English ReadersEnglish for Exams

Ice-breakers, short llers and exam technique practice

These tasks make use of all four books and can be used to start a lesson, to end a lesson, or to take a break from the textbook. They will help students to develop the skills they need to pass the IELTS exam.

1. To encourage students to think about their own language learning and exam preparation:Pair students up to do a practice speaking test. One student can be assigned the role of exam candidate and the other can take the role of examiner. They can talk about the topic that was covered in the previous class, asking and answering questions in the style of Part 3 of the Speaking exam.

2. To get students used to working to time limits:Exercises such as gap- lling passages or matching columns of items can be made more challenging by dividing learners into teams and placing strict time limits on activities. When you check answers, allocate a certain number of points to the fastest team but deduct points for incorrect responses. This will encourage learners to balance the need for speed with the need to be accurate, an important skill for IELTS.

3. To encourage learners to engage personally with a topic:Explain to students that people often communicate more effectively about issues that are meaningful to them. If they are interested in what they are saying, their writing and speech is likely to come across as more interesting and coherent to the examiner. They are also more likely to read or listen actively when they are dealing with a topic that they have explored in a personally meaningful way.

Set questions for small group discussion. For example, if the topic is An aging population, you could invite learners to imagine themselves at the age of 75 and ask:

What would you enjoy doing as a 75-year-old?

How would you feel?

What would be important to you?

What would you want or need from other people or from society as a whole?

Then move on to getting groups to discuss the topic in more objective or academic terms:

How should society prepare for an aging population?

Should families or governments take more responsibility for looking after the elderly?

4. To increase learner autonomy:This activity will help learners prepare for their IELTS speaking and writing tests, where they will frequently have to give reasons for their responses. It will also help them to become better, more self-re ective learners.

Before checking the answers to exercises as a class, ask students to work in pairs to compare their responses. They must explain how they arrived at their answers and compare the strategies that they used. Where theyve used different strategies, ask them if they can identify which was most successful.

English ReadersEnglish for Exams

5. To help learners think like examiners:A. Get learners to test each other. You can begin with something simple, for example, giving each

student in a pair a list of words from the previous unit to test the other.

As they become more experienced, get learners involved in producing exam practice exercises for one another. For reading practice, for example, invite learners to write comprehension questions about a text for a partner. Start with simple short-answer comprehension questions, then move on to the more challenging tasks of writing true/false/not given and multiple choice and questions. Point out examples of good distractors or good trick questions to encourage learners to read closely and think like an examiner.

B. Arrange for learners to give one another feedback on speaking and writing activities. For speaking practice, have learners work in groups of three: examiner, candidate and observer. To give learners more con dence in giving constructive feedback, try the following:

Stage 1: Identify an aspect or aspects of performance to focus on (e.g. intonation, giving examples)

Stage 2: Demonstrate giving feedback using a video or audio taped sample.

Stage 3: Invite the class to give feedback using a video or audio taped sample.

Stage 4: Arrange for learners to work in groups of three. At the end of each practice, ask the observer to feedback what went well and what needs more work. Then swap roles.

6. To encourage self-re ection:Encourage learners to monitor their own learning by setting questions for re ection at the end of each lesson: What was the most useful thing you learned today? What do you think you need to work on next?

Learners could also be asked to produce a line graph showing how their con dence and/or motivation has changed over the course of their studies. This could be used as a stimulus for Task 1 writing practice.

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