Reading & Writing Practise

There are lots of different exams that people can take to improve their reading and writing. Here is a link to some exams: http://www.trinitycollege.com/site/?id=3032

You should practise Entry 2 exams. This will give you good reading practise and will give you some good ideas to practise your writing. When you finish your writing, ask the teacher in the Study Centre to check it.

How can I improve my English outside class? (Part one)

There are lots of things you can do to improve your English outside class. Here are a few ideas:

1. Write a diary. This is good practice for writing and vocabulary. You can ask the teacher in the Study Centre to check it. Write something in your diary every day. You can write about what you did last night (in the past) or what you are going to do the next day (Tomorrow, I am going to...). You can write about something you saw, something in the news, a person you met... Anything! Two or three sentences is enough.

2. Follow a twitter account or subscribe to a website. This account looks useful for elementary students: https://twitter.com/EP_Learning You could subscribe to a BBC podcast to practise your listening skills. For example, http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/6min_gram or http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/elt_drama It is important that you listen to the podcast several times a week. These podcasts might be useful for Chinese students: http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/aab and http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/suk

3. Use songs to improve your vocabulary and pronunciation. http://lyricstraining.com/ is a good website where you can listen to the song and write in the missing words, but you can just listen to a song and find the lyrics on the internet.

IELTS Speaking Part Two

Here is a useful link to some questions you might see in the IELTS Speaking Exam. Remember, in part two, you need to talk about the questions on the card for one minute. The topics are general English (holidays, works, families etc). You need to talk about everything on the card. Look at the tenses used: do you need to talk about the past, the present, or the future:

http://www.usingenglish.com/files/pdf/101-ielts-speaking-part-two-topic-cards-that-tie-in-with-ielts-speaking-part-one.pdf