Friday, May 12, 2006

British Council IELTS Blog

British Council IELTS Blog

Thanks to Techteach (a BC discussion list) I came across this IELTS blog. Looks nice, lots of good advice and sample answers for the writing tasks.

Wednesday, May 10, 2006

http://www.cityu.edu.hk/elc/elc/facilities/sac_ielts.html

http://www.cityu.edu.hk/elc/elc/facilities/sac_ielts.html

Another multimedia site. This one offers 4 videos, one for each part of the IELTS exam, as well as powerpoint presentations and downloadable booklets (although the speaking powerpoint seems to have a broken link at the moment). Could be useful for teachers, for ICT coordinators, for self-access...

Thursday, May 04, 2006

http://abcasiapacific.com/studyenglish/

ABC Asia Pacific - STUDY ENGLISH - IELTS Preparation

A multimedia site. The programme, called Study English, features a number of short videos, the first of which is an introduction to IELTS. The others deal with the IELTS tasks and skills (from how to describe a process to the pronunication of final s sounds to the use of the comma).
It says there are two series, though when I checked today I could find 26 episodes in series 1, but only 4 episodes from series 2, despite the fact that these latter are numbered as though they are the final 4 in the series...

http://www.askynz.com/ielts/preparation.htm

IELTS Preparation Hints

This is basically a one-page document which gives useful and concise tips to candidates (what to do the night before, etc) and which also includes excellent summaries of the skills necessary for each component of the exam.

Contents:
IELTS Preparation hints
Skills for the Listening Module
Skills for the Reading Module
Skills for the Writing Module
Skills for the Speaking Module

http://international.holmesglen.vic.edu.au/ie.cfm

Holmesglen - International Services & Programs

I was surprised how good this site is. It really has very good information for candidates about how to tackle each part of the IELTS exam. It has a self-study feel to it, but could easily be adapted by teachers for use in the classroom. Very similar to the Hong Kong site (same contents), but fuller and doesn't use external links or pop-ups.

http://elc.polyu.edu.hk/ielts/

ELC IELTS

A very nice site, full of practical information about the tasks and dozens of practice exercises. Unfortunately, perhaps it's a little old, so some of the links it has to sample answers from onestopenglish are no longer valid and some exercises which need to open in new windows don't actually open... perhaps it's my Camino (though I tried with Firefox too)? Or a javascript problem?

Contents:
Listening
Reading
Speaking
Writing

http://www.longman.com/exams/ielts/index.html

Longman Exams: IELTS

Site contents:

Students' Activities
Study Tips
Teachers' Resources
IELTS Info
Coursebook directory

A minor site. The most useful sections are the student activities and study tips, thought both are limited: two nice interactive exercises for candidates and three rather curious exercises for teachers to use with candidates - multiple choice and memory(!).

http://www.onestopenglish.com/Exams/IELTS/index.htm

IELTS

I think this is the best practical site so far. The site has the following pages:

IELTS first lesson
IELTS strategies
IELTS writing
IELTS reading
IELTS speaking
IELTS describing
IELTS with minimal resources

Each section includes full lesson plans, and professionally presented materials to download.

http://www.cambridgeesol.org/teach/ielts/index.cfm

IELTS Teaching Resource

This site, primarily for teachers, features:
  • Sample tasks
  • Activities to understand the tasks
  • Tips for teachers and students
  • DOs and DON'Ts
  • Ready-made activities to use with your class
  • Skills development
  • Exam practice tasks
The site has a good collection of teaching ideas including a series of useful overview activities (introductory quizzes). The teaching materials usually take the form of mini teaching activities designed to address particular aspects of the different tasks (e.g. Step 1 - Describing Statistics) and are usually not full lesson plans.

http://www.ielts.org/

IELTS is the first choice international English language test for global opportunity

The definitive IELTS site. Up-to-date information about IELTS.
The site includes the latest Handbook, Information for Candidates and Speciman Materials. Also included are the band scores and descriptors for the writing and speaking tasks. Although it's a 'must' for teachers and candidates, it's a first stop kind of site. It has some usful samples and test day advice, but doesn't have teaching resources or section tips for candidates - these are on the Cambridge site http://www.cambridgeesol.org/teach/ielts/ (see above).

Introduction to IELTS BLOG

In this blog I hope to explore the world of IELTS from an ICT perspective. I would like to use this blog to comment on and link to various IELTS websites with a view to putting together an online IELTS course. The course itself will eventually materialise on a wiki (http://ielts.pbwiki.com/ or http://ielts.wikispaces.com).