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  • - Hey, Chris here, from IELTS Advantage.

  • Now, there are lots and lots

  • of great IELTS teachers out there,

  • and lots of amazing schools out there.

  • But, if you're watching this video,

  • you know that there are some IELTS teachers who

  • either don't really know what they're doing

  • or there are some schools that are actively

  • trying to scam people out of their money.

  • And the reason why they can get away with it is you guys,

  • as students, don't really know what to look out for.

  • Those guys are trying to trick you

  • and they know that you have not a lot of knowledge

  • about this industry.

  • So what I thought I would do, in this video,

  • is give you five insider secrets

  • and give you this information,

  • and you'll be able to check any teacher,

  • or check any school,

  • and if they have even one of these five things,

  • some of them will have all five,

  • then you probably know that they're not so good,

  • and you should go and find someone else.

  • The reason why I'm making this video is

  • we receive thousands of emails every month,

  • from people saying, "I had this teacher,

  • "and they told me something that caused me

  • "to get a low score",

  • or, "This school basically stole all my money.

  • "They gave me all of the these promises,

  • "all of these guarantees,

  • "and none of those things came true."

  • So, check out these five things,

  • and they are going to show you exactly what to look for.

  • And, as I said, most teachers are great,

  • but some of them, not so good.

  • So you need to be aware.

  • So, the first thing that will give away

  • whether somebody knows what they're doing or not

  • is

  • half bands.

  • So, if you get your writing score,

  • it might be 6, but it might be 6.5, 7, 7.5.

  • So somebody who has just started teaching writing,

  • often what they'll do is they will give half bands

  • for the individual marking criteria.

  • So, there are four marking criteria for writing,

  • so, that's task achievement, that is coherence and cohesion,

  • then we have vocabulary, or lexical resource,

  • and then grammatical range and accuracy.

  • Let's just call that grammar.

  • So, for each of those four things there are no half bands.

  • So, if you go onto their website

  • you'll often see that they will give, like,

  • sample writing corrections out,

  • and if they put,

  • for task achievement or

  • coherence and cohesion, or grammar and vocabulary,

  • oh, you are around a 6.5, or you are a 5.5, or a 7.5,

  • that shows that that person has never been an examiner,

  • because examiners are giving out those scores all the time,

  • and that they don't really know what they're doing.

  • Because anybody who has been an examiner,

  • or has been teaching IELTS for years, and years, and years,

  • knows that there are no half bands

  • for those individual marking criteria.

  • Your overall band can have half a band in it,

  • 6.5,

  • 5.5,

  • 7.5,

  • but the individual four things

  • that they are looking at will never, ever, ever

  • have a half band.

  • If they are putting that in there

  • they don't know what they're doing.

  • So, the thing that we see all the time,

  • especially with scam schools,

  • is schools that have success stories,

  • but their success stories, if you dig a little bit deeper,

  • are not so successful.

  • Are not as impressive as they are trying to be.

  • So what you'll see, you'll see this on Instagram,

  • Facebook, YouTube.

  • You'll also see it inside schools,

  • where you'll have someone standing with a certificate,

  • or you'll have, you know,

  • their image with "Band 9 Reading", or "Band 9 Listening".

  • And they always are showing

  • the reading and listening scores.

  • If you look at that, you look quickly at that,

  • and you see, you know, 50 students with band 9's

  • and band 8's, and band 7.5 in reading and listening,

  • you're like, wow,

  • this school really knows what they're doing.

  • Dig a little bit deeper.

  • You will never see, or very, very, very rarely see,

  • any students who have a 7 or above for speaking or writing.

  • So,

  • to the lay person,

  • to the person who doesn't know much about IELTS,

  • that looks really, really impressive.

  • To a teacher, or someone who knows IELTS inside out,

  • that is not impressive at all.

  • Most of the students,

  • the two things that they struggle with

  • are

  • speaking and writing.

  • Nearly all of the students that we work with

  • already have quite high scores for reading and listening,

  • and when we work with them they get even higher scores

  • for reading and listening.

  • What is really difficult to do

  • is to get people a 7 or above for speaking or writing.

  • So if you go into our website, all of our students,

  • all of our success stories have that.

  • If you go onto most of the scam schools

  • you will see that they will portray themselves

  • as getting very, very high marks,

  • but you will

  • very rarely see speaking.

  • You'll almost never see writing, at a 7 or above.

  • Believe me, if they were getting student, after student,

  • after student a 7 or above for speaking and writing,

  • they'd tell you about it.

  • They're not, so they don't post that.

  • So, be very, very careful when you see that.

  • That's a big, big red flag.

  • The third thing you should look out for

  • are unbelievable claims.

  • Now, a real IELTS teacher,

  • someone who knows what they're talking about,

  • will never, ever tell you that it's going to be easy.

  • They will never tell you,

  • learn these five words to get a band 9.

  • They'll never guarantee that you get a band 9

  • or a band 7, in two days or anything like that.

  • They won't make unbelievable claims.

  • Because a real IELTS teacher, a real expert,

  • knows that it's very, very difficult.

  • You can help people, it's actually quite simple,

  • but it is not easy.

  • So, if they say things like it's going to be easy,

  • memorize these list of words, memorize these phrases,

  • we have magic structures, we have golden words

  • or learn these magic things,

  • any time they make unbelievable claims like that,

  • or give you guarantee,

  • no teacher, in the entire world,

  • can guarantee you a high score.

  • That is nonsense.

  • What it is, they're just telling you what you want to hear.

  • You are desperate.

  • You want to get a high score.

  • And all of a sudden you see this advertisement,

  • or you see this person on Facebook or YouTube,

  • saying, "Come to our school, memorize our magic words

  • "and you'll unbelievably get a band 9.

  • "We guarantee it".

  • And it's a really, really cheap course, as well.

  • I wish that was the case, but it's not.

  • The more unbelievable the claim,

  • the more wary you should be.

  • My number four is a really sneaky one, on our part.

  • One thing that we noticed, especially online,

  • a lot of the schools, and a lot of the courses,

  • were posting results from students,

  • and these unbelievable results,

  • and the people always looked a bit weird.

  • They were always like, very, very good-looking people

  • in these exotic locations, and very high resolution photos,

  • like professional photos.

  • And below, their comment was always in amazing English.

  • And we're looking at student's English every single day,

  • and we're looking at students every day.

  • Something just didn't seem right.

  • What you can do on Google, is you can take a photo,

  • put it into Google Images,

  • and then you will be able to see

  • where that photo is, around the internet.

  • And what we found was a lot of these websites,

  • and a lot of these online courses, were using stock photos.

  • Those are photos that you can go and buy,

  • they're not real students.

  • And if they're using stock photos, and their testimonials,

  • and I'm not saying that they are fake,

  • but the English is pretty amazing,

  • plus why couldn't you get a real photo of a real student?

  • That sets off a lot of alarm bells for me.

  • So, if it's an online course, or if it's an offline school,

  • and they have testimonials on their website,

  • just check out the little image that they have there,

  • put it into Google Images,

  • and if it comes up as a stock photo, be very, very careful.

  • And finally, number five.

  • If your school, or especially if it's an individual teacher,

  • and they say that they are an expert in not only IELTS,

  • but TOEFL, and TOEIC, and PTE, and OTE,

  • and they are an expert at writing teacher,

  • pretty much they have expertise in every single test

  • and every single area of English,

  • I would be very, very careful,

  • because it takes years and years

  • of study, and training, and experience

  • to become an expert in one of those tests.

  • We hire new teachers all the time.

  • We have 12 examiners working for us,

  • or ex-examiners working for us.

  • We know what real expertise actually looks like.

  • I have never, ever, in my entire life met a teacher

  • who was equally expert in all of the different tests.

  • Normally what you get is they know a little bit

  • about the other tests,

  • but they are an expert in just one of them.

  • So, if you have a teacher, and in their advertising

  • they say TOEFL, TOEIC, PTE, OTE, IELTS, everything.

  • "We're amazing at everything".

  • Maybe they are some sort of superstars,

  • that I have never met before.

  • Most likely they're just saying that

  • because they want to get as many different people in

  • as possible.

  • They're more interested in making money

  • then actually helping people.

  • So those are five insider secrets.

  • There's a lot of other things that you will see.

  • If there's any other red flags,

  • or anything that would make you skeptical

  • or worry about the quality of a teacher,

  • or the quality of a school, feel free to comment below.

  • Thank you very much.

  • And I'll see you again soon.

  • Bye-bye.

  • (upbeat music)

- Hey, Chris here, from IELTS Advantage.

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