IELTS with Fiona: a comprehensive guide to IELTS

I'm trying out a new way of sharing my tips and advice for IELTS. If you go to the 'What's new' tab on my website, you'll find a daily tip: https://app.getbeamer.com/ieltswithfiona/en You can leave a comment there and ask questions if you need help or if you have any requests. In this podcast I cover the last 7 days of tips: Should I appeal my IELTS score? https://app.getbeamer.com/ieltswithfiona/...

Have you ever been ripped off, conned, scammed, tricked, duped or just misled when buying an online IELTS course? In this blog and podcast, I've outlined the 10 'red flags' that you need to know about before you decide which course provider to go with. Here are are some common tactics that you may not even notice, and they range from being simply 'misleading' to illegal. For more information and e...

The Members Academy Reading Bootcamp started today (you can still join - it's just $28 and includes 28 days of both live and recorded lessons). This week's focus is on True False Not Given questions, so here's a taster of today's lesson. This is an Academic Passage 1 about a sculptor called Henry Moore. I try to get my students to make educated guesses about TFNG questions by the way they're writt...

This is an Academic Passage 3 Part 3 (Book 16) , so it's tough. In this lesson we'll look at how the language that you learn for Task 2 will help you understand the Reading, and how Reading academic texts like this will help you improve your Writing. Some of the points I mention include: - Word formation https://ieltsetc.com/2020/06/word-formation/ - The 'marc' system for pie charts (Makes up, acc...

Are you using the right idiom in the right place with the right person and the right pronunciation? To use an idiom correctly there are so many factors that you have to take into account, for example who uses this idiom (age, gender, profession, location)? when do they use this idiom? (context) why do they choose to use this idiom (humour, anger, sarcasm, style)? how often do people use this idiom...

This episode is a Part 4 Listening about an ancient philosophy called Stoicism (don't worry if you've never heard of it - the Listening will explain everything). It's a gapfill summary (one word only) and we also discuss: DESPITE (+ noun or + ing verb or + the fact that) US and UK spellings (do they matter in IELTS?) how my 2-minute Pronunciation feedback can fix a common problem related to your f...

This passage 2 Academic IELTS Reading is a problem-solution structure. The problem : air-conditioning units generate 'spectacular and largely unnecessary energy use and carbon emissions'. The solution: use natural ventilation, as they did in 19th-century hospitals. This IELTS Reading is packed full of useful vocab like 'to squander energy' (= to waste) and 'it uses a FRACTION of the electricity/at...

This is a Section 4 Listening. I chose this Listening in order to show you why hyphens are NOT important in Listening gap-fill summaries. There are 3 main types of words in gapfill summaries: 1) Words ending with a suffix like '-tion' or '-sion' 2) Commodities or materials like wool, gold, tea or sugar. 3) Irregular words like plurals ending in y/ies or irregular word forms like poor/poverty. Get...

I had a special request for this Academic Passage 3 because it's difficult, but honestly, it's a very early test (Book 7) and is just badly-written. I think the reading itself is very useful as an example of academic writing, with lots you can learn from it, but the questions are simply not good - you can guess 3 of them without even needing to understand what they mean (a sure sign of a bad test)...

When you get IELTS Writing feedback from your teacher, you should be able to see why you are not achieving your desired score. But this feedback is only useful if you understand exactly what the teacher is talking about when they are pointing out areas you need to work on. Writing Feedback about LANGUAGE is usually easy to understand – most people know the language related to grammar (e.g. wrong t...

This is an Academic Part 1 text. The text and subject matter is difficult but the questions (YNNG) are NOT.  In fact, in this episode I will show you how you can mostly guess the answers without reading or understanding very much of the text. Get more help with Yes, No, Not Given questions on my website . If you'd like to contribute to the upkeep of my website and podcast, you can buy me a co...

Cambridge Book 15 Test 1 Passage 3

This is a really useful Part 2 IELTS Listening (Book 15) about a community that closed their road to traffic so that the children could play safely outside. It practises Multiple Choice and Choosing from a list. Useful vocab: 'the idea caught on' = the idea became very popular in other places 'give it a go' = try it Useful grammar: Present Perfect vs Past Simple 'The scheme's been up and running f...

This is a nice and easy Academic Reading Part 1 (great for GT too). It goes in chronological order, so it's easy to find information from dates, names and places, and there are 2 sets of questions (TFNG and gapfill). If you're aiming for 7 and you can get 10/13 correct in less than 20 minutes, you're doing very well. Check your band score here: https://ieltsetc.com/ielts-band-score-calculator/ Get...

Today's Listening is a 6/10 for difficulty. It's a Part 3 Listening with multiple choice and matching from a list. Useful vocabulary and synonyms: surprising = amazing got cut off = became isolated exact = precise contact = get in touch with make detailed notes = write down all the ideas check timing = make sure we won't overrun add personal opinions = give your own viewpoint Join the Conditionals...

This is a really really useful passage to read because of how it can help your WRITING. The passage itself is not difficult, but it is jam-packed full of excellent examples of Formal Academic Writing so if you have this reading at home, go through it carefully. - 'PEEL' paragraphs - Hedging https://ieltsetc.com/2020/12/hedging-in-academic-writing/ - Linking words https://ieltsetc.com/2019/07/ielts...

This is an extremely difficult Academic Reading Passage 3. It took me 30 minutes to find the answers even with the answer sheet in front of me. What can we learn from a text like this? Background knowledge and vocabulary will aid understanding Strategies such as locating the researchers' names will speed up your responses Every little helps - 2 of my recent daily tasks from the Writing Challenge w...

No time to do my Advent Challenge? This podcast (watch the video version on www. YouTube.com/fionawattam) talks you through the past 12 days, so you'll get up and running really quickly! It's never too late to start - just go to my website: https://ieltsetc.com/ielts-advent-adventure/ and open the windows which will take you through to all the links. Come and post your sentences on Facebook, where...

Is this Listening more difficult than usual? I got a special request from Elango in my Members Academy, and yes I think it is a tricky one! I had to read the tapescript very carefully to figure out the answer to Question 27, and it even required a bit of background knowledge (possibly true of Question 28 too!). Apart from that, this is a really good one to practise listening for: - Signals and Sig...

I had a special request from Isabella on Instagram today 👋🇧🇷. She asked me to look at a really difficult text (yes, this one's 9/10!). It's an Academic Passage 3 and it follows the Reading Type 2 structure (discursive) which goes like this - Title: asks a question ( Why? The answer is not what everyone thinks). 1. Old theory: Everyone thinks fairy tales have endured because the STORIES give us WA...

Do you have a bike-sharing scheme where you live? In London there are the so-called 'Boris bikes' (named after Boris Johnson, who launched them in 2010 after being inspired by the success of a similar scheme in Paris, which is mentioned in this reading). This is a Section 2 Academic Text with 3 types of questions: Matching Statements, Choosing from a List and Gapfill. So whenever there's a lot to...

This is a difficult Section 4, but if you listen to my podcast regularly, you will be very familiar with this common IELTS topic! It's about marine archaeology, the use of technology to find ancient shipwrecks and building under the sea, and the lessons researchers can learn about how ancient civilisations lived. In this episode I refer to similar IELTS Reading/Listening texts, so you can see how...

Both texts are gapfill summaries. The first one gives you practice with summary Flow Charts ( IELTS 28-Day Planner Day 12 ) and the second covers the common topic of how to deal with absence in the workplace (good practice if you never usually read this kind of document). Get more General Training Reading tips on my website. Follow me on Instagram and Facebook for daily practice. #ielts #ieltstest...

Listen out for the 5 most common gapfill types in this Part 4 gapfill on the very common topics of Agriculture and Water (28-Day Planner Week 1). Practise these topics on my website: https://ieltsetc.com/?s=agriculture Watch my YouTube 5-minute Vocab review of Agriculture here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ha1KIJfkglA&t=56s And here's the Honeybee Listening I mentioned: https://ieltsetc.com...

This is an Academic Reading Part 1 (so it's good for GT too). The structure is chronological (in order of time) which helps you locate the answers more easily. It's also very similar to a text on my website: The Story Of Silk, which you can find here: https://ieltsetc.com/2018/12/ielts-reading-story-silk/ and I refer to last week's podcast about The Eucalyptus Tree to show you how similar they are...