My IELTS Classroom Podcast

Why are so many students stuck at a 6.5 for IELTS writing?

• Shelly Cornick and Nick Lone

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Today, Nick and I discuss one of the most important IELTS questions - why are so many students stuck at a 6.5 for IELTS writing? Is it because there is a conspiracy to trick test-takers, or are there other less sinister reasons? You can find the full episode notes and a transcript of the conversation at http://podcast.myieltsclassroom.com/

This is a re-run of an episode from 2020, so don't be surprised if Nick and I sound so youthful!

Episode Notes

Following on from our lesson last week, today we look at the most common IELTS myth -  examiners are changing test-takers writing scores on purpose to prevent them getting a 7.0. Is there really any evidence for this? Well PC Lone and Sargent Cornick will investigate to find out! Then, we will spend the rest of the episode discussing the most common errors in that we saw when we were examiners when marking students' essays. Are you making these mistakes? Well, join the episode to find out!

In this episode, we will discuss:

  1. if it is possible that Cambridge, the British Council, IDP, examiners, or individual test centres are changing scores of purposively making it hard for students to get a 7.0 in IELTS writing?
  2. why students tend to get a lower score in writing than in the other parts of test
  3. the most common errors that we see with Task Response, Coherence and Cohesion, Lexical Resource, Grammatical Range and Accuracy that stop students getting a 7.0 for their IELTS essay

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