EnglishRyan's IELTS Blog

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Sunday, March 30, 2008

Cold again in Shanghai

I finally got around to updating the www.ielts-ielts.com page I created a few weeks ago and also wrote two lessons for www.englishryan.com.

Besides that, just spent the weekend relaxing and eating 'zong zi'. Zong zi is a Chinese food made of rice wrapped in a leaf, and it tastes awesome!

It's cold (again) in Shanghai, so I spent most of the weekend studying Chinese. I am now trying to learn the characters, but it is REALLY difficult. For example, check out this video:



Argh!
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Sunday, March 16, 2008

Laundry list of apologies

Maybe I should entitle this blog the 'apology' blog seeing as that is all I ever seem to write in it. :D But sorry that there have been so few updates. I spent the weekend outside with some friends, taking advantage of the awesome weather (t-shirt time!)

Last week, I taught some lessons on how to express yourself when you are annoyed by something. We used phrases like:

It bugs me when...

I find it irritating when...

My pet peeve is...

I am just sitting down to make lesson plans for the coming week and thought perhaps an interesting topic would be how to express yourself when you like something. So here are some phrases you can try out:

I love it when...

It's awesome when...

I find ... ... very pleasant.

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Have a great week!

Ryan
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Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Active forum

I came across this forum http://www.usingenglish.com the other day. It is a great resource and is always active with both teachers and students. If you have any English related questions, check it out!

Ryan
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Monday, March 10, 2008

Some new updates

Sorry again for the lack of updates. I wrote and recorded a few new lessons today and will get them up after work this evening.

Ryan
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Thursday, March 6, 2008

IELTS page up

I have finally put together a page dedicated to IELTS prep. There is not much on it now, but I will get some more vids up this weekend. Check it out at - http://www.ielts-ielts.com

Good luck!

Ryan
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Sunday, March 2, 2008

I love Shanghai

Beautiful day here in Shanghai! Going to hit the bund (Shanghai waterfront) later

Hope you are having a nice day, too

Ryan
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What is IELTS?

IELTS (International English Language Testing System) is an exam that assesses the English abilities of those who wish to work or study in an English speaking country.

(The following is taken directly from ielts.org):

International Recognition

IELTS is recognised for course admission by universities in many countries, including Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the USA, the UK and increasingly in Germany and wider Europe.

In the USA the IELTS Test is now recognised by more than 1000 institutions and new ones are constantly added to the list, of which you will always find the latest version here.

IELTS is also required as proof of your language abilities for immigration to Australia, New Zealand and Canada.

What appears on the test?

The test checks the applicant's strengths in the areas of speaking, reading, listening and writing and is separated into two test types - Academic and General.

What is the difference between the Academic IELTS Module and the General Training IELTS Module?


IELTS Academic Training is a course and test designed to prepare and assess those wishing to attend institutes of higher education in English speaking countries. The listening and speaking portions of the two tests are identical, but the reading and writing portions are not. The General Module test asks the candidate to complete two writing tasks. The first is a letter (minimum 150 words). The second is an essay (minimum 250 words). The Academic Module test, however, is different. For this test, the candidate must write one piece describing factual information that is presented to them (for example, a bar graph or list of statistics). Using this information, the candidate must accurately depict in words the information presented by the images (minimum 150 words). The second task is to write an essay on a given topic (minimum 250 words).