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naturegirl321 · Joined: 04 May 2003 Posts: 9041 Location: home sweet home

I-ve been guilt tripped into preparing a workshop for teachers on how to prepare their students for international exams, like Cambridge and IELTS. Besides the exam sites themselves, anyone know of any good sites with exam prep, or exam tips? tahnks so much!

Glenski · Joined: 15 Jan 2003 Posts: 12844 Location: Hokkaido, JAPAN

I have nothing for those 2 exams, but if you have to teach TOEIC, I'd suggest a couple of books by Rogers. The point teachers need to understand is that students either need to know how to take a test, or they need to know how to study the English. Different animals.

Study for the test:
Not so motivated students. Perhaps some just want to assess their scores (for TOEIC, anyway).
Know how to read questions before the listening or reading section begins to give a clue as to what to look for.
Know simplistic stuff like reading all the answers before choosing, and putting your pencil on a likely answer while waiting for the others to be read.

Study English:
Got a listening section? Get practice with listening! Podcasts, VOA, CDs, etc.
Reading speed improvement. Show students how to read faster because many/most can't even finish the test.
Teach skimming and scanning, reading in chunks, discerning meaning from context, etc.
Pound idioms into their heads, but only the ones expected from the previous exams.
Teach some prefixes and suffixes.
Extensive reading.

father Mackenzie · Joined: 10 Oct 2008 Posts: 105 Location: Jakarta Barat

Spend time with students teaching them how to firstly understand what the question means and then how to answer it fully.
Encourage debate and conversation to help build confidence and free talking.
Teach students how identify signal words and how to identify complex sentences.
Be honest in marking and giving feedback
Provide lots of 1 to 1 reviewing
When listening break it into very small chunks
Writing homework rather than in class so that students get the best from the teacher in class time
Have students record their speaking so that they can listen to themselves and identify errors
Lots of grammar and vocabulary quizzes

For IELTS I use the writing questions from here: http://www.ielts-exam.net

I find this site extremely useful.

naturegirl321 · Joined: 04 May 2003 Posts: 9041 Location: home sweet home

Thanks so much ! I'll be preparing the PPP this weekend

Glenski · Joined: 15 Jan 2003 Posts: 12844 Location: Hokkaido, JAPAN