IELTS 9.0 expert shares how to learn English

Hanoi Four speakers share their experiences in learning each skill to achieve high scores, especially listening and writing, in the IELTS test.

The event took place yesterday with speeches by Mr. Dang Tran Tung, Mr. Vu Hai Dang, Mr. Luyen Quang Kien, and Ms. Truong Hai Ha. The large hall of the Banking Academy was almost full with about 800 students coming to listen.

Four speakers discuss why many people spend time practicing Listening but do not improve and cannot understand what native speakers say.

According to Ms. Ha, a lecturer at the University of Foreign Languages, Vietnam National University, Hanoi, there are three factors, including recognizing "connected speech", which is English spoken in a continuous sequence, similar to the way native speakers communicate every day.

When words are connected, they are pronounced differently than when they stand alone. In "connected speech", some words or sounds are swallowed, phrases are spoken together, and important words are stressed while function words are omitted. As a result, non-native listeners will have difficulty.

Ms. Ha gave the example of "meet you". When read separately, these two words are pronounced /mi:t/ and /ju:/, but when connected, they are pronounced /mi tʃu/, because the sound /t/ combines with /j/ to form /tʃ/.

"Concentration also affects listening ability. Every time we do a listening test for 30-35 minutes continuously, our ability to concentrate is stretched beyond the normal limit, causing one ear to hear something differently," explained a teacher who achieved a 9.0 IELTS with no skill below 8.5.

Regarding Listening skill, Mr. Tung admitted that this is an abstract skill, not simply "practice makes perfect". The teacher who achieved 9.0 IELTS 6 times shared that he improved this skill through rapping.

Mr. Dang Tran Tung, who achieved 9.0 IELTS 6 times. Photo: The IELTS Workshop

For Mr. Kien, the first Vietnamese person to achieve perfect scores in all four skills, the best way is to listen and watch a lot. Mr. Kien said that he reached the ability to listen and understand about a year after being exposed to English quite a lot, mainly watching movies or TV shows.

"I spend 5-6 hours a day watching movies and 30 minutes reading books. I read what I like and what is at my level," said Mr. Kien.

When studying teaching methods, I learned about the speed of reflexes with a word. If you only see a word once or twice, you cannot expect to recognize it right away. But when you see it enough times through reading and listening, then your recognition will increase and you will know what the word is.

Listening and reading are practiced by Mr. Kien every day, in the fields that need to be studied or loved. Interested in psychology and physics, the 9X teacher often watches knowledge related to these fields on YouTube or channels with subtitles.

According to Mr. Kien, turning off subtitles while listening is extreme and counterproductive because if you don't understand what you're listening to, you won't have any clues or tools to know what you didn't hear. Mr. Kien once tried turning off subtitles and found that the entire time you listened afterward was ineffective.

"With subtitles, you will know where this part turns out to be from or where people connect sounds, change sounds, and gradually learn from experience. Once I got used to it, I could hear much more clearly, almost without having to pay attention to the subtitles and still be able to understand well," he said.

Teacher Luyen Quang Kien (right) and Ms. Truong Hai Ha at the English Festival on the afternoon of October 14 in Hanoi. Photo: The IELTS Workshop

Subtitling while listening is also the method applied by Mr. Dang (9.0 Writing). He often suggests to students websites with speeches about presidents.

"For example, turn on the subtitles of Ivanka Trump's speech about her father during the presidential race. You listen to it but you're actually reading it," said Mr. Dang, adding that to write a speech with such linguistic sophistication, the assistant team had to read many books.

Listening cannot be separated from Reading . Mr. Dang's method is to read slowly, read to understand. To understand, learners must look up the dictionary a lot, learn by themselves, then ask the teacher.

"Once you understand, you are no longer like a language learner but like someone who can evaluate whether the reading is good or not. This level inadvertently shows that you have made progress in your learning path," Mr. Dang analyzed.

Of the four IELTS skills, Writing is considered the most difficult. Having twice achieved 9 of these skills, Mr. Kien advises that if the level is below 6, learners should focus on grammar. An IELTS essay without many grammatical errors is coherent enough for the examiner to score 6.

Once you have a good grasp of the language and know how to develop your ideas, you should focus more on good arguments to get a score of 6-7.5. From 7.5 to 9, the most important factor is vocabulary. Vocabulary must be sophisticated enough to deepen the ideas and make the sentences flow smoothly.

"To improve writing, learners need to read a lot to have good input and knowledge to produce ideas," said Mr. Kien.

Tran Nguyen Ngoc Linh, a student of the English Language Department, Banking Academy, appreciated the English learning experiences of the speakers.

"The sharing session was very useful. I learned three ways to improve my English, including learning like a child, sharing with everyone the knowledge I learned and celebrating small victories," Linh said.

At first, I forced myself to study and found IELTS boring, but after listening to the teachers' advice, I needed to change the way I studied.

Phu Xuan, a third-year student majoring in English at Hanoi University of Foreign Languages, came to the festival because he wanted to meet experts and learn more experiences.

"The speakers are very professional. I plan to take the IELTS test in a year," Xuan said.

Held since 2016, English Festival is an annual event of The IELTS Workshop to encourage and support young people to learn English.

Dawn

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