I’ve been teaching IELTS in different countries around the world for the last decade and I have experience with every type of student – what makes a student a success?
I’ve had students who improved their IELTS score dramatically in both short and long courses.
I’ve also seen students who studied for years and years without moving their score up an inch.
Let’s take a look at the differences between successful and unsuccessful students!
Another quality of successful IELTS candidates – they read a lot of quality sample answers.
Be sure to avoid the mistakes that most students make on writing by signing up for my exclusive IELTS Ebooks here on Patreon.
Dave
The Main Difference
The main difference between these types of students is simple and has many names: Motivation. Determination. Grit. Resilience. Attitude.
The qualities of successful IELTS students!
Your IELTS journey will be mostly made up of stumbles, failures, and steep challenges.
The students who continue to work in the face of failure, who even enjoy failure and use it to push them forwards, will be successful.
A mountain climber doesn’t get discouraged when it is difficult to climb the mountain. They expect it. They enjoy it. They have a good attitude.
I see evidence of good attitude in several ways: students who show up to every class, take good notes, ask questions, focus, do their homework, do extra homework, and don’t get discouraged when they make mistakes or improve slowly.
If that describes you then you can stop reading this because you are already on your path to becoming successful.
If it doesn’t, read on and I’ll show you the 4 elements of a bad attitude and what you can do to have a good attitude from now on!
Bad Attitude
1. Comparing Yourself to Others
It is harder for you to focus on your own work when you focus on how much faster other people are working.
There may be a number of possible reasons for other students improving more quickly: they have been studying English longer, they have better study habits, they are better motivated or they are naturally talented at learning a language.
Those are just excuses. Ignore the people racing ahead of you!
You will improve as long as you are focused on your own English. As soon as you begin focusing on other people you will start to feel that your study is a waste of time, meaningless.
You can endure the difficulty and struggle if you believe it is meaningful. If you don’t think it is possible, then you will give up.
Be careful – the opposite of this is also true if you are a good student.
If you focus on how much better you are compared to other people, you may become over-confident.
Measure yourself against yourself. No one else.
In this way, you will make the best progress.
2. Failure is Personal
IELTS study is a long series of failures: You can’t write an overview. You make lots of grammar mistakes. You can’t think of the right word. It takes too long to write. And so on and so on.
This is a natural part of the learning process and it does not mean you are dumb. It simply means that you have more to learn.
If you think your failures are a permanent part of who you are, you will become demotivated.
You will not be able to enjoy studying because you will fear the next failure.
The worst part is you’ll try to hide your failures and mistakes from other people.
Failure is the key to success. But it has to be out in the open. You need to see your failures. And then correct them.
Fear or hide your failures and you will not make good progress.
3. Weak/Unclear Motivation
It’s absolutely essential to have a good reason for studying – a deep well of motivation that will get you through difficult challenges.
A lot of students don’t have clear goals for their study.
Maybe your parents are making you take the class but you don’t really want to.
Maybe your family is pressuring you to study abroad or learn English but you’re not interested.
Maybe you want IELTS for no specific reason – just to have it.
None of these reasons is very deep or important so they will fail to motivate you both in the short and long-term.
4. Bad Study Habits
This one is less psychological than the other elements of a bad attitude.
A lot of people just haven’t learned good ways to study. Maybe this is your fault. Or maybe you can blame the schooling system in your country.
It doesn’t matter. You need to improve your study habits if you want to get a good score.
Some bad habits include: taking notes but not reviewing them, not reviewing lessons, taking messy notes, not asking questions in class, studying a lot of hours in one day but not every day, not doing much practice, and having a disorganised notebook/materials folder.
Make a list of all your bad habits and try to cross them off everyday!
Good Attitude
In order to have a good attitude you just need to reverse the elements of a bad attitude:
1. Comparing Yourself to Others Measure Yourself Against Yourself
The only person you should compare yourself to is yourself.
Look at how good or bad your English was in the past. Could it be better? Of course!
Focus on how you could be better and ignore the people around you (both those who are better and those who are worse).
Focus on any improvements you can make. You’ll feel better about yourself and be more motivated to work hard and improve.
2. Failure is Personal Failure is not Personal
No one likes the feeling of failure. It hurts.
It makes you feel stupid. Incapable.
But you should try to connect the words ‘stupid,’ and ‘bad’ to your mistakes, not to you.
Good IELTS students don’t believe failure is personal.
Why?
Stupid and bad are not fixed qualities. Your abilities change over time. You go from bad to not-so-bad to good eventually.
Recent research has shown that your brain can physically change, even as you get older.
No quality is fixed.
Once you attach bad to your mistakes, rather than yourself, you will be free of the emotional impact of making a mistake.
Making a mistake doesn’t mean you are stupid. So make a 100! It’s fine!
Only by making mistakes will you improve your English.
Not feeling bad about your mistakes is the first step to failure which is the first step to success.
3. Weak/Unclear Motivation Strong/Clear Motivation
For example, you want to go study abroad.
That’s a good, motivating reason. But it could be better.
Look at the reasons for your reasons and your motivation will become deeper and stronger, like a house built of stone rather than straw.
You want to study abroad because you want to experience life in another country. You want to get a better job. You want to work in the best companies, with the best people. You want to change the world in some way. You want to bring your experience back to your home country and help it. You want your children to grow up in a more developed country.
There are so many reasons! These are all firm bricks in a wall of motivation.
Add more bricks, more reasons, and the wall will become stronger and won’t be shattered by the occasional setback.
4. Bad Study Habits Good Study Habits
Some people are born with good study habits (maybe) but mostly people have to learn from their mistakes and get better over time.
Here are some of the good study habits I’ve noticed in my best students: reviewing their notes after every lesson within the same day, taking neat organised notes, studying consistently every day even if it is not that long, practicing all the time, focusing on 1 thing at a time (close your Facebook!), and having organised folders with old worksheets and notes.
Now it’s Your Turn! Tell us –
What are your good study habits?
Nice ideas
Glad that you find it helpful!
Thanks, Nirav!
It is useful for me
Happy to hear that!
Thank you very much for your valuable advices, Teachers. I’ve totally agreed with you all what you mentioned above. You showed and made it clear about the feeing of failure and the misunderstanding of “failure is personal”. General speaking, this is a very big and common misunderstanding of human. When you make mistake, automatically you feel bad about youself, you feel shame and you don’t want the others know and mention about it because you think your personal must be always good. But if you think that mistake is not your personal, you’ll feel better and have more confident to go ahead. “Once you attach bad to your mistakes, rather than yourself, you will be free of the emotional impact of making a mistake”. I’ve just want to share what i think about the advice above. Now this is my answer to the question “What are your good study habits?”:
– Always ask Teachers what i don’t understand about the lessons to make sure i understand it correctly.
– Do homework and practice as much as i can. Then, ask myTeacher correct my homework, practice, show me my mistakes.
-Ask the successful learners their stuying method to get the high score, and apply it to my studying method if possible.
Besides these good habits, i also have bad habits as below:
-I don’t have fixed studying plan. i just follow my interesting feeling to select the subject, for example, today i prefer to study reading than other skills.
-sometimes when i focus much and strongly on studying, for example, brainstorm ideas for writing task 2, i feel tired and don’t want to think of it.
Pls help me to overcome it. Thank you very much
Thank you very much for the most detailed advices and encouragement
You’re welcome!
Ncy Idea
Thank you!
Dear All,
IELTS is a Business for IDP and British Council. My IELTS General Module Journey Started four years back, with initial score of Band 6 in all Modules at period when my English was an average. During this span i have attempted IELTS for 5 times, In the last test I scored Listening 8.5, Reading 7.5, Writing and speaking 6.5. my writing and speaking was not less than band 8. this is not my judgement. this is what i am telling you from my personal experience of Band 6 through last 4 attempts.
I have a question. is there any candidate who got straight Band 8 in listening and 7 in rest of the modules in a single attempt or Band 7 in all parts. Because for Canadian & Australian Immigration requires such score. and IDP & BC are deliberately failing the candidates by reappearing in exam again and again for $.
you can check the evidence in below link.
http://www.thefreeschool.education/language-tests-review.html
http://ielts-sucks.blogspot.com/2011/01/ielts-bottom-line.html
https://www.change.org/p/cambridge-stop-ielts-from-becoming-a-money-making-business-we-need-fair-evaluation-and-transparency
https://www.change.org/p/cambridge-stop-ielts-from-becoming-a-money-making-business-we-need-fair-evaluation-and-transparency
Interesting! I’m really into conspiracy theories – but the examiners don’t know where you are applying so how could they deliberately mark you lower? And it is very, very common for students to do better in listening and reading compared to speaking and writing by as much as a full point. The test is inconsistent – but is it definitely rigged? I also don’t understand how you can know that your speaking and writing are band 8 – that is almost native speaker level…
Well, Why IDP, BC is interested to collect personal Information, Like for whats the purpose you are applying for IELTS test, Nationality, Education level, First language, if you dont answer to these, you cant book your test.
I have been struggling for IELTS from last four years, not by sitting on the fence. but by exerting my efforts to ameliorate by IELTS test by the grading criteria mentioned on IDP & BC site, for an exemplar coherence, vocabulary and so on for writing & speaking part.
Hi Naeem, thanks for your comment. Firstly, if you would like detailed feedback on your writing and speaking from a real IELTS expert, then get in touch with us. In answer to your question, I know plenty of students who achieve high scores in all four skills. Check out IELTS groups on Facebook as people always post their results there. Regards your criticisms of IELTS, it is definitely a business, not just for IDP and BC, but also for Cambridge of course. It is true that IELTS is very tricky and unfair in many ways. For example, in writing certain things seem to have a very large influence on your score e.g. the overview in academic Task 1, a clear position, and relevance of ideas in Task 2. Also scores are rounded down so that will be a factor too. I also agree that IELTS should give more feedback to students. It’s crazy that you just get single band scores for writing and speaking and not individual scores e.g. for fluency, grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation.
Band 6.5 is quite difficult to achieve so I’m not surprised when students struggle to get this even after several attempts. They would really benefit from feedback from an expert so they know which big mistakes they keep making. Band 8 speaking and writing are very very difficult to achieve, as your English must be very natural and almost without error. You say that your writing and speaking were both really band 8+ (despite getting band 6.5 for each). You say this wasn’t your judgement so whose was it? Was it from an IELTS expert e.g. a current or former examiner? If it is not someone who knows the band descriptors very well, then you cannot trust their judgement. To be honest, looking at your other comment, both ‘sitting on the fence’ and ‘ameliorate’ were used in an unnatural way so I think perhaps your English is not as good as you think it is.
Examiners working for IELTS are only human, and their judgements are not always correct e.g. so they have given you a lower score than you deserve, but I think giving you a score of 1.5 bands lower than you deserved for both writing and speaking sounds highly unlikely. Cambridge, British Council and IDP work very hard together as one company to make sure the test is the same in all countries and examiners are trained and re-trained and they are monitored regularly to make sure they are following the same standards. Also all candidates have the right to have their scores checked.