It puts in a cameo appearance on page 180, but I’d like to have seen it less simply assumed as we move though the otherwise excellent Writing work. I see a corollary here with punctuation it bears a relationship with writing like that of pronunciation in speech, and it too seldom gets the attention it deserves.
To be sure, any advanced course that has got its head around the notion that learners at this level have not necessarily mastered the phonemic system of the language deserves some credit, but the Speaking Assessment Criteria faithfully reproduced on page 183 remind us that Pronunciation ranks equally with Grammar, Lexis and Fluency. Pronunciation gets a mention in three of the modules, though I found it somewhat tokenistic: tiny sections on weak forms, the schwa and connected speech. Each module finishes with a packed one-page review. If they can take in and appropriately use just half of what’s in these two books, they’ll be flying into the heady 8 band, and Writing part 2 is probably the ideal stage for them to show that.
Writing sections will send you to look at the descriptors for assessment criteria before the planning stage this has been thought through well.Īpart from heaps of practice of the four papers, there are sizeable sections on Language development and Vocabulary. Of course, only in the two output parts of the test can candidates display (and I use the verb consciously) their acquisition of this language, something they sometimes forget in the Speaking part, where just answering the questions politely isn’t enough to get much beyond a 6-band.
#EXPERT IELTS BAND 7.5 PDF FULL#
And the modules are full of analysis and reflection (‘What helped you identify and choose the correct option?’) and as much post-reading personalisation as you could hope for (‘Would you describe yourself more as a rational or creative person?’). Nevertheless, while it avoids any topics that might quicken the pulse of your learners, it still manages to be pretty interesting. I might have gone for shorter modules with slightly wider thematic range. Both A and B walk us through all the sections, though not all the parts, of the exam. A community and B communication, A the mind and B the body, A preventing crime and B solving crime, etc. These are divided into A and B halves that are thematically related, e.g. Module titles don’t try to be funny or enigmatic: Consumer Society, Social Networks, Law and Order, the Feelgood Factor, etc. The coursebook has ten modules of 14 pages, which is going to account for quite a lot of class time, though of course some of it could be done as self-study. Well fair enough, since most IELTS candidates are looking to pursue university-level studies in English (the Academic version) and those going for the exam for migration purposes (General Training, with some differences in the Reading and Writing components only) are perhaps less likely to need to cope with understanding and producing this level of discourse. And if you’re coming in at a 6.0 level, you’ll find the take-off pretty steep, as the material in Module 1 doesn’t seem to be any lower pitched than that in Module 10.Įxpert IELTS, like the exam, is adult-content and expects punters to be articulate: the lead-in for one listening section asks ‘What do you think is the most important medical advance in history?’ Um … the development of antibiotics, germ theory, birth control, anaesthetics, realising that we are not made up of four humours and the best treatment for any malady is to use leeches, or getting Hugh Laurie to play Doctor House? And the reading sections will expect you to take lines like: ‘Our ability to imbue things with rich meaning is a universal human trait that emerges early in life and develops as we age’ in your stride.
The aim is to take IELTS students from a respectable 6.0 level (top end of B2) to 7.5 (top end of C1), which where I work in Spain is usually a 180–220-hour trip, and I reckon there are about 220 hours of work in this coursebook even without the SRB, so fasten your seatbelts, forget the cirrocumulus outside and get ready to put in some hard work. There’s also a Student’s Resource Book (SRB), contributing another 139 pages, with ten pages of additional practice to consolidate language input and test-taking skills. At seventeen and a half hours, it’s a mighty long haul, much like Pearson’s Expert IELTS 7.5, which weighs in at a hefty 214 pages, and that’s just the coursebook. I recently picked up some friends who had just flown on what is, at the time of writing, the world’s longest non-stop flight, between Auckland and Qatar.
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