Hi there, this is Chris from IELTS advantage and here are seven reasons why
you'll fail the IELTS test in 2019 now why should you watch this video so we
get around I'd say around a thousand emails a day so we interact with about a
thousand students on through email and social media and the vast majority of
those interactions are with people who have failed the test and we've been
doing this for like more than five years now online and we have noticed that
there are seven things, seven common things that come up again and again and
again and even if you're doing just one of these things you're pretty much
guaranteeing that you're going to fail the test so what I want to do today in
this video is talk about those seven things so that you can avoid them and
start preparing properly and get the scores that you need in 2019 so number
one you think doing lots of practice tests is the answer the most common
thing we get is from people who say I've done 50 practice tests I've done all the
Cambridge practice tests and I've done you know practice test after practice
test after practice test why am I not getting the score that I need? So the
conclusion that I draw from that is that people think that doing practice tests
is going to improve their scores, it's not, there are many things you need to do
in order to get the score you need practice is just a very small part of it
you need to learn what to do properly you need feedback on your work
you need to improve your weaknesses, identify your weaknesses, there are so
many things that you need to do and practice is just a very very small part
of that and I'm not saying that you shouldn't practice it is important but
it is just let's say you know 10 or 20 percent of what you really need to do
and you're missing out that 80/90 percent. Also practice without feedback
is completely useless I can't learn how to let's say for example drive a car by
just driving a car around and around and around
you need a driving instructor sitting beside you correcting your mistakes and
giving you feedback on what you're doing well and what you're not doing so well
it's exactly the same with IELTS if you are just doing
speaking test after speaking test or writing test after writing test and no
one is telling you what you're doing right on what you're doing wrong then
you're wasting your time it's actually less than useless because by wasting
that time you're not focusing on the things that are actually going to help
you improve your score and you're spending your time on something that is
not actually helping you at all so in order to get the scores that you need
you need to focus on the things that matter and spend less time focusing on
the things that don't matter in other words do things that improve your score
and don't do things that don't improve your score that sounds very simple and
it sounds very logical when you say it that way and but I'd say you know the
vast majority of students don't do that and they don't follow that because
they're spending time on things that just really don't improve their scores
and ignoring the things that do. Number two using lots of big words will get
your high score if you believe this you're going to fail if you believe that
you can learn a list of band 9 vocabulary or learn a list of magic words or
high-level words and use them in your speaking or your writing tests,
you're pretty much guaranteeing that you're going to fail. Vocabulary is
an important part of the test however inserting lots of big words is
not the same as using vocabulary effectively your vocabulary score is
linked to that. Your vocabulary score is determined by your ability to use
vocabulary effectively you are being judged on accuracy, you're being judged
on appropriacy, is it appropriate to use that word. Are you using that word
accurately? Learning lists of words does not teach you how to use those words, so
you'll see this again and again and again if you're an examiner and you're
looking at essays every day you'll you'll notice very very quickly that the
majority of students use this technique and maybe their teachers taught them
this or maybe that it's just a natural conclusion that they came to that oh
vocabulary is important so I'll learn lots of words put them in my essay and
I'll get a high score. Just putting words in your essay
and big words is not really going to help you because it will actually lower
your score because you're using them inaccurately and inappropriately.
Number three, following an expert or a guru somebody who says that they're a guru or
an expert and they can really, really help you. Let's talk about that
so IELTS is big business in many countries, in many countries it is the
thing that is going to get you out of that country or get you the new life or
the new job that you want people are desperate to get the scores that they
need they might have a lot of pressure on them financially or a lot of pressure
from their families to get a high IELTS score what happens when you have lots of
desperate people who are willing to pay a lot of money? Think about that, what
happens when you have millions of people who are willing to pay money to get an
end result? What you'll get is you'll get a lot of people pretending that they're
experts, pretending that they're gurus when they know nothing about what
they're doing. Why are they doing that? Because it's easy to make money so we
will get a huge number of emails every single day from people who say my
teacher told me to do ABC or my guru or my expert or in my country this person
is the the leading guru and he told me to do XYZ and it's it's completely wrong
so be very, very, very careful who you give your money to. Don't give your money
to someone who just says that they're brilliant at what they do they should be
able to prove that to you through you know if somebody is really an expert and
is great at what they do then they will have hundreds of
thousands of people who they have helped who will be talking about them so don't
go with someone who just says that they have the secret to getting about nine or
they're the leading expert get them to prove it to you.
Number four, learning grammar structures and phrases the key to a high grammar
score is the ability to use the appropriate grammar and do so accurately.
Learning grammar structures and phrases is not going to allow you to do that
learning phrases and structures will lead to lots of mistakes. Lots of
mistakes will lead to a lower score that is very solid logic. If you're using
grammar you don't understand you're going to make lots of mistakes if you
make lots of mistakes you're going to get a lower score instead of listening
to people who tell you you know the secret to getting a high score is to use
these grammar structures or these phrases just apply basic logic you know
how is my grammar being judged? Well one of the ways that it's being judged, in a
primary way, that you're being judged on grammar is the number of mistakes that
you're making, if you're making lots of mistakes you're going to get a lower
grammar score so how do you improve your grammar? You lower the number of
mistakes that you're making. You do that by making yourself aware of the
individual mistakes that you're making what are your common weaknesses what are
your biggest weaknesses I'm working on those areas until you really improve
your grammar because learning structures and phrases that's just a cheat that's a
hack and these things are designed to be alluring to students so that you'll give
people money and whereas if you tell someone actually your grammar isn't very
good and you need to work very hard in order to improve that and people don't
want to hear that and so be very very careful about people who tell you
there's an easy way of getting a higher score. You can improve your grammar but
you can't do it by learning structures and phrases. Number five doing your test
at a particular test center many people believe that the British Council or IDP
is easier you'll get you know fifty percent of people saying that the BC is
easier, then you'll get another fifty percent of people saying IDP is easier,
funny that isn't it? Many others believe particular countries or particular
cities or examiner's are easier this is like a fat person trying to find a
mirror that makes them look good instead of eating better food or exercising. How
do you improve your IELTS scores? You improve your IELTS scores by
doing things like improving your English, improving your awareness of the
different tests, improving your test-taking ability, improving your
writing skills, your speaking skills, your reading skills, your listening skills,
you're not going to improve your English magically by going and doing it in a
different city, or doing it at a different country, or
doing it at the BC, or doing it at IDP if you are thinking this way you're looking
for an easy way out and you're really in denial of the fact that you need to
improve your English, you need to improve your skills, you need to do a lot of work
so instead of, you know, being like that fat person looking for a mirror that
will help them look good don't be delusional, don't lie to yourself
and be realistic and realise that it is very easy, it's very simple to improve
your scores and but you do need to put in the work. Number six
doing a crash course you will not magically improve your English in a week
or two you can't do some crash course in a week or two weeks where you're sitting
in a room with 50 other people and it's just not possible
no school, expert or guru has a magic secret that they can teach you. I often
visit countries where IELTS is very popular and you'll always see signs up
on the street saying you know join my band 9 school and I'll get you a band 9
in two weeks. These are all marketing techniques and their all lies,
unfortunately, anyone can improve their scores but it takes time and hard work.
Number seven, any type of memorisation. You can't memorise answers and then hope
to use these in the test you can't memorise speaking answers, you
can't memorise writing answers, you can't memorise vocabulary or grammar
structures or phrases or anything like that
why not it's not a memorisation test. Alright it's not like when you were in
school and you had to memorise your times tables like you know two-by-two
you know is two by three. It's not like that it's not a memorisation test
it's an English test and you don't improve any
language by memorising stuff that's not how you learn a language, if this worked
there would just be one book on IELTS alright think about how many websites
there are, think about how many books there are, think about how many courses
there are, if it was just a memorisation test there will be just one book with
lots of answers in it and you just memorise them and looking at band 7, band 8, band 9
answers and memorising them is completely useless, it's a completely
useless use of your time and I'm not saying this to be harsh I'm saying this
because I want to save you money and time and effort because if you're, you
know, doing these seven things then you're going to waste a huge amount of
time and money by failing the test over and over and over again so it might
sound harsh but it is coming from a place where I just want you guys to pass the
test next time and not waste all this and all these useful resources. So is
there an answer? Is there a way that you can get the scores you need? Fortunately,
yes of course there is and it all has to do with your mindset it all comes from
your attitude to the test your attitude to your preparation and your test is the
key factor and I'll be sharing nine common things are successful students do
tomorrow in a free course and so tomorrow on Wednesday and Thursday I'm
gonna do a brand new free course and what I decided to do was to take all our
successful students to look at all the interviews that we've done with them so
one of the things that I do with my successful students is I interview them
after they get the scores they need and then I looked at any common factors that
were coming up and there were nine things that came up again and again and
again and anybody can learn these things so put it together into a free course
but you have to join this course before you can access it so click the link
above or below this video you'll find it in the description or anywhere above or
below the video and just give me your name and your email address and we'll
send you the joining instructions for this course and it all begins tomorrow
on Tuesday the 18th of December 2018 and hope to see you in there hopefully you
find that useful and I'll see you in the new course. Bye.