IELTS Advice: the power of repetition

I've been thinking about the power of repetition (in the sense of practising the same thing many times) this week.

Young children (the best language learners!) love watching the same cartoon or reading the same book again and again. But as adult language learners we rarely do this; we move on to the next thing too quickly.

Let's think about how we can build some repetition into our IELTS practice. I gave you some ideas yesterday and on Tuesday, but what else can we do? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments below, and I'll give you my tips next weekend.

Comments

[Tom]

Dear Simon,

To improve my writing skills, i have collected 15 essays and 15 reports which cover all types of questions from your blog. Firstly, i write these essays, reports on my own, and then i compare with your writing, learn new words, sentence structures. And then, i copy your writing into my notebook. I repeat this way until i finish these writing tasks. Secondly, i start again. At this time, i have a look your writing again and take notes key words from each sentence, and i leave it for 3 days to make sure that i forget the way which you used to write. I hide your writing, and try to rewrite them using the notes. Finally, i learn by heart your writing. In fact, this is similar to your advice on how to improve writing skill following the way of Benjamin Franklin. I find it very helpful, my wiring and speaking skill has been improved significantly

[jk]

@tom
This is really appreciated that you are trying good and knew your mistakes.But you have to work on your spelling in order to get high score band.

[sujit]

noted

[Tom]

hi Jk
Thanks for your advice. I am trying to remember new words and learn ideas from Simon's book

[Ameet]

When an adult has gotten the main idea from any writing script than it should be written in their own language rather than repeating again and again. This happens with children because they are capable of capturing same things due to their pshyolgical order. I do not like to repeat the same writing or reading passage even though I have to write it twice or thrice.

[ST]

Great advice. Power of repetition is what makes your confident.

[Suki]

In my opinion, repetition power would be useful in improving writing and speaking. What about start from topic vocabularies? Perhaps Simon could give several vocabularies of one topic, and ask us to paraphrase them; then on the next day, Simon could give the paraphrases and hide the topic vocabularies, and ask students to type vocabularies out.

[samra]

Great advice Simon. You are definitely right. We need to repeat a context or a book several times. Thanks a lot.

[Sahra]

I think we can start with some books, for example, Cambrideg Vocabulary and read the first lesson several times and then go to the next lessons.

[Leman]

The view is absolutely true that repetition is the power of learning. My 3 years old son haveca great passion to watch same cartoons over and over again everyday. Result is perfect, he has already pick up simple new words and use them in his speaking )). This approach must be true for adults as well. Thans for invaluable advise and noticeable IDEA Book which I have purchased 2days ago, Mr.Simon.