I remember sitting in a cramped exam hall five years ago, watching a student’s face go from focused to utterly defeated. He hadn’t failed because he lacked the vocabulary; he failed because he encountered a poorly phrased prompt and, quite frankly, had no idea how to report questions that seemed fundamentally broken. He sat there
I was sitting in a cramped, overheated exam hall last Tuesday, watching a bright, capable student stare at a transformation task like it was written in ancient Greek. She knew the vocabulary, and she certainly knew the context, but she completely crumbled when it came to shifting her tenses. It’s the same story I’ve seen
I remember sitting in a humid classroom in Johannesburg, looking at a student’s essay that was technically perfect in grammar but sounded like a robot trying to pass as a CEO. He had used “utilize” and “subsequently” in every single sentence, completely missing the fact that the prompt asked for a friendly email to a
I was sitting in my office last Tuesday, staring at a particularly heartbreaking essay from a student who is clearly brilliant but keeps hitting a ceiling. He used “get” and “stuff” in a formal report about urban development, and just like that, his score plummeted. It’s the same pattern I’ve seen for nineteen years: students
I was sitting in a dim exam hall last Tuesday, grading a stack of IELTS essays, when I felt that familiar, sharp pang of frustration. I looked down at a candidate’s paper—a bright, capable student, clearly—and saw it again: a relentless, rhythmic drone of “it was decided,” “it was thought,” and “the results were obtained.”
Stop wasting your money on those “essential word lists” of 5,000 academic terms that no one actually uses in a coffee shop or a hallway conversation. I see it every single semester: students memorizing archaic synonyms for “happy” or “sad,” only to freeze up when a colleague asks them a simple question about their weekend.
I’ve spent nineteen years watching brilliant, highly educated adults stare at an IELTS reading passage with absolute dread, only to lose half a band score because they overthought a single sentence. Most textbooks will tell you that you need complex logic or a deep understanding of nuance, but that is a lie that costs students
I was sitting in my small home office last Tuesday, staring at a stack of IELTS essays, when I heard a particularly dissonant note from my choir rehearsal recording. It reminded me of the way students approach grammar: they try so hard to be “correct” that they end up sounding utterly robotic. Most textbooks will
I was sitting in a cramped, windowless exam hall last Tuesday, watching a student—a bright, hardworking man in his forties—stare in disbelief at his writing score. He had lost nearly two full marks on his descriptive essay, not because his vocabulary was poor, but because he kept alternating between ‘used to’ and ‘would’ in ways
I was sitting in a crowded exam hall last Tuesday, watching a student’s face turn a bright, panicked shade of crimson. He had just finished a speaking component, but instead of a clean exit, he had simply faded away into a series of awkward, mumbled “uhs” and “umms” before practically running for the door. It’s