 Recently I decided to do a crazy experiment with IELTS test. I went down to Dublin by two hours from where I live and I did the real IELTS test because I wanted to test something that has been bothering me for many, many years. Do me a favor, don't skip ahead and look at the results. All right, don't skip ahead and look and think, oh, you got that result. Well, you know, a native English speaker who teaches IELTS for a living should be getting a band nine. So, you know, it's kind of like Lewis Hamilton doing the driving test and passing the driving test. It is not such a big deal because this is my job. Instead, what I decided to do was this experiment. So the IELTS test is divided into four parts, listening, reading, speaking and writing. What I decided to do was for two parts of the test, go and look at the most popular advice, the most popular tips and tricks for that part of the test and follow that blindly. And for the other two parts, I looked up the common advice, the most popular tips and tricks for those two parts of the test, and decided to do the exact opposite. So don't follow the advice, do the opposite. And then let's see what the scores should be. So let's check out what happened. So starting off with the listening test, the two most common tips that you see on popular blogs and YouTube videos are number one, really focus on keywords. So when you're looking at the questions, focus in on the keywords, the keywords will reveal the correct answer to you. And the second tip is skip ahead. When you finish a section, go straight away and read the questions and try and find those keywords. So it's a very keyword driven way of doing the listening test. And this is the most popular advice out there. It's not the advice that we give at IELTS Advantage, but it's certainly the advice that millions of people use every test day. So for the listening part, I followed the gurus, just did exactly what they said. And I had to abandon that strategy after the first section, because I found it nearly impossible to focus on what I was doing. A huge part of listening is focusing and being able to focus on the question and focus on the listening at the same time. And you really have to do three things. You need to read, listen and think and decide the correct answer all at the same time. And I think that I got the first question wrong, because I was really focusing on keywords and then skipping ahead and trying to think about what is happening next instead of really just doing what I should be doing, which is looking at the question and waiting for the listening and thinking about it more holistically. So I think that I got the first question wrong. And it was an extremely simple question. It was a registration number, a number plate on a car. And I think I got that wrong, because what I was doing was really focusing on keywords and thinking about what was coming next. And what that did was it stopped me actually getting this really simple answer. Like the first question in the listening test is the easiest one. I think I got that wrong. And I paid a lot of money for this test and this, you know, this experiment. And I thought I was thinking to myself after section one, I better abandon this strategy of focusing on the keywords and then skipping ahead, because I my mind was going blank. I couldn't think straight and I couldn't focus on what I was doing. So here's the result. I ended up getting a band nine for the listening test. But if I had of maintained that strategy, I definitely would have got much lower than a nine. And really, to be honest, I didn't want to embarrass myself. So I followed the common popular guru thinking. And I think I got the first question wrong, and I abandoned that. And I would not recommend that to anybody, because you really just lose focus. And my mind was going blank. And I couldn't really understand what was going on. And that's as a native English speaker. So I did get a band nine, but it was only because I abandoned the strategy after the first section. So a pretty good start, a band nine so far. But it was quite shocking how difficult I find the first section and the first section is the easiest section. Moving on to reading, the three most common things that you will see online about reading, the popular tips and tricks are skimming, scanning and keywords. So all you have to do is skim the text, scan the text, look at keywords and the questions, and then magically you're going to find the correct answer. This is all kind of designed to trick your way into getting the correct answer somehow and to focus on doing it as quickly as possible. It's really about time management, that advice. And I totally disagree with that advice because it is not a time management test. It is a reading test. So what I did instead was basically the opposite of that. I didn't do any skimming. I didn't do any scanning. I did no keyword highlighting or anything like that. What I did was carefully read the text, really, really carefully read it. Then I went to the questions and I basically applied the strategies that I teach for each of the different types of questions, thought about them very deeply, read very carefully, no skimming, no scanning, really thinking about the correct answer to each question. And I believe I got 100%, all of them correct. I got a band nine, as you can see up here, by following exactly the opposite of what the gurus teach. And not only that, I got it all done in about 20 minutes. Now that is not bragging. Anyone who is a native English speaker should be able to get a band nine in reading by doing that. But if I was skimming, scanning keywords, I think I would have messed it up because a lot of the questions skimming is a waste of time. A lot of the questions, keywords is looking for keywords is a waste of time. So by focusing on time management, I actually would have wasted a lot of time ironically, because good time management is not really about time management tips. It is about becoming better at reading and reading carefully and deciding the correct answer based on your understanding of the text and your understanding of the questions. And all of that skimming, scanning keywords, that kind of gets in the way of it. Now some of the strategies that I use do deploy some of those things, but in a very limited way, not answering every question in that way. So doing the complete opposite of the gurus band nine. The next one was speaking. So I did the opposite of what I was supposed to do in speaking the opposite of what the top tips and tricks. So again, what I did, what are the most common, most popular tips and tricks for speaking? They are for part one, memorize answers, you're going to get questions about your job, you're going to get questions about where you live in your home. So memorize some answers. I didn't do that. Use idioms and phrasal verbs and things like that. I didn't use one single idiom the entire time. I was told to use idioms, didn't use them at all. Use a very high level vocabulary. Didn't use high level vocabulary. What I did was just answer the questions in a simple language as possible and only use high level vocabulary when I absolutely had to. When there was no simple way of saying it. But where are you from? I'm from the place that I'm from. I didn't say I reside or I dwell in like, I wasn't using really high level words when I could use simple words. Complex grammar didn't really focus on using the most complex grammar, the most complex sentences or the most complex tenses I could think of. If they asked me about the past, I used the past tense. If they asked me what I was thought about the future, I would say like, I think they might be doing this in the future or I said Elon Musk has big plans for this. I wasn't using really complex standardized grammar that you'll see online. Part five or part number five, I was told in part two, using these popular strategies, you must focus on the bullet points in part two. You must address each of the bullet points. If you don't talk about the bullet points, you will not get a high score. I didn't even look at the bullet points. I just talked about the stuff at the top, the topic at the top. And I just talked naturally about that. And I don't know if I use the bullet points or not, but I didn't really consider them. And then the sixth popular piece of advice is part three is very formal. It's very academic. So you should use lots of academic words and talk about it in that kind of formal academic way. I talked about it in a really informal, non-academic, very friendly conversational way. So I did exactly the opposite of the advice and I got a band nine. So there's a lot of people out there that will tell you if you don't use idioms, you'll get a low score. That is completely false, based on my experience doing the real test. And at IELTS Advantage, we've got like 12 X examiners who would agree with me on that. So who is right? Is your YouTube guru right? Or is the actual examiner right? A lot of people will say if you miss a bullet point, you will get a low score. A lot of people say if you don't use high level vocabulary and complex grammar, you will get a low score. This is completely untrue. And this was not because I'm a native English speaker. And somehow my pronunciation was so magnificent or that I, you know, got a really high score. It's not done on pronunciation alone. It's not done on fluency alone. It's not done on grammar alone. It's not done on vocabulary alone. In order to get a band nine, you need to be a band nine for everything. And if you are lacking in two of those things, then you're going to get at least an 8.5. That didn't happen. Writing was the most interesting part. So I have seen other YouTubers, IELTS YouTubers going and doing the real test and getting 6.5, getting 7, 7.5 in the writing, and then blaming the examiner and blaming the writing or blaming the test and all sorts of things. I don't think that's right. I think that's probably because their methods are not very effective. And if you are a native English speaker and you're getting 6.5, 7 in the IELTS test, then you're doing something seriously wrong. And that's what I did. What I did was I did a few things that are popular advice. And I believe that they're seriously wrong. So what did I do? I used high level ideas. So very common advice, very popular advice about the writing test is make sure your ideas are very high level. Whatever that means, they're impressive. They would really impress the examiner. Number two, make sure that your vocabulary is very, very high level. As complex and as high level and as many C2 and C1 words as possible, never repeat a word. Always vary your language as much as possible. That's very common advice. Number three, make sure that your ideas are impressive, that they impress the examiner in some way, that the examiner will look at it and think, these are really impressive ideas. And number four, make sure that your grammar is very complex, that you use many different structures, that you use like things like conditionals and multiple different conditionals and you use multiple different types of tense and complex structures and everything. This made writing the essay really difficult because a few problems came up. Number one, it took me a long time to try and think of high level ideas. And I wasted a lot of time before I knew it, like eight minutes had gone by. And I was still thinking, what is a really high level idea? Then when I started writing, what I noticed was there were certain keywords that I didn't know how to vary. So one of the keywords was hobby. There's only a few ways that you but it was a some people like high tech hobbies, some people like low tech hobbies. So the whole thing was about hobbies. So what all I was doing while I was writing, instead of thinking, how do I write a clear essay, what I was doing was thinking, how do I change hobbies, which really isn't that important. The examiner is testing your writing, the exact and clear communication and writing, they're not testing how many different variations of the word hobby can you put down. So that made my job really, really difficult. For part one, I was trying to think of something that would impress the examiner. So I was trying to think of something that would be really interesting. It was write a letter to your boss about the dress code. So to impress the examiner, I wrote that I was working in a restaurant called Hooters. Don't know if you know this, but Hooters is like a restaurant where all the ladies wear very skimpy outfits. So I pretended to be a Hooters girl and complain about my outfit and the men were harassing me and everything. I thought that was funny and pressed the examiner that way. And I tried to use really complex grammar. So what I was doing was actually deleting good, simple sentences with really effective, simple grammar in it and trying to make it more complex. So everything that I did by following the common advice, the popular advice, that made my job much more difficult. And I got a band eight. So I should have got a band nine. But because my job was made so much more difficult, I was a full band below where I really should be. And that's something that you should really think about. You probably deserve a much higher band than you are currently getting. But if you are doing even one of those things, you're not bad at writing. You're just making your life more difficult by following popular advice on YouTube and on blogs. That doesn't really help you get a high score. Because what you should be doing is instead of thinking of high level ideas, try and think of simple ideas. Simple ideas are easy to write about, easy to think about, easy to explain, easy to think of examples for high level vocabulary actually lowers your vocabulary score because you're trying to think of ways of varying your vocabulary and making it more complex and making your your job more difficult and probably you're writing less clear, impressive ideas. It's just an extra thing that you need to think about. You're running out of time, you don't have time to check your work because you were spending all that time trying to think of impressive ideas. And you're probably making grammar mistakes because you're making your grammar more complex. So have a think about that. By following the advice and listening, I nearly messed up my listening test. By doing the opposite, I got a band nine and reading in 20 minutes. By doing the opposite in speaking, I got a band nine. By doing what the gurus tell you to do. Most of the gurus, not all of them, there's some good coaches and trainers online, not criticizing all of them. I know you guys think that I am overly critical. The reason why I'm overly critical is I spent 200 euro plus 100 euro getting my writing rechecked. So that's 300 euros in test fees. I spent 160 euros on a hotel. I spent 50 euros on food breakfast and dinner because I had to go down and stay there. I spent another 20 euros on petrol. I took half a day off work. That cost me probably about 500 euros. So close to a thousand euros in just doing this test. And I know that you guys spend an equivalent amount of money and it makes it even worse for you guys because if you don't get the scores that you need, that means that you can't go and work in that country of your dreams and achieve and earn the money that you deserve. It's easy for me. All I had to do was drive up the road and I'm back into my big house working in my nice job, getting paid what I deserve. Most people doing the test, when they follow this advice, don't have that choice. What they are told is you failed the test. Your scores are lower than you hoped for. We're not going to tell you why and what people normally do, what their normal reaction to that is. I'm dumb. I'm stupid. I need to go and do more tips and tricks, make things more complex, more impressive ideas, learn more idioms and then they go and fail again. Okay, I need to find another guru and learn even more tips and tricks and hacks and shortcuts and then they fail again. This is why I get so passionate about this because we get emails every single day from students saying, I failed because they followed this advice, this common advice. If this common advice can make a native English speaker fail the test by getting a band eight in writing and doing the exact opposite leads to a band nine, that might make you think. And if you think, oh, my expertise as an IELTS teacher and as a native English speaker and as an educated person from Ireland, that means that of course you would have got a band nine. Go and look at other IELTS experts from native English speakers who've done the test for real. They're not getting band nine and everything. So it makes you think, doesn't it? So hopefully you find this interesting. If you did and you have questions about how do I actually get the scores that I need? Well, you just follow exactly what examiners should show you or would advise you to do, which is do the opposite to most of the stuff you see online. Why is it popular? Because that's what you guys want. You want tips and tricks. What you need is something completely different. If you want something completely different, feel free to get in touch with us and we will help you out as much as we can. Thank you very much. Hope that you find that interesting. Special thanks to the people at the IELTS test center. They were amazing. They made me feel really comfortable, really professional. They did their best to reduce nerves amongst the other candidates and things like that. It was really, really professional. I'll probably make a follow-up video on what it was like to do the computer-based test. If you want that or any other videos in the future, feel free to subscribe or unsubscribe if you don't like the channel and feel free to give the video a like or a dislike if you didn't think that this video was helpful. Thanks very much and hope to hear from you soon. Bye-bye.