7 min read
2026/06/18
The latest Language Teaching Takeoff Webinar welcomed back Joanna Szoke, freelance teacher trainer and AI in education specialist. During the session, she demonstrated how teachers can use the TeacherMatic ‘IELTS Style Test Prep Generator’ to create personalised IELTS-style practice materials and support more effective exam preparation.
How to Make IELTS Preparation More Targeted and Engaging with a Purpose-Built AI Tool
London, June 2026 – In ‘Boost Learner Confidence with Engaging, Targeted IELTS-Style Practice Materials’, Joanna Szoke explored one of the biggest challenges in exam preparation: to move beyond repetitive practice papers and create learning experiences that genuinely help students improve. She demonstrated how the TeacherMatic ‘IELTS Style Test Prep Generator’ can be used to create IELTS-style reading practice tailored to different learner needs, with customisable task types, difficulty levels and strategy guidance.
Moderated by Alba Melián, Marketing and Sales Operations Consultant at Avallain, the session focused on making exam preparation more engaging, targeted and effective. Joanna shared practical approaches to extending exam activities, developing subskills and helping learners understand not just what the correct answer is, but how to approach tasks more successfully.
Making Exam Preparation More Meaningful
To start the session, Joanna invited attendees to reflect on their own experiences when teaching for exam preparation. She highlighted three common challenges: keeping learners engaged, avoiding overreliance on practice papers and supporting students with exam techniques when teachers may not have taken the exam themselves.
Drawing on her own teaching experience, she finds that learner engagement is often the biggest concern. When teachers are unsure how to make these lessons more interesting, it can be tempting to rely heavily on practice papers. While these have an important role to play, using them in isolation can lead to repetitive lessons that do little to sustain learner motivation.
Instead, Joanna encouraged teachers to personalise and extend exam activities. This could involve incorporating learner interests, hobbies or familiar topics into practice materials.
Meaningful progress depends on helping learners understand how to approach different question types, develop relevant subskills and reflect on their performance. As one attendee observed, without feedback, nothing can change.
For those who have never taken the exams themselves and feel they lack credibility, Joanna recommended trusted resources and expert guidance. Whether using established exam preparation materials or purpose-built AI tools such as the TeacherMatic ‘IELTS Style Test Prep Generator’, teachers should ensure that the support they provide is grounded in credible, reliable sources.
A Purpose-Built Approach to IELTS Preparation
To address these challenges, Joanna introduced the TeacherMatic ‘IELTS Style Test Prep Generator’, a purpose-built AI tool designed specifically for IELTS preparation. Rather than simply generating practice materials, it enables teachers to create IELTS-style reading activities that can be adapted to different learner needs while supporting more meaningful exam preparation.
Teachers can select from a range of task types, adjust the difficulty level and choose to include additional support materials. These features make it easier to personalise activities and extend learning beyond a single task, helping learners understand not only the correct answer, but how to approach exam questions more effectively.
The generator currently supports IELTS Reading preparation and allows teachers to export materials as Word documents or PDFs for further adaptation and classroom use. As with all AI-generated content, Joanna emphasised the importance of reviewing outputs and applying professional judgement before sharing them with learners.
Putting It into Practice
To demonstrate the generator, Joanna created an IELTS Academic Reading activity. After selecting the Reading paper and Section 3, she chose two question types: Summary Completion and True/False/Not Given.
She then selected the Accessible Academic band (5.5–6.5), demonstrating how teachers can tailor activities to different learner levels while remaining aligned with IELTS requirements and level descriptors. Teachers can also instruct the generator to include additional support materials in the output, such as detailed answer explanations, task analysis, strategy guidance and glossaries.
AI Outputs That Support Real Teaching and Learning
Joanna then showcased the generated resource, which combined IELTS-style reading tasks with a range of additional materials designed to support both teaching and learning.
Alongside the activity itself, the generator produced a glossary, detailed answer explanations, task analysis and strategy guidance. Joanna explained how these additional elements can help teachers provide greater context for exam tasks, support learners’ understanding and create opportunities for further learning beyond the activity itself.
Beyond the Generated Activity
For Joanna, the real value lies not only in the generated activity itself, but in how teachers choose to use it.
She demonstrated how the glossary could be repurposed as a matching activity before learners begin the reading task, creating opportunities for vocabulary development and activating prior knowledge. Alternatively, it could be used after the activity as a revision exercise to reinforce new language.
Joanna also highlighted the value of task analysis and strategy guidance, particularly for teachers new to exam preparation. These additions explain what each task is assessing and provide practical techniques that teachers can share with learners.
Finally, Joanna encouraged teachers to personalise activities whenever possible. By refining the generated text to include learner names, interests or hobbies, teachers can create more engaging experiences. She suggested turning these references into a treasure-hunt activity, encouraging learners to scan the text for familiar details before completing the exam task.
Supporting Every Stage of IELTS Preparation
Generated activities can also be incorporated into a broader teaching workflow. Once created, IELTS-style reading activities can be saved and reused with other TeacherMatic generators, including the ‘Lesson Plan’ generator. This enables the creation of complete IELTS preparation lessons tailored to specific learners’ needs.
Throughout the session, Joanna emphasised that effective exam preparation requires more than exposure to exam tasks alone. Learners need opportunities to develop subskills, practise exam techniques and understand how classroom activities connect to real-world language use.
As she explained:
Don’t just do practice papers one after the other, because that’s not going to really help students learn, but focus on the connection between the exam task and real life. Students, in this generation, appreciate this kind of connection a lot.
Joanna also highlighted the importance of gathering and providing feedback throughout the learning journey. This helps educators identify where learners need additional support, understand learner progress and refine future activities accordingly.
An AI Toolkit Designed for Language Teachers
The ‘IELTS Style Test Prep Generator’ is just one of more than 50 generators available within the TeacherMatic Language Teaching Edition, an AI toolkit designed specifically for language educators. In addition to creating IELTS-style activities, teachers can generate lesson plans and supporting resources to streamline feedback processes.
Built around language teaching methodologies and responsible approaches to AI adoption, the toolkit helps educators integrate AI into their practice while maintaining professional judgement and control over teaching and learning decisions.
Next in the Webinar Series
Join special guest host Pilar Capaul, language teacher and ELT content creator, for the next Language Teaching Takeoff Webinar.
Reading, Vocabulary and Grammar: Practical AI Tools for Everyday Language Teaching
🗓 Thursday, 9th July
🕛 12:00 – 12:30 BST (13:00 – 13:30 CEST)
Discover three new TeacherMatic AI generators designed to support reading, vocabulary and grammar development. You’ll learn how to use purpose-built AI tools to create engaging, CEFR-aligned teaching materials.
About Avallain
For more than two decades, Avallain has enabled publishers, institutions and educators to create and deliver world-class digital education products and programmes. Our award-winning solutions include Avallain Author, an AI-powered authoring tool, Avallain Magnet, a peerless LMS with integrated AI, and TeacherMatic, a ready-to-use AI toolkit created for and refined by educators.
Our technology meets the highest standards with accessibility and human-centred design at its core. Through Avallain Intelligence, our framework for the responsible use of AI in education, we empower our clients to unlock AI’s full potential, applied ethically and safely. Avallain is ISO/IEC 27001:2022 and SOC 2 Type 2 certified and a participant in the United Nations Global Compact.
_
Contact:
Daniel Seuling
VP Client Relations & Marketing
