Shadowing Practice: How I’d Teach My Wife IELTS (If I Had To Start Over) - Learn English Speaking with YouTube

Most IELTS students are preparing for the test completely backwards.

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Most IELTS students are preparing for the test completely backwards.

They're memorizing vocabulary lists, learning complex grammar templates and following advice that sounds right,

but actually makes their score worse.

I know this because I've spent over ten years helping thousands of students get a band seven,

eight and even nine.

And because I watched my own wife waste thousands of dollars failing the test over and over again,

many, many years ago.

She followed everything her teacher told her and got nowhere.

It wasn't until I built her a completely different system that everything changed.

So if I could go back in time and teach her again from scratch,

the first thing I'd change is the mistake that cost her the most time and money.

So before I was an IELTS teacher,

I used to teach just general English in a big language center.

And I'd see IELTS examiners in that center marking IELTS tests every single day.

And almost all of them had a box of headache tablets sitting right next to their papers.

When I asked them why they took so many headache tablets,

they said two words, headache essays.

A headache essay is one that is so overloaded with complicated vocabulary

and grammar that it literally gives the examiner a headache trying to figure out what the person was trying to say.

And this was actually what my wife was doing

because her teacher had given her a list of band 9 vocabulary and a set of complete complex sentence templates.

The idea that her IELTS teacher had was quite simple.

More complexity equals a higher score.

But I wanted to check whether that was actually true.

So I took all the official Cambridge books,

the ones that have band 8 and band 9 samples at the back,

and I ran all those essays through software that measures language complexity.

And what I found was the opposite of what everyone was teaching.

The highest scoring essays produced by Cambridge were the simplest ones,

with the lowest amount of complex vocabulary and grammar.

And then I took all of my wife's essays,

and they had far more complex words and sentences,

exactly what the examiners were calling headache essays.

So I went back to our teacher,

and I asked him about this,

and he said something I'll never forget.

Of course we know simpler writing scores higher,

but students want vocabulary lists.

They want templates.

And if we don't give them that,

they just go to another school.

And that's the moment that I realized that the problem wasn't my wife's English or her writing.

The problem was who she was listening to.

Her teacher knew the truth

and he chose to tell her what she wanted to hear instead of what she needed to hear.

If I were teaching my wife again from day one,

the first thing I'd tell her is find people who will be brutally honest with you about what you need to do,

even if you don't want to hear it.

The thing I say to my students is,

you will hate me when I'm giving you feedback,

but you will love me on results day.

And that's the most important thing.

But understanding this was just the first step

because the way my wife was actually preparing day to day was still completely wrong.

And that's what cost us the most time.

So let me take you through a typical day,

what it looked like when she was preparing.

So she'd wake up and do some listening practice

because someone on YouTube told her to do a listening practice test every day.

Then she'd spend an hour memorizing lists of vocabulary.

And in the evening, she'd watch two or three IELTS tips videos from different teachers,

all saying different things.

So she was busy every day and felt tired at the end of every day.

But then she was getting frustrated because she wasn't seeing any improvement.

That is one of the most frustrating things in the world when you're working hard,

but you're not seeing any progress.

So the problem for most students isn't that they are lazy.

The opposite is actually true.

They're working extremely hard, but with no direction, no focus.

So the example I always give to my students is,

imagine I drop you into the center of London,

and I tell you to go and find Buckingham Palace.

And I say, just follow the signs and ask a few people,

and you'll make it there.

Or you put Buckingham Palace into Google Maps,

and it will take you directly there in the simplest,

shortest, most direct route.

That's exactly what a real study system does.

It understands where you are right now and exactly what you need to do to get to your target score.

If I were teaching my wife again,

I would never let her sit down and study without a clear step-by-step roadmap that was personalized to her.

So what does that actually mean?

Well, I would sit down and I would actually look at her essays.

I would do practice speaking tests with her.

I would get her to do writing tests and listening tests and then analyze all of her mistakes.

That would allow me to find out the most important thing,

which is what are her exact weaknesses and what do we need to do to turn each of those weaknesses into strengths.

And we would do that by creating like a step-by-step study roadmap that just focuses on closing those gaps.

So that's why we say that's like Google Maps for IELTS preparation.

It not only saves you time,

but it reduces stress significantly because you feel like you're working on the right things and making progress every day.

But even with a perfect study plan,

you can make one big mistake that means that you'll fail over and over again.

And this is the one big mistake that cost her the most money.

So my wife was writing essays every single day.

Her teacher told her that that was the key to success.

And that's half true.

Practice is important, but

if you have no one to actually look at your essays who is an actual expert

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and tell you where you're going right,

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where you're going wrong, it's a huge waste of time.

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So when I looked at the feedback on her essays,

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it said things like improve vocabulary,

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improve ideas, make sentences more complex.

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But what does that actually mean?

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She didn't know what a good idea or a bad idea was.

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So how could she improve her ideas?

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Even though the paper was covered in red,

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there was nothing showing her this is exactly why this is wrong and this is how to fix it.

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She was just reinforcing lots of bad habits and lots of mistakes because the teacher never made her aware of this.

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And this wasn't really the teacher's fault.

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Problem was is that he was a teacher.

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He wasn't a former examiner.

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So he didn't really know himself what to look out for.

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And this is not a criticism of teachers in any way.

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I'm just telling you what actually happened.

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So she was paying someone to make her writing and speaking worse

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and then going and doing the test and throwing away even more money,

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which is incredibly frustrating.

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So if I could go back in time

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and give her advice on how to actually save money

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while getting better is to only work with a qualified former examiner to look at her writing

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and listen to her speaking and tell her exactly what is wrong with that.

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Now, many people might say,

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including my wife at the time,

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but those teachers are more expensive.

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And there's a saying in English,

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if you think hiring an expert is expensive, try hiring an amateur.

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So trying to save a few dollars today by finding a cheaper teacher,

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but throwing away thousands in test fees,

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sounds crazy when you think about it,

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but many of you watching right now are doing exactly that.

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You are looking for the cheapest teacher rather than the best teacher.

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Every day, every month, every year,

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you are not working in America or Australia or UK or Canada.

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You're throwing away all that extra salary that you could be earning.

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But I still haven't told you about the number one reason for failure,

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not just with my wife,

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but this is the number one reason why thousands of students failed.

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And it is actually quite easy to fix.

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So in general, there are two types of students.

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Let's call them student A and student B.

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Student A knows the test is coming up soon.

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They book the test, and then they try and figure out how to get that score.

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Then we have student B who doesn't book the test.

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What they do is they find out what level they're at now

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and what they need to do to get to the level

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that they need to be at to get the score that they need.

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And they don't book the test until they are 100% ready.

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Which one do you think 90% of students are, including my wife?

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Student A.

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About 10% of people or student B,

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but student B is pretty much guaranteed to get the score that they need.

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Student A will struggle over and over and over again.

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And this is exactly what my wife did.

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She would just see, oh,

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in six weeks, there's a test coming up or in four weeks,

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book it and then just panic and start studying and trying and hoping for the best.

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Hope is not really a strategy.

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You're not going to get lucky.

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The only way that you will pass is to understand exactly where you are

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and exactly what you need to do to get to that level.

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And it is all about just making that decision.

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This is actually the first thing in the first video on our VIP course.

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I'll give you a little sneak peek of our VIP course.

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The very first thing we say is do not book your test until we tell you that you are ready.

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Because that pretty much guarantees you're going to get the score that you need.

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Sounds super obvious and super simple,

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but it probably is the most profound and effective advice you will ever hear.

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So if I could go back,

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I would just tell my wife,

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don't book the test until an expert tells you you are ready to get the scores that you need.

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And she would have saved months of her life

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because she wouldn't have had to do the test over and over again and thousands of dollars.

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And that leads us to the final thing that I would tell her,

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Something that has nothing to do with English at all.

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But my wife says mattered more than anything else.

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Every IELTS video you'll watch focuses on strategies and techniques and how to improve your English,

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which are valuable.

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But it is not as powerful as what I'm about to share with you.

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None of them talk about what it actually feels like to be preparing for the IELTS test.

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Just coping with the stress of knowing your whole future is determined by a score on a piece of paper.

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My wife knew that if she didn't get the score that she needed,

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her family would be stuck in a country she didn't really want to live in anymore.

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And she'd walk into the exam room thinking about

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that instead of thinking about how do I write a clear essay

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or how do I clearly answer questions in the speaking test.

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Her brain would actually shut down from all of the stress.

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So it didn't matter how good her English was or how many techniques or strategies she learned,

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until she was able to fix this stress problem,

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nothing was going to help her.

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So you can be completely prepared and still underperform.

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Some of you watching this video will know exactly what I'm talking about.

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You feel that you're ready.

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Maybe you did practice tests and you got the score that you needed.

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But on test day, you were so overwhelmed with stress that you couldn't perform at the level that you're capable of.

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So if I had to start over with my wife,

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I'd address these types of things from day one,

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not just stress, not just how to manage anxiety,

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but things like how to stay focused during preparation,

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how to stay focused during the test,

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how to deal with negative feedback and mistakes and setbacks,

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how to walk into that exam room calm and in control and knowing that you will get the score that you need.

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This is why we added a mindset course to our VIP course and it's actually the first course students do.

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We force people to do the mindset course before we talk about writing

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or reading or speaking or listening because it is so important.

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And if you listen to all of the success stories we have,

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most of them actually talk about the mindset course

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and how it was more important than the actual IELTS lessons that we teach.

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Now the IELTS lessons are good,

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they do help, but you need to fix

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that mindset part of the equation first before you can perform at the level you need to be at.

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So in the end, what I decided to do was learn how to teach IELTS myself

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and I took over my wife's IELTS preparation and taught her myself.

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And after weeks of preparing with this new approach,

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the big day finally arrived for my results day and my wife had done everything differently this time.

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She stopped trying to impress the examiner with fancy vocabulary and structures.

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She'd followed a structured roadmap instead of jumping from random tip to random tip

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and I also found qualified former examiners with more than a decade of experience to do practice tests with her,

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to do speaking tests and look at her writing and give her feedback and show her exactly what she needed to fix.

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And most importantly

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she didn't book the test until we told her she was ready

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and she was able to walk into the exam room knowing

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that she was a hundred percent sure going to get the score

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that she needed because she had done so many practice tests with us

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and she had got some great feedback

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and we had told her no matter what happens but

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if you follow this system you are going to get the score

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that you need

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but even though she was calm on test day she wasn't very calm on results day

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and when she got the email her hands were shaking

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so much she couldn't even tap into the email to get a result so she handed me the phone

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We took a deep breath,

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tapped the screen, band 7.5.

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So more than enough for her visa.

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We put our house up for sale

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and three weeks later We landed in Dublin and I'll never forget watching my son on that first day

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running through those green fields breathing in that fresh air in the country he was supposed to grow up in.

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And 10 years later, we're still living in the same amazing area and we have one more addition.

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William, actually two more additions.

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Now we have our dog, Nuki.

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So that's what I would do if I could go back in time and help my wife.

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But unfortunately, time machines don't exist.

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But the good news for you is everything

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that I've learned in more than 10 years of helping thousands of students get a band 7,

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8, and 9, I've put into our VIP course and our VIP system. So

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if you join today we will look at your writing listen

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to your speaking find out exactly where you are what score you're at why you're at

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that score and then design a personalized roadmap showing you step by step exactly what to do

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and we won't let you do the test until we tell you you're 100% ready

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so that on test day all that stress is gone

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and you can walk in with total confidence

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that you will get the score that you need

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because of the level of feedback and help

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that we give to students we can't help everybody

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but I'll give you 10% off today as a reward for watching to the end of this video.

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If you go to the description you can click on

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that link see if there are any places available and you will get 10% off at that link.

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Now the VIP course does cost money because we only hire the best teachers

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that we can find and we give you a huge amount of one-on-one feedback

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and one-on-one support but maybe you just want some free courses.

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If you want that here's a complete writing course,

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here's a complete speaking course.

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And then later on, if you need more feedback,

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more one-on-one help, you can join the VIP course later.

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So click on one of those.

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If you just want free stuff,

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go to the VIP course and click on that if you want to work with us personally.

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Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.

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Shadowing Practice: How I’d Teach My Wife IELTS (If I Had To Start Over) - Learn English Speaking with YouTube

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What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing Practice: How I’d Teach My Wife IELTS (If I Had To Start Over) - Learn English Speaking with YouTube

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About This Lesson

Key Vocabulary & Phrases

Practice Tips

What is the Shadowing Technique?