Teaching IELTS is different from teaching general English.
You need to understand how the test works, what the examiners are looking for and which skills your students need to develop. You also need practical activities, examples and resources that you can actually use in your lessons.
I’ve been teaching English for more than 30 years and was an IELTS examiner for 20 years. On this page, I’ve brought together some of the IELTS teaching advice and resources that I think will be most useful, whether you’re new to IELTS or have been teaching it for years.
📝 Teaching IELTS Writing
IELTS Writing can be difficult to teach because there is much more to it than correcting grammar and vocabulary.
Your students need to understand what the task is asking them to do, develop relevant ideas, organise those ideas clearly and use language accurately and appropriately.
They also need to understand why a piece of writing receives a particular Band Score.
What should you teach?
Focus on helping students to:
- understand the question and answer it directly
- develop and support their ideas
- organise their writing into clear paragraphs
- use a range of vocabulary accurately
- use grammar accurately and appropriately
- understand how the IELTS Writing criteria affect their score
- recognise their own recurring problems
- improve through focused practice and useful feedback
Don’t try to fix everything at once. A student who keeps getting Band 6 doesn’t necessarily need more advanced vocabulary. They may have a problem with Task Response, paragraph development, grammar accuracy or something else entirely.
The first step is to find out what is actually limiting their score.
Useful resources for teaching Writing
How to answer the IELTS Writing Task 2 question
Help students understand exactly what the question is asking and how to make sure their ideas answer it directly.
How to structure an IELTS Writing Task 2 essay
A practical approach to organising ideas into clear, logical paragraphs.
PEEL paragraphs for IELTS Writing
A useful way to help students understand how to develop and support a main idea.
IELTS vocabulary
Help students move beyond simply learning lists of “advanced” words and focus on using vocabulary accurately and appropriately.
IELTS Writing Task 2 ideas and model answers
Use model answers to help students notice how ideas, organisation and language work together.
👉 If you’re looking for ready-made IELTS teaching materials, my Members Academy includes a complete Writing programme with step-by-step lessons, practice activities, model answers and downloadable resources.
🗣️ Teaching IELTS Speaking
IELTS Speaking can look deceptively simple. Students answer questions and have a conversation with the examiner, so it can be tempting to focus mainly on giving them lots of speaking practice.
But good IELTS Speaking preparation is about much more than talking.
Students need to understand what the examiner is assessing, develop the language and communication skills they need, and learn how to give answers that are relevant, clear and well developed.
What should you teach?
Focus on helping students to:
- understand what the examiner is looking for in the four Speaking criteria
- answer the question directly rather than giving memorised answers
- develop their answers with relevant ideas and examples
- speak clearly and naturally
- use a range of vocabulary accurately
- use a range of grammatical structures accurately
- improve their pronunciation and intelligibility
- keep speaking when they don’t know exactly what to say
- recognise and work on their own recurring problems
- become more confident through focused practice
One of the biggest problems with IELTS Speaking is that students often try to improve everything at once.
A student who gets Band 6 doesn’t necessarily need to “speak more”. They may have good fluency but limited vocabulary, or reasonable vocabulary but frequent grammatical errors. Another student may have good language but struggle to develop their answers.
The first step is to find out what is actually limiting their score.
Don’t teach memorised answers
Students often look for model answers because they want to know what a Band 7 or Band 8 answer sounds like. Examples can be useful, but memorising complete answers is not a good way to prepare.
Instead, use model answers to help students notice:
- how an answer is developed
- how ideas are connected
- useful vocabulary and collocations
- natural ways to express opinions and experiences
- how grammar is used in context
Then give students opportunities to use what they have noticed in their own answers.
Useful resources for teaching Speaking
How to get Band 7 in IELTS Speaking
Help students understand what they need to do to move towards Band 7.
IELTS Speaking Part 1
Ideas and strategies for helping students give natural, developed answers to common Part 1 questions.
IELTS Speaking Part 2
Help students organise their ideas and keep speaking for the full two minutes without relying on memorised answers.
IELTS Speaking Part 3
Help students develop and explain ideas, express opinions and deal with more abstract questions.
Pronunciation for IELTS
Help students understand that good pronunciation is about being clear and easy to understand, not about trying to sound like a native speaker.
👂 Teaching IELTS Listening
IELTS Listening can be difficult to teach because students often think the solution is simply to do more practice tests.
Practice tests are useful, but they don’t necessarily teach students how to listen more effectively. If a student keeps getting the same types of questions wrong, doing another test may simply give them more mistakes to check.
Good IELTS Listening preparation should help students understand why they are missing answers and develop the listening skills they need to improve.
What should you teach?
Focus on helping students to:
- understand the different types of IELTS Listening questions
- predict what kind of information they need to listen for
- recognise paraphrases and synonyms
- follow changes in topic and understand signposting language
- listen for specific information without trying to understand every word
- recognise words when they are pronounced differently from how they look on the page
- deal with different accents and varieties of English
- improve their ability to concentrate for the whole test
- check spelling, plurals and word forms carefully
- understand why they got an answer wrong
One particularly important point is that pronunciation and listening are connected.
Students may know a word when they see it written down but fail to recognise it when they hear it. They need to become familiar with features such as weak sounds, linking, contractions and changes at word boundaries.
Don’t just give students more tests
A practice test can tell you what a student can do now, but it doesn’t necessarily show them how to improve.
When checking a Listening practice test, encourage students to investigate their mistakes.
For example:
❌ I got this answer wrong.
✅ Why didn’t I recognise the answer?
Perhaps they didn’t know the word. Perhaps they knew it but didn’t recognise the pronunciation. Perhaps they missed a paraphrase, lost concentration or wrote the wrong form of the word.
The important question isn’t just “What was the answer?” It’s “Why did I miss it?”
This turns a practice test into a learning opportunity.
Useful resources for teaching Listening
IELTS Listening question types
Help students understand how different question types work and what they need to listen for.
IELTS Listening strategies
Practical strategies for dealing with the different parts of the Listening test.
Connected speech for IELTS Listening
Help students recognise the way English actually sounds in natural speech, including linking, weak sounds, intrusive sounds, contractions and other changes in pronunciation.
IELTS Listening vocabulary
Help students recognise useful vocabulary in context and understand how words and phrases may be paraphrased in the test.
The aim isn’t simply to help students get more answers right in practice tests. It’s to help them become better listeners.
📖 Teaching IELTS Reading
IELTS Reading is not simply a test of how quickly students can read.
Students need to understand the questions, find relevant information, recognise paraphrases and deal with unfamiliar vocabulary. They also need to know when they need to read carefully and when they can move on.
As with Listening, practice tests are useful for measuring progress, but they don’t automatically teach students how to become better readers.
What should you teach?
Focus on helping students to:
- understand what different Reading question types are testing
- identify the important words in a question
- find relevant information in the text efficiently
- recognise paraphrasing and synonyms
- understand how information is organised in a text
- distinguish between the main idea and supporting details
- deal with unfamiliar vocabulary without stopping at every unknown word
- read carefully when the question requires it
- manage their time effectively
- understand why they got an answer wrong
Students often think that they need to understand every word in the text. They don’t.
They need to understand enough of the text to answer the questions accurately. In many cases, recognising the relationship between the words in the question and the words in the text is more important than knowing every piece of vocabulary.
Don’t just teach reading strategies
Reading strategies can be very useful, but they shouldn’t become a collection of tricks.
For example, students may learn to skim, scan or look for keywords. But if they don’t understand the vocabulary in the question, can’t recognise paraphrases or misread the information in the text, a strategy alone won’t solve the problem.
When a student gets a question wrong, ask:
Why did you choose this answer?
Then look at what actually happened.
Perhaps they:
- didn’t understand the question
- couldn’t find the relevant part of the text
- found the right information but misunderstood it
- didn’t recognise the paraphrase
- chose an answer because it contained the same words as the question
- missed an important word such as not, only or mainly
- didn’t know an important piece of vocabulary
This kind of analysis helps students become more aware of how they read, rather than simply counting how many answers they got right.
Useful resources for teaching Reading
IELTS Reading question types
Help students understand what each question type is testing and how to approach it.
IELTS Reading strategies
Practical strategies for finding information, managing time and dealing with different types of questions.
IELTS Reading vocabulary
Help students deal with unfamiliar vocabulary and recognise words and phrases in context.
Academic IELTS Reading practice
Use practice questions and tests to check progress and identify specific areas that need more work.
The aim isn’t simply to help students finish the Reading test more quickly. It’s to help them understand texts more effectively and make better decisions about where to focus their attention.
🔤 Teaching English for IELTS
Teaching IELTS isn’t just about teaching exam techniques.
Your students may know how to approach a particular question type, but if they don’t have the English skills they need, strategies alone won’t take them to a higher Band Score.
This is particularly important when students are trying to move from around Band 6 to Band 7. They may already know how the test works, but they need to become more accurate, flexible and confident users of English.
What should you teach?
Focus on the English that your students actually need to improve:
Vocabulary: learning useful words and phrases in context, rather than memorising long lists of “advanced” vocabulary
Collocations: learning which words naturally go together
Grammar: improving accuracy and learning to use a wider range of structures when appropriate
Pronunciation: becoming easier to understand and more aware of how spoken English actually sounds
Fluency: developing the ability to express ideas without constantly stopping to search for language
Reading skills: understanding longer and more complex texts
Listening skills: recognising natural spoken English, including different accents and connected speech
Paraphrasing: understanding and expressing the same idea in different ways
Register and context: understanding that the best word or structure depends on the situation
Teach language in context
One of the biggest challenges for IELTS students is knowing a word or grammar structure but not knowing how to use it naturally.
For example, learning the word significant is not enough. Students also need to understand how it is used:
- a significant increase
- a significant difference
- a significant impact
- significantly higher
This is much more useful than simply adding significant to a vocabulary list.
The same principle applies to grammar. Students need opportunities to notice, understand, practise and use language rather than simply memorise rules.
Don’t teach “advanced English” for its own sake
Students often believe that getting a higher IELTS score means using more complicated vocabulary and grammar.
It doesn’t.
A Band 7 student needs to use a range of language appropriately and accurately. A complicated word that doesn’t fit the context is not better than a simple word that communicates the meaning clearly.
Help students ask:
Is this the right word or structure for what I want to say?
rather than:
Is this a Band 7 word?
Useful resources for teaching English
IELTS vocabulary
Help students develop useful vocabulary and, more importantly, learn how to use it accurately and naturally.
IELTS grammar
Practical grammar lessons covering the areas that commonly cause problems in IELTS.
Pronunciation for IELTS
Help students improve their pronunciation and understand how pronunciation affects Speaking and Listening.
Connected speech for IELTS
Help students recognise the changes that happen when English is spoken naturally.
Prepositions for IELTS
Focus on common preposition problems and the importance of learning prepositions as part of phrases and collocations.
Ideas for IELTS Writing Task 2
Help students develop the language they need to express and support ideas clearly rather than simply memorising model answers.
The aim is to help students develop English they can actually use, not just English they can recognise in a textbook or reproduce in a test.
🎯 Helping students reach Band 7
Band 7 is a common target, but it can be difficult to know exactly what a student needs to do to get there.
A student who is getting Band 6 does not necessarily need to improve every aspect of their English. They may already have some of the skills needed for Band 7 but be losing marks in one or two specific areas.
As a teacher, your job is to help students identify what is limiting their score and work on those areas systematically.
Start with the Band Descriptors
The IELTS Band Descriptors are an essential tool for both teachers and students.
Don’t just tell a student that their Writing or Speaking is “around Band 6”. Show them why.
For example, in Writing, look at:
- Task Response
- Coherence and Cohesion
- Lexical Resource
- Grammatical Range and Accuracy
In Speaking, look at:
- Fluency and Coherence
- Lexical Resource
- Grammatical Range and Accuracy
- Pronunciation
The descriptors can help you move from general comments such as “You need better vocabulary” to something much more useful:
What specifically is preventing this student from reaching the next Band?
Don’t try to improve everything at once
Students can become overwhelmed when they are given a long list of things to improve.
Instead, identify the areas that are most likely to make a difference to their score.
For example, a Writing student might need to:
- develop their ideas more fully
- answer the question more directly
- improve paragraph organisation
- reduce repeated grammatical errors
- use vocabulary more accurately
They probably don’t need to work on all five things at the same time.
Choose a focus, practise it, get feedback and then move on to the next priority.
Be careful with “Band 7 language”
Students often believe that they need to learn complicated vocabulary and grammar to reach Band 7.
This can lead to unnatural or inaccurate English.
Instead, teach students to use language that is:
- accurate
- appropriate
- varied
- natural
- relevant to what they want to communicate
A simple word used accurately is often more useful than an impressive-looking word used incorrectly.
Help students become independent learners
The long-term goal isn’t for students to depend on their teacher to correct everything.
Help them learn to ask:
🔍 What is my problem?
🤔 Why am I making this mistake?
🎯 What do I need to practise?
🔄 What will I do differently next time?
This is particularly important for students who have already taken IELTS several times. If they keep repeating the sa
💬 Giving better feedback
Good feedback should help students improve, not simply tell them what they did wrong.
This is particularly important in IELTS because students can easily become dependent on correction. They submit a piece of writing, receive a long list of mistakes, correct them, and then make many of the same mistakes again in their next piece of writing.
The aim of feedback should be to help students understand their problems and know what to do differently next time.
What should useful feedback do?
Good feedback should help students understand:
- What the problem is
- Why it is a problem
- How it affects their IELTS score
- What they could do differently
- How they can practise it
For example, simply writing “develop this idea” doesn’t give a student much to work with.
A more useful comment might explain what is missing and show the student what they could do to develop the idea more fully.
The same applies to language correction. Instead of simply changing an incorrect sentence, help students understand why it was wrong and how they can avoid making the same mistake again.
Don’t correct everything
It can be tempting to mark every grammatical error, vocabulary problem and awkward phrase.
But a page covered in corrections can be overwhelming, particularly for students who already lack confidence.
Ask yourself:
Which problems are most important for this student to work on right now?
A student may have ten different language errors in a piece of writing, but perhaps three of them are recurring problems that are having the biggest effect on their accuracy.
Focus on those first.
Make students use the feedback
Feedback is only useful if students do something with it.
After giving feedback, ask students to:
- rewrite a paragraph
- correct and explain their own mistakes
- write another answer using the same skill
- look for the same problem in their previous work
- keep a record of recurring errors
- check their next piece of work for the same problem
This creates a cycle:
Practise → get feedback → understand → improve → practise again
The next piece of work should give students an opportunity to use what they have learned from the previous one.
Help students become better at self-correction
One of the most useful things you can teach an IELTS student is how to notice their own problems.
Instead of immediately correcting:
People is becoming more dependent on technology.
you could ask:
Can you find the grammar problem in this sentence?
Then, once they have identified it:
Why do we use are here?
This takes longer than simply writing are, but it turns a correction into a learning opportunity.
Useful resources for giving feedback
IELTS Band Descriptors
Use the assessment criteria to make feedback more specific and help students understand what their Band Score means.
How to ask better questions and improve your IELTS
Help students ask more useful questions about their mistakes and feedback rather than simply asking whether something is “correct”.
How to improve your IELTS score: a practical guide
Help students understand how feedback fits into a wider cycle of targeted practice and improvement.
The goal of feedback isn’t to produce a perfectly corrected piece of IELTS writing or a perfect Speaking answer.
The goal is to help the student produce better work next time.
👩🏫 Advice for IELTS teachers
Teaching IELTS can be very rewarding, but it can also be demanding.
You may have students with very different levels, goals and expectations, and it isn’t always obvious what will make the biggest difference to their results.
Here are some principles that have helped me over many years of teaching IELTS.
You don’t need to know everything
You don’t need to have an answer to every question a student asks.
IELTS is a large subject, and there will always be something you haven’t come across before. If you aren’t sure, say so and find out.
More importantly, help students learn how to find reliable information for themselves.
Don’t promise a particular Band Score
Students understandably want to know whether they will get Band 7, but nobody can guarantee a particular result.
You can assess their current performance, explain what is limiting their score and help them work towards their target. But their eventual result depends on how they perform in the test.
Be honest about what you know and avoid making promises you can’t keep.
Don’t teach tricks instead of skills
IELTS techniques can be useful, but they have limits.
If a student has weak vocabulary, poor grammar or difficulty understanding natural spoken English, another test-taking trick isn’t going to solve the underlying problem.
Teach the skill and then show students how to use it in the IELTS test.
Use reliable sources
There is a huge amount of IELTS advice online, and not all of it is accurate.
Get your information from reliable sources and check advice before passing it on to students.
The official IELTS Band Descriptors are particularly important. They give you a much better basis for teaching and feedback than vague ideas about what sounds “advanced” or what a Band 7 student “should” say.
Keep learning
IELTS changes, teaching approaches develop and there is always more to learn.
Listen to experienced teachers, read around the subject, compare different approaches and question advice that doesn’t seem to make sense.
You don’t need to follow every new IELTS trend. In fact, learning to distinguish useful advice from questionable advice is an important part of becoming a good IELTS teacher.
Look after your time and boundaries
IELTS teachers can easily end up doing far more work outside lessons than they expected.
Be clear about what your students are paying for and when you are available. If you provide feedback, decide how much feedback you can realistically give and make that clear from the beginning.
You don’t have to answer every question immediately or provide unlimited corrections.
Good boundaries help you give better teaching without burning yourself out.
🎓 New to teaching IELTS?
If you’re an experienced English teacher but are new to IELTS, one of the biggest challenges is knowing what to teach, how the test works and where to find good teaching materials.
My Members Academy can give you a structured introduction to the four IELTS skills, grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation, with step-by-step courses, practice activities, model answers and downloadable resources.
It’s designed for IELTS students rather than specifically as a teacher-training course, but it can also be a useful way for a new IELTS teacher to build their own knowledge of the test and develop a bank of ideas and resources for their teaching.
👉 Learn more about the Members Academy.
One final piece of advice
Don’t judge your teaching by how much material you cover.
Good IELTS teaching isn’t about giving students more worksheets, more vocabulary or more practice tests.
It’s about helping them understand what they need to improve, why they need to improve it and how to practise it effectively.
If your students become better at identifying their own problems and working out how to improve them, you’re doing much more than preparing them for one IELTS test. You’re helping them become better learners.
About Fiona
Fiona is an IELTS trainer, ex-examiner and course creator based in the UK. She has a Master’s in Teaching English as a Foreign Language (Distinction) and over 35 years of teaching experience. She has helped thousands of IELTS candidates develop the language and exam skills needed to achieve their target scores.
