…I didn’t quite know what I was doing. 😀
I had been working with candidates preparing for the Cambridge FCE, CAE, and CPE (today ‘B2 First’, ‘C1 Advanced’ and ‘C2 Proficiency’), but I hadn’t heard much of IELTS yet.
(This was in the early two thousands, IELTS wasn’t so well-known in Europe at the time yet).
So I did what I see many of you doing as well when starting teaching IELTS:
• I was honest about my lack of IELTS experience with my (prospective) students,
and if they still chose to work with me (–many of them did, either because of word of mouth, or because they had been my general English students before)
• I got a few past papers to become familiar with the basic structure of the exam.
And so we started.
And I made sure that I paid extra attention to what my students’ emerging needs were, relying on my general English teaching, as well as my Cambridge main suite exams prep experience.
And this seemed enough at the time (as my IELTS clientele kept growing as well).
And it kind of HAD TO be enough, frankly, as there were no courses, online qualifications, etc. available at the time that I could have taken to be better at the thing, even though I would have loved to sign up for one.
So this is my advice to you, if you’re just starting to teach IELTS:
Start where you are, as you are. <3
And THEN, when you’re ready, take a proper IELTS teacher training course, to consolidate what you already discovered about the exam, and to learn new teaching techniques.
How did you feel when YOU first taught IELTS?
P.s. If you already ARE at the stage when you are ready to invest into your IELTS teaching career, check out my course, How to Teach IELTS –The Ultimate IELTS Teacher Training Bootcamp– here! 😉
#showmehow #skillsfirst
#IELTSteacher #IELTSTeacherTrainer #IELTSTeacherTraining #ELTskillsteacher
#TeachingIELTSafterCELTA #bootcamp #CPD
