Now, there are lots and lots

of great IELTS teachers out there,

and lots of amazing schools out there.

But, if you're watching this video,

you know that there are some IELTS teachers who

either don't really know what they're doing

or there are some schools that are actively

trying to scam people out of their money.

And the reason why they can get away with it is you guys,

as students, don't really know what to look out for.

Those guys are trying to trick you

and they know that you have not a lot of knowledge

about this industry.

So what I thought I would do, in this video,

is give you five insider secrets

and give you this information,

and you'll be able to check any teacher,

or check any school,

and if they have even one of these five things,

some of them will have all five,

then you probably know that they're not so good,

and you should go and find someone else.

The reason why I'm making this video is

we receive thousands of emails every month,

from people saying, "I had this teacher,

"and they told me something that caused me

"to get a low score",

or, "This school basically stole all my money.

"They gave me all of the these promises,

"all of these guarantees,

"and none of those things came true."

So, check out these five things,

and they are going to show you exactly what to look for.

And, as I said, most teachers are great,

but some of them, not so good.

So you need to be aware.

So, the first thing that will give away

whether somebody knows what they're doing or not

is

half bands.

So, if you get your writing score,

it might be 6, but it might be 6.5, 7, 7.5.

So somebody who has just started teaching writing,

often what they'll do is they will give half bands

for the individual marking criteria.

So, there are four marking criteria for writing,

so, that's task achievement, that is coherence and cohesion,

then we have vocabulary, or lexical resource,

and then grammatical range and accuracy.

Let's just call that grammar.

So, for each of those four things there are no half bands.

So, if you go onto their website

you'll often see that they will give, like,

sample writing corrections out,

and if they put,

for task achievement or

coherence and cohesion, or grammar and vocabulary,

oh, you are around a 6.5, or you are a 5.5, or a 7.5,

that shows that that person has never been an examiner,

because examiners are giving out those scores all the time,

and that they don't really know what they're doing.

Because anybody who has been an examiner,

or has been teaching IELTS for years, and years, and years,

knows that there are no half bands

for those individual marking criteria.

Your overall band can have half a band in it,

6.5,

5.5,

7.5,

but the individual four things

that they are looking at will never, ever, ever

have a half band.

If they are putting that in there

they don't know what they're doing.

So, the thing that we see all the time,

especially with scam schools,

is schools that have success stories,

but their success stories, if you dig a little bit deeper,

are not so successful.

Are not as impressive as they are trying to be.

So what you'll see, you'll see this on Instagram,

Facebook, YouTube.

You'll also see it inside schools,

where you'll have someone standing with a certificate,

or you'll have, you know,

their image with "Band 9 Reading", or "Band 9 Listening".

And they always are showing

the reading and listening scores.

If you look at that, you look quickly at that,

and you see, you know, 50 students with band 9's

and band 8's, and band 7.5 in reading and listening,

you're like, wow,

this school really knows what they're doing.

Dig a little bit deeper.

You will never see, or very, very, very rarely see,

any students who have a 7 or above for speaking or writing.

So,

to the lay person,

to the person who doesn't know much about IELTS,

that looks really, really impressive.

To a teacher, or someone who knows IELTS inside out,

that is not impressive at all.

Most of the students,

the two things that they struggle with

are

speaking and writing.

Nearly all of the students that we work with

already have quite high scores for reading and listening,

and when we work with them they get even higher scores

for reading and listening.

What is really difficult to do

is to get people a 7 or above for speaking or writing.

So if you go into our website, all of our students,

all of our success stories have that.

If you go onto most of the scam schools

you will see that they will portray themselves

as getting very, very high marks,

but you will

very rarely see speaking.

You'll almost never see writing, at a 7 or above.

Believe me, if they were getting student, after student,

after student a 7 or above for speaking and writing,

they'd tell you about it.

They're not, so they don't post that.

So, be very, very careful when you see that.

That's a big, big red flag.

The third thing you should look out for

are unbelievable claims.

Now, a real IELTS teacher,

someone who knows what they're talking about,

will never, ever tell you that it's going to be easy.

They will never tell you,

learn these five words to get a band 9.

They'll never guarantee that you get a band 9

or a band 7, in two days or anything like that.

They won't make unbelievable claims.

Because a real IELTS teacher, a real expert,

knows that it's very, very difficult.

You can help people, it's actually quite simple,

but it is not easy.

So, if they say things like it's going to be easy,

memorize these list of words, memorize these phrases,

we have magic structures, we have golden words

or learn these magic things,

any time they make unbelievable claims like that,

or give you guarantee,

no teacher, in the entire world,

can guarantee you a high score.

That is nonsense.

What it is, they're just telling you what you want to hear.

You are desperate.

You want to get a high score.

And all of a sudden you see this advertisement,

or you see this person on Facebook or YouTube,

saying, "Come to our school, memorize our magic words

"and you'll unbelievably get a band 9.

"We guarantee it".

And it's a really, really cheap course, as well.

I wish that was the case, but it's not.

The more unbelievable the claim,

the more wary you should be.

My number four is a really sneaky one, on our part.

One thing that we noticed, especially online,

a lot of the schools, and a lot of the courses,

were posting results from students,

and these unbelievable results,

and the people always looked a bit weird.

They were always like, very, very good-looking people

in these exotic locations, and very high resolution photos,

like professional photos.

And below, their comment was always in amazing English.

And we're looking at student's English every single day,

and we're looking at students every day.

Something just didn't seem right.

What you can do on Google, is you can take a photo,

put it into Google Images,

and then you will be able to see

where that photo is, around the internet.

And what we found was a lot of these websites,

and a lot of these online courses, were using stock photos.

Those are photos that you can go and buy,

they're not real students.

And if they're using stock photos, and their testimonials,

and I'm not saying that they are fake,

but the English is pretty amazing,

plus why couldn't you get a real photo of a real student?

That sets off a lot of alarm bells for me.

So, if it's an online course, or if it's an offline school,

and they have testimonials on their website,

just check out the little image that they have there,

put it into Google Images,

and if it comes up as a stock photo, be very, very careful.

And finally, number five.

If your school, or especially if it's an individual teacher,

and they say that they are an expert in not only IELTS,

but TOEFL, and TOEIC, and PTE, and OTE,

and they are an expert at writing teacher,

pretty much they have expertise in every single test

and every single area of English,

I would be very, very careful,

because it takes years and years

of study, and training, and experience

to become an expert in one of those tests.

We hire new teachers all the time.

We have 12 examiners working for us,

or ex-examiners working for us.

We know what real expertise actually looks like.

I have never, ever, in my entire life met a teacher

who was equally expert in all of the different tests.

Normally what you get is they know a little bit

about the other tests,

but they are an expert in just one of them.

So, if you have a teacher, and in their advertising

they say TOEFL, TOEIC, PTE, OTE, IELTS, everything.

"We're amazing at everything".

Maybe they are some sort of superstars,

that I have never met before.

Most likely they're just saying that

because they want to get as many different people in

as possible.

They're more interested in making money

then actually helping people.

So those are five insider secrets.

There's a lot of other things that you will see.

If there's any other red flags,

or anything that would make you skeptical

or worry about the quality of a teacher,

or the quality of a school, feel free to comment below.

Thank you very much.

And I'll see you again soon.

Bye-bye.

(upbeat music)