This IELTS blog is designed to help you with your English essay writing skills and general ESL skills. Please comment on posts you find helpful!
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Spoken performance enhancers
Monday, November 29, 2010
Spot the mistakes in this student's speaking response
Sunday, November 28, 2010
IELTS Speaking - Can you spot a few areas where this student could improve?
Positive:
-very few hesitations
-no bad pauses
-no short answers or unnecessarily long answers
-very natural use of English idioms and phrases
Negative:
-a few grammatical errors
-she gets tongue-tied at moments
Friday, November 26, 2010
Qualifying words
Time/Rate of occurrence | Never, rarely, seldomly, once in a blue moon, occasionally, sometimes, often, next to always, always, without fail |
Conditional | Only, except, if, on the condition that, provided that |
Order | Before, after, first, second, third, final, last |
People | Women, men, male, female, professional |
Negative | Non-, un-, not, no |
Quantity | Surpassing, over, under, few, too much, too little, not enough |
Supporting/Refuting | Anti-, but, yet, however, on the other hand, with this, in favour of |
Possibility | May, might, could, potentially, possibly, probably, must, certainly |
Importance | Necessary to, need to, ought to, have to |
Comparison | More ... than, bigger, smaller |
Additional info | Further, in addition, also, as well |
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
Two common mistakes made by IELTS exam takers (speaking section)
"He told me you are smart."
Please don't become a victim of bad spoken grammar habits.
My hat goes off to Rebecca, who makes a very nice summary of reported speech here. I've also included another video of hers regarding speaking about future events. Commit these two tips to memory and practice them daily as you train.