Allen Davenport joined us for the second part of his series exploring ways of using authentic practice tests to prepare students for the IELTS tests. This time, he was looking at preparation for the Writing test.
Allen began by considering the benefits of using authentic practice tests to prepare for the exam: doing so helps teachers both to monitor students’ progress, and to provide holistic, meaningful feedback, and enables students to understand the tasks and assessment criteria better. This latter point is crucial – students need to understand exactly what is expected of them, and what the task requires of them. The first rule of academic writing is to make sure that you ask the actual question that is being asked, and not the one that you expected or wanted to be asked! Looking at the task achievement descriptions for particular bands will also give your learners a sense of what they need to do.
You can help prepare your students for Task 1 by practising overview and summary writing
Learners often need assistance here, and showing them patterns is not always helpful – writing the word ‘overall’ and then following it with a few words is not enough! Students need to be able to identify the key features of a piece of writing or a diagram, features that may not become clear right away. Practising with authentic tests can help them develop this skill, familiarising them with the techniques they’ll need – such as the ability to combine similar categories (‘satisfied’ and ‘very satisfied’), for instance, in graphs or pie charts, to come to a more meaningful understanding of the data.
These are just a few of the tips Allen gave during his webinar. To hear the rest, press the ‘Play’ button below. You may also be interested to find out more about other Cambridge resources for IELTS preparation, including Testbank and the Official Cambridge Guide to IELTS.
Check out the first webinar, where Allen discusses reading and the use of authentic practice tests in the IELTS classroom.