Priceless Tips on Improving 4 Language Skills for the IELTS
Lately, I’ve had an interesting interview with one of the best English teachers in Pakistan, a TESOL Certified Instructor, M.A. in English language and literature in 2 universities: Arizona State University and the University of Karachi Kashif Hussein. We talked about how to master the English language quickly and how to prepare for the IELTS very well.
– Many people are leaving their countries and taking the IELTS (General or Academic). How do you study your students for the IELTS? What methods do you use? Do you teach English by the book or do you have your own program?
– I really appreciate this million-dollar question, and most IELTS students keep searching for that answer from experts. I would like to take your two minutes in order to give the answer to this question as this is something which I need to elaborate on right well.
Concerning the IELTS, there are four skills that the British Council and other examination bodies take the test: reading writing, speaking, and listening:
- Reading If I talk about reading first, so in reading there are different materials that we have available in our surroundings. It’s also worth mentioning that if you want to improve your spoken skills, so you need to read different articles, newspapers, blogs magazines research papers, etc. right. This is one of the most significant things that you can do for the reading. Another one is that the reading should be for understanding. Reading should not be for the sake of reading. Reading should be for the sake of understanding, and in order to read some articles try to go for the plethora of reading. If you like novels, dramas, fiction or non-fiction stories, or you can say research papers, economic conditions, economical articles, whatever you want to read, just try to read it out.
- Writing. Another one is writing, which is one of the most important things in which most people face difficulty in learning and preparing for the exam. So for the writing, I always suggest my students write an essay about their lives first. It has certain steps that they have to follow:
- the first step is to write about your daily routine to write about your friends family members your business, about your office colleague;
- another one is if they want to get excellence in writing, so they must write, they must go for academic writing. There are certain topics that we have here like nowadays. COVID is very in, many writers are writing on it, and if you want to get a space in writing, so you can go for the burning topics that are very-very common in this era.
- Speaking. Another one is speaking. You must speak as much as you can. Don't worry about the grammar at the very first stage. At first, try to make yourself habitual of spoken English whether you're talking with natives or non-natives you're talking with your friends, colleagues, or anybody, just try to have a conversation with them on a daily basis, as this is something which requires high concentration. So you need to go for this thing.
- Listening. In order to improve your listening skills, you can go for listening to clips. There are certain clips that are easily available on Google on different search engines, so you can quickly jump on that and try to find out the best listening audios for yourself, and side by side you can solve some exercises which can be helpful for you in order to practice listening skills.
So that's how I usually prepare my students for the IELTS exam. There are certain other steps that I take for the students' requirements because the students are not the same. Some students are good at writing, some are good at reading some are good at speaking, but there is room for improvement. So I just try to fill that gap which I personally believe that students must need it.
– Do you give them any connectors or linking words for better writing or speaking better, or how can they enhance the level of their vocabulary, and how do you estimate uh like whether it's a fancy word or it is a low-lexis word or high-lexis word? How can you wait how to improve your vocabulary?
– Vocabulary. For the IELTS exam, in order to improve or enhance your vocabulary, first, you need to read. All four skills are interconnected with each other. If you start reading, you will come to know how the words are usually utilized in the sentences. You can see enhancing vocabulary. You must go through different reading passages because the best source of getting vocabulary is from the reading passages and yes, I want to mention here one important thing about vocabulary if you really want to learn vocabulary, so just start with one word and try to find out what is adjective of that word adverb, preposition, conjunction or interjection, what are the other parts of the speech of the same word. Furthermore, you just do not need to learn one single word and try to use it, rather you should go and try to check out what the other words are similar to the same family, some syllables, maybe we have to find some synonyms and attributes. For example, if it's “good”, so we have to understand the coloring of this word. Sometimes, this synonym can be in different contexts and the different connotations, for example, it could be “wonderful” but “good” can also be “delicious”, so we have to understand that some context as well as that you need to learn the different adjectives of the same thing. For example, if I talk about “big”, “enormous” and “massive” are giving you close meanings, so you can use them in different ways, but the sentence would give you the same sense.
– Thanks a lot, Kashif, for such professional tips.
– You’re welcome!
