Stop buying those massive, expensive vocabulary workbooks that promise “fluency in thirty days.” I’ve spent nineteen years watching adult learners pour hundreds of dollars into glossy books, only to sit for their exams and freeze when they encounter a real sentence. They think they’re studying, but they’re just performing a hollow ritual. If you want
Stop highlighting your entire textbook and calling it “studying.” I see it every single term: students sitting in my classroom with neon-colored highlighters, frantically marking up pages as if color-coding a word makes it stick in their long-term memory. It’s a performance, not a process, and it is the fastest way to ensure you fail
I’ve sat through enough exam prep sessions to see the same tragic sight: a student pulls out a beautifully decorated, color-coded journal, only to realize they haven’t actually learned a single new word. You don’t need expensive highlighters or a degree in graphic design to succeed; honestly, most of that “aesthetic” studying is just a
I see it every single exam season: a brilliant student sits down, stares at the prompt, and proceeds to use the same tired, basic words they learned in primary school. They have these magnificent, sophisticated terms tucked away in the back of their minds, but they simply cannot reach them when the clock is ticking.
Stop wasting your money on those flashy, high-tech vocabulary apps that promise “neuroscience-backed” results in five minutes a day. I’ve spent nineteen years watching adult learners pour hundreds of hours into digital flashcards, only to freeze up during the actual exam because they haven’t truly internalized anything. If you are searching for how to learn
I was sitting in a cramped exam center last Tuesday, listening to a candidate struggle through their speaking component, when I heard it: “Um, like, so, you know…” every four seconds. It was like watching a beautiful choral arrangement being ruined by a single, out-of-tune singer. Most textbooks will tell you that fillers are just
I was sitting in an exam hall last Tuesday, watching a student—a bright, hardworking man in his forties—completely unravel during the speaking component. He had the vocabulary, certainly, but he was stumbling through his sentences like a car stuck in neutral, searching desperately for a way to connect his thoughts. He kept asking himself, how
I was sitting in a quiet exam hall last Tuesday, the kind of silence that feels heavy, when I watched a student stare at a writing prompt with absolute despair. He wasn’t struggling with vocabulary or grammar in the traditional sense; he was paralyzed because he didn’t know how to express certainty and doubt without
I was sitting in my small office last Tuesday, staring at a stack of IELTS essays, when I saw it again: another student claiming that “social media always causes depression.” It’s that same, aggressive certainty that I’ve seen hundreds of times over my nineteen years of teaching. These students think they are being bold and
I was sitting in a cramped exam hall in Johannesburg last Tuesday, watching a student stare at a prompt about urban development, and I could practically see the gears grinding. He was clearly brilliant, but he was stuck in the “black and white” trap, writing with the blunt force of a sledgehammer. Most textbooks will