POWER WRITING: POWERFUL IDEAS AND PRACTICAL ACTIVITIES FOR TEACHING WRITING AS AN ALTERNATIVE TO LEARNING ESSAYS BY HEART

Teachers often find that, no matter how many essays their students write, their writing quality does not improve. What can the teachers do to make their writing instruction more effective? In this article we offer a solution – a PROCESS APPROACH focusing on the development of skills that make one a good writer.

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TO WHAT EXTENT IS COMMUNICATIVE LANGUAGE TEACHING A FEATURE OF IELTS CLASSES IN CHINA?

Communicative language teaching (CLT) has become widely accepted around the world and is thought to bring the best learning outcomes. To what extent is CLT a feature of English classes in China? Do IELTS teachers use communicative activities in their classes? Two experienced EFL professionals, Richard Badger and Xiaobiao Yan, answer these questions in an IELTS-funded research study. In this article we offer you the highlights of their findings.

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Hi Olena, this is Kevin, thanks for your terrific training course. I have a question here: How exactly does the examiner assess the candidates? I mean, do the examiners assess  the three parts separately with the  four criteria, each part give an overall score and at last give an overall score or just give an overall score throughout the whole test with the four criteria?

Dear Kevin,

thanks for your email.

Answering your question (I assume it's about the speaking test?) – examiners assess candidates for the whole of the test, not each part separately. I. e., an examiner gives one score for each of the four assessment criteria. The examiner does not give an overall score – it is automatically calculated by special software.

Dear Olena, recently I've been confused with a question: You know, in the IELTS speaking test, there are four guiding questions in part 2, do the candidates have to cover all the questions in that part? If they don't cover all the questions but speak very well, does it influence their score?

Hi Kevin, candidates do not necessarily have to cover all four bullet points for part 2. If they speak well and on the topic it does not matter if they do not have time to cover a question or two. However, if they don't have time because they've digressed and started speaking about something else – then this might be a problem.

Hi Olena, I have a question for you: During the 1 minute preparation time in Part2 of the speaking test, can the candidates take notes in Chinese?

Hi Kevin! Examiners don't monitor what candidates are writing during that one minute – they can be drawing pictures if they want However, personally I wouldn't recommend my students that they take notes in Chinese – they will have to speak from those notes and it will be difficult for them to organise their speech efficiently using notes taken in a different language. It would definitely be difficult for me, and research shows it's hard for everyone.