Pedagogical Strategies for Mastering All Four Academic IELTS Skills

This dissertation describes a variety of pedagogical strategies for the development of all four skills in IELTS Academic test-takers. In contrast to the prevailing view among many IELTS teachers that IELTS preparation involves nothing more than repeated practice tests and familiarization with test formats and strategies, the study takes the view that IELTS preparation is best viewed as a form of academic English instruction with the dual aim of helping test-takers acquire the skills required to perform well in the test and to cope in English-medium academic situations after testing. After an introductory overview of IELTS Academic, including a description of its purpose, an explanation of its format, a discussion of how it is scored and an examination of its growing global popularity, as well as an explanation of the role which it is playing in higher education entrance and professional mobility around the world, the main body of the study describes a range of general and more specific methodological principles underlying effective IELTS teaching, including needs analysis, diagnostic assessment, target-band selection and achievement, lesson planning and design, material selection and use, assessment and feedback, learner autonomy and teacher competence. The four skills are dealt with individually in turn, with a description of a range of strategies which are shown to be of potential value to teachers in their attempts to help their students improve in each. The skills are discussed in the following order: Listening, Reading, Writing and Speaking. In each case, after outlining the key difficulties which test-takers are known to experience, examples of lessons and/or teaching ideas which are intended to help students to develop the necessary skills are provided. A final section examines the IELTS assessment criteria and describes how teachers can make use of the band descriptors which are used to determine scores in order to provide feedback to students, as well as to aid test-takers’ own assessment of their work and that of their peers, and to monitor their own and their students’ progress over time.