- Hey there, Chris here from IELTS Advantage,
and last year, about three million people
did the IELTS test, and hundreds of thousands of them
failed that test because of avoidable problems
related to the actual IELTS system.
So these are four things that if I was the CEO
of IDP or the British Council,
these are four things that I would fix.
And I'll also give some advice to students
on how to deal with these four problems
and make sure that you get the score that you need.
So, number one is the inconsistency,
or the lack of quality of teaching.
So, if I want to go to the hospital,
I am pretty sure that that doctor
has gone through all of the training needed
to be a doctor and to treat me.
Or if I have a legal problem, I know
that the lawyer that I'm going to went to law school,
has all of the certificates and the diplomas
and the degrees that they need in order to solve my problem.
But if an IELTS student wants to find
an IELTS teacher, they have no idea
about whether they are the best IELTS teacher
in the world, or whether they are
absolutely terrible, and they're going to give them
really really bad advice that will lead
to them actually failing the test.
As a student, you are relying upon the teacher
to tell you what to do, and it only takes
a couple of Google searches to see
that there are some great teachers out there,
and there are some terrible teachers out there.
And how could we fix this problem?
Well you could easily fix this problem
by coming up with some sort of certification process
where a teacher can get a certificate
which says IDP or the British Council
or Cambridge English taught me how to teach IELTS.
And in order to get this certificate,
you need to have, for example, you would probably need
to have a CELTA already, so you know how to teach,
you would have to have a certain IELTS score
so your English is good enough,
and you would be able to show that you have
probably taught general English
for at least a couple of years
before you are able to even do this certification.
Now, that might seem like the bar is really really high,
but you're dealing with people's futures
and with people's finances, and with people's lives here.
Getting the score that they need
and not getting the score that they need
can mean the difference between being stuck
in a country they don't want to live in anymore,
and living in the country of their dreams
and helping themselves and their family,
so it is really really serious,
and I think it's time for everybody
to take it seriously as the students do.
And I don't think that it should be a two day course,
like you'll see some people running at the moment
where teachers can go and they spend half the time
daydreaming and falling asleep at their desk,
and listening to someone talk for a couple of hours,
it should be at least as rigorous as, let's say, the CELTA,
or probably even more rigorous.
And unless people pass that, then they can't
show someone that certificate.
So imagine a world where someone could be able
to walk into a school, or if they're getting taught online,
to ask their teacher, can you prove to me
that you are a certified IELTS teacher.
And the great thing about that also would be
it's another revenue stream for the British Council
or IDP or Cambridge, if your main priority
is to make more money, then do this
and get the teachers to pay you
in order to do this course, and therefore
you're improving the quality of the teachers,
and you're making money at the same time,
because it seems to me many of the problems
that IELTS have, or the system of IELTS has,
is that people are trying to make profit.
And profit seems to be number one,
and we'll talk about that later on,
but if you wanna make more profit,
that's a thing that you could do
that kills two birds with one stone.
So as a student, what can you do
to mitigate against, or guard against this problem?
Well don't go with a teacher who has just passed
the IELTS test a month ago, or six months ago,
and now he thinks that they're an IELTS teacher,
don't go to a school that guarantees you
a band nine in two weeks, if they're making
some unbelievable claims in their marketing,
they're probably a scam school.
Don't go for the cheapest possible teacher
that you can find, if you buy the cheapest
possible car that you can find,
or buy the cheapest possible house that you can find,
what's gonna happen, you're going to get a terrible car
or a terrible house, the cheapest is normally the worst.
I'm not saying the most expensive is the best,
but use your own common sense.
Any teacher that has helped many many many IELTS students
in the past should have hundreds and hundreds
and hundreds of testimonials from real students.
I'm not talking about vague testimonials,
but if you go on to our website, you will see
hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds
of real people saying how we helped them.
If you are thinking of joining a school,
or joining a teacher, ask them to put you
in contact with their past students,
or at least look at the videos that they've made
or the testimonials that they have from past students.
And then you will get a good teacher.
So, that's problem number one, so problem number two.
Improve the staff and the equipment at test centers.
So, we get emails every single day
from students saying, I was ready for my test,
and I went to the test center, and they were
so disorganized, they were so rude,
then we went into the room, and everything again
was really disorganized, or it was too hot,
or it was too cold, and the equipment for the listening
wasn't working, and I couldn't get anything done,
and I was so stressed out that I failed the test.
Things like stress and people being rude to one another,
and equipment failures and equipment not being good enough
and outdated, do affect people's scores.
And the really really simple solution
to this is train your people better.
My wife actually did the IELTS test
about a year ago, and I went to the test center
with her, I didn't go into the room or anything with her,
but the people there were rude to her,
they were very very disorganized,
they were very stressed out, and that's not
that person's fault working there,
that's the manager's fault, that's the owner's fault
for not training their people right.
In my company, if somebody does a bad job,
that's my fault for not training them properly,
or not giving them the correct message,
or that is my fault because it is my business.
And I think that's the mindset that you guys
need to have, is when you're training your people,
make sure you train them properly, and that they
are polite to people, they're giving you a lot of money.
These students deserve good service.
And again, when it comes to equipment failures
and outdated equipment, spend some money on it.
You're not going to make as much profit,
but if you prioritize short term profits
over long term profits, and thinking
how are we going to actually look after people,
then like any business you're going to be
in all sorts of problems, or you're going
to have all sorts of problems.
So if you're a student, how can you get over this,
how can you guard against this?
Number one, make sure that you know
where your test center is, get there on time,
know where the room is, and you're going to reduce
a huge amount of stress there.
Get there an hour early and get into the room,
and then you're not going to be there
at the last minute, and the staff
are not gonna react to you in a really stressed out way,
so you're reducing the amount of stress
that you have there, even go there the week before,
and ask them questions like where are the toilets,
can I bring water in, can I bring food in,
these things are going to have an affect on your score,
and if you plan ahead, then you're going to
really see the benefit of it on test day.
And number two, if there is an equipment failure
or the headphones are not working,
or the examiner is really rude to you
or does something that they shouldn't be doing,
complain on the day, and demand your money back
or a new test, a lot of people email us
the day after they do the test and say,
the headphones weren't working,
or the examiner cut me short way before
he or she was supposed to do it.
And I say well what did you say to them at the time,
they're like, I said nothing, if you don't complain,
then they're not going to do anything.
You've given them money, you deserve a good service,
complain on the day, if that is the case.
And also, if you have multiple test centers
within your area or within your city,
research them, ask people what their experience was like.
The test is going to be the same,
the examiners have the same training,
although we'll talk about that in point number four,
but some of them might be more modern than others,
or the staff might be a bit better trained.
So go with the one that you get the recommendation for.
Number three, and nearly every student will agree with this,
you should be able to keep your good scores.
So, a problem that we see again and again and again,
and one of the reasons why people hate the IELTS test,
is a common scenario where your listening is great,
your reading is great, your speaking is great,
you've got those scores, every time you do the test
you get the scores that you need
and you don't get the score that you need for writing.
Why not allow people to keep their reading,
listening, or speaking scores, and just focus
on the writing test, so that they are not put through
the rigmarole of having to go through
the listening test and the reading test
and the speaking test and then go and do the writing test.
Why not have a cheaper version
where you just allow people to do
the writing test, and then they can bank
those good scores that they already have?
You're going to make less money,
you're going to make less profit in the short term,
but if you keep doing this, you're going to maybe
be bankrupt in the future, because people
are going to gravitate towards other,
better tests that allow them to do that.
There's no reason why if somebody does
a test this week, and gets a band nine
in reading, listening, and speaking,
but a band six in writing, there's no reason
why they can't bank those three scores
and then just do the writing test next week
and then get the score that they need.
That's probably not gonna happen,
'cause it's going to mess with your short term profits,
but again, any business that focuses
on short term versus long term is going to be in trouble.
So if you're a student, how can you overcome this problem?
Well, what I would do is, if you have a problem
with just one skill, so everything else is great
except one thing, normally it's writing.
Totally focus on that one thing,
'cause we often have students who are getting
nine for reading, nine for listening, eight for speaking,
but they're stuck at six or 6.5 for writing.
Ignore the things that you're really really good at,
you don't need to work on those things,
focus on the thing that needs your attention,
and find out the exact reasons why
you didn't get the score that you need.
That is going to cost you a little bit of money,
because you're going to need to find a good teacher,
they will have to look at your writing,
give you feedback on your writing,
it's gonna cost you a little bit of money,
but that will cost you way less
than having to go and fail the test
over and over and over and over again.
Our data, we collect data from our VIP students,
most of them failed three times before they joined us.
Most of them spent over 1,000 dollars
failing the test on all of those fees,
and teacher fees, and travel expenses,
so that's a huge amount of money.
Spend a wee bit of money, a little bit of money,
on finding out the exact reasons why
you are getting that low score,
and then take action to improve on those areas.
For example, if there was something wrong with your car,
you would take it to an expert who's a mechanic,
they would fix the one part that needs fixing,
and then your car would be fine.
Same with writing, I don't know exactly
what the problem is with your writing,
but if I looked at it, I could tell you
in two minutes what the problem is,
and then you could work on fixing that.
So that's what to do to overcome that problem.
And number four, improve the reputation
and the integrity of the test by being far more transparent
about examiner training and examiner performance.
Just go on to any YouTube video
about IELTS and read the comments,
you'll see things over and over and over again
that sound like, my examiner didn't know what he was doing,
my examiner, she is biased, this examiner here
always gives low scores, I don't really agree
with those people, but what I do agree with
is IELTS does have a bad reputation,
and I think you could combat that
by revealing the amount of training
that examiners go through, look at the quality assurance
that examiners go through, how often are they checked,
how rigorous is the quality assurance on their work?
A big thing would be to reveal the percentage of people
who go for a remark who actually get higher scores.
There is a huge perception among students
that they are being failed on purpose
so that they will have to go for a remark,
and then a lot of them do go for a remark,
and then they get higher scores.
Now, I don't agree with that, I don't think that
IELTS are lowering scores on purpose
or anything like that, because that would be fraud
on a huge scale, and I don't think
a company like the British Council or Cambridge English
or IDP would actually do that, but you could stop
all of this nonsense and all of this rumor
and conjecture, by just releasing some data,
and saying this is the number of students
who went for a remark, this is the number of students
who got their scores increased,
and then you could dispel all of these myths.
Also, maybe incentivize examiners
to improve their performance.
So, teachers who work for me, we do a huge amount
of quality assurance on their work.
We check everything that they do.
And if they get above a certain score, we give them a bonus.
If they get below a certain score, they lose that bonus,
and if they continue to get below that score, we fire them.
To my knowledge, that doesn't happen with examiners,
but when you incentivize people to do an amazing job,
and you disincentivize them by messing with their money,
see how well they perform when you do that.
That would be very very unpopular amongst the examiners,
but what's more important, the opinion of the examiners,
or the futures of the students doing the test.
And to combat that problem, as a student,
what you should do is don't give the examiners
any excuse to give you a score lower than you deserve.
Be so good that you, no matter what happens,
you are going to get the score that you need,
and again, as I said before, that comes down
to finding out the reasons why you are at a certain score,
and understanding exactly what you need to do
in order to get the scores that you need,
and working on that, and don't be defeating yourself
by saying, it's all a scam, and people are failing me
on purpose, and the examiners aren't good enough,
and all of these things, you're guaranteeing
that you're going to fail if you do that.
Whereas with our students, and we have more success stories
than any other online or offline IELTS course in the world,
with our students, we show them exactly what to do,
here's why you are a 6.5 or a six, or whatever,
here's exactly what to do in order to move
to the score that you need, and encourage them
to do the work, no shortcuts, no tricks,
no hacks, just good honest work, do these things,
improve, and then you'll get the score that you need.
So, in the comments below, do you agree
with those problems, do you think that I was fair,
do you agree with the solutions, do you have
any problems you want to put down below
that I haven't thought about, or any alternative solutions,
and it would be great to hear from you.
And as a little reward for making it to the end
of this video, click below, or see in the description below,
I'll give you my fundamentals course
which will help you understand exactly
what to do on the test absolutely free.
Thanks very much guys, hope that you enjoyed this video,
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Thank you very much guys, and see you again soon, buh-bye.
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