IELTS 5 (reading & listening)

31st December 2018

First IELTS class at my new centre, and if you’ve read my previous post, you’ll know my previous experiences with IELTS have been less than glorious. However, I was optimistic about this class; I would only be teaching reading, listening and speaking. No more having to read (often poorly-written) essays about graphs or charts.

One of my first students said she was, “Very excited.” I thought she meant about the lesson – but no, she was excited about New Year’s Eve and what she would be doing after class. Oh well … nevermind.

I thought it would be good to immediately get the students mixing and talking to each other, get them up from their seats, so I prepared a questionnaire. They had to interview different classmates and learn a little about them

Gather information about your classmates

Question	Name	Response
Why are you studying IELTS ?
Where would you most like to visit and why ? Would you like to live abroad ?
What is the hardest thing about learning English ? How do you solve this ?
How often do you use English ? Do you need English at work ? Do you write, read or speak English everyday ?
What do you like most about western culture or countries ?
What idioms do you know ?  Which are your favourites ? Do you understand why people use these idioms ?

This lead into the idiom it’s raining cats and dogs which most students had heard (it means raining heavily).

Today’s reading and listening was based on types of housing and areas. I boarded some extra terms:

gritty / industrial

quite / safe / residential

boring / peaceful / suburban

bustling / vibrant / city centre

Which would you apply to these:

All photos are from the UK

New vocabulary introduced included:

apparently – something you believe to be true

conversely – the opposite, on the other hand, however

bear with me – please wait a very short time

Pronunciation focused on dates – the difference between 3rd, 13th and 30th.

Grammar was adjective-noun phrases – such as a stressful journey, a peaceful holiday, delicious food, expensive watch etc.