Irina Lutsenko

I want to share an absolutely awesome IELTS essay written in my " Writing with New Scientist " course by the wonderful Alyona Borisova . This is what a topic "explored in depth" looks like (Task Response Band 9). Topic: "Many ultra-processed foods that people consume in large amounts today are known to cause health problems. Such foods should be made more expensive to encourage people to decrease the consumption of such foods. To what extent do you agree or disagree?" ✼✼✼ There is now ample evidence that ultra-processed foods are a significant driver of poor health, linked to multiple diseases ranging from diabetes to heart attacks and depression. These facts have given rise to the opinion that the government should introduce taxes on ultra-processed foods to deter people from consuming them in large amounts. However, I completely disagree with this view for several reasons. First, there is no consensus yet as to what exactly makes ultra-processed foods de...

I want to share an awesome IELTS essay written in my " Writing with New Scientist " course. The essay was so great when I first checked it that I had to read it several times in order to find something to correct or at least suggest. It's absolutely awesome now - it has academic lexis, hedging, a range of cohesive devices, a sharp focus - everything you need for a high score. The author of the essay decided to remain anonymous. Some people believe stress is such a detrimental force that it should be avoided and minimized as much as possible. Others, however, say that stress should be welcomed as it is a natural part of life and can even be beneficial. Discuss both these views and give your own opinion. ✽✽✽ It is generally agreed that stress is an integral part of life, but there is no agreement as to what attitude towards it is best to adopt. Some welcome stress, claiming that it could be turned to their advantage. Others, however, feel that stress should be eliminated o...

I want to share a great IELTS essay written in my " Writing with New Scientist " course. The author is the wonderful Anna Skopina . Just look at the plethora of cohesive devices she used (I highlighted some to make sure you notice).  Task: Some people think that economic well-being is the most important factor for achieving happiness. However, others think that there are other factors involved in happiness. Discuss both these views and give your own opinion. ✽✽✽ Some people claim that financial well-being is of paramount importance to an individual’s happiness, whereas others are convinced that other factors contribute more to life satisfaction. I am going to discuss both views and agree with the latter. One view is that money plays the most important role in people’s quality of life. This could be explained by a certain correlation between economic well-being and the level of life-satisfaction, with rich people in general being more satisfied with their lives than poor one...

I want to share a great Writing Task 1 answer written by my former student Anna Skopina . The task is a process description from IELTS 16 Test 2 - making sugar from sugar cane.  With process descriptions, students usually have two problems: 1. The answer is either extremely short (= not fully developed) or extremely long (= with many irrelevant or even made-up details); 2. The description is mechanical and the stages are marked with same type of cohesive devices (first, then, in the next stage etc).  Anna's description is well-balanced and contains a range of cohesive devices, especially ones to indicates stages and sequences. Try to notice them as you read it.  ✽✽✽ The provided diagram gives information on the production of sugar, which is made from sugar cane. The process is divided into seven stages, including growing and harvesting sugar cane, extracting and purifying its juice, making syrup from the juice and, finally, separating sugar crystals from the syrup. The pr...

How can teachers make the most of IELTS writing sample answers? Here are some suggestions from the wonderful  Natalya Skachkova , my former IELTS student, a passionate writing teacher, and my first VK Donut subscriber - my subscription service with IELTS writing sample answers. Speaking of which... you will find links to some IELTS answers by both me and my students at the bottom of the post. ✽✽✽ Providing the example of strong performance While doing the course «Prepare your students for IELTS» with Norwich Institute for Language Education , not once were we reminded about the importance of providing sample answers, both strong and weak. However, it is the former that gives a clearer understanding of what is expected of your writing. All the criteria should be exemplified by an actual work; otherwise, they will just remain elusive notions that can be interpreted in a variety of ways. Teaching writing sub-skills In order to direct students’ attention to specific features of a samp...

Some people think that in IELTS essays there is the "right" opinion, that is either the opinion the test makers have in mind (which you are supposed to somehow divine) or the socially accepted opinion that sounds righteous (e.g. we need to prevent climate change). This is not true. Any opinion works as long as it's argued well.  I want to share an essay that argues a very counterintuitive point of view - that too much time and resources are spent on protecting wild animals. The essay is written by my student Nastya. "You came up with very convincing arguments on the point of view I didn’t want to be convinced in," was my comment on the essay. She probably doesn't even support this point of view herself, but this is irrelevant. All that matters is it's a very logical essay that would get a very high score. ✽✽✽ "Some people say that too much time and resources are spent on the protection of wild animals and birds. To what extent do you agree or disagr...

I often hear people criticize tests like  IELTS   or   C2 Proficiency  for having nothing to do with real life. Well, I disagree. So much so that I have to split the post on this topic into two parts. Part 1. First and foremost, a universal “real life” does not exist. A farmer in Nebraska, a university professor in Oxford, and I have very different real lives. The farmer won’t write essays, the university professor won’t make Stories on Instagram, and I will do both. Second, exams were created for very specific “real lives.” If you go to official exam websites and check their descriptions, you will find the following: “IELTS is an English language test for study, migration or work. IELTS is accepted by more than 10,000 employers, universities, schools and immigration bodies around the world.” “Preparing for and passing C2 Proficiency means you have the level of English that’s needed to study or work in a very senior professional or academic environment, for example ...

I want to share a great essay written by my student Svetlana Demchenko in my IELTS Academic Writing Target 7.5-8 group . Topic: In the future it may be necessary for us to live on other planets. For this reason, some people believe that we should spend money now researching planets that could be a possible home, such as Mars. To what extent do you agree or disagree? Answer: There is a possibility that people will need to colonize other planets and, consequently, that some funds have to be invested in this research now. I fully disagree with this opinion for two reasons. First, the money allocated to finding another potential home for humanity should rather be spent on more pressing problems that are already harming an enormous number of people. Taking into account the ultimate aim of space colonization, that is, saving people’s lives, it is a considerably more plausible idea to spend resources on battling various diseases, eliminating poverty and other social issues. The amount of mon...

IELTS line graphs are easy to tame - you just go chronologically, so the description doesn't get out of hand. Information in pie charts, however, can be hard to organize because there are different directions you can go in. In this post, I want to share two IELTS pie chart answers I wrote for the same task. The task is from Cambridge IELTS 11 . The introduction and the overview are the same. As you read, pay attention to the organization and try to decide which description works better. ✼✼✼ Introduction  The pie charts compare the percentage of British students of one English university who knew foreign languages in 2000 and 2010. Main Body Version 1 The percentage of students in three groups grew. Speakers of Spanish formed the largest share in both years, rising by 5% from 30% to 35%. The increase was the same in the “Another language” and “Two other languages” groups. In 2010, the former amounted to 20%, while the latter comprised 15%, making up the second and third largest prop...

Lyudmila Snezhanova is on the horns of a dilemma which test of English to take  IELTS or C2 Proficiency . Having taken both, I’ve decided to summarize some practical information about the exams, hopefully making her choice easier (and your choice if you are facing the same dilemma). In this post, I will outline the exam structures briefly and comment on what seemed easy or difficult to me personally. I will be talking about IELTS Academic only. I will be using the old abbreviation CPE for C2 Proficiency because it's shorter and more familiar to most people in the EFL world. The post is a long read, but I've organized it into sections so it should be easy to navigate.  First, some words about my exam history. I've taken paper-based IELTS Academic (three times, getting 8.5 in 2011 and 2013, before finally getting 9 in 2016) and paper-based C2 Proficiency (just once, getting an A in 2018). Now off to describing the two exams. 1 Listening IELTS You...

Last year I read a book called " Storytelling with data: a data visualization guide for business professionals ,” which might seem like a bizarre choice for an English teacher. Seduced by the word storytelling , I ended up reading a book for people whose job is to visualize information in the form of line graphs, bar charts, pie charts, and tables, so basically IELTS Writing Task 1 tasks but for real life situations. In IELTS preparation we always describe data. But this book gave me an opportunity to change sides and look at those charts from the perspective of those who create them. In this post, I want to share one important insight I got that can make a huge difference to the way you approach IELTS Academic Writing Task 1. The author of the book emphasizes that to visualize data effectively you need to think about two key questions - who you are describing the data to and what you want them to know or do. Even though these questions are technically not part of the exam, ...

This post is an interview with Liubov Vlasova , who is my first student to have taken the computer-delivered IELTS . In this interview, she shares her impressions and the reasons behind her choice. 1 Tell my readers a bit about yourself. My name is Liubov Vlasova. I am an ecologist from Saint-Petersburg, Russia. Today I want to share my experience of taking computer-delivered IELTS, which happened on 7th of May. A couple of months ago I took a very important decision to try to emigrate abroad. I think my professional area is very important today because our environment was totally destroyed the last years, and I hope one day I will do really useful and important job for improving the current situation. According to the media, in foreign countries environmental and particularly ecological engineering are very important and popular branches, which is why I decided to move abroad for achieving my professional and personal goals. 2 Why did you decide to take IELTS? Initia...

IELTS assessment criteria, which are available on the official website , are drowning in myths and stereotypes. When interpreted unprofessionally, they get totally distorted. Some aspects get blown out of proportion and enter the popular consciousness, while others get totally neglected. In this post, I want to look at the ones that are usually overlooked, focusing on bands 7-9. First things first, here are the links to the public version of the assessment criteria: - Speaking ;  - Writing Task 1 ; - Writing Task 2 .  1. Skillfully 2. Naturally  Speaking. Lexical resource 8-9 :  - uses less common and idiomatic vocabulary skillfully , with occasional inaccuracies (8); - uses idiomatic language naturally and accurately (9). For some reason people focus on “idiomatic” and totally ignore “skillfully/naturally.” This results in students memorizing insane lists of idioms and bending over backwards to use them. For one thing, vocabulary memorized with...

Last December I took my fifth international exam in English. “ Why do you take exams? ” is a question I get asked a lot. In this post, I want to answer this question. First, my exam history: 2011 IELTS 8.5 2013 IELTS 8.5 2013 TOEFL 115 2016 IELTS 9 2018 C2 Proficiency A (CPE) So what is this madness for? 1. I want to get an independent assessment of my English. I think my own assessment of my skills is less credible or reliable than an internationally recognized certificate with the C2 English level on it. Additionally, having my level assessed by strangers helps me identify my weaknesses and get a clear picture of what I am good or bad at. 2. I want to see if I can perform under pressure. To be brutally honest, I know my language skills are good even without taking any tests. But I see value in testing myself in high-pressure situations. Many people underperform in exams because of exam nerves. It’s normal. But the way I see it is if I have great language s...

IELTS Academic Writing Task 1 poses the biggest difficulty to everyone, including those who have excellent English skills. The reason might be that most people don’t often describe graphs in English or even in their native language. I know all the test takers want a simple model to follow. More often than not, they go online and end up trying to follow questionable models. I want to put a stop to this. In this post, I want to share my sample answer and my six-step guide to describing IELTS line graphs. Disclaimer While I believe my guide is a good model to follow, you have to keep in mind that: 1) This is one possible approach, not the only one possible approach; 2) Each line graph is different, so the approach might have to be modified for some line graphs; 3) My overall IELTS score is 9, but my writing score is 8.5, so my sample answer might not be absolutely perfect. Here is the task and the line graph I will be describing. It is based on a task from Cambridge IELTS 7. The...

Most people get the lowest score for the writing component of the IELTS test. My experience as an IELTS trainer and the official statistics completely agree on this. In this post, I want to look at the reasons why and at the ways how not to. Here is why you might get your lowest score for writing too: 1 You don’t write enough. Tell me if that sounds familiar. The teacher gives you task after task, but you just can’t muster the willpower to write them. Finally, you become overcome with guilt, write one or two tasks, pat yourself on the shoulder and stop writing until the next fit of guilt occurs in a week or two. That’s not enough and you know it. I usually give my students two writing tasks 1 and two writing tasks 2 per week if the test is 3 months away. Two W1 and two W2 over 12 weeks add up to 24 of each. This is about the number I think is necessary to get the score you will be happy with. Now think about your last IELTS test - how many tasks did you write? 2 You don...