Would you really want to invest a few thousand dollars so that you could be banned from another country? Should I choose to do IELTS at an IDP center, or should I choose to do it at a British councel? Does the same apply for native speakers? Do native speakers always get the scores they want? This is the dark side of IELTS, to put it nicely. Sometimes this breaks our hearts. It really makes us depressed. People say "this is unfair". This test isn't just testing my English, it's testing my thinking. Yes, it is. On the Internet, there are hundreds of sites, thousands of videos which are associated with IELTS. And sometimes it can be really difficult to find out what is good, useful and helpful material when preparing for the IELTS. Well, today we've got a super useful video, and it's the first in a series. We have a very special guest who's going to come and join me and talk about some of the myths associated with IELTS. And hopefully, we'll be answering some of your questions and some of your concerns about the IELTS test, so that we can help you save time, save money and increase your band score as quickly and as effectively as possible. So if you want to know those tips, stick around because my guest is coming up very soon. So are you guys ready to talk about some myths? I am joined by somebody really special today, and you may have seen this person when doing your Youtube searches for IELTS speaking or IELTS writing. Joining me on the screen now is none other coming in from Canada, the other side of the world, actually joining us from yesterday. I think I am tomorrow for you, and you are yesterday for me. Welcome to Adrian from Academic English, how we're so privileged to have you join us today, Adrian. Thanks for having me on your channel, Chris. It's a pleasure to be here, and it's great to meet you. I have a lot of respect for your work and what you've been doing on your channel, and obviously, that's reflected by the great interest on your channel as well. So for me, I started Academic English Help back in 2007, really got going in about 2011 where I started to upload videos to Youtube, About the IELTS exams, specifically the academic IELTS exam, and even more specifically about task one. And I did that because I realized that most of the materials for academic IELTS task one writing was unclear and not very useful for students. So from that, I realized many ineffective materials are out there on the Internet, and I really wanted to help students to overcome the challenge of IELTS so that they can make that leap into the next chapter of their lives- meaning living abroad, studying or working abroad. And I want it to be a part of that journey. So Academic English Help, and our website is there to really help students to achieve this as quickly, as smoothly as possible. Great, I couldn't agree more. I see so many kind of lower quality piece of material, and these tips on the on the website, and it drives me, to make sure that we can put those bad tips to rest, and we can provide students with quick, effective ways to save money to save time. And I think that's something that's really common between you and I. Would you agree? Absolutely, yes. We're success driven, and that's a part of our model. We say, "your success is our success", so 100%. Great. So the aim of this series is to kind of talk about these myths. We're gonna bring up a few of these pieces of fake news that I see around. We're gonna talk about our experiences, and if you guys who are watching this kind of relate to any of these myths, and you hear these myths being taught wherever you are, write them in the comments, share your experiences. Head over to Academic English Help Youtube page, because there's actually going to be a second video in this series coming up very soon, which follows on. So it's gonna be a kind of a ping pong match between the two of us. I'm going to share some tips. You're going to share some tips. And for the better, we are going to help these students pass the test as quickly as possible. Not only in this video do we have the discussion between Adrian and myself, stay tuned, stick around. Because later, we have a student IELTS speaking submission. Adrian and I are going to listen to it and we're going to provide an evaluation based on our experience, what the student does well and how they can improve. So if you're interested in that, make sure you watch to the end of this video. Right? Shall we begin and look at the first myth? If you don't know the word myth, myth means something which is kind of not real or not true. So when people are preparing for the IELTS, they often see things on the Internet which might not be the case. And some of the biggest myths relate to the choosing of the IELTS test. Before you even decide that you want to do IELTS, you have to choose the test. And the first myth relates to choosing different exams. Adrian, what's your experience With IELTS and other exams, such as the Pearson Test of English or Cambridge Advanced Exam, or even the TOEFL? What are some of the myths around that? So oftentimes, students believe that choosing a TOEFL or the PTE exam might be easier than the IELTS exam. And that's not necessarily the case, A TOEFL being a multiple choice exam can be quite challenging. Especially since TOEFL is a multiple choice exam at the college level, meaning that there are often multiple correct answers, and you have to choose the best answer. So IELTS really isn't necessarily a more or less difficult exam than its counterparts. However, one important point that many students overlook is that IELTS is right now the most accepted exam worldwide. And that means if at any point in time, a candidate decides to apply to multiple places, they might have difficulty if they've chosen to do a different exam. So IELTS, in my opinion, is the right choice in most cases, and it's not necessarily more difficult than the others. What do you think, Chris? I would tend to agree. I mean, there are lots of people here in Australia who are now starting to choose PTE. I have kind of a few reservations about PTE at the moment as a teacher. It's a completely computer-based exam. Are there any possibilities that people could kind of trick the computer? I don't know at the moment. And so therefore, I would agree with you, and I would say, stick with IELTS if you're looking for something which is internationally recognized. If it is a really good indicator of somebody's level, I tend to agree that it's a really good indication of a level, and kind of it has the most resources available for people to choose from. So I would agree. The only problem for me for IELTS is that it's only two years, the expiration date is only two years. It's possibly three years now because of COVID. But for me, that's a big problem and I would argue that if the test is given, people should be given that test for life, and we can't change the policy of IELTS. But some other exams such as Cambridge, they do have no expiration date. So it's just it's a consideration for you, if you need it for a short term, if you need it for for visa purposes or entry to a university, IELTS is a great opportunity. If you're thinking about this for the long term, for your job applications in the future, you may want to think about another exam such as Cambridge. And that brings us on to the second myth, which is around the global distribution, and lots of people say, and I say, I hear this all the time: IELTS is easier in some countries. What's your view, Adrian? So again, I would say that this is a myth. And I hear it all the time, and I read and see, and hear comments where somebody says, "Well, if that person were to the test in India, they would have only scored 7. Or if they were to do it in China, that writing would have only scored 6. I tend to disagree with this. IELTS is standardized Internationally. The marking system is standardized internationally. A lot of training goes into making sure that IELTS examiners have similar marketing criteria and of course, it's never going to be perfect. Assessing writing, assessing speaking is always going to be somewhat subjective. However, there is a standard, and that standard doesn't very much. So if a student were to sit the IELTS one day in China and on another day in Brazil, they would most likely end up with very similar scores. Now, having said that, there are other factors that can influence a candidate's score when they go to another country. Just having the thought that the exam is easier might create more confidence, which could possibly lead to a better score. But at the end of the day, the marking is still going to be the same. I totally agree. Aand I would say, for many people who don't know this, if you are doing the computer based or the paper based test, the majority of your writing is no longer marked in country. So they will scan your paper based test, or they will send your computer delivered test electronically to mark us to examiners around the world. So here in Australia and in the UK, and they have a bank of examiners who are working remotely. So your country really doesn't have any influence over your writing score anymore. And there's another query, another another question that often comes up, and it relates to the companies associated with IELTS are there is the British Council which often runs test centres, and there's IDP, which runs test centres. Do you know if there are any differences in the level of scoring that you would find through each company? Again, a great question. And often times, we do get this question from candidates: Should I choose to do IELTS at an IDP center, or should I choose to do British Council Center? Now, of course, not everybody has this choice, depending on where you are in the world. In some locations, you only have one or the other. But in some locations, you do have both, if I'm not mistaken, Chris in Australia, there's British Council and IDP as well. We mostly just have IDP actually. Yeah, there were no British Council Test Centers. Alright. I believe in India, they have both. That's where a lot of these questions originate from. And in some places, there are both. And some people are, of course, relating to our last question are willing to travel if they feel that that will give them an advantage. Well, here's the truth. There really is no difference, so the standard is common between IDP and British Council. Rather than IDP or British Council impacting the score, different test centers are set up differently. with different equipment. Some test centers have very modern equipment, modern computers, modern audio equipment for the listening section. While other test centers might have some dated equipment that makes the listening a little bit more difficult. So it is a good idea to check where you are planning to do your exam. If you have the opportunity to do it at a location with modern equipment, then that is a great idea. You are going to have less difficulties as a result of poor audio or poor visual equipment. Incredible feedback, great advice there. And I concur totally. And this one is a super important discussion topic, and I am sure you will agree that sometimes this breaks our hearts, it really makes us depressed, and it's around the idea of fake certificates buying your IELTS score and people getting scammed, and people losing thousands of dollars by "investing in", and I
say that, loosely investing in an IELTS certificate because they see WhatsApp groups and they get bombarded with these kind of spam messages. What's your thought on this topic, Adrian? This is the dark side of IELTS to put it nicely. We see lots of comments on our Youtube videos advertising for fake IELTS certificates, and we try to delete as many of these as possible. We've notified British Council, they tried to manage this situation. But unfortunately, there is a lot of criminals. Criminals out there yet, and a lot of unethical individuals who are basically scam artists. IELTS certificates are synonymous with a birth certificate or a death certificate. They're very carefully monitored, recorded. They have unique identification numbers and codes. So these certificates, these fake certificates, will only bring you headache, trouble, and sorrow, and I don't think any people actually realize how dangerous it is to go down that path of trying to purchase a fake certificate. Maybe Chris, you can explain a bit more about the actual dangers of buying such a certificate. I was just going to say that that I don't think people realize the consequences of purchasing or investing in these scams. So in the same way that you wouldn't avoid the tax, or you wouldn't submit fake documentation when you were applying for your passport, you would not do this as well if you were applying for a visa, and the consequences are really strict. If you find that you're applying for a job and you submit a fake IELTS passport, you can be convicted for fraud because it's a fraudulum activity. If you try to apply for a visa and you're gonna move to a country such as Canada or to, I don't know, to Singapore, and you have to show your IELTS, you may find that by submitting a fake certificate, you could be blacklisted from ever visiting or applying for a visa to that country again. Would you really want to invest a few thousand dollars so that you could be banned from another country? I just don't think some people realize, would you agree, Adrian? Yeah, absolutely. So it is considered a criminal activity. It's not the same as faking a high school math test. I think that's what people don't realize. So faking the IELTS is forging an internationally recognized document, like a passport. And that can get you blacklisted, as you said, from traveling. It can also not can, it will. It will get you blacklisted, and it will get you blacklisted from university applications. Not just abroad, but even within your own country. So with the Internet these days, these systems are very connected. If a major university, University of Adelaide, University of British Columbia puts you on a black list, that can very possibly come back to a candidate's own country, and they will not be allowed into any recognizable, quality, higher-level education Institute. So it's a very serious situation, and I highly, highly recommend avoiding it. And not only that, you'll lose some of your savings if you invest $2000 into your fake certificate. You'll never see that money again. There's no way that you could claw that money back or go to the police, because you have a kind of invited yourself into that world. We're telling you that if you want to get a certificate and if you don't want to spend too much money, the most important thing is to be prepared. Prepare yourself for the IELTS so that you're not taking the test twenty times or thirty times. We see it happening again and again. I think both Adrian and I would say, if you want to pass the first time, make sure that you understand your level, that you get checked, that you follow quality materials. And that's what we both are here trying to do. We're not here to say, you will pass tomorrow if you watch all our videos. You have to prepare. You have to spend time, it's an ongoing process. Some people have natural abilities. We agree. But the majority of people need to invest some of their time, and investing time is much better than wasting money. I absolutely agree, and it's very important to keep in mind that at the end of the day, even with a fake certificate, a person needs to have functional English in the society where they're going to. They need to read textbooks, write exams, apply for jobs. So having a fake certificate will not get you very far, and of course, oftentimes, I'm sure Chris will agree with me on this when a candidate pays for a fake certificate. They never get a call back. They don't even get the fake certificate, so it's just purely a scam. Total, total scam, and that brings us really nicely onto the next kind of subtopic of myths, and it's at the myths around preparation. I've just said that we need to be prepared. You need to be prepared when thinking about the IELTS test. Now in your experience, Adrian, 99, 98% percent of people. will not pass with short cuts, templates. Would you agree? 100%. There are no quick tricks to or magic tricks to getting a good IELTS Span Score. This is because IELTS is a valid and reliable test. What many candidates are unaware of, there is a branch of science called, "psychometrics", that sounds like a very fancy word. But it simply means to measure human thought processes and behaviors like communications. And there is a pysche like communication, and there is a science around this. And when a test is reliable, like the IELTS exam, it means that if a candidate sits the exam today and gets a band 7, if they were to sit at the exam again tomorrow without any improvement or study, they will again get a band 7. They're not going to magically get a band 8 just because they sat the exam again. So the one true way to improve band scores is to improve English and improve communication. Couldn't agree more. Does the same apply? This is an interesting idea. Does the same apply for native speakers? Do native speakers always get the scores they want? Is it always easy for them when they sit the test? That's a great question. It applies to native speakers as well, absolutely. So IELTS is not an ESL exam. It's commonly, that's another myth we could say, that it's commonly thought of as an English as a Second Language exam. But nowhere does it actually say that IELTS isn't the International English Language Testing System, and it is a test of English proficiency. It's taken by native speakers, just like non-native speakers, to prove their proficiency. For instance, as a substitute for grade 12 English equivalency to go into university. I'd even heard of native speakers taking the IELTS exam for immigration to other English speaking countries. So it is taken by native English speakers, and native English speakers have to familiarize themselves with the IELTS exam. They have to learn the format. They have to learn correct communication strategies. A good example of that would be part two in the speaking section. We don't commonly hold two minute little speeches on the daily and a native speaker could easily have difficulty with this part of the test, just like a non native speaker. Totally. Native speakers are really surprised when they set the test and the videos that we've that we've made on IELTS Daily with the higher band scores people have commented as native speakers and said: Wow! I don't think I could do that if I was sitting in front of a person and talk for two minutes on a memory or a piece of furniture in my houses. It's really quite difficult, and it's a skill that you have to learn. You have to prepare yourself for this skill. So recording yourself, making sure that you are timing yourself, it's, it's really vital. IELTS is more than just a test of English. And the way that I prove that to our viewers often is by just simply telling them that there's an academic version of the exam, and there's a general version of the exam. If IELTS were simply a test of English, there wouldn't need to be two versions of the test. So clearly, it's testing for something else other than just English, and that something else is the ability of a person to communicate in certain contexts. To write certain styles of essays with certain voices of authors. So we do get comments, and I'm sure you probably see these in your videos as well, Chris, where people say, this is unfair. This test isn't just testing my English it's testing my thinking. Yes, it is. It absolutely is testing the candidates' thinking and that has to be learned, and that has to be trained to maximize scores on the exam. Wonderful. So I'm just gonna slip into teacher mode this time, Adrian and I ask you to explain to the students a piece of language. And this piece of language, If I said to you, How long is a piece of string? What would that mean if I was using it in like everyday language? Well, for me, that would mean that we're going into the unknown. So we're looking at an idea, concepts, or a piece of information where we really don't have a clear answer. Perfect. So when students say to me: How long will it take me to reach a band 7? I always answer: How long is a piece of string? Because we really don't know; it depends on the student. And this relates to the the idea of preparation. Do you get this question a lot? How long will it take me to reach 6.5 in writing? Absolutely, we do get it often, and we give the exact same response which you just previously mentioned. So the truth and it is about the truth, so again, I'm glad you asked this question, Chris, because there are a lot of entities out there who will provide false information to this question in hopes of getting money quickly from candidates by saying that, "Oh, we can get you to a band 7 in less than 2 weeks". While, okay, that's unrealistic, it's how long is that piece of string. So it depends on the student's actual base ability, so what is their current level of English? What is their vocabulary based, how much knowledge of grammar do they have? How much experience do they have with essay writing in English according to essay writing rules in the English language? And then, of course the other big variables to answer this question is: How much time does this student have to prepare? Do they have two hours a day? Eight hours a day? And last but not least, what are they actually doing to prepare? So where are they getting their materials from? How effective are the lessons that they're learning? So what is their use of time? Not just how much time. And so all of those variables play into this, and therefore, it's extremely a difficult question to answer without deep analysis. Incredible. Great, great feedback there, and I sometimes joke with the students when they ask me and I say to them, how long is a piece of string? And they think, they look puzzled. And then I say: Well, it depends on you. It depends on your commitment, it depends on your family situation, your working situation and every person is different. And this leads onto the most important question, which is: What should students do? How should they approach the preparation and the choosing stage? And we've covered lots of points here. But I think to summarize, to make sure that we put everything in this nutshell, you need to be clear on your goals. Why are you taking a test? Is that test right for you? What are the factors in your life which are going to affect the preparation? Because the more time, the more dedication you can devote to preparation, the better the chances that you will succeed. And the probably, and I think Adrian might agree with me here: Choosing the right source material and that's why we're both here together today, because I think we kind of trust each other to say there is a benchmark. There's a standard of what constitutes what is good quality material. Would you say that was kind of a key focus for students choosing the right material? Yes, definitely, and it's not easy to do. So an important tip: There is always question, the materials that you're looking at, where are they coming from, what do other people say about these materials? Are they the same level of difficulty as the official IELTS exam? Do they have the same format as the official IELTS exam? And of course it's important to get feedback on a lot of the learning as well. I think an important point that pertains is connected with this topic is, it's not a good approach to gather tons of new materials and keep doing new materials day in and day out without going back and reviewing mistakes, redoing essays. So it's important to get feedback from experts and in this sense, it's important to consider spending a bit of money, and of course this depends on each person's budget, but free materials are great. However, at some point, especially to get quality feedback from experts, there's a very good chance that the candidate will need to spend a bit of money, and that money can be well invested, like getting quality feedback on essays. or on speaking practice. I know that you on the aehelp website, aehelp.com website, you have a writing feedback service, tell us a little bit more about that. Yeah, so we offer feedback services for candidates on task one, task two of both the academic and general IELTS. And simply, students are given questions, or they can upload their own questions, if they're different from the ones we have on the website. And then there's a built-in word processor where they can type their response, or they can copy, paste it. It's six cents Canadian per word. And then the word processor automatically counts up the words. It tells the user how much it costs. And then within 48 hours of submitting the essay, that user will get the edited, proofread version of their essay back in their email inbox, which highlights of course, grammatical mistakes, language use mistakes, and provides a lot of tips on what that student needs to do based on the marking criteria of the IELTS writing section. So grammatical range and accuracy, coherence, task completion. So all of those components are looked at, assessed, and then valuable feedback, as given to the students. We commonly get comments from students who use this service, that after using the service just a few times, they identified some critical mistakes in their writing. They made some adjustments, and they improved by half a band or a band quite quickly, so feedback and paid feedback can be extremely valuable. And yes, as you mentioned Chris, we do often... and ultimately saves money, doesn't it? Because they don't have to take the test again and again and again. It's win-win all. Yell, yeah, money time, headaches. We often feel the pain of students who, you know, write us an email and say that, "I've taken the IELTS exam four times in the last year. And I keep getting a band 6 on my writing. What am I doing wrong?" And then we finally get one of their essays and we realize that, well, it doesn't have a structure, doesn't have a thesis statement, that's standard to an English, I say. So just these quick adjustments can make a world of difference. Great. We'll post the link to the aehelp.com website in the description below. You can go and check out if they, and if you think that you need writing help. Definitely go over and get some feedback on your writing, and it will make a world of difference for your overall IELTS score. So, great. This brings us on to the next section of our video, which kind of relies on both our knowledge and our experience. And both Adrian and I are going to listen to a submission from a student, a real submission from a student, and it's a speaking exam. And there's going to be different questions. And we're going to listen to each question and provide our thoughts on what they do well and how they could improve, and just give you guys some ideas on where people are going wrong so that you can adopt the same kind of areas that you could avoid and improve on. So, are you ready? Let's go to the next section of this video where we're gonna be discussing somebody speaking.
