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
materials and therefore the governing bodies would prefer
IELTS examiners not to be active as IELTS teachers, although
this has now changed since the beginning of 2010. It
was originally 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. The IELTS Books section is for 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 was established
in October 2005, and 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.
Please
Note: This is not the official IELTS Website
Please click on: IELTS.ORG
for the official site.
