What’s YOUR opinion about mock exams?
For example, about assigning entire writing tasks, following actual exam conditions straight out the gate?
I personally like to ‘ease them in’ to a course, a bit more gently. For their first ‘mock’ I tell students to take all the time they need (but try to do the task without a dictionary, as much as possible).
And as their course progresses, I start to more vehemently require that candidates submit any new writing with the following three bullet points explicitly included:
• Time:
• Dictionary:
• Word count:
This serves two key purposes, I think.
One, it splits the responsibility between teacher and student, and two, it serves as a great, ongoing reminder of IELTS-specific constraints, (e.g. that you have 20 minutes for the report, 40 for the essay, that the first should be around 150 words only, the latter 250-ish, etc.).
Mock exams –yay or nay? And HOW?
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Hi. I’m Fatime. I’m an IELTS Teacher Trainer, helping CELTA-qualified English language teachers become better at teaching SKILLS, as opposed to just testing them.
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