Interview with a master's degree student

It is easy to assume that a successful student is the one that achieves high scores and is popular not only with their peers but also lecturers and tutors. But, is it the only way to define 'success'. In this week's episode, I dive deep into four categories of 'success' and try to encourage you to explore non-academic skills that can greatly contribute to your success as a student and individual. I talk about being resilient and confident as they seem to be top skills that are required to thrive in today's uncertain world. I also talk about systems that can help you increase your levels of resilience and confidence. And of course, I have created a free guide that will help you coin your own definition of success according to the four categories explained in this episode. 

Accountability breeds confidence. But how can you do it? How can you build your confidence? How can you trust yourself and be sure that you will accomplish your goals? In this week's episode, I talk about the importance of accountability and how it can help you with self organisation and time management. I also refer to the Priority Matrix as a tool that aids task prioritisation.

In this episode, I encourage you to reflect on your self-organisation and time management. Both skills are critical to becoming a successful student. With the amount of work mounting and the deadlines coming all at once, it is easy to feel overwhelmed and stressed. With the rocks, pebbles and sand analogy, I would like to help you for your priorities and focus on the tasks that matters most to you.

One of the reasons why students don't do well in writing is a lack of academic vocabulary. While there are many wordlists with academic vocabulary available on the Internet, there are not too many proven methods or tools that would actually help with the acquisition of the new vocabulary set. In this week's episode, I introduce two applications that my students and I use for learning, revising and applying academic collocations. While Collocaid helps you with expanding your academic vocabulary range, Quizlet facilitates the process of testing and memorising new words and phrases.

In this episode, I interview Rachel, an experienced English language, IELTS and OET trainer. We talk about the differences between OET and IELTS exam, both the General and Academic version. We share our experiences of preparing candidates for IELTS examination and what makes it is a challenging English exam. We also talk about how IELTS Academic Training can help you with university requirements and what language skills you need to achieve IELTS Band 7.0 or higher. We also discuss differences between IELTS academic essays and university-level essay and how IELTS preparation cannot substitute university preparation courses, and how native speakers of English can benefit from academic writing classes as well. If you're interested in taking IELTS, I recommend that you grab Rachel's free resources '3 fatal speaking mistakes IELTS candidates make' from her website https://www.rachelpratley.com

From self-doubt to applying for a PhD. In this episode, I talk to one of my former students - Jacob - who enrolled on a master's degree at a London university not knowing much what to expect. He talks about his journey from questioning if he should be pursuing a higher-education diploma, feeling lost and stressed to finding the right help and finally, finishing his degree with honours.

In this episode, I talk about a major roadblock that stops international students from succeeding on their undergraduate and postgraduate courses and I explain what makes academic writing easy so that you can not only get higher grades but also start enjoying writing academic assignments. 

In this episode I explain what academic writing style is and how to improve it in an easy. You first start with auditing your own writing style and then you make simple changes to sound more formal and academic. Academic writing style is not only about using formal words but also using advanced grammar structures. I also talk about the French language and its influence on academia.

In this shortie episode, I am talking about the main differences between descriptive and critical or analytical writing. I give prompts, which will help you realise where you need to improve your writing and also or most importantly, I share a step-by-step process for structuring a strong paragraph, including a critical analysis of external sources.