It can be more challenging than you think...
Reading: Multiple choice.
Choose and prove your answer (again, it might not be what you first thought)


Text:
The curious hunting habit was first observed by a local fisherman who reported to marine biologists that he had seen a dolphin with an odd growth on its nose.

The Shark Bay fisherman mentioned in the passage
A. Provided an explanation for the dolphins’ hunting habits.
B. Made numerous observations of the dolphins in Shark Bay.
C. Notified the media about dolphins balancing sponges on their noses.
D. Thought the sponge was permanently attached to the dolphin’s nose.

The answer is NOT C. Biologists are not the media (journalists, tv reporters)

The answer is D. Odd growth (g'alati o'simta) is something that grows on the surface of animals' body.

YES, NO, NOT GIVEN?

Text: As far as the researchers can tell, a single dolphin may have invented the technique relatively recently and taught it to her offspring.

Question: Researchers believe that the use of sponges for hunting may have originated with one female dolphin's experimentation.

Explain why in the comments👇

The answer is Yes.

One female dolphin - a single dolphin, her

may have originated with one female dolphin's experimentation - invented

Task 2: There are more and more older workers working in companies. Does this trend have more advantages or disadvantages for a company?

Estimated score: 8

Today, increasingly more elderly people are employed by organisations. Despite the benefits of hiring experienced staff, namely the absence of need to train newly hired interns, I believe that the drawbacks of this trend - compromised efficiency of work flow and the risk of more unemployed young individuals - are more crucial.

The expertise of older employees is undoubtedly of great use for many businesses. Since they have been working for many years, they have already been equipped with both theoretical and practical knowledge, which is highly valued at almost any workplace. It is these enhanced skills that allow companies to save money and time on training procedures. This is the reason why many highly paid vacancies, such as accountants and graphic designers, are for candidates with several years, if not decades, of experience.

Having considered the upsides, the negative impact of this development on productivity cannot go unnoticed. It is no secret that the older people get, the slower their brains become. This is because cognitive functions tend to deteriorate with age; thus senior individuals are highly likely to operate far slower than their junior colleagues. As a result, a reduction in the overall workflow can be observed.

The increase in the number of unemployed youth is another concern. With most enterprises preferring to hire experienced staff, many young people have been failing to find a proper job. Many IT course graduates, for example, have been struggling with this issue for a few years because the organisations they apply to need only senior software developers. If those young adults had been given a chance to try and fulfil their potentials earlier, they would probably become experts in their fields and be working successfully for certain companies now.

In conclusion, although there are some advantages to hiring older generations, I hold the view that the negative effects of this trend on productivity and youth employment are more significant disadvantages to consider.

TASK 2: Young people who commit crimes should be punished in the same way as adults. Do you agree or disagree?

Approximate score: 7.5
Task achievement can be not enough to get an 8 as the essay does not have specific examples.
Grammar range is also not that wide to get 8.
You can still learn a thing or two by analyzing it.

Some people believe that governing bodies should treat youth crime as seriously as the offences committed by adults. I disagree with this view because of young people’s inability to fully understand the consequences of their actions and potential negative effects of such punishment on their future.

It is their immature brains that usually lead to reckless behavior in youngsters. With still-developing cognitive functions, young individuals tend to be in the process of learning right and wrong, unfortunately failing to differentiate them properly at times. The consequences of their actions, therefore, cannot always be fully understood by teenagers, which often leads to committing crimes. Were they to understand the possible negative results of their misbehavior, adolescents would reconsider their actions.

Another factor to consider is the young generation’s future. By applying strict deterrents such as many years of imprisonment, authorities can ruin the future of many minors. Since these individuals’ personalities are still being shaped, the longer the prison sentences are, the more aggressive they are prone to become in jail, a place with criminal environment. As a result, these people, who are full of aggression and hatred, can struggle to find a job after leaving jail because almost no employer wants to hire a candidate with a criminal record and such unappealing qualities.

In conclusion, I hold the view that young offenders should not be punished as severely as their older counterparts since they are still developing and usually do not have the same level of judgement and reasoning as adults. Their ruined future prospects, moreover, can be unintended consequences of such changes to the law.

Task 1.

The line graph compares how the rates of three various types of crime (burglary, car theft and robbery) changed over a period of nine years, from 2010 to 2019.

Overall, the most noticeable changes occurred in the figures for burglary and car theft, while it was robbery that experienced the least significant change. Interestingly, although burglary topped the list initially, car theft had become the most common offence by the end of the period.

In 2010, the number of incidents for burglary was ranked first with almost 3500 occasions, whereas car theft came a close second with approximately 2700 incidents. Meanwhile, the figure for robbery was nowhere near the other two criminal actions, representing just over 500 cases.

The patterns for burglary and car theft underwent significant shifts, however. Having risen to around 3700 criminal cases in 2011, the figure for burglary plummeted to 1000 after four years. It then climbed by 500 incidents and remained almost the same for the rest of the period. As for car theft, in 2013, the lowest point was marked just above 2000, a figure that had increased gradually to nearly 2700 by 2019.

In terms of robbery, the number of incidents stayed relatively stable at approximately 700 despite some fluctuations over the time frame.

211 words.
Approximate score 7.5

Before starting to work for a different organization, I used to post students' IELTS results quite often and I collected them on this channel @jkielts_results.

I kinda stopped posting such results since here I had to teach from general English to IELTS, not IELTS only. Now some of my very first groups here have taken their tests and received decent results. I guess it's time to post some results again... :)

#results
Very young and smart girl Malika🥳

First attempt: Overall 7.0🚀
Reading 8.0💣
Listening 7.5🔥
Speaking 6.5🤩
Writing 6.0👍