I have been teaching from the Ready for IELTS book for a number of years now, and I have found it to be one of the best IELTS preparation books out there! It is a comprehensive coursebook preparing students who are looking to achieve a band score of between 5.0 to 7.0 for the Academic IELTS exam. It is a topic-based coursebook, with each unit covering preparation and practice exercises for the four main skills tested in the exam: reading, writing, speaking and listening. Linked into each topic, you can also find extensive Vocabulary and Word-building sections, as well as a Language Focus component, helping students increase their level of grammar for the exam. 

From a student’s perspective, this has proved to be an extremely valuable resource as it provides tips and detailed strategies for dealing with each task type. These are presented in clear What to expect in the exam, How to go about it, and Don’t forget! boxes alongside each practice task. What my students have found particularly useful are the Speaking and Writing Checklists, which provide a clear breakdown of what the examiner is looking for in these parts of the exam. The Grammar Reference and Wordlists for each unit at the back of the book are also useful for students to go home and review what they have studied in the lessons.

From a teacher’s perspective, Ready for IELTS 2^nd Edition is the perfect coursebook to use for an IELTS preparation course. The clear and logical organisation of the book make it easy to adapt to the classroom, and the extensive coverage of material means it needs very little supplementing. The book is also very visually appealing with lots of colour and photos, and the way each topic is presented is also very engaging,  paving the way for some very lively lessons!

I would highly recommend this coursebook for both students and teachers, as it is easy to use and provides students with everything they need to know about the exam. It is not just a practice book; instead, it really focuses on training students to approach the exam tasks in the best possible way, as well as improving their general language level, in order to achieve the high scores they are aiming for.