Daily lessons with Simon,
ex-IELTS examiner
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IELTS Reading: Doggerland
Try this multiple choice exercise about a place called Doggerland. Look for keywords in the questions and passage.
‘Home history’ plan and introduction
In this lesson I show you my full essay plan and introduction for the ‘home history’ writing topic.
IELTS Writing: ‘home history’ topic
In some countries, more and more people are becoming interested in finding out about the history of the house or building they live in. What are the reasons for this? How can people research this?
The essay plan in your head
This lesson is about having a plan and a clear approach before you go into the IELTS writing test. We also start work on a new question from Cambridge IELTS 16.
Error correction and useful phrases
Here are my answers to last week’s error-correction homework, and some useful phrases from the same exercise.
Full paragraph and error correction
Read my five-sentence paragraph about how to reduce the consumption of fossil fuels, then try to correct the mistakes in 10 sentences.
Fossil fuels paragraph
In this lesson we plan and write a five-sentence paragraph about how to reduce the consumption of fossil fuels.
Be more coherent
How can you improve the coherence in your paragraphs? Answer: look at the ‘job’ that each sentence is doing.
Learning from mistakes
Your mistakes are an opportunity for improvement.
IELTS Speaking: my method vs unrealistic methods
In this lesson we compare my method for IELTS speaking part 1 with a method that some teachers are recommending.
Concise, clear, coherent
These 3 words sum up the writing style that we’re trying to develop.
Efficient writing and sentence jobs
To write in a more efficient way, remember that each sentence should do a particular job.
Stick to the method
Follow my suggested writing method as closely as possible, and become a more efficient writer.
‘Less common’ vocabulary
What is ‘less common vocabulary’?
Common collocations are usually best
Use the kind of collocation that a native speaker would use, rather than something unusual that sounds strange or wrong.
Introduction to collocations
What are collocations and how can you become better at using them?
Two-idea paragraph
In this lesson we use a two-idea plan to write a coherent, organised paragraph.
Improving a paragraph
In this lesson we analyse a paragraph written by a student, looking at how the logical development of sentences can be improved.
Developing your ideas
How to develop or extend ideas when writing an essay.
3 paragraph types
Learn to write three types of main body paragraph.
How to build a paragraph
How to use the ‘sentence-level’ writing approach to build main body paragraphs.
Sentence-level essay writing
Do you know exactly what to write in each sentence of your essays?
Welcome to the new site
Welcome to the Blog area of this site. Here you can read my new weekly lessons, and you can write comments to communicate with me and other members.