Daily lessons with Simon,
ex-IELTS examiner
Log in
Not a member?
Sign up or learn more here
IELTS Speaking: mirroring grammar
In the speaking test, listen carefully to the grammar in the question, and try to ‘mirror’ it in your answer. Read this lesson to see what I mean.
IELTS Listening: Immigration
The gap-fill exercise in this lesson gives you some useful words and phrases for the ‘immigration’ topic.
IELTS Reading: Adolescent Psychology
Try this paragraph headings exercise about the psychology of teenagers. Look for keywords in the questions and passage.
‘Home history’ paragraph
In this lesson you’ll see how I used our essay plan to write the first main body paragraph.
Teaching IELTS: Be a good model
A fair number of IELTS teachers are members of this site, so I’ll be sharing some teaching advice with them here too.
Writing Task 1: Asking for help
This lesson contains a General Training IELTS letter task and my model answer. Make a note of the informal phrases that I used.
Writing Task 1: Internet graph
The graph shows changes in the proportion of Internet users in three different countries from 1999 to 2009.
How to improve your speaking
Spoken language is usually less structured, organised and precise than written language. But there’s a simple way to improve it.
IELTS Listening: Crime Prevention
The gap-fill exercise in this lesson gives you some useful words and phrases for the ‘crime’ topic.
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.