Job Discussion Forums

[migot]

So I have been told that IELTS and TOEFL tutoring are massive business in China. To understand the market more deeply, I would like to know the following. Do Chinese students start taking IELTS preparation courses having appropriate English skills, or do their parents force them to attend courses even when those students have no realistic chance of passing the exam?
Teaching the latter group must certainly be a joyride.

[Sashadroogie]

Test-takers get a band score. They don't pass or fail as such.

[Capt Lugwash]

OP they may not fail "as such", rather they fail to achieve the required mark to apply or get admission to their preferred foreign university.

Thus far I have had five Chinese colleagues whose young relatives scored 5.0 or 5.5 in IELTS and who have approached me over the past two years for help. Funny it is only AFTER they fail and no, before NiHao man says. it was not for pay, just the odd working lunch.

In every case what had let them down was their oral English, just as well because there is no way I can work miracles with writing in a month or five weeks of a couple of hours every four days over lunch. My worst result was an increase from five to six ( still enabling the lad to gain admittance) and the other four went from five or 5.5 to 6.5. I have not had a seven yet but to be quite honest I would rather not be given these cases as any failure may be seen as mine even though miracles are expected.

One of the cases had taken IELTS five times and couldn't progress beyond a score of five. His father, although wealthy, had issued an ultimatum that he would only pay the 1,700 yuan once more and after that the boy would get no more. His uncle is a colleague and muggins got the job. I did what I was asked to do and heard no more from either the boy or the colleague which just goes to show how some people are.

I only found out the result by overhearing a conversation in which it was mentioned the lad had jumped up from five to 6.5 and was off to America. Really nice of both the student and the colleague to let me know.

[Welcheronymus]

@Migot:
As others have said, the IELTS isn't a pass/fail type test. Universities in Australia, New Zealand, UK, etc generally want students to have an overall band score of 6.0 (more prestigious ones want to see a 6.5), as well as scores in each individual skill (reading, writing, speaking, listening) at a 6.0 or higher. If they don't meet both of those requirements, more than likely they will need to take a semester or 2 of English before they can really start classes at the university. I've heard from students who get 6.5 and up for R, W, L but get a 5.5 in Speaking and have been told by their prospective university that they'll need to take an English class. Alot depends on the individual university, the more prestigious the higher the bar.

To answer your question, there are many students who will probably get low scores on the IELTS test who are only preparing for it only because their parents want them to. Their English level and interest in English may be low or non-existent. Seems like most people with money want to get out of China, or at least want their child to get out. And "yes", having students like that in a class with students who do want to improve can be a challenge for a teacher.

[Welcheronymus]

[Sashadroogie]

A good place to start is with the band descriptors, if you haven't already done so:

https://www.ielts.org/pdf/SpeakingBanddescriptors.pdf

[Sashadroogie]

And this book contains practice speaking tasks which are pretty close to the real interview. I'm sure it's in cyberspace if not in the shops.

http://www.cambridge.org/download_file/716268/0/

[Voyeur]

While you cannot pass or fail TOEFL or IELTS, your English can be too weak to benefit (at least to optimally benefit) from studying TOEFL or IELTS material directly. If your TOEFL score is in the 50ish range then what you really need is more basic English practice. Listening to TOEFL passages will help you somewhat, but mostly it will be far too difficult and nearly incomprehensible. Yet many students of that level will be forced into TOEFL classes.
The exception is if you take some kind of 'New Oriental' style TOEFL program where you are essentially trying to 'beat' the test. There is no longer any concern for improving your English per se; the goal is to find a way to get a few more (or even a lot more) points on the test than you really should be getting. This is why such programs are typically taught by Chinese speakers. I would say, however, that in my experience the effectiveness of such programs is oversold. You get a few examples, usually very bright students, who are able to to add 30 points to their score very quickly by utilizing certain test-beating strategies. But most students I have taught were unable to really 'beat' the test. And of course in many cases beating the test is ultimately self-defeating: you end up entering a college program you are unable to succeed at.

[Capt Lugwash]

Welcher I think if I am to be honest the students themselves did most of the work. All those who were sent to me had a book listing the topics the examiners would use to select their oral questions from.

It can be laborious but simply asking the same questions in the book randomly and then suggesting improvements or alternative ideas seemed to work. They all had questions they hoped they would be asked and they all had others they were dreading. I concentrated more on the latter obviously. Another important aspect was to praise them and give them confidence in themselves because I believe many candidates become tongue tied in oral exams, when in a relaxed setting there is nothing wrong with their English.

And the boy who had failed five times? He only had one problem so I worked on that and even invited a couple of my best students to have a free lunch with us so as to give their own independent opinions because the lad couldn't or wouldn't believe what I was telling him. The problem was that although his speaking was certainly good enough for 6 or 6.5 he spoke far too rapidly and as a result his pronunciation suffered terribly. I can only assume at his sixth and successful attempt he heeded my exhortations!

[Sashadroogie]

Pronunciation is a factor, especially for Chinese test-takers. Also, Chinese test-takers can very often try to memorise whole set-pieces, which an examiner can spot a mile away and will immediately cut off the test-taker where possible.

Very often too, I noted, that Chinese test-takers were unfamiliar with the format of the interview. They didn't use the 1 minute prep time for Part 2, and so consequently were unable to keep going for the full two minutes. Unless they recited irrelevant memorised texts.

For Part 3, they tended to have difficulties developing their positions, and were unable to give any justifications for opinions expressed. At best they merely re-stated an opinion.

Of course, things might be vastly different for IELTS examiners in China proper, but this is what I have experienced with Chinese test-takers outside China.

[Voyeur]

The idea of improving a student's score can be dangerously deceptive. To the extent that these tests of English are well made tests, then a term of practice should have little influence on their scores. This is to say that the tests are designed to measure their English skills as best they can--skills developed over years of study and practice. One 4-month course shouldn't impact those skills significantly, and thus it shouldn't affect the scores significantly.
When teaching what I think of as an 'honest' TOEFL/IELTS class, the goal is to familiarize the students with the format and what is being asked so that a lack of such familiarity does not result underperformance relative to their true level. As such, you can often get a pretty big jump in scores after four months relative to an initial test that was written cold, i.e. by a student who had no experience with the test. However, once a student is performing at around his true English level, it gets a lot harder to produce fast and significant score gains. And if the tests are working as they should, this makes sense--the students' English is not, after all, making large strides in a 4-month class.
That being said, there are more dishonest approaches to these tests that can, in some cases, result in large improvements over a short period. I don't mean to suggest that there is anything ethically wrong with such approaches, only that they clearly are not approaching the tests as the test designers intended them to be approached. The higher one's score, the less one seem's to gain from such approaches. And you often need a certain level of native intelligence and natural test-taking skills to benefit. But I have seen and heard of students whose English is middling (say 60ish on the TOEFL) getting scores of ~90 after a three-week intensive TOEFL class. These test-gaming approaches include memorizing scripts for the speaking and writing sections, focusing on how to best take notes and answer questions on listening passages when at best you will comprehend ~25% of what is said (as opposed to actually improving your listening comprehension levels), and massive amounts of targeted vocabulary memorization with an aim to predicting specific words that will be encountered on the test.
Finally, there are some truly dishonest approaches that cross the line from gaming a test to cheating on it.

[Capt Lugwash]

Valid points there. Another equally valid one in my view is what I try to do and that is to show them how best to present the level of English they already have.

In every case I have had I have been given two months or less to get results and every time I have stated that I can't work miracles. It is drawing out their abilities and fine tuning. I do not lay claim to teaching a course in IELTS and sometimes (as with the boy) it is simply a case of identifying the problem. In another (a girl) it was all down to stage fright.

[Voyeur]

That is typical of what I think of as an honest or straightforward approach to the test. And that is typically how I approach it (the other approaches usually require Mandarin language skill). You are essentially trying to make sure they don't underperform, and as you said, sometimes you can make a big improvement if you identify a specific weakness that is causing underperformance. But once they are performing at their natural level, miracles are few and far between. The problem is, of course, that they do happen from time to time, and everyone fixates on that one exception, forgetting it is 'exceptional'.

[jimpellow]

Some excellent responses. I would like to further the response by explaining the market from another angle. Some of this you probably already know.

A fair majority of the present IELTS demand is by students who intend to study in foreign university. If I could guess, I would estimate that 20% come from middle class families and almost all the rest from affluent families.

The middle class students as a whole are better students in terms of motivation and seeing IELTS and/or TOEFL as a barometer of their progress in English. Often their parents have been sold on the falsehood that investing their life savings into a foreign education will ensure success for their child and thus he/she will be able to support them in their retirement.

The affluent students as a whole are quite a different lot. They have usually been underachievers all their lives as it has always been assumed that one day they will run the family factory, etc. No need to work hard as their "lao da" dream will certainly come true. Added to the general lack of motivation by this group are a couple other realities that work against the IELTS instructor. The first is that their grades will be inflated by corrupt Chinese infesting the high school prep programs. They see little reason to work hard in class as a few hong bao by the parents here and there will guarantee top grades in almost all the current programs. The second is that their parents' wealth has almost always been the result of how much better their fathers have been able to lie, backstab, cheat, bribe, etc than the competition. Hence, parents and students see brain dumps and memorization and other cheats and shortcuts as the natural keys to success. They will prefer to invest their time in that route including truly terrible Chinese cram programs, books etc.

This is the real reason now for IELTS that a 6.0 across the board is required by most schools. It is more difficult to scam a higher score on areas which require language production.

In my third high school I had a student who was always off for weeks on IELTS crams. He was able to brain dump and memorize his way to an 8.5 on the Listening section. He would return to class on occasion and I would ask him slowly what he ate for lunch and he would look at me with a blank stare. Incredulous but true. The parents were tickled pink as he must be able to understand English as the TEST score said he could!

That is a simplified view of the market about which you were curious.

[Voyeur]

Personally, at least for TOEFL, I've always found listening to be the section least able to be gamed. Sure, as in the old days of the paper TOEFL, you can study a lot of listening and be decent at it without being able to speak much at all. But that took a while. I've yet to see any effective ways for most students to quickly game the listening section and boost their scores in a short period over their actual listening ability. Even for decent students, I don't find that there are many strategies--even legit ones--that are needed for that section (unlike with say reading). Listening questions tend to be straightforward and even easy--you either understood enough of the passage or you didn't. Maybe the kid got lucky?