- [Chris] What I thought I would do in this video
is give you some bonus material that's gonna help you
on your IELTS journey.
Currently it is Father's Day today,
so I was thinking about what could I do for you guys?
And an idea came to me this morning,
that what if my son was doing the test?
What advice would I give my son
if he was struggling with the test?
And so what I'm gonna do in this video
is tell you exactly what I would tell my son
if he was doing the IELTS test.
And we're gonna talk about your IELTS journey
and why most students fail,
and why you don't have to.
So according to our data from our students,
thousands and thousands of students over the years,
the average student fails 2.9 times or three times
before they start working with us
and then get the score that they need.
Also, if you look at the official data from ielts.org,
the average band score for writing is just 5.5.
So what I'm gonna do is show you
what the average student does, what most students do
and how you can avoid these common problems,
and then you can be successful next time.
And I'm gonna show you how to do this
using this line chart.
So the X axis is time, over here,
and then the Y axis here is confidence.
So how confident do you feel about your ability
to get the score that you need?
And what we really focus on at IELTS Advantage
is not so much your IELTS score or your IELTS preparation,
it is helping you achieve this goal.
So this could be to move to a different country,
get a better job, study at a better course,
have a better life in general for you and your family.
So we really, really focus on getting you here.
Unfortunately, most students will never reach this goal
because of these common problems
that we're gonna talk about now.
So when students start off on their IELTS journey,
when they do their first test,
normally they are very, very confident.
So when they do test one,
normally what students will say are things like,
"It's only an English test,"
(pen scribbling loudly)
or "My English is good."
So normally students think that IELTS test
is just an English test, their English is pretty good.
They go and do the test for the first time
and unfortunately they fail.
So why do they fail?
So the problem with this is you have no idea
why you have failed.
So there could be, for example, very obvious grammar
or vocabulary mistakes that you're making,
but you don't know that you're actually making them.
If I looked at your writing or listened to your speaking,
I would be able to tell you immediately what those are,
but because you're not aware of those,
then you are going to continue to fail.
The other problem with this stage
is that IELTS is a writing test, it is a speaking test,
it is a reading test and it is a listening test.
Especially for writing, for example,
many students don't know how to actually write
and structure and organize an essay
and clearly answer the question,
so you do not know why you have failed.
So what happens is your confidence
goes from being very, very high
to plummeting down to this stage.
So what students normally do at this stage
is they do another test and after they thought,
"Oh, it's just a general English test,
I'll go and do the test and I'll get the score that I need."
Then they think, "Right, what I'll do
is I'll go online and I look for some tips,
tricks, hacks, or shortcuts."
So they're basically looking to hack or to cheat the test,
they think, "Okay, so there's must be something unusual
about this IELTS test.
I just should go onto YouTube or onto a blog
and find out what these things are."
And normally what they'll find
is lots of memorization techniques.
So if they go onto YouTube or online,
they'll find people saying, you know,
"Memorize this list of band nine words and get a high score
or memorize these structures and get a high score
or memorize these grammar structures
or phrases and get a high score."
And what happens is they fail again, all right,
so even more failure.
So they fail for the second time because the problem is,
there are no tips, tricks, hacks or shortcuts
that will actually help you, memorization doesn't work.
And even the teachers that are teaching you IELTS properly,
a lot of it is very confusing.
There's a lot of confusing information
and there's a lot of conflicting information.
So one teacher says it to do this way,
another teacher says it's to do the second way,
another teacher says to do a completely different way.
So you're dealing with mostly confusing information.
I'd say 80-90% of the information online
related to IELTS is just plain wrong,
and the remaining 10 or 20%,
all the other teachers that know what they're doing
are teaching you all different things.
So you are going into the test being highly confused.
And if you are confused on test day, you are going to fail
because you're going to write a confusing essay,
you're going to be giving confusing answers
during the speaking test, you won't know what to do
on the listening and reading test,
and again, you will fail.
So most students, what they do is they do the test
for a third time.
So their confidence is still pretty low,
but what they do is they think,
"Okay, I did the test here without any help and I failed,
then I looked online and there was lots
of teachers teaching online, giving tips and tricks
and that didn't help, maybe I need need a real teacher."
So an online or an offline teacher in real life
to teach them what is actually going on.
But unfortunately, what most students will do
is they will look for the cheapest teacher
that they can find.
Because they have already failed the test twice,
and they've probably spent, you know, five or $600
on test fees, traveling to the test center.
Maybe they bought a really cheap, like $50 crash course
or something like that,
so they don't have much money to be spending on this.
And many of them are more concerned about money
than actually getting to their goal,
so they find one of the cheaper teachers online,
or they find a local teacher who isn't charging much money.
So what happens?
They fail again.
Remember most students, most, fail at least three times.
Is this because the test is really unfair?
Is this because the British Council
or IDP wants you to fail?
No, it's because you're doing these really silly things.
So the problem with this
is most teachers are unreliable.
Most IELTS teachers online and offline,
especially the cheaper ones,
normally the cheaper they are, the worse they are.
Just like any other profession,
the best teachers get paid the most money.
The only way that bad teachers can compete
is by lowering their prices.
So you see a cheap teacher,
you think that that's really a really good deal,
but it's not a good deal
because you are not reaching your goal
because they're going to give you unreliable advice.
They're not going to give you feedback
that is reliable on your work,
which is what you really, really need.
So you're going to fail again.
So after failing, once, twice, three times,
most students are left with a choice.
What happens is either they just give up completely
and they never reach their goal,
so they never move to that country of their dreams,
they never earn the money that they deserve
and that new job.
They are stuck in a country
that they maybe don't want to be in,
and they just give up because they're like,
"Okay, I failed once,
and then I listened to all these tips and tricks,
and then I hired a teacher."
And the point is that you will not even know
that this teacher is not good
because you are not an IELTS expert.
So what happens is most students blame themselves.
They either blame themselves and say,
"I'm not good enough."
Or what they will do is they will blame everyone else,
"It's not my fault."
So what you will hear typically
with students at this stage is "It's IDPs fault,
it's the British Council's fault.
It was my teacher's fault.
It was because the examiner didn't like me.
It's because the examiners in this country give low results
and it's not fair.
It's because the whole system is a scam
and they are just trying to steal people's money."
No, you did three very silly things
in order to achieve your goal
when all you had to do was avoid these three things
and actually learn what to do properly.
Our students, we teach them what to do properly
and they are able to reach their goal.
And what we do with our students
is we tell them, "Do not book the test
until we tell you that you're ready."
They know exactly what to do on test day,
they know exactly what score they're going to get
because we teach them how to think like an examiner.
So how do they avoid this first problem?
Well, we look at their writing,
we listen to their speaking,
we tell them the exact vocabulary, grammar, structure,
writing, speaking problems that they have.
And we say, "These are the exact reasons
why you are going to fail and this is how to fix them
in order to reach your goal."
We don't teach tips, tricks, hacks,
or shortcuts or memorization,
we just teach one simple system
and that simple system has produced more band seven
or above students than any other course in the entire world.
And we only hire the top 1% of IELTS teachers in the world,
and we give students a huge amount of support and feedback.
So maybe you might be thinking,
"Well, you're only telling us this
because you want us to give you money
and join our VIP course."
Nope, our free courses are better
than everybody else's paid courses.
So even if you have hired a real teacher,
even if you have paid a lot of money for some course
that is teaching you tips and tricks,
we are going to give you way more value
for free in this free course.
I hope that you enjoyed that video
and I look forward to teaching you,
and if you have any questions,
feel free to comment below.
(upbeat music)