IELTS Study Group Online — speaking & writing practice every week

Preparing for IELTS on your own is miserable — especially speaking, which you physically cannot practice alone.

So I started this group.
We meet for one hour, work on one part of the test, and use official practice materials and the public band descriptors to give each other real feedback. Small group, everyone speaks, nobody watches.

How it works
Each session covers a single part:

1. Week 1 — Speaking Parts 2 & 3. In pairs: one plays examiner with the cue card and timer, one answers. One minute prep, two minutes talking, then the follow-up discussion. Swap.
2. Week 2 — Writing Task 2. Forty minutes, real timing, then we read each other's essays against the four band criteria: task response, coherence and cohesion, lexical resource, grammatical range and accuracy.
3. Week 3 — Listening. A full section under test conditions, then we go through what went wrong — because the mistakes are almost always the same three or four traps.
4. Week 4 — Speaking Part 1 & fluency work.

Then it repeats, so you can join any week.

Academic or General Training?
Both are welcome. The only real difference is Writing Task 1, which we handle separately - everything else in the test is identical, so we practise it together.
About me - please read this
I'm not a teacher and not an IELTS examiner. I speak English at a high level and I can give you useful, direct feedback on your speaking and writing - but I can't certify you, I won't guess your band score, and I'd be doing you a disservice if I pretended otherwise.

What I can do is run the format properly, bring real practice materials, and make sure you actually practise every week instead of promising yourself you'll start next month.

If you want a qualified teacher, the British Council and IDP both run proper prep courses. This is the thing you do alongside that, or instead of paying for it.

Who this is for
Roughly B1-B2 and above. The whole hour is in English. If you're targeting band 6+ this will help; below B2, a structured course will serve you better first.

How it runs
One hour on Zoom. Cameras on — this is speaking practice, and you can't practise speaking to a black square. The link goes out to people who've RSVP'd, an hour before we start.

Writing weeks work differently
You write the essay during the week and post it in our shared doc before the session. We spend the hour reading and giving each other feedback against the band criteria - not sitting in silence typing.

Before you RSVP
Please only book if you'll actually come. If your plans change, cancel your RSVP so someone else can take it.