- Hi everyone, Chris here from IElTS Advantage
with another success story.
So we have a VIP student Dhruv
whose going to share his success
with you guys so that you can learn from him.
So Dhruv, start off by introducing yourself to everyone.
- Hi guys my name is Dhruv Gupta.
I'm from the central part of India,
the state of Madhya Pradesh.
I'm working as an energy consultant
for renewable energy here in the
state of Madhya Pradesh.
And
I'm
looking
to receive my
Canada PR visa very soon, since I've already
applied and got an an ID.
- Yeah he just told me when we were talking
today that you got it 30 minutes ago.
You got your...
- Yeah I just got it like,
I think the time, official time
is started from now, like one hour before in Canada.
- Congratulations.
How does it feel to be going to Canada?
- First of all, I've been in this IELTS
preparation since one year, last one year.
Yeah I started, I gave my first attempt
in September 2017
and I got it the 3rd
or 2nd of August, I mean the test date
was second of August and I got the result
of 14th of August.
- Excellent
- So yeah it has been quite a struggle,
but I am a relieved person,
I'm the happiest person as of now.
- Brilliant, brilliant.
So let's take a step back and
think about where you were a year ago
or six months ago.
What were you struggling with
in terms of the IELTS test?
What did you find difficult?
- Well basically I have,
I mean the first written one which I gave
in September 17th,
I got the score of, eventually I got it
good in writings, 7.5.
But I got a 6 in listening and reading.
And 7.5 in speaking.
I mean first of all I was shocked
because I had long back ago, in 2009,
had given IELTS and I came to England
for my masters from University of Surrey Gildford.
2009, 2010.
And at that time I got 7, my score,
and I didn't find it
that difficult at that time.
Eventually with time, perhaps my skill
could have, you know,
they were not as good as they used to be.
And I got the reality check on
the first attempt in September 17.
I mean I was shocked to know that my reading as,
as skills and listening, they were not up to the mark.
I mean I had practiced a lot after that.
For one month I had practiced a lot.
And I gave in one in half months I think.
It was November 2017 I gave my second attempt.
This time I got 6.5 in writing
and 6.5 in listening and reading,
and 7.5 in speaking.
Actually, I was, second time when I gave it,
I was devastated with the result.
I mean I was not sure what was wrong with me.
Eventually, there were not much coachings
and no guidance for that I can get here in India.
I mean, as far as the transparency
and the trust what I could have in a teacher,
in an IELTS teacher that was not there here in India.
And it is not there here in India right now as well.
Then, okay,
I kept my nerves
and thought of giving it again in January 2018.
This time again I got like 6 in reading and listening.
Listening I got 7,
in reading I got 6,
6.5 in writing and 8 in speaking.
Then I took a break, I really needed to
introspect into myself and I was not sure
what exactly I'm lacking in.
I mean I had already learned about
you in the meanwhile on the internet
and social media.
Although I was not sure because there
were other IELTS teacher as well from UK.
Liz was one of them,
I went on to her site as well.
She was also good, I had a difficulty
choosing between you and Liz, I mean,
I thought both are you know pretty good.
But then,
I took certain sessions, free,
free writing sessions from your end.
Two times actually.
In the mean time from January til now,
I had taken two sessions from your end,
free sessions and the way you explain things
and you're a really precise in
what we need to deliver, in IELTS.
I mean no here and there no,
like even in writing task 1, you were pretty sure,
because I had taken another coaching as well
in the meantime in India.
They were really messed up in terms
of explanation between the kind of
letter we have to write in letter task 1.
Formal, informal and semi-formal.
They had created another third category.
And which was really difficult to identify.
Weather it is semi-formal or formal.
And they have made it in such a way that,
I was confused as a student, really confused.
I thought let's give it a try,
I found your lessons really useful
and I was pretty sure after having that experience,
that your VIP sessions going to be pretty helpful.
Ultimately, my idea was to get my
application in place as soon as possible.
So, I joined your
VIP course and,
here I am.
- Excellent.
And what scores did you get at the last attempt?
- In my second of August I gave in on second of August,
I got 8.5 in reading,
8 in listening,
7 in writing and speaking both.
- Excellent.
So from 6 to 8.5 in reading,
6 to 8 in listening.
Excellent, well done, congratulations.
That's a huge difference.
Let's focus on, in these videos
we mostly focus on writing and speaking,
we rarely get students who
on the VIP course we rarely get students
that need a lot of help with reading and listening.
We help with reading and listening
but we mostly focus on speaking and writing,
because most students need that kind of help.
So lets in this video focus on reading and listening.
If you were talking to a student
who was in the same position as you,
maybe getting 6, 6.5,
and they want to increase their scores,
what advice would you give them
for reading and listening?
- Well first of all I would like
to talk about what my experience was
during last four attempts actually.
Earlier 3 attempts, first 3 attempts where
I was doing is, I was just practicing.
I was not low at practicing,
I was giving a number of tests
in a time condition.
Like, one hour for listening,
half an hour
for listening and one hour for reading.
But, what I was lacking is, I was not
analyzing my performance.
I just calculate my score out of
40 and got 36 rank or 32 rank,
but I didn't look at the questions
who got wrong and why it got wrong.
And what was the thought process
I was having at the time of attempting
those wrong questions.
That was, I was not doing that.
And that is something I believe
one has to take care of because,
see, you can give a number of questions,
a number of tests and practice tests
are always available like, Cambridge,
I attempted Cambridge IELTS general training books.
I've also from
IELTS training,
8 to
12,
til now.
I've attempted multiple times.
But, it's not about attempting multiple times,
what is the most important is that
you analyze where you are going wrong,
you understand it, and not repeating those mistakes again.
- Absolutely.
- And that was the key to success
in this particular attempt in reading and listening.
And this was in reading and listening
I was recently, I mean 2 months back,
I got the subscription of Netflix,
and one of my really good friend
he advised me to watch House of Cards
the season and that's really good english
as you listen good english,
you improve in writing as well.
So it was working both the ways.
Multiple, benefits I was having with that.
That was not the only season one must,
one must watch, there are may such, like,
good fight and other seasons,
but other then that, I also,
used to listen podcasts from
Malcolm Gladwell particularly
- Yup.
- Yeah and that was really helping me
understanding the intonation of
native english speakers,
their pronunciation,
their breaks, and you know, like the speed and breaks
what they use in their speech.
So, that was, I was exactly able to
correlate with listening audios.
When I used to listen there, when I used to listen here
in the actual tests.
I was having really I mean,
I was really getting comfortable slowly
with listening tests, with the help of
all these things what I've done.
With multiple practice and analyzing
my performance continuously.
Gradually, I moved to 8.
- Excellent.
Excellent.
So if I can just circle back and,
summarize your points.
Number 1, practice alone does not help you improve.
As practicing is never gonna help you improve.
The analogy I always use is I used
to have a friend from when he was like
12, 13 years old, his dad allowed him to
drive a car around his farm where he lived.
And so he been driving for years
when he went to do his test, when he was 17,
and he failed his driving test over and over and over.
And he's like I've been driving for years,
but because he didn't learn how to drive properly,
he had all these bad habits, he couldn't pass
his driving test.
Even though he had practiced for
hundreds maybe even thousands of hours.
- That's because he was not getting
any feedback...
- Yeah exactly.
- On what, where he was going wrong.
- Exactly, exactly.
We had another friend
and she had never
driven a car in her life and she got,
she used to tease him because she only
got like 10 lessons or something
and passed first time.
But because she had a driving instructor,
a teacher sitting beside her
constantly giving her feedback
and telling her you're doing this wrong,
you're doing that right.
Its the same with the IELTS test.
With reading and listening, your second point,
with reading and listening it's not really
important to have a teacher giving you feedback
on your mistakes.
The most important thing is that you
analyze your own mistakes.
Because reading and listening is not a productive skill.
Writing and speaking you're producing
language so the teacher can give you
feed back on that language.
Reading and listening you're receiving the language.
So a teacher can't really get into your
brain and analyze your thought process.
Only you can do that.
Everybody makes mistakes.
Every single person makes mistakes.
What the difference is between
some body who improves and somebody who doesn't improve
is the person who learns from their mistakes.
And thinks about why did I make this mistake.
For reading and listening?
Was it grammar, vocabulary, spelling,
strategy, time, what was it?
And if you think deeply about that,
like, if you give me one student
who does one practice test and
thinks about their mistake or
another student who does 10 practice tests
and doesn't think about their mistakes,
the first student - That's exactly
that's what I was doing earlier.
That's why I had to take 3 IELTS attempts.
Failure attempts.
- Absolutely.
And then your next point was you were
watching Netflix, which is great.
Or you were listening to podcasts.
The key there for anyone listening is
you don't have to watch House of Cards,
you don't have to watch, to listen to Malcolm Gladwell.
What you should do is listen to
something you enjoy listening to.
Because if you enjoy doing it,
you will do it everyday.
So pick something.
I know a lot of people from India love cricket,
listen to a cricket podcast or
listen to cricket commentary in english
or a cricket talk show.
Like my wife loves cooking,
she has really improved her english
by watching cookery programs and reading
cook books because she loves doing it
and she does it every single day.
And that's really the key, do something consistently
that you enjoy and those are basic principals
of you know, learning from your mistakes,
getting feedback, doing things.
- The reason I mentioned House of Cards
is because perhaps I think that
Kevin Spacey his origin of english
is you know way too good.
If you listen to it then and try to
imitate the same thing.
- Sure.
- Not in a very superficial way.
But you have to be natural at the
same time when you're speaking.
- I mean there is certain TV shows and movies
that have
actors or accents or it's a very local accent
or very colloquial accent and they'll
be very, very difficult to understand.
But if you find a podcast or you find a TV show
where some one you can really understand them.
You always want to be listening to
different accents, challenging yourself
but if you find someone with a very
clear, easy to understand accent
that's gonna help you with your grammar
your vocabulary because your constantly hearing it.
- Exactly.
- These are just simple things that everyone can do.
They are simple, but they are not easy.
You know?
- There is that thing I would like
to talk about my writing particularly
since I took writing from your end.
- Sure, sure.
- I got two feedback from your end,
and I took only two, but I got to
know everything about my mistakes.
What I was doing in writing.
First of all, the kind of education system
we have in India, I mean I've
been born and brought up in India only.
And we are supposed to write very long essays.
No matter what the topic is.
No matter what the occasion is.
No matter what, weather you are giving a test,
IELTS test, or your english examination at your school.
You ae supposed to write as much as you can.
Irrespective of the fact that what you're writing.
What is the quality of content.
- Quantity over quality.
- Yeah I mean it's a terrible fact,
but let me admit it today.
I mean, I had the habit of writing
way too much then what is needed.
While I gave you my writing
in terms of feedback, I got to understand that
when I have second point to explain,
I usually take 3 to 4 lines more
then what is needed, and that too
complex sentences.
So the length is multiple clauses.
So I was going 330, even 370,
380 word limit.
Well, as a result of that, I was making
too many grammar mistakes as well,
and I was not getting time to proof read
my writing as well.
Because all what I did, in terms of the
submissions I have made to you,
that was an in exam conditions.
Typically 14 minutes
I used to use my stopwatch,
and put my phone
on airplane mode and then I start writing.
I got to know that I had no time to proofread.
Once I write 315 more then 350 words,
I have no time to proofread and
I cut down my writing because I was not
able to submit to you couple of essays
that had 330 word limit.
- A lot of students, so what Dhruv is talking
about when our VIP students submit
using our online platform, as soon as they hit 330 words,
it stops they can't submit anything
and when... - Actually earlier
I was curious because I couldn't
understand the essence of it.
- Yup.
- But then I got to know why you are doing this.
- Yeah a lot of students email us
and they're quite angry about it, and they're like,
I paid for this course, I want to do what,
why are you limiting me, and then we explain
okay this is for your benefit,
if you write more than, you know, more than this,
it means that you're never going to
complete the essay and be able to check everything
and it's all about quality not quantity.
Because some people think that we
do that because we're lazy and we don't
want to read a long essay, it's not that.
It's because we care about our students'
results and that's the only
variable - Exactly.
And I understood it when I got your first feedback.
And since I've made a lot of mistakes
as you have pointed out in the feedback.
What I actually understand in the two
main body paragraphs what I usually write,
I inherently in my subconscious mind
assume that examiner knows about the topic.
- Yeah.
- I mean he has the best he can understanding
of the topic.
Eventually, that is not the case.
You have to explain what you're writing,
and you also have to include the result of that.
What if you say that like, you, one has to do this,
then as a result of this, what all can happen.
- Yup.
- To write that as well.
I was not writing that as well.
I understood from your feedback.
There was certain things I was
not able to exactly connect to the topic.
I had a problem with the task response
criteria of the judgment of essay.
I understood when you actually pointed out
that what happens if this happens.
Whatever I had written.
Yeah, I mean, I was taking it
as if I am an examiner and I am examining.
Wether I would understand that
I got the answer, I didn't understand that.
- It can be quite shocking when someone
sees the first correction that I do for them
because it's a lot of information.
But as long as people take it positively,
and because I correct every single mistake
and go into a lot of detail on why.
And some people react to it like,
oh I'm gonna fail, I'll never get better.
But other people like you see it
as a positive thing okay...
- At the end of the day you need to
understand that you are not here to
blame somebody.
You are here to make your dreams come true.
And that is the priority.
- Yeah.
Everything we do,
every single thing we do - and it was back to
all IELTS teachers, not just you.
All the IELTS teachers in the world.
- Yeah, yeah.
Our number one priority is just student results.
Everything we do is for that.
So thank you very much Dhruv,
I'm sure it's late with you right now
it's pretty late here too.
I'm sure in India it must be really late.
So thank you so much for sharing that information.
- And there is one more thing I would like to ask,
I'm more interested in your
IELTS,
that culture shock program
- Oh the..
Yeah I'll send you an email about that.
That's our new program.
- So I would like to join that program
once I move to Canada.
- Brilliant.
- It would be really of a help.
- Great, great.
I'll look forward to welcoming you
onto the new course soon.
- Thank you so much.
- You're welcome, thank you, bye bye.
- Thank you bye bye.
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