Greetings to my IELTS website. If you’d like to know a little more about me, this is where to look.
Who is Dominic Cole?
I’m a freelance teacher of English. That means I work for myself – a somewhat dubious pleasure perhaps. I also have a real job which, by a happy coincidence, is also teaching English. I’ve been teaching English (and IELTS) for the last 15 years or so. Before that I used to be a lawyer. I like to tell people that I gave up that career because I was more interested in job satisfaction than money. Though part of truth is I simply wasn’t a very good lawyer – life is rarely simple.
Where do you work?
At the moment I work on the English program at ISS Wuhan, part of Wuhan University in China. China is a country I always wanted to spend time in and it is indeed a fascinating place with a sadly impossible language. If you’d like to see what I get up to in class, you might be interested in my class website. Curiously, I almost never use this site in class even when I am teaching IELTS.
(Actually where I work isn’t quite that grand.)
Why do I run this website?
Curiosity. It started as a small blog for my class at ILS Nottingham (another place I can recommend). I noticed lots of other people were visiting and it just grew from there.
In truth, like most teachers (and students) I do get bored by IELTS and so my motivation is not just teaching IELTS, it is also to see what it is possible to do with a teaching website. I do everything myself and that is part of the fun.
Are the lessons really daily?
Erm, no. Not always. There are times when I take a holiday from the site and it does not get updated. It is though already quite large and should have enough to keep you occupied. When I am working, you will get:
- around 5 daily word exercises a week
- a lesson on writing, speaking, listening, reading, vocab or grammar about 3/4 times a week
What if you find a mistake?
Please let me know. I’m aware that there are problems with the site. So if you find a link not working, a typo or language mistake, or something you think is just plain bad or wrong just let me know and I will take a look.
Do I make any money from the site?
No. Not for now anyway. It is purely non-commercial. There aren’t even any ads, mostly because I don’t like the way they look. However, the day will come when I decide to make money from it. Then you will find some ads, some cheap (but quality practice materials and tests) and some very expensive private lessons – a premium service for premium prices. But I don’t really intend to see if I can become the world’s best paid teacher until 2013!
Do I teach privately? Can you send me your essay?
Nope. I simply don’t have the time. It’s partly for that reason I’ve set up the Teachers’ page so that you can find someone to help. So, I’m sorry it’s not really worth it to send me your essay to look at.
Am I an IELTS examiner?
No. I did do all the training to become one, but then decided life was too short to spend my weekends examining IELTS, especially because I had just spent over 5 years being an examiner for another (similar) series of English exams.
This is part of the reason I don’t add band scores to pieces of work – I’m not really qualified to. I’d also be suspicious of people who do give you band scores. Many of the band scores you see on the net are very inaccurate – because IELTS grading is different and people frequently forget to grade Task Response and Coherence and Cohesion and just look at grammar and vocab. The work you will find on my site are all easily good enough for any university applicant. I do the basics right and that is the key to IELTS.
What is my best IELTS advice?
Easy. Learn to read/listen to the question and learn some English. There is a complete IELTS industry that wants to persuade you that they can teach you the tricks of IELTS. They want your money.
IELTS is a comparatively simple exam and it doesn’t take long to “learn” it. The one problem is that you first need a good standard of English. No amount of tips and tricks will help you, if your English is not good enough in the first place.
What is the worst IELTS advice?
Easy. Do lots of practice tests.
People who become obsessed by doing practice tests rarely improve the level of their English. Even if they do “pass” the exam, that is often just the start of their problems. They will go to a university where they do not have good enough English to survive: the university will take their money and they will learn little or nothing.
