In my day to day job as a Director of Studies at ELA. I come into contact with many International admission officers. It’s part of my job to discover what they expect from my international students, what will put my international students ahead of other students and more importantly what will display to these universities that my international students will not only get onto the course but succeed and excel when they get there.

The first thing that is evident to me is that International admissions officers are wising up to the fact that many students arrive at university to begin their course with a “huge” IELTS score and absolutely no transferable study skills. “The student seems to get their 6.7 or 7 in IELTS and think, “That’s it, I’m here!”. This is so far from the truth”, was the almost impassioned plea I heard recently from one of my partner Universities. “These students do not seem to realise that just because they get onto the course that anybody is going to give them any further support with their English language skills”, she continued. In fact, the international admissions office in question, then went on to explain that they had actually put an ESOL support line, in until the end of the second year of their courses but very few students had actually taken the college up on it and ended up failing their second year.

This got me to thinking about how we could make sure that our students didn’t fail their university course because of poor language skills. I started by looking at my own education and what was lacking for me, having been educated in the UK during the 1980s. The answer was “transferable study skills”.

What are transferable study skills? Well, they are the skills that you need in any language or culture to follow an academic pathway. Its learning how to follow good academic practice in your reading, note-making, essay-writing, and referencing of sources, and avoiding plagiarism.

• Being Critical – develops critical thinking skills.
• Managing your reading – many degrees (such as law) require you to read hundreds of texts.
• Referencing – how to let your tutors or peers know how you know something or where you found it out.
• Discussion – how to discuss with other students and be critical without offending or taking offence.
• Academic Writing – how to write a standard academic essay, report or review.
• Presentations – how to make an acceptable academic presentation.
• Study-culture – getting ready to study in a multi-cultural society.
• The Theory of Knowledge – what is knowledge? How do know when you ‘Know something’?

Over the last two years we have found that our students have made great strides in gaining places at Universities that we are partnered with and then going on to be successful in their courses.We have effectively moved the IELTS culture of our University preparation courses toward a more holistically rounded approach. Ironically the average IELTS score has gone up amongst our students as they realise that there is actually no such thing as ‘IELTS English’, just Academic English. The IELTS preparation part of the course becomes merely what it should be “Preparation for an Exam” and not the ultimate goal of the student.

Hopefully this information will filter toward the international sponsors who pressure their students to start attacking IELTS from pre-intermediate level, when the time could be far better spent developing their general and academic English by exploring transferable study skills, that will ultimately lead to a better Cambridge, IELTS, PTE or TOEFL score.