How to Teach an IELTS Lesson Using my Sample Answers and Essays (Ideas and Activities)

Introducing the Topic Activities

Use these activities to start the lesson and introduce the overall topic.

1. Videos: Choose a video (or Google a news article online) from one of the following YouTube channels related to your topic: TedEd, Vanity Fair, Stitcher Podcasts, New York Times, BBC, Wired, The Atlantic, Vice, Practice IELTS Listening, Cambridge IELTS, ASAP Science, Audible, Spotify Podcasts, Netflix Educational
2. Agree or disagree?: Students stand up and the teacher writes agree/disagree on the board. Dictate a statement or opinion about the day’s topic and they stand in the section for agree or disagree. Can be varied by writing on the board true/false, emotions, or good idea/bad idea.
3. Topic Survey: Board the topic, for example ‘Raising Children’ and students write down a survey with questions related to it such as ‘How were you raised as a child? What did/didn’t you like about your parents? Do you plan to have kids?’ etc. Students ask their partner or go around asking other students in class.
4. Topic vocabulary brainstorm: Put the topic on the board, for example ‘The Environment’, and students write down in 4 minutes as many related words as they can. Pass the paper to another group and they keep adding vocabulary. Variation: instead of adding new words they try to write collocations for the words already on the paper. Another variation is to put up the alphabet A-Z and they brainstorm a word/phrase for each letter of the alphabet.
5. Guess about a classmate: Students predict about another student in class their opinions about a topic (i.e. he/she thinks taxes are best way to punish companies that pollute) and then goes and checks. A variation for classes who struggle to think of ideas is the teacher dictates opinions (Taxes are the best way to punish companies that pollute) and students guess true or false for their partner. Then go and find out the truth by asking their partner.
6. Introduction statements: Write on the board a simple sentence stem related to the day’s topic such as ‘Pollution makes… / Parenting is …’ etc. and students write down a few ways of finishing the statement. Then they can either board them, share in groups, or stand up and read them out loud to the rest of the class.
7. Have you ever…?: This is a common game for students to play at university but can be adapted to introduce a topic. Students hold up 5 fingers and take turns saying ‘I have never…’. If the other students have done it, they must put one finger down. The one with fingers left at the end is the winner. The statements about themselves (or the country they are from instead) should relate to a topic such as littering or the environment or parenting.
8. Venn diagrams: Put up a picture related to the essay and hand out a table or Venn diagram with “Things you know/things you are not sure of/Things you would like to know” and students fill in a sentence for each part. Compare in partners and add to their chart. Timed gist reading 10-50 seconds checking the information.
9. Picture prediction: Put up a picture related to the essay and students predict as many topics (not words) that will come up. Listen/read and cross of the topics. The student with the most topics crossed off is the winner.
10. Title and boardrace: Give the title or a picture from an essay. Boardrace with questions that will be answered in the essay. Read/listen and check.
11. Speedwriting: Give the title and a picture from an essay. Students write without stopping or thinking for 2 minutes. Read/listen and check if there is anything they wrote about.
12. Problem solving: Give students the problem or issue dealt with in the essay and they come up with a solution in groups and board it. Listen/read and check who was closest. Decide if the solution in the essay is better/worse than the ones of the board.
13. Personalized prediction: Students make statements about themselves related to the content of the essay. For example, write what they do on the weekend and listen to someone talk about what they do on the weekend. Circle any similarities.
14. What comes next: Pause a listening or cut up an essay at various points (after a few sentences, between paragraphs, etc.) Students predict what will come next then listen/read and check.
15. Listening for key points: Pause a listening or cut up an essay at key points. Students write questions they want answered next, ex “Will they escape?” Listen/read and check.
16. Video word match: Play a video without the picture, audio only. Pause intermittingly and students draw/write what they think is happening. Compare in partners. Check by watching the video. Discuss whether the visuals the producers chose match the words from the video well (most visuals will extend or be somewhat unrelated to the spoken words). Suggest changes to make to the visuals of the video.
17. Authentic summarizing: Put up a reading/essay cut up into paragraphs outside or around the room. Don’t give students the headings for paragraphs but leave them on the powerpoint in the room or on students desks on a handout. Timed – students go outside and read and come back in match to the heading. This way they have to naturally, authentically summarize in their heads in order to be able to match easily when they come back to the ppt.
18. Gap fill: Read aloud a reading or essay (or hand out a gapped text) and students write a plausible word for the gap. Gap content words rather than grammatical-function words. Compare with a partner, board the possibilities and sort into possible/impossible. Go over why the impossible ones don’t work.
19. Outside class: Students are asked to bring in a reading about a subject they are interested (it can be from any source and about anything). Students have to write a summary of their reading, persuading the class to choose it for a shortlist. The most popular reading would then be used for a lesson.

Analysing a Sample Answer Activities

Use these activities to show them the structure of an IELTS essay.

1. Break it down: Hand out or project the essay and label the different sections: introduction, body paragraph 1, body paragraph 2, conclusion. Then go deeper asking students to label: topic sentences, opinion, summary, example, support, and main ideas. Finally tell students to write a sentence by sentence structure starting with ‘Introduction: Sentence 1 – Paraphrase the overall topic. Sentence 2 – State your opinion.’ Follow up by giving them an essay with some sentences deleted (topic sentence, opinion, etc.) and they write those sentences.
2. Checklist: You can download and use this checklist to evaluate a student sample or one of my essays.
3. Colour it in: Variation of the checklist. Give each part of the checklist a colour and students highlight in the essay using the colour. This is a good way to make the structure visual and memorable. (Choose the key parts of the checklist, not every item.)
4. Order the sentences: Paragraphs is probably too simple so put all the sentences in the wrong order and students either number or cut out the sentences and order them. They can also do it with their own essay as long as you tell them to write each sentence on a new line.
5. Write the analysis: Print out one of my essays for writing task 1 or writing task 2 but blank out the analysis so that students can write it for each sentence. You might want to show them an example analysis on a different essay first before they do it in pairs. Then check with my analysis. You can download a sample of this activity here.
6. Label as you like it: Students label the structure, sentence by sentence, of a sample answer. They can use their native language and label it any way that makes sense for them. Then discuss in pairs/groups and differences.
7. Follow my sample essays: My essays are also designed to be taught in the classroom. You can use the videos at the end to start the lesson, hand out the readings, read out the topic, hand out the essays, go over the analysis and vocabulary, and use the essay topic and speaking questions. You can adapt them to fit your personal teaching style.

Practicing Vocabulary Activities

You might skip these activities if you just want to focus on their writing but they can be helpful and make your students feel they got something concrete out of the lesson.

1. Collocations translations: Most collocations in English will not have a direct translation into the student’s mother tongue (for example, water scarcity, inherent danger, etc.). Students write the closest L1 equivalent for the most difficult collocations in a sample essay. Then discuss any differences in pairs/groups.
2. Xs and Os practice: Also known as noughts and crosses, students draw the board and play in pairs. They must use a new vocabulary word correctly in order to be allowed to put the X or O down. Best to play it whole class one time against the teacher first to explain the rules.
3. Long sentence: Students choose 5 or 10 words from the essay and must write a super long sentence using all the words. Then give the sentence to another student and that student must break it up into multiple sentences so that it makes more sense and then give it back.
4. Antonyms: Before reading a sample answer, dictate to students the antonyms of a bunch of new vocabulary in the essay out of order. Then students read and find the antonym. (Variation: this can also be done with synonyms.) For more advanced classes, you can read the essay aloud and they try to write the word from your essay next to the antonym.
5. Fixed Expressions: Students underline the fixed expressions like ‘On the one hand’ ‘The results of this is that’ etc. They then practice writing new sentences or inserting them into their own writing.
6. Inferring meaning: Students highlight the difficult words from my sample essays and try to figure out if they are nouns/verbs/adjectives and write a definition before looking them up in the dictionary to check.
7. Memory activities: There are a lot of simple memory activities students can do with my sample answers. For example: one student reads the sample answer but pauses before a word in bold and their partner remembers the word, complete the gap-filled sample answer, use the vocabulary list to rewrite the essay.
8. Word as image: Students make the new vocabulary words into ‘word as image’ pictures. This will help them to remember them deeply. You can see some examples in this video (there are a couple images you might want to skip if showing a class that video).
9. Mouth the word: Students mouth the vocabulary words from the essay without making a noise and their partner guesses which word it is. Teacher corrects pronunciation.
10. Taboo: Students write cards for the new vocabulary with a new word and 3 words that a student cannot use when describing the word. Students then describe the words to their group and the group tries to guess the word.
11. Fake and real definitions: Write fake and real definitions for the difficult vocabulary in a sample answer. Mingle and students say which definition is fake/real.
12. Drawing: Students draw pictures to represent the new vocabulary words in an essay. Give the pictures to another student to figure out what the words are from the pictures. Fast finishers then write sentences with the new words.
13. Vocabulary crossword: Students choose new vocabulary from a sample answer, look up the definitions and make a crossword puzzle for another student to complete for homework.
14. Paraphrasing Practice: There are a number of ways to work on paraphrasing including hand out just the essay questions and students paraphrase them, students write their own essay topics and another student paraphrases, paraphrase or suggest synonyms for a finished essay, make a list of words that can/can’t be paraphrased, or turn it into a speaking activity and students talk about a topic (for example, their hometown) and their partner takes notes and then paraphrases their answer.