(43 of 50) CLT & Taiwan: 5th Sign about a ‘Teacher’ Which Should Make You Worried [Part i]

Is it the truth.png

Six Signs Which Should Make You Worried About a ‘Teacher’: 5th Sign [Part i]

So, let’s give the next sign which should make you worried. This sign comes in two parts. Here is the first.

5th Sign That Should Make You Worried About a Teacher

The teacher claims they are IELTS 9 – and that’s the only ‘qualification’ they have.

[There’s no TEFL qualifications, or no proof of TEFL qualifications].

This is the old trick, and it’s recently come back again.

“I have IELTS 9. I’ll tell you how I did it. And by the way, if you pay me lots of money per hour, I teach you the ‘IELTS 9’ method. It worked for me, so it can work for you.”

They can reinforce this with,

  • IELTS 9 seminars,
  • IELTS 9 strategies,
  • IELTS 9 books,
  • IELTS 9 tips, and so on.

There are two problems with this.

Problem 1

Talk to any real IELTS examiner, and they will admit they give IELTS 9 once every few years, or simply never at all. IELTS 9 is a score native speakers of English might be able to get; not Taiwanese students. Even native speakers of English would probably never get 9 for IELTS Writing. [Writing is difficult!]

So, when the teacher says, “I got IELTS 9” or the school advertises, “All of our teachers are IELTS 9”, we have the usual problem: are you sure they are saying the truth? Thus, there are two important things which should happen.

  • The ‘teacher’ who claims ‘IELTS 9’ should prove this claim.
  • You, the student, should ask for this proof.

A simple photograph of the IELTS certificate, clearly showing the name, is good enough proof. But the teachers who claim IELTS 9 achievements (and it is happening right now on PTT) never prove it. They just claim it. And no one asks them to prove it. And that’s the problem.

Time to think everyone; think to think very very carefully.

Problem 2

Even if someone does have IELTS 9, does that mean anything? It actually means nothing that matters to you. This links to a two very early post I made on this blog, on the 4th and 5th of January 2017. They were called:

“I got IELTS 8; I’ll show you how to do it”.

At that time, people were claiming that they had IELTS 8. Well, now they have raised it to IELTS 9. You could go back and read these original posts, but I’ll show a shorter version right now.

Begin

Everyone has a right to proudly mention their success in IELTS. They have a right to speculate about why they got it, but that’s all. It is always just speculation. Remember that!

But whatever band score is achieved, it begins to get risky when the student says,

“It’s really easy. I just used …[dubious source] and [dubious source]”

… and it gets even riskier when they start saying,

“You only have to do [strange piece of advice]”,

… but when the student or a school starts saying,

“I can teach you all how to do it” 

… your reply should be simple: it doesn’t make any sense.

And when they begin to say,

            “Pay me lots of money to show you how to get IELTS 9.”

… your reply should be (as I said in Part i), “Before I give you any money, prove to me that you did get IELTS 9.”

Time to think

If I, Teacher Andrew, did the IELTS Test, I’d get IELTS 9 for Speaking, Reading, Listening, and probably for Writing, too. Can this ‘IELTS 9’ rub off onto you? Can I show you how to do it? Did I get this IELTS 9 from a secret ‘method’? A sneaky ‘trick’? A magic ‘key’? A special set of ‘IELTS Vocabulary’? Was it because of some discrete piece of knowledge which someone can easily pass onto you? Think about it. How did I get this IELTS 9? Could I put on my website and all my advertising,

Teacher Andrew will show you the famous IELTS 9 method?

Ummm, what was my method? Well, having spent the first 27 year of my life growing up in Australia, studying six years at primary school, six years at high school, and four years at university, probably helped a bit. Then the masters degree, and the predilection of mine to constantly read and study, and the many teacher-training courses I have done over the years probably helped. Of course, over 20 years of working as a teacher with the English language may have assisted just a little. And the eight books I have written (in English) and an ongoing interest in literature helped.

So how could you achieve what I would achieve in the IELTS test – an IELTS 9?

Well, one way to achieve that score is to simply do what I did – grow up and educate yourself in an English-speaking country for over 20 years! In short, become a native-speaker of English – and that’s the IELTS 9 method.

The next post will conclude the ‘I got IELTS 9 and I’ll show you how to do it’ issue.

Now, check that you know the meaning of the underlined vocabulary (also repeated below).

  • a seminar (n)
  • to speculate (v)
  • to be dubious (adj)
  • to be sneaky (adj)
  • discrete (adj)
  • a predilection (n)

If you want to find out more about me, go to aisielts.com .