivalentmace:
yes, i always tell my students if your examiner picks up the pen again in part 3, your goose is cooked.
I'm possibly the person you're after to respond.. I'm now a former examiner of IELTS, and of course, I was 'teaching' the thing Now, I"m producing a video series on IELTS preparation, as well as touring the country giving lectures (and some teacher training).
As said above - there's this idea that you can just do a few hours a week, for a few weeks (or a month), and magically get the score you want! (well, if the score you want is 4, then ok... 
).
IELTS is a test of English language competency... and as we know, most here are not really competent!
Yes, you can 'guarantee' a score or your money back... you give them a quick, IELTS mock test, lower the score they achieved (ie, if they would have gotten a 5.0, you tell them they only got 4.5), and then after a few weeks of 'training', they do a real test, and get the 5.0 they would have gotten anyway!
There is definitely a way to improve the score! IELTS academic module is academic! But most here don't understand what that actually means!The writing I've seen is about that of a grade 9 back home. Not university level. So, to answer your question - yes, a GOOD IELTS training program can help!
However, I can't say that I really know of any. The teachers don't know what needs to be 'taught', and the local teachers don't understand what academic writing is... and so - all they do is copy copy copy some crap that is almost designed to keep them at 5.5!
As for speaking... simple rule... if they have to memorise, they're not getting higher than 6.0 for speaking (and that's ONLY if they're lucky!) Mostly, memorised responses will get 5.0-5.5 - BECAUSE it's memorised! (and then, in the Part 3 - when they're asked a question that's not been fully prepared for or memorised, they crash like a sack of potatoes!)
Schools tend not to focus on pronunciation - which means, there goes an easy quarter to half band for speaking! They also focus on ridiculous vocabulary!!!
I love seeing the faces of potential IELTS kids when I tell them the examiners KNOW all the Qs (for P1 & 2) are on the internet... and that wonderful fully memorised answer they gave they've heard a dozen times before - and thus, stops them getting a higher score! And all those phrases they use that they have no idea what they actually mean... and say over and over and over and over again..... As well as - let's memorise 1 anwser that will (hopefully) answer 5 questions!!! Yeah - know that! Doesn't work! 5.5! (or lower)
How much do mummy and daddy pay? I've been told about 16K per month for full-time classes! Some are higher. VIPs who get 1-1 are charged hourly (not sure how much)
I charge between 500-1000/hour personally (ie, not through a school).
The final reality is - if they're a good student, and interested in English -they'll be fine (may not be getting the higher scores in the production skills, but can for the receptives) -and those are the people the school advertise - those top 1% (who still don't do great in writing or speaking!) However, if they're a crap student, not much will make a difference!
icnif77:
I had offer a month ago of 120Rmb/h from Uni nearby to teach 'IELTS speaking only!' as part-time. First, they asked me to teach 20h/week, which they lower it in the end to 7h/week.
After few negotiating emails, I (diplomatically) replied I cannot work any part-time job for less than my present job pays me (200 Rmb/h). No reply from Uni.
Shining_brow:
You were taking too much of their profits... IELTS classes at uni would be the students paying a direct fee to whomever.... probably the teacher of the dean (or combination).
icnif77:
My first thought was 'Why are they treating me as 'scum'?' I had 'bad week' afterwards.
I presently work 14 classes/week. I'm free from Sat - Tue afternoon. I can't rest anymore! I'm sick of laying in bed.
There's new IELTS Centre across the street. I'm going to ask for part-time job these days.
I thought that the Chinese thinking towards taking the IELTS was to pay another person to take the test for you so that you could attend a university in another country and have no idea what anyone is saying, because laowai are dumb.
Shining_brow:
Probably... but they get caught :D I was told on a couple of occasions - something is suspicious (usually, the photo - but also the dumbfuck forgetting their name or new birthday), and so the supervisors ring the phone number... "wei, ni hao .. ni shi <name>.. Shi de? wo shi YaSi Laoban zai..., he Wo you ni de ID ka...."* click......
*"(hey, hello. are you "name'? You are? I'm the IELTS supervisor at... -and I have your ID card in my hand...")
Shining_brow:
Many used to... maybe it depends on what area or city you're in. Where I was, I had a LOT of faith in my supervisors (cos they have the same sort of malicious streak that I do :) )
