TREN THI TRUONG CO QUYEN ADVANCED NUA, MINH DA CO GANG TIM

TREN MANG QUYEN ADVANCED NHUNG TIM HOAI MA VAN CHUA THAY.
Common Mistakes at IELTS Intermediate

This invaluable little book highlights the real mistakes that students make in the exam and shows how to avoid them. Based on analysis of thousands of exam scripts, each unit
targets a key problem area. Clear explanations and exercises help students to use the
language accurately. Regular tests offer students a further opportunity to check and
consolidate what they have learnt.
Highlights common mistakes that learners really make.
Based on analysis of thousands of exam scripts.
Short, snappy explanations focus on key problem areas.
Includes exam-style exercises.

Common Mistakes at IELTS Advanced

And How to Avoid Them

Full title: Common mistakes at IELTS Advancedand how to avoid them

Author: Julie Moore
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Review by: Saul Pope
Summary: An important component of any advanced IELTS course
Review

IELTS can be a notoriously tricky course to teach, especially for the more inexperienced
teacher. Youre almost guaranteed to have a mixed ability group, students may want to
take the exam at different times to one another, and some will simply not be capable of
reaching the lofty targets their future place of learning has set them in the time you have.
On top of this, it can sometimes be difficult to know what to concentrate upon as spiky
profiles are often the order of the day, and, unless youre an IELTS examiner, it can be
tricky to know where students tend to go wrong in these exams. Common mistakes at
IELTS Advanced cannot solve all of these problems, but it is very useful in providing a
focus on typical mistakes that students make.
The book is split into thirty page-long units, each focusing on a different common
mistake made by students in the IELTS exam. This would be good if it were based on the
experiences of IELTS speaking and writing examiners, but what makes this text really
impressive is that it is based on analysis of thousands of exam scripts at IELTS bands 7
and above stored in the Cambridge Learner Corpus. When using the book for the first
time in class, I pointed out to my students how the book used this unique source of
materials. They were impressed, and immediately motivated to gauge themselves against
these typical errors. In a later class, when everyone got all of the common spelling
mistakes of unit 7 right, there was a real sense of achievement, and a feeling of
confidence amongst the students that they were closer to achieving that elusive band 7.5
than they had thought.
A wide variety of mistakes is covered in the text, from the perennial problem of when to
use the definite and indefinite article to the differences in usage between when, if and
whenever. There are also units covering aspects of the language that can also confuse
native speakers, like apostrophes or the use of commas with discourse markers, and there
are also three units on common errors with describing statistics, which comes up in the
first part of the writing exam. Each unit follows the same format, with two similar
sentences being compared (one correct and one incorrect) followed by well-explained
rules and two exercises to practice these. Each third unit is followed by a revision test,
which attempts to mimic the type of questions set in the IELTS reading exam.
The only real weakness of the book is the slightly formulaic approach taken in each unit.
The first part works well, with the two similar sentences clearly highlighting the common
mistake, but after this the rules are simply listed rather than elicited. The exercises are
functional but short; a little more practice would be desirable. Still, these are minor
glitches given the overall quality of the text, and easily remedied by the creative
practitioner.
On the whole, this is a very useful addition to any higher-level IELTS course. The
quantity of data used makes this a reliable and impressive resource, and the simplicity of
its design and the fact that it contains an answer key makes it as equally suited to home as
to class study.