This is an All Ears English podcast, episode 102.
Secrets to a high score on IELTS with expert Jack Askew.
Welcome to the All Ears English podcast where you'll finally get real native English conversation and fluency for business and life.
We believe in connection, not perfection, when it comes to learning English.
Now here are your hosts Lindsay McMahon, the English adventurer, and Aubrey Carter, the IELTS whiz, coming to you from Arizona and Boston, USA.
In this episode, you'll get three tips from an expert so you can prepare for success on IELTS.
Listen up for some fantastic insider advice to be ready for this tough English exam.
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Hey, Aubrey, I have a question for you.
Let's hear it.
Have you ever had to take a standardized exam like an SAT or a GMAT or a GRE or anything good like that?
Oh, for sure.
Right.
In high school to prepare for college, I had to take the SATs, the ACTs.
But I actually took an exam pretty recently when I was teaching in New York.
I had to prove that I was highly qualified to teach French.
Because my undergraduate degree was not for teaching French.
It was for ESL.
Interesting.
But they needed me to teach French.
So I took this exam that was a lot like the IELTS exam, the French content specialty test.
And yeah, it was really interesting because I had a speaking test in French very similar to the speaking test on IELTS, except that it was French recordings.
I wasn't a real person.
And the writing, the essays were very similar in French.
So that was pretty recent.
That was just a few years ago.
Yeah.
And did you have like a clear study plan?
Did you what was your style and preparing for that test?
Yeah.
No, I wish I had.
I wish I had had a study plan like we have for three keys IELTS and you know insider information from an examiner like we can provide to you, because I didn't.
I was kind of flying blind.
I just I spoke French very fluently.
So I scored very highly.
It was fine.
Yes, I got luckily lucky.
But it was still there were some things that were unexpected.
I remember scoring a little lower from the for the writing than I expected.
Interesting.
Because there just are specific things for each exam that you don't necessarily know going into it.
Sometimes it's not enough just to be fluent in a language.
Exactly.
That's so true.
So guys, as you know, we do a lot of IELTS here at All Ears English.
Aubrey, where can our listeners find you talking about IELTS three days a week along with Jessica Beck.
Where can they go?
Yeah, we have another podcast, guys, called IELTS Energy.
Jessica was an examiner for 14 years for the IELTS exam.
So we're so lucky to have her, all of her insider advice that she's passed along to me.
We focus solely on IELTS.
So we're able to give you...
Information you can trust.
You know it's correct.
Strategies and tips in every episode.
So make sure you're following the IELTS Energy Podcast.
Exactly.
And we also love to network around with other IELTS experts, right?
And so in this episode, we're actually going to feature a guest, Jack Askew, who also teaches IELTS.
And we're going to see what Jack's tips are here.
And we may chime in with our own ideas as well and respond to Jack's tips.
But we're looking forward to featuring Jack here today.
So let's just dive right into it for Jack's first tip.
Are you ready?
Yeah, let's hear it.
Okay.
So this, the first tip, might sound a little bit obvious, but I always see a lot of students do the focus preparation later on, when it's too late.
But I think it's really important to get that focus preparation early and to also get as many sample papers as possible, because it's important to know the structure of each section and to know what you're going to see when the exam comes.
Okay, so this one is so clear and so true.
Aubrey, what do you think?
Preparing early, right?
Cramming does not work for IELTS.
You cannot start preparing a week or two advance.
Jack says to start preparing six months or even a year before.
We definitely recommend if you have a year, you should just focus on improving your overall English.
You don't want to start focusing specifically on IELTS until two months at the most ahead of time, or you're going to get burned out, right.
At the end of the day, it's an English test.
So improve your overall English and then take a couple of months to focus on IELTS strategies.
Right.
So if you spend that time that year improving your general English, your overall fluency, you bring that fluency to the preparation, learning the actual strategies.
And that can be done with a good study plan in two months.
So I like that.
I like that strategy.
I think that's a really good way to do it.
And we do provide a study plan for either 30 days or 60 days, because you may be in that situation where you only have one month.
That is enough time to get the score you need on IELTS.
But you do have to have a study plan so that you're maximizing your time.
You're not wasting any time.
Yeah, exactly.
And there are two different versions of IELTS, right, Aubrey?
What are they?
Yeah, this is important to know.
There's an academic version and a general.
So it depends on why you're taking IELTS, who is requesting you to take the IELTS exam.
But the only real difference is writing task one.
It's a letter that you write for the general exam.
And then the academic essay is about a chart or a graph.
It's more about describing numbers.
And then the reading exam is somewhat different.
The general exam is an easier level, has more passages, but they're shorter simpler, maybe like an advertisement.
And the academic reading question or academic reading passages will be more academic, maybe like an academic journal article.
But the question types and the strategies you use to answer them are exactly the same.
I see.
So it sounds like general might be a little bit easier.
Overall, the general exam, is that fair?
Yeah, in some ways it is.
With our Three Keys course, we use a lot of academic passages so that you're prepared for both.
And then the actual test day feels so much easier because you're used to answering questions in academic passages.
And we've had a lot of students who prepare for general tests but then ending up having to take academic
And they're so grateful that they're prepared.
Yeah, I love that.
And we haven't quite mentioned listening yet.
So in this next clip, Jack is going to chime in.
We're going to play part of the interview with Jack about listening.
Are we ready here?
Yeah, let's hear it.
Okay, the listening section does cause a lot of students problems and this one thing about the listening is you only actually hear the recording once, So a lot of students go in and expect to hear it again, but it only comes once and it goes very quickly.
That's tough.
So there's a couple of things I recommend doing.
The first one is just to listen as much as possible.
What I mean is to take your iPod, your MP3 player, your iPhone with you wherever you go and to just cram it full of english.
Okay, and especially if you've got a lot of time before the exam.
It doesn't matter, especially what you put on there, but just to listen to things like your podcast.
Different podcasts yeah, TED Talks are great as well.
But anything that you put on there is really important to listen as much as possible, because there's no easy way to listen just a few weeks before the exam.
Okay, so what's the basic idea here that Jack is saying about listening?
What do we need to know?
Yeah, it's very important for you to know that you're only going to hear the recording once.
Something about the exam.
A lot of students sort of listen to it and then they're thinking, all right, I'm going to hear this again.
No, you don't hear it again.
You need to be ready to understand information after just hearing it one time.
So you need, just like you said, you need to be listening to podcasts, TED Talks.
You need to be listening multiple times a week to English.
Well, it's so true because I mean, in a way, IELTS is trying to mimic the skills you'll need when you do immigrate.
And people don't repeat necessarily in the real world for you on a daily basis, right?
You can't ask everyone to repeat every time.
So you've got to be ready.
And like you said, Aubrey, the way to do that is just consume a lot of listening material.
Exactly, right.
There are some specific podcasts that we recommend like Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me.
It's an NPR podcast that does provide free transcripts so you can listen while looking at the transcripts or without the transcripts, to sort of work both sides of your brain to get used to to do lots of different activities.
And it's a good speed.
It's funny and interesting.
You want to make sure that you're interested and engaged in the podcast you're listening to.
You can...
Slow down the speed, maybe listen to it at a slower speed at first and then speed it up if needed.
We have had students recommend listening to listening exam audio at like one and a half speed.
So then on test day. it feels slow and so much easier to get those answers.
That's a very good tip.
Oh, I love it.
The point is just preparing in the right way, right?
Knowing what's coming on test day.
And then Jack is going to mention something else here.
We're going to play Jack's next clip, next piece of insight about kind of the danger of Direct translation word for word.
I think this happens in reading and writing, doesn't it, Aubrey?
Definitely, yes.
This is really good advice.
Let's listen to Jack's clip.
So the third tip is the writing exam.
And I recommend doing something called read to write, because a lot of learners go in think in their own language and then try to translate this.
Oh, that's a big problem.
Yeah.
And it just leads to strange sound in english, right um?
So what i recommend doing is to read lots of model answers.
There are so many model answers out there and you can get them for the different parts of the writing exam.
Um, read them, get to know them, and then also i've i have a method which uses space repetitions software.
I call this the SRS writing method.
What it does is it helps you internalize the correct structures of the writing exam, to internalize the correct written English.
So when you go into the exam, these of trying to translate word for word from your own language into English.
Okay.
Is that true?
Have you seen that as you've been working one-on-one with students?
Do they do this?
Do they kind of like go direct word to word translating?
Yeah, for sure, right?
If you're thinking in your own language and then translating word for word, it does lead to those strange sentence structures that don't work and that's pulling down your cohesion coherence score, your task response score, because the ideas aren't clear, not supported like they need to be.
We just can't approach English writing or speaking with that word-for-word mentality.
We use chunks of language.
Learn them in context so that you use them and it makes sense.
Yeah, I mean.
This is why we said in another episode using music, using songs, because common chunks you'll hear them watching TV, watching Netflix, getting those cultural chunks idioms, things people say all the time that's the place to go.
I've made that mistake in my own, in second languages, right?
Trying to find the vocabulary in Spanish, but to say things the way it's said in English.
It just doesn't work.
Exactly, right?
It just doesn't work.
And what's really helpful is when you have good essay templates.
This does not mean a whole essay that's written.
It's a sentence that can be used for different types of essays that has...
Linking words, those transition phrases.
You need high-level vocab and then you add the ideas that are topic-specific for the essay that you're writing.
You add the ideas that you need, reasons and examples, but you have this structure.
You have this template that takes the guesswork out of it and boosts all of your scores.
Yeah, that's so good.
And we do provide templates like that in the Three Keys Isles online course.
So by the way, maybe we should just let our listeners know where they could go to find that course.
Yeah, you can go to allearsenglish.com slash keys.
K-E-Y-S.
We have the computer delivered version, paper version, everything you could need, academic, general.
So just go to allyoursenglish.com slash keys to sign up.
All right.
And let's hear from Jack on one more piece of insight, right, about the writing exam.
I mean, how can we get better?
How can we find better tools to prepare with?
So let's listen to what he says.
Yes, the software that I recommend is called Anki, and it's free to download.
A lot of language learners use this to learn vocabulary, but what I recommend is using it so that you can take the model answers, put them into the software and learn the different sentences, but become more familiar with the sentences.
And there are certain things that you can do so that you actually internalise the correct English.
So I like this tool, Anki.
I know Jack talks about this a lot.
Have you used Anki before?
I have not, but we do have students that use it.
And this is, I mean, this is great advice for anyone learning English, not just for IELTS students.
Yeah, for sure.
For sure.
So what exactly is it?
Just so we know.
I mean, so it's basically a memorization tool for vocabulary, right?
Yeah, you can put in model answers from IELTS, use the software to learn phrases from it.
So it's a great way to learn chunks of language at a time instead of like memorizing vocabulary lists.
It's a much smarter way to do it.
Unless, as Jack said, it should be free to download.
So go to the App Store.
That's an app, guys.
And download Anki.
A-N-K-I.
This is great.
And I would love to let our listeners know how they can find out more from Jack.
Where can they go?
Yes, his website is tofluency.com.
You can find out more about learning English there.
And he has a lot of material for general fluency as well as IELTS.
So whether you're studying for IELTS or not, it's a great resource for every one of our listeners.
All right.
Awesome.
Well, thanks to Jack for his insight.
And thanks, Aubrey, for your IELTS insight as well.
We've got a lot of experts on the show today.
I know, right?
If you're not getting all that IELTS info, be sure to subscribe to IELTS Energy.
There's a lot of good content you guys are missing.
So come check us out.
Check it out.
All right, Aubrey, I'll see you in the next one.
Take care.
Bye.
Thanks for listening to All Ears English and if you believe in connection, not perfection, follow our show wherever you listen to podcasts to make sure you don't miss anything.
See you next time.
