Today a student asked me… “To develop my listening skills, should I watch English movies and TV with or without subtitles?” The answer is…do both. In other words, watch some shows with subtitles and other shows without them. Why? Let’s look at some academic research… Watching English shows or films with subtitles, even subtitles in your native language, can help […]
IELTS Listening: Movie/TV with Subtitles – Good or Bad?
IELTS Listening: ‘Life on Other Planets’
Those of you who have met me know that I love talking about space exploration and science in general. Fortunately, science is one of the main topics for IELTS listening lectures (along with history, geography, etc.)! I watched this TED talk recently and found some great vocabulary in it for IELTS listening. To make things more interesting, […]
IELTS Master Highlights: Volume 3
It’s my job to get you the best IELTS material, whether it’s from me or someone else. Here are some of the highlights from this week: IELTS Reading: Newsela article on Robots and Health IELTS Writing: IELTS Simon on Task 1 Pie Charts IELTS Speaking: IELTS Advantage on Pronunciation General Speaking: Expert Adrian Underhill on English […]
IELTS Listening: Preparing with Podcasts
Podcasts can be a great place to get IELTS listening practice. They are a great way to study while riding a bus or driving to work. Here are some of my favorites. I recommend you choose one or two that you enjoy and can understand: IELTS Podcasts (these are directly related to IELTS): IELTS Podcast IELTS Test Prepcast IELTS Energy […]
IELTS Listening: Capital Letters and Proper Nouns
Student Question: Should I write in all capital letters for the IELTS listening so I don’t lose points for proper nouns? For listening, it doesn’t matter if you use capital letters, lower case letters, or a combination of both. So you can write an answer as “China”, “china”, “CHINA”, “ChInA”, or whatever else you’d like. […]