This is the IELTS Energy Podcast Episode 1507.
Three tips to quickly improve grammar for IELTS.
Welcome to the IELTS Energy Podcast from All Ears English.
Downloaded more than 35 million times with examiner trained IELTS whiz Aubrey Carter and Lindsay McMahon, the English adventurer.
If you are stuck with a low score, our insider method will help you get the score you need to unlock your dreams. Get your estimated band score now with our two minute quiz at allearsenglish .com slash my score.
Does it take a year to increase your grammar score on IELTS?
Heck no. You can strategically focus on key things to see an increase in 30 days.
Listen in to learn what to do today.
Go to allearsenglish .com slash fluency score.
Again, that's allearsenglish .com slash f -l -u -e -n -c -y -s -c -o -r -e and we'll see you there.
Hey, Aubrey, how are you doing today?
I'm great. How are you, Lindsay?
Good. So excited to be here on IELTS Energy.
Aubrey, do you find that students worry about grammar a lot for IELTS yes almost too much sometimes right sometimes the focus is all on grammar and vocabulary and you don't always think about all the other stores scores you should be improving but you also can't totally ignore grammar right there are some it's pretty easy simple things you can do make sure you're doing to get the highest grammar score you can so that's what we're talking about today yeah in my mind a grammar is the biggest potential potential liability if the preparation is incorrect the way you prepare, but it's also the biggest
potential boost that you can give to your score.
Because if you use the right grammar strategically, you could really boost your score strategically.
So yeah, that's what's really tricky.
So we're going to answer a question we got about grammar today.
And you are going to get three tips for speaking and three tips for the writing exam of the quickest things you can do to improve your grammar score because unfortunately it can take up to a year to increase a full band point but there are some things you can make sure you're doing that if you don't neglect these if there's things you don't overlook on test a you can boost your scores yeah the most important thing to know is we are not approaching grammar in the same way we would if we were at a b1 b2 c1 trying to move up those cefr levels right I'll bring it's a different approach it's a more
selective strategic approach right Right.
Exactly. So I'll just go ahead and read our question here.
It was Anu Deep in one of our webinars that just asked, how can I improve grammar in writing and speaking?
So we're answering that today and we're assuming you don't have a full year because it would be different.
What you would focus on, what you would spend time on if you have a year or two is different if you're limited.
If you have 30 days, 60 days, a few months, it's different what you'll focus on yeah totally but you can still increase your grammar score if you use each and every day in the right way which is why we provide a study plan and three keys ielts but here we're going to give our listeners some little tips to get started but first aubry what should our listeners do right now yes be sure to hit follow right here on ielts energy for strategies and tips to boost your ielts scores as well as sample answers vocabulary everything you need make sure sure you're following the podcast. Love it.
And we have some important poll results to announce for our listeners.
What was the poll? Yes, these polls are on Spotify.
We love when you fill them out.
The poll was, have you taken IELTS before?
I was very interested to see among our listeners what the results were.
Yes was 28 % and no was 72%.
So that's interesting to know that that in general, probably about three quarters of our audience have not taken IELTS exam yet.
Yeah, very interesting, right?
You all are new to the exam.
So fresh eyes and ears getting ready to go in with the right tactics and tips.
Love it. Absolutely.
Yes. Be sure to fill out these Spotify polls.
So just go into Spotify.
We'll have another one today.
It's really interesting to see these results.
Love it. All right, Aubrey, let's get into answering the questions.
When it comes to writing what can we do what are some simple things we can do to improve our grammar yeah so the first thing for every ielts essay that you write this includes your practice essays as well as on test day you need to proofread your essays often students when they submit essays to us for feedback i can tell they have not proofread it right so many little mistakes that they definitely would have caught if they proofread it you want to get in the habit of taking a full five minutes to proofread your essay.
This means you need to manage your time so that you have time to brainstorm and write it and leave time to proofread.
Yeah. And again, in three key styles, we show you this as part of our writing system as our three step system to how to do that and how to fit it in and how to manage your time.
But the point here for today is just you need to proof your essays.
Exactly. Proofread your essays.
You will catch errors, right?
And this this is not a skill that you can all of a sudden be good at on test day, or that you'll remember to manage your time so that you'll have time to do it.
You need to be doing this as you write practice essays as well.
And there are specific things you should be looking for, right, Lindsay?
Oh, for sure. For sure.
Yes. All right. So verb tense, punctuation, spelling.
There are specific things that you want to get used to looking for in those essays.
And you can always, if it's a a handwritten essay, cross it off, write it correctly above it.
You don't need to erase anything.
You don't have to start over.
Your essay can be pretty messy as long as the examiner can see what you intended.
So just cross it off, write it above.
Or if it's on the computer, delete it, rewrite it even easier.
Okay. Got it. Good to know.
So looking for the verb tense, the punctuation, the spelling.
Got it. Okay. Yeah.
What is the second thing we could do, Aubrey?
Yeah, you need to find out which mistakes you're making most. This is related to proofreading as well.
Once you're aware more of the mistakes you're making, you know even better what to look for as you're proofreading your essays.
So how can students do this, Lindsay?
There are a lot of tools to be able to identify the mistakes that you make.
Yeah, we now have AI, and Grammarly uses AI in a brilliant way.
So what you can do is put your essays into Grammarly and just take note of the errors that are being made as a practice routine.
operate, right? Exactly, right?
This will help you recognize the errors you're making.
You're not expected to catch every error in your essay.
There are tools that are available to you.
So you can definitely put essays in there.
You can also get feedback from a teacher, from us.
We provide feedback for IELTS essays so that you know the mistakes you're making.
If you're spending hours and hours for months writing practice essays, but you don't know if you're making errors or not, this is not effective practice.
Yeah, I think the point here is don't put your head in the sand when it comes to your errors, your grammar errors on writing, right?
Exactly. Yes. And then number three is don't translate directly.
So this I know is a huge, especially for writing.
We want to sort of just write it the way it would be in our first language.
This causes a lot of grammar errors.
Yeah. Have you seen this in the essays that you've corrected, Aubrey?
Absolutely. Yes. In fact, I'll share a sentence from a recent IELTS essay that was submitted to me for feedback and then I'm going to share what the sentence should have been and it definitely wasn't an issue of just writing it the way it would have been written in a first language right so that the sentence was and this was a sentence in an introduction the topic of technology has great effect in our lives and it has made outstanding balance between work and personal life has sparked considerable debate in recent years.
So then corrected, that would be, you know, the effect of technology on a person's balance between work and personal life has sparked considerable debate in recent years.
So you can see that first sentence, the examiner, there are a few scores that would be going down there, right?
That's not cohesive.
There are grammar errors and it's all because we're just trying to write it as it would be in our first language.
It's not cohesive. It's not concise.
It feels like, what do we say, gobbledygook, right?
Exactly, right. And if it doesn't make sense to the examiner, they're not going to be able to give you the score you want, even if the ideas are correct.
Precisely. I love it.
So making sure we're not translating, this is a broader tip for everyone learning English, right?
But especially important, it really comes down to your score on IELTS.
Exactly, and that really does apply to speaking and writing.
But when you're writing your essays, you can't just think of how you would say it in your first language and write it directly, right?
The grammar forms will be different.
The phrasing will be different.
You have to be instead learning, you know, shadowing, paying attention to the way this would be said in English and using those structures.
You got it. If you are a band five or six student, then your study plan will look different than if you are a band seven or eight student, but you need to know your estimated score range to know how to prepare.
Take the next step and get your estimated IELTS band score.
Answer a few quick questions and get your score plus resources to push that score higher at allearsenglish .com slash myscore.
Okay, Aubrey, we are back from break.
Let's talk about speaking.
So speaking is another area we can strategically increase our grammar. What is the first tip for speaking?
Exactly. Exactly. So the grammar mistakes that you make in speaking will be similar to the mistakes you are making in writing.
So Grammarly or AI can also help to point this out.
So you can also write out or do a speaking sample answer and then write it out, put it in Grammarly to also catch those errors or just use the feedback you're getting from your writing as well in speaking to know, okay, these are the grammar errors I'm making.
This will also apply to speaking but you can also have a teacher give feedback on mistakes being made in practice sample answers right again in three keys we provide practice sample speaking tests with feedback because you need to be aware of the types of mistakes that you're making yeah a mock test is what we call it and this should be done with someone that understands IELTS on a deep level like you Aubrey having that depth of experience knowing exactly what the examiner does, what they look for is very different than just chatting with an English tutor, okay?
Exactly. And when you are with a speaking partner, the best use of that time is to focus on fluency, right?
Asking and answering practice questions rather than grammar correction.
So, be really intentional about when you focus on grammar and when you're practicing, especially especially with other IELTS test takers, other people learning for IELTS, focus more on fluency.
Love it. OK, so that is the first tip.
What is the second tip, Aubrey?
OK, the second tip is don't try to use complicated verb tenses.
There is always one correct verb tense for everything you're saying.
So often students will make the mistake of like trying to squeeze in past perfect because they think it will improve their grammar score.
But if the sentence should have been past simple, your score will actually go down.
You can't use any tense you want.
Yeah. The truth is we don't really use Past Perfect that much and the IELTS is meant to test real English, practical English for your daily life in a sense, right?
So not squeezing in that tense you don't really understand or are not using correctly.
Yeah. And the good news is that the IELTS scoring system for both writing and speaking, it requires a variety of grammar structures.
That doesn't mean you have to use all of these complicated future and past verb tenses.
That's not what they're talking about.
If you use simple, compound, and complex sentences, you are satisfying that requirement of a variety of grammar structures.
So, the examiner is looking for all of those.
That's why you've heard us talk about them a lot here on the podcast. You do need to use those.
So, that leads us right into our number three, right, Lindsay?
Yeah, exactly. And I think just as an asterisk to that, this is why we're not going to the back of the textbook and studying all these grammar tenses because all we need is the simple the compound and the complex sentences it's very strategic okay so again number three is use compound and complex sentences tell us more about this aubrey exactly so compound sentences are two independent clauses these are sentences that could stand alone alone and then a conjunction combines them so for example the sentence i absolutely love going to the movies but it's gotten super expensive so we have these two
independent thoughts right love going the movies it's gotten super expensive and often students will have those be simple separate choppy sentences use a conjunction combine them and you are boosting your grammar scores or there's another thing we can do use a complex sentence right so a complex sentence is an independent clause with one or more relative clauses Aubrey what would that look like exactly so here's Here's an example.
Although I planned to use my gym membership a ton, I really haven't.
So here we have a relative clause, right?
Although I planned to use my gym membership a lot, I can't stand as an independent sentence.
This is a clause. And then I really haven't, that's a full complete sentence, right?
So this is a complex sentence.
And if you are using some simple sentences, absolutely.
But also with compound and complex sentences, sentences, both in speaking and writing, that satisfies that of the scoring system requiring a variety of grammar structures.
It also keeps the examiner awake.
Yes. It makes what you're saying human, interesting.
These are interesting sentences, so much better than trying to jam in the future perfect, the past perfect, in a way that's awkward, doesn't really make sense, and doesn't feel relevant.
Exactly, right? And we'll actually pull down your score if it's not the right verb tense for the sentence, if you use it incorrectly.
So instead of trying to use every verb tense that exists in English, don't focus on that.
Make sure you're using a variety of sentence structures.
We want to recommend a previous episode we did.
It was IELTS Energy 1177.
So you could go to our website, allersenglish .com and find a blog write up for that one.
It was called Three IELTS Band band nine sentence structures.
And we provided details for writing compound and complex sentences with lots of examples.
I love it. So guys go over right now when we finish up today and check out that episode.
Now, Aubrey, our listeners should definitely be over in Spotify when they listen today so they can vote in the poll.
Yeah. Yes. Our Spotify poll today is what grammar score do you think you'd get if you took IELTS today?
You know, five, six, seven, eight, nine.
Right. How how good is your grammar?
And yeah, we'd love to hear how you feel about your current grammar score.
And I bet a lot of native speakers would say nine, but that might not be true.
You never know, right?
They might make more mistakes than they would expect to.
Yeah. That's why we learn IELTS.
We learn about the test and the strategy and what the examiner wants because native speakers cannot walk into IELTS and get nines.
They just can't. They have to know what to expect.
It's true. It's very specific what examiners are looking for, what the scoring system is all about.
So you need strategies.
Absolutely. And I'm excited that now you have tips for both speaking and writing of what you should focus on for the grammar score so that you can improve your score soon.
Right. Right away. You don't need a year if you're looking for and paying attention to the right things.
Oh, yeah. We've seen so many success stories where students come in.
They have 30 days and they follow a study plan in our course super closely and they make it happen.
They get past IELTS.
They only need one take, right?
That is the dream right there.
Yeah. So, for those 75 % of you who haven't taken IELTS yet, that's the dream that you could take it one time, have the strategies you need, and get past IELTS.
You got it. Guys, hit follow right here on the show and we'll see you next time.
All right. Awesome.
See you next time. Okay.
Avery, bye. Take care.
Bye. thanks for listening to IELTS energy hit subscribe now and don't forget to find your estimated band score at allearsenglish .com my score
