Teaching & Learning English
This article presents a self-study strategy for students preparaing for the IELTS Writing test by reading about the common topics and studying the language typically used to discuss those subjects. Whilst I intend to do more research into this and publish the results to help my students, the recent advances in AI tools means this … Read more
One of the main things students have to do in academic writing is to make comparisons between different theories, methods and sources of data. In task 1 of the IELTS writing test, students need to compare the significant features of the visual provided. In both cases, it is clearly a big problem if students cannot … Read more
This page is set up to help students explore the use of the BAWE corpus as a tool for informing vocabulary choices in academic writing. The examples below come from either common errors in student writing or questions my students have asked about specific lexicogrammar features of English. If you search for words or phrases … Read more
This is my criticism of what I call the “formulaic template approach”. This is the approach typically used in IELTS training centres across China where the student is taught to memorise a template consisting of numerous generic sentences or partial sentences so that all they need to do is paraphrase the prompt a few times … Read more
One very common problem that students (below band 6) encounter is a limited range of vocabulary. Even if the vocabulary is used relatively effectively and accurately, the limitations become obvious due to repetition. Here are some examples from student writing: Sample 1 In this first sample, the word country is used repetitively. There are two … Read more