FAQ

Great question and one you should always ask when choosing an IELTS preparation school! Our answer is simple. We have a level of expertise that is second to none, and a proven track record of helping students from all over the world hit their target scores every month.

More importantly, we care about your IELTS journey just as much as you do. Our students often say that the moral support and motivation that we give them throughout their journey is just as important as our knowledge as of the exam

All of our teachers are native speakers who hold a CELTA (that is the Cambridge University teaching qualification). Shelly Cornick, who creates all of the lessons for My IELTS Classroom, has over 20-years’ experience working in universities around the world teaching English for Academic Purposes. She also has a Masters in Applied Linguistics and works as an exam creator for two universities. You can find out more about all of the My IELTS Classroom teachers on our About page.

Yes! In the past, we specialised only in helping people hit their target score in writing because this is where students seemed to struggle most. But now, following huge demand, we offer lessons for every part of the IELTS test. If you are just beginning to study for IELTS, we recommend that you start by signing up to our Writing Bronze Package.

This will not only give you access to our entire IELTS writing / grammar video library for 31 days, but it will also allow you to attend the free live lessons for the other modules as well. That means that you will have access to high-quality lessons for all four modules for just £34.99 a month.

Yes! We have joint lessons for the parts of the exam that are the same (speaking and listening) and separate courses for the parts that are different (writing and reading).

The lessons and practice materials are aimed at students who need a score of 6.0 or higher. This means that you need at least B1 level (Intermediate) to understand our video courses and live lessons. If you aren’t sure if the lessons will be suitable for you, we recommend that you watch the 12 free videos at the start of our writing courses to help you decide. If you can understand these, you will be able to complete all of the lessons. If you cannot, find a local English school and take an Intermediate (B1) course and then come back to us.

Every package can help you achieve your target score. The only difference is the level of personal guidance you will receive.

Bronze contains all of the main teaching materials for each module. Here, you will learn all of the skills, language, and techniques needed to gain a high score either in video lessons (writing / grammar) or an intensive course with one of our expert teachers (reading / listening / speaking).

Silver includes everything in the bronze package (i.e. you still get all of the teaching) but you will also get personal help from our IELTS experts. For example, in Writing, you will receive feedback for two essays, two letters or reports, and a free first assessment alongside the video courses.

Gold packages offer the highest-level of personal support from our experts and are for students who either need a very high score (7.0+) or who need to move up by at least one band. We spent a long time considering exactly how much individual help a student would need to improve in each area and are 100% confident that these packages provide the perfect amount of support.

That depends on where you currently are in your IELTS preparation. Some of our students are just starting their IELTS journey and others are working hard to reach the highest scores. Whatever your needs, we have a package for you. Have a look at our Pick My Package page, which will help you decide what is best for you.

All payments are taken through a secure payment system called Stripe, which accepts all major cards from customers around the world. You will be charged based on the exchange rate on the day you subscribe.

If you have problems subscribing because your debit or credit card does not allow international payments, you can email us at hello@myieltsclassroom.com with the name that is printed on your card and your country, and we will create a manual invoice that will allow you to pay in your local currency.

Yes, but you will need to email us so that we can generate an invoice for you. Just email us at hello@myieltsclassroom.com for help.

There can be a number of reasons for a failed payment:

1. You do not have sufficient funds in your account to make the payment (Solution = transfer more money into your account before attempting the payment again)
2. Your card is not able to make international payments (Solution = email us so that we can manually create an invoice for you in your own currency: hello@myieltsclassroom.com)
3. Your bank has blocked the payment (Solution = call your bank to explain that the payment is genuine)

If you have problems making payment, PLEASE contact us so that we can help you access the course.

If you sign up to the Bronze or Silver Writing Packages, you will be billed every month and THE RENEWAL WILL HAPPEN AUTOMATICALLY. It is simple to cancel your subscription, and I will send you an email 2 days before the next month’s payment is taken to remind you. If you have finished with the course or no longer wish to continue, just cancel your subscription.

If you join any other My IELTS Classroom Package, you will only be billed once.

You just need to click on My Account, which is in the footer of the main website (i.e. the black part at the very bottom of every page). Then, you can download all of your previous invoices. You will also be emailed a receipt.

You can cancel your subscription to the Bronze or Silver Writing Package at any time in My Account. If you need help, just email hello@myieltsclassroom.com and we will unsubscribe for you.

We were recently named as the number one IELTS preparation website. The reason? Our video library! Our classes are interactive and based on my real classroom lessons. This means you will actively participate in your learning from lesson one by completing exercises in every class. Plus, you then get the chance to reinforce that knowledge with our practice activities. It is this unique mix of fun interactive lessons with genuine expertise that makes My IELTS Classroom different to other online sites. And it is why we have a 100% satisfaction rating with our previous students.

Once you join a Writing Package, you will have unlimited access to all of the lessons for the length of your subscription. You are free to watch them as many times as you wish. In fact, we encourage you to return to lessons multiple times as they are rich with information.

Yes! Each video has a number. Start each course at lesson number one and continue until you reach the end. We have designed the course so that all the basic, key skills are taught in the earlier videos. Then, as we progress, we will move from the most common types of questions to the least common.

If you have limited time before the exam, start from the beginning and do as many videos as you can before exam day. Do NOT start in the middle, as you will miss very important information and may become confused.

The lessons vary in length but are, on average, 30 minutes long. However, remember that you will need to pause the video 2 or 3 times to complete activities during the lesson, so you will probably need between 45 minutes and 1 hour to complete each one properly. Plus, you will need another 30 minutes to complete the practice activities after the video has finished (or longer for the guided practice videos). You can now control the speed of the videos on our updated video player, so if you are comfortable watching at a faster speed, you can now do so.

No. It’s totally fine to watch a few Task 1 videos and then a few Task 2 videos, but you should start both sections from video one. Actually, I think that it's a good idea to study both courses at the same time. You can become tired watching only one type of task, so mixing them together will help keep your interest. We will supply you with a study plan that will help you finish the course within your subscription period.

You have two choices. You can do them as an integrated part of the Writing Task 1 and Writing Task 2 video courses. We explain how to do this in our study plan. Or, if you want to, you can do the grammar videos as a separate course. If you choose this, I would recommend watching all the grammar videos before you start the Writing Task 1 and Writing Task 2 videos.

That is up to you! I recommend watching a video every day. That way you will have time to do the practice activities and will remember everything you learn. If you follow this plan, the course would take two months to complete. Many students, however, choose to watch 2 videos a day (or more), so they can complete the video course within a month.

YES. Just go to www.myieltsclassroom.com, sign in, and you will be able to stream to any device. I have tried to make the text big enough to be read on even a small phone screen.

Yes! But not at the same time, so for security reasons, you should make sure that you are the only person who knows your account details!

The practice activities are designed to check the knowledge you have gained from each lesson. You can either complete the exercises online (which is good for students sitting the Computer Based Test) or download them as a PDF file. You can find links to both options under the video you are watching. You will not be able to see the link until you have subscribed.

No. Why? Well, in my experience, students who do this are unlikely to finish the course. You cannot learn from only doing the practice activities, just as you can’t learn from only watching the videos. They have to be done together for your language to improve, which is why you have to watch the videos to access them.

No. You need an Internet connection and an active subscription to access the My IELTS Classroom video library.

Yes! In fact, we encourage you to do this. Just scroll to the bottom of the video and type your question, and one of our experts will answer within 24 hours. However, we have a great bank of questions for each lesson, so I am sure if you read the previous comments at the top of each comment box, you will be able to find an immediate answer to your question.

That is up to you. We have a bank of genuine IELTS questions (NOT from the Cambridge books) that we can supply to you, or you can use a question from the Cambridge 5 – 15 books.

However, you MUST use a question from one of these sources. Having worked with so many test-takers, we know how important it is to use high-quality questions – even one word can make a difference to the focus of a question and how you should approach it.

We guarantee to return marking within three working days (we do not work on Sunday), but usually we aim to get your writing back within two. If you have an exam coming soon, you can email us to discuss express marking. We will always do our best to help you.

No. I’m afraid that you can’t. We spend over an hour writing detailed personalised comments for every essay and at least 30 minutes on every letter or report. The whole purpose of marking is to use this detailed feedback to improve your next piece of writing. If you send us 2 or 3 essays at the same time, they will all contain the same mistakes (grammar errors, missing topic sentences, lack of extension, etc).

Yes! In fact, this can be a very good idea, especially if you want to ensure you can produce high-quality writing in exam conditions.

When My IELTS Classroom started, we specialised only in helping students with IELTS writing. However, our courses were so popular that almost immediately people started to ask when lessons for reading, listening, and speaking parts would be available. Well, now they are! The problem is that creating high-quality video content takes a LONG time – the writing video library took over two years to make and now that I am busy running a school, it would be almost impossible for me to get all of the lessons made to quality I demand.

Our live lessons are the solution to this problem. They offer you a chance to get the same high-quality teaching that we offer in a video class, but without me having to spend days editing footage and adding animation.

We use Zoom to host our live lessons. You can sign up for a free account here: zoom.us/freesignup/

Live Lessons happen every day from Monday to Friday. The lessons and teachers change every week, so to find out what you can learn, you will need to check our Weekly Timetable, which is published every Sunday.

If you are a subscriber to any of our Packages, you will be able to find the weekly timetable at the bottom of your Dashboard. You will also be able to register there. If you are not yet a subscriber, you can find this week’s timetable here.

Live lessons are only available to subscribers of My IELTS Classroom. Once you subscribe, you will be able to register for a class at the bottom of your Dashboard – just scroll down past the video courses and you will see this week’s timetable. Just click on “Register”, fill in the details and wait for a confirmation email that contains a lesson link and password that will allow you to join the class.

We manually approve all the applications for each lesson, so please do not panic if you do not immediately receive confirmation. I promise that if you have a current subscription, it will arrive before the class.

No. We have no rule about cameras, but we do need to know who we are teaching, so we ask every student to make sure that they have their name showing on the screen and maybe a photo (or cartoon image) so we can differentiate between students. I will show you how to do this in an introduction video.

We do expect students to participate in every class. The lessons are interactive and so you must be prepared to speak with the teacher and other students. This means you must be in a suitable environment to take part in the lesson. If you are at work and cannot speak, then we may ask you to leave the class as it is not fair to other students who are partnered with you.

At the moment, there is not. We hope to keep it this way, but this is all very new to us and we will have to see how many people come to class and how they are working. If numbers grow, we hope to add more than one class a day so that people in different time zones are able to join.

Yes! We want the classes to be as effective as possible, so we have also designed practice activities that you can complete when the lesson ends to further your skills.

Our intensive courses are designed for students who want to master the main skills needed to get a high score in reading, speaking and listening in a short space of time. They are completed in five 75-minute lessons from Monday to Friday. The lessons have all been developed by Shelly and the team to teach you the exact skills you need to get a high score in the four tests.

The quality of teaching is the same, but the groups will be much smaller (a maximum of 8 students) and we will NOT use any material from the Cambridge series (so if you have finished those, you will have new reading and listening tasks to practice with). More importantly, you will work with the same teacher over the 5 days, who will be checking your performance in class and homework activities to give you personal feedback. This feels just like being in a real classroom and really is the key to success.

There will be homework at the end of every class. Your teacher will give you a link at the end of each lesson (and he or she can see your answers!).

We run one intensive course every week. You can find the timetable for this month here.