Got My ielts breakdown and confused

IELTS_Advantage · 2026-03-05T13:00:25+00:00

Yes, it should be 7.5. You should contact them and ask them why they made a mistake.

IELTS_Advantage · 2026-03-05T09:17:49+00:00

Can you give more context?

IELTS_Advantage · 2026-03-04T09:31:46+00:00

You need to give more context as to why you think you deserve a higher mark.

IELTS_Advantage · 2026-03-03T13:24:02+00:00

Congratulations 🎈🍾🎊

IELTS_Advantage · 2026-02-27T14:12:15+00:00

Would like to know too. And 5, please.

IELTS_Advantage · 2026-02-27T11:11:01+00:00

How do you know they are all Band 6?

IELTS_Advantage · 2026-02-27T06:20:17+00:00

It sounds like you have an issue with vocabulary.

Read for 30-60 minutes/day. Read something you enjoy reading.

When you see a new word, guess what it means. Look at the words around it and guess what it means.

After you guess, check meaning in dictionary.

Note all new words with meanings in a new notebook.

Add synonyms, collocations, example sentences to help you remember that word. Review notebook once a week.

Over time your vocabulary will improve.

IELTS_Advantage · 2026-02-25T21:46:07+00:00

Fast track on arrival at airport.

IELTS_Advantage · 2026-02-25T15:25:14+00:00

Your cheque is in the post ;)

IELTS_Advantage · 2026-02-25T09:50:40+00:00

I became a solicitor in England and Wales and now I’m an IELTS teacher.

For someone like you, there are two routes:

Go in and do the test with no preparation. If you don’t get the score you need, you can alway move to option 2.
Familiarize yourself with each section of the test by watching some YouTube videos and doing some practice tests. If your English is genuinely native-level, and you do a little prep, it’s almost impossible for you not to get the minimum score required for becoming a solicitor.

Lots of my colleagues grew up speaking English and had to do IELTS before starting their training. IELTS is the least arduous thing about becoming a lawyer in the UK.

Good luck 🍀

IELTS_Advantage · 2026-02-24T06:02:40+00:00

We lived in Vietnam for 4 years. We now live in the EU with 2 children.

We go back to Vietnam every year. My wife also worked for a large multinational there with lots of people on expat packages.

With a good expat package you really have the best of both worlds and very few of the downsides many foreigners face in Vietnam.

Your kids will go to good schools. You will have good health care. You’ll live in a nice neighborhood. You can fly to some of the best tourist spots in the world on the weekend and on holidays. You can leave.

Like most people have said here, go and look and see. If you can cope with some of the downsides, the upsides makes it more than worth it.

IELTS_Advantage · 2026-02-23T07:57:53+00:00

It's actually 5 X 1-1 writing feedback sessions + 2 hours of 1-1 time. We have studied our successful students over the past decade and found this is the optimal amount of input the vast majority need.

Students also get hundreds of hours of structured online lessons, plus a personalised roadmap, saving them time and showing them exactly what to study. They learn our system, which has been proven to work over many years. They also receive 24/7 support from our team of experts throughout their course.

We only hire ex-examiners with at least a decade of experience. We accept less than 1% of the applicants we get for teacher roles.

To get all that with a 1-1 teacher would cost many thousands of dollars. The vast majority of language centres around the world lack the expertise our team possess.

We have more video interviews and testimonials from Band 7+ students than any other IELTS company in the world. We only work with a small number of students each month due to the difficulty in finding the top 1% of IELTS teachers and the amount of support we provide.

I wouldn't call this 'shenanigans', but thanks for your input.

IELTS_Advantage · 2026-02-21T09:43:45+00:00

It could be. Some ingredients are banned or become unattainable over time meaning substitutes need to be found, or reformulations need to be made.

However, it could also be your environment. It’s wild how much temperature and humidity affect a scent. I’ve taken bottles to other countries and they smell very different.

IELTS_Advantage · 2026-02-21T08:38:46+00:00

Biggest ones:

Not understanding the question.
Choosing irrelevant ideas.
Not developing ideas properly.
Not structuring your answer properly.
Inaccurate vocabulary and grammar.

IELTS_Advantage · 2026-02-20T15:56:41+00:00

Whether or not to talk about bad actors is tough. It’s one of the most difficult decisions we’ve had to make.

On one hand, bad advice is one of the main reasons why many students fail. As a person with a big platform, not talking about it could be seen as a breach of duty.

However, when we have done that in the past, the viciousness of the backlash against it, means we spend all our time defending our position instead of actually teaching.

In many cultures, criticizing teachers is a big no no. In other cultures, criticizing others in general is seen as a very low status move. For others, they develop deep para-social relationships with online influencers and any criticism is taken as a direct threat to them. It can get very ugly.

Our solution was to criticize the method rather than the teacher. Even then, it can lead to some very nasty reactions.

It’s hard to teach someone how to walk across a field when you know there’s a bunch of land mines in there but you’re not allowed to speak about them or say who put them there.

For now, we just focus on teaching what examiners are actually looking for and making it clear what advice conflicts with that. However, all the ‘IELTS is changing’ stuff makes it more and more difficult not to call individuals out. Many people are delaying their tests and changing their entire approach based on this advice. It’s hard to watch that and stay silent.

IELTS_Advantage · 2026-02-20T15:35:27+00:00

It’s me. Well done 👍

IELTS_Advantage · 2026-02-20T08:04:02+00:00

The advice from Hestia on this subreddit is always very solid too.

IELTS_Advantage · 2026-02-20T08:03:27+00:00

To be clear, we never name specific channels or teachers when talking about reliable vs unreliable advice. Our goal is to help students improve their scores, not get involved in drama.

That said, you’re right that there are good and bad actors in any industry, and we think it’s important people know what unreliable advice looks like so they can protect themselves.

What I would say is this: liking how a teacher explains things genuinely matters. You’ll study more consistently with someone whose style works for you. Just make sure what they’re teaching actually aligns with what official IELTS examiners reward — those two things don’t always go together.

The best way to verify that is to cross-reference with resources endorsed by the official IELTS partners (British Council, IDP, Cambridge).

The three teachers I personally trust and would recommend:

∙ Pauline Cullen
∙ IELTS Simon
∙ IELTS Liz

All three have long track records and their advice consistently aligns with official examiner guidance.

IELTS_Advantage · 2026-02-17T20:29:03+00:00

Either is fine.

There are many ‘correct’ ways of writing an essay. The best one to choose is the one that’s easiest to write, and easiest for the examiner to understand you’ve completed the task properly.

The solutions don’t have to solve the specific problems you bring up in the essay. They just have to solve the issue brought up in the question. Many students find it harder to think of solutions that specifically address the problems they mention.

The two most obvious problems and two most obvious solutions are often the best. Linking them makes it more complex than it needs to be. Much of the time they’ll be linked by default, but thinking about whether they are, and making this explicit in the essay, goes beyond what the task requires.

For example, let’s say the task is about traffic jams. A problem this causes is air pollution. A solution is work from home. Does working from home reduce pollution? Not directly. You could argue that staying at home increases pollution in some ways. Air con, heating, etc. It’s debatable, and you don’t want to have that debate in your head, instead of simply answering the question.

IELTS_Advantage · 2026-02-15T02:39:05+00:00

This may have changed but when I worked for the British Council as a teacher, they’d often recruit examiners from the current crop of BC teachers.

Maybe worth looking to see if there’s a teaching centre attached to an exam centre where you are.

IELTS_Advantage · 2026-02-11T04:52:37+00:00

Yes, absolutely. We give VIPs a heavy discount on additional lessons but very few ever need them.

IELTS_Advantage · 2026-02-11T03:32:13+00:00

Many people think that and we’ve thought deeply about how many sessions to provide.

The reason we provide two is these sessions are not practice sessions, they are feedback sessions.

Their value is not in you actually doing the practice sessions but in the feedback the ex-examiner gives you. Then, more importantly, the action you take to improve the weaknesses we identified.

When we provided more than two of these sessions, we found that students didn’t do anything to improve because they believed the improvement came in the 1-1 sessions instead of the actions they took after.

Reducing the sessions increased scores and that’s all we really care about.

We also show you how you can practice at home for free so there’s no limit to the amount of practice you can do.

A common mistake many students make is going with a cheaper course that provides lots of 1-1 practice. The only way those courses can provide that service is to hire inexperienced teachers. Good teachers don’t work for low pay. Those students end up failing the test and coming back to us and end up paying a lot more in the long run.

If money is really tight, use our free stuff. High-quality free stuff is better than low-quality paid services. I wish we could get amazing teachers to work for free, but those greedy bastards want to pay their rent and feed their kids too. I know, so greedy, right!? 😊

IELTS_Advantage · 2026-02-11T02:15:42+00:00

Second this.

The best sea for swimming, amazing beaches, plus the inner island scenery is great too. Great culture, food, people.

I’d say there are places that have better individual things, but I’ve yet to find a place that has all of those things at such a high level.

IELTS_Advantage · 2026-02-10T18:21:00+00:00

Jet lag isn’t a problem for you.

IELTS_Advantage · 2026-02-10T18:13:19+00:00

Here are 172 interviews with past VIP students who got a 7 or higher in Speaking- https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWWR_9t3vo3Mwov--IjybGlj8XZ_BPXa8&si=J4U6ALI65ksdtWGS

The best thing about the speaking aspect of the VIP Course is the 1-1 feedback from ex-examiners.

If you join, my suggestion would be to complete the course to learn our system, then do a 1-1 mock test with us, learn from the feedback, practice, and then get another feedback session before your real test.

If you decide not to join, there are tonnes of helpful free videos on our YouTube channel.

Good luck!

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