English Language tutoring and IELTS Preparation

26/08/2021

A quick summary and do's and don'ts for IELTS Listening

15/01/2019

A secret about collective nouns

15/11/2018

How can we talk about our past habits that we no longer do?

11/11/2018

What is the difference between 'must' and 'have?'

EIAM: Must vs have to

27/10/2018

What can we use to talk about future plans? Can we use will? Here is your next lesson of "English in a minute" by BBC.

Be going to vs present continuous

21/10/2018

Struggling to use article
'a,an,the.' Here are three facts about using "the"

Here’s another episode of English In A Minute! You give us a minute and we give you the English. Watch Phil’s video. Why is this incorrect? “I love unhealthy...

27/09/2018

Difference between 'must' and ' have to.'

EIAM: Must vs have to

16/09/2018

IELTS Writing Task 2: Grammatical Range and Accuracy: Does it only require you to take care of your tenses? The answer is no! It means apart from your tenses you need to consider the points mentioned below in your writing.
Use a variety of complex and simple sentences
Use a variety of appropriate structures
Check your writing for errors

06/09/2018

IELTS Writing Task 2: Lexical Resource: What does it mean? It's an another name for group of words, phrases or collocations that we use in English Language. So how are we assessed on that here is the brief explanation of each band score;
Band 5 users have very limited vocabulary and rarely use ‘topic specific’ words. if we were asked this question:

Nowadays lots of young people don’t have a job.

What are the main causes of this?

A band 5 answer might say:

Lots of young people don’t have a job because there is no money. There is no money because countries are not doing well with money now.For example, countries in Europe don’t have any money and lots of young people don’t have jobs.
This candidate has repeated words from the question because they are not aware of synonyms for words like ‘young people’ and ‘job’. They are also unable to express their opinion effectively because they don’t know vocabulary that is specific to the question like ‘unemployment’, ‘recession’, ‘financial crisis’ and ‘economic’.
A good candidate would use topic specific vocabulary to improve the answer like so:
Many of today’s younger generation are unemployed because of the financial crisis. The financial downturn caused huge economic problems all over the world. For example, European nations find themselves with massive youth unemployment, with over half of 18-25 year olds out of work in countries like Greece.
This answer has basically the same meaning but the author’s points are clearer and more developed because of a wide ranging vocabulary.
Band 6 answers attempt to use lesson common words, but there is some inaccuracy and there are some errors with word formation and spelling.
Band 7 answers have far fewer of these errors, however some errors are permitted. The words chosen here are more likely to show use of correct style and collocations. There is still some repetition of words permitted.
Band 8 answers have very few spelling or word formation errors and use very appropriate words to convey meaning precisely. There is also very little repetition of words.
(Taken from IELTS Advantage)

30/08/2018

IELTS Writing TASK 2: Marking Criteria: Coherence refers to your ability to be clear and easily understood whereas, Cohesion refers to your ability to link ideas, sentences and paragraphs together and one of the ways we do this is through the use of cohesive devices. So what does it mean if you score band 5? For answers in bands 6, 7 and 8 in this category all parts are easy to read and understand. Parts of band 5 answers are not easy to understand.

This may be because you have lots of grammar mistakes, you have lost grammatical control of your sentences, the words and sentences are in a very illogical order or you have used words and phrases that are not appropriate or accurate.

The examiner will be able to understand all parts of band 6, 7 and 8 answers but the ease of understanding will increase as we go up the bands. Practicing is indeed a great tool to improve, but probably you would want someone to give you true and constructive feedback.

03/08/2018

What does it mean to get a band score 5 or 6 in IELTS Writing and what you could to do improve it. In my upcoming posts we will have a thorough look at the IELTS writing criteria (Task achievement, Coherence and Cohesion, Grammatical Range and Accuracy.) Did you know that your writing is marked
(0 to 9) in each criteria? Today's post looks at Task Achievement. Please feel free to ask questions in the comment section

16/07/2018

Wondering when to use infinitive 'stop to do' vs 'stop doing.' Here is another episode of 'English in a minute by BBC' that explains when to use infinitive and when to use Gerund.

Stop to do/Stop doing