When I have to explain the English teaching industry, I often feel like a Kremlinologist must have when they had to make assumptions about deeper changes from who the party leader was standing next to, or like a journalist trying to make a whole article based on the evidence of a photo of Kim Jong Un pointing at things. For example, when I had to explain why the answer keys were so inaccurate, I guessed from the names on the covers that the Teacher’s Book writer was probably falling into traps that Student’s Book author had set for the students. Similarly, I often have to apologise with “Sorry that we have to cover this topic, but it looks like the publishers used up all the normal topics in the earlier levels of this textbook series”.

Finding patterns in tealeaves is most important when teaching and writing about IELTS. Cambridge exams like B2 First rarely have changes, with such alterations clearly explained and the exam predictable from then on. Somehow Cambridge has not decided to go through the same kind of clear process with IELTS. Instead, we are forced to search through the official Cambridge IELTS practice test books for subtle signs of how the exam might be secretly changing. To give one of numerous examples, I’ve never seen an announcement that IELTS Listening gapfill tasks will no longer have two or more words per gap, but there haven’t been any examples since IELTS 12 in 2017. I therefore have to tell my students that the exam is unlikely to be like the “no more than three words” task in the textbook, but could still be – because who knows?? Similarly, Cambridge no longer sells books earlier than IELTS 12, but it’s not obvious what changes there had been that mean earlier materials are no longer suitable, especially when IELTS 17 and 18 are quite a lot different from IELTS 12 and 13.  

My most recent example of TEFL Kremlin watching is that I just got my hands on a copy of the new Cambridge IELTS 19 official practice exams book. I’ve therefore been trying to work out what recent trends in IELTS tests it reinforces, what further changes might be starting, and what is just examples of clumsy writing and editing (like in all the Cambridge IELTS books) and so can safely be ignored. Results of that analysis coming soon. In the meantime, here is the first of what I hope will be a complete set of articles on what we can and can’t learn from “official” IELTS practice exam books:

Analysis of official IELTS informal letter tasks