.
About
Hi
My name is Paul Griffiths
and I am originally from Bournemouth in England. This free site is
dedicated to all the hard working IELTS teachers and students. I
am currently an active IELTS teacher and have been so for several
years having taught both in New Zealand and China. I have also
participated in teacher training programmes delivered to Chinese
teachers engaged in teaching English and lectured in British Society &
Culture, Sun Yat-Sen University.
When there are so many ESOL, ELT language sites why
would there be a need for an IELTS website, after all there is the
official site at www.ielts.org.
Well for my part I can only relate to my own experience and that of
other colleagues who have taught IELTS.
The IELTS exam necessarily needs to have a great deal
of secrecy with regards to exam material and therefore the governing
bodies would prefer IELTS examiners not to be active as IELTS
teachers. It is thought that they might knowingly or
inadvertently give away too much information about material and
procedures thus rendering the exam results unreliable. There is
no official college that I am aware of which trains teachers to teach
IELTS and in the main trained ESOL teachers are often asked to take an
IELTS class with no previous experience. As with most trained
teachers they adapt very readily but are still left looking for
resources and additional methodology and this is where the ground can
become very thin. I have searched long and hard through many
websites and books for materials which can be used and just like
everything else some resources are excellent and others very poor.
There are boasts that there are magical ways of passing the IELTS exam
but any experienced teacher will know that there are no short cuts to
language acquisition and that it requires dedication, good resources
and good methodology.
What is the difference between teaching ESOL and
teaching IELTS? Basically they are both about teaching English
and this needs to be to graded levels but with IELTS there is a need
to use resources and methodology which specifically targets the IELTS
exam and its requirements. Students need to be able to quickly
understand question types and methods for finding answers quickly.
This site is therefore to enable those teachers who
find themselves thrown into the world of IELTS at a moments notice or
even those who are curious about possible new ideas. The
forum (currently closed) is for asking and answering questions relating to IELTS in order
that we might all gain from a wider experience of other teachers. Hopefully
both teachers and students will use the forums and help each
other. In the Teaching Ideas section from the sidebar menu I
hope that teachers will submit ideas or tips for others and that this
section will grow to help everyone concerned. The Books section
is for IELTS related books and maybe we can get some comments later
about the listed books. In addition there is a Links section for
other sites which may be of use.
This site is new and was
completed in October 2005. I hope over the next year it will grow to be a useful
resource in the teaching of IELTS. The site is free to use but
is copyright and no material can be used for any purpose without
express permission except for the ideas in the 5 ideas sections. I claim no right to any
material contributed in the ideas sections and if anyone does claim ownership of any
intellectual property then please contact me at the email on the lower
left of this page.
