A Good Teacher- IELTS Reading Answers

Smruti Das

12 min read

Updated On Nov 08, 2023

Reading Passage
A Good Teacher Reading Answers and Explanation
Tips for Answering the Question Types in ‘A Good Teacher?’ Reading Passage
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The Reading Module can be the top-scoring category for IELTS aspirants, with diligent practice. To score well, you must understand how to approach and answer the different question types in the Reading Module. Ideally, you should not spend more than 20 minutes on a passage.

The Academic passage, A Good Teacher, is a reading passage that appeared in an IELTS Test. It contains some of the IELTS reading question types. If you are interested in familiarising yourself with all the question types, don’t hesitate to take an IELTS reading practice test.

So, let’s see how easy this passage is for you and if you’re able to make it in 20 minutes.

The question types found in this passage are:

Matching Headings (Q. 1-7)
Yes/No/Not Given (Q. 8-13)

Aiming to achieve a band score of 9 in IELTS Reading? Check out the video below for some quick tips.

Reading Passage

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13, which are based on the Reading Passage below.

A Good Teacher?

A As a teacher for the past 20 years, I have seen many good ones, and some, it’s true, fit the stereotype: graduates with good degrees from so-called ‘good’ universities. A cardinal mistake is to think qualifications make a good teacher. When you’re faced with 30 truculent children after lunch on a Friday afternoon, they don’t count for much. Take Lesley, a high-powered business executive who I mentored as she trained to be a teacher. She had everything: a great degree, excellent organisation skills and good communication skills. Yet she crumbled in the classroom because she was so impatient with her pupils: nothing they did was good enough. Whereas her employees had tolerated her endless nit-picking, her pupils became demotivated and disaffected.

B David had a first-class degree. As his mentor, I observed him teach what I felt was a relatively well-behaved class of 12-year-olds. A quarter of an hour in, it was clear that none of the children had the slightest idea what he was talking about; the class began talking, then chucking his elaborate worksheets around the class. Ironically, it was his support teacher, who didn’t have a degree at all, who rescued the lesson by explaining in clear English what was required. If you don’t have the right personality, you’ll suffer in the bear pit of today’s classrooms. In my experience, there are four types of teachers who are effective: the despot, the carer, the charmer, and the rebel.

C I’ve come across many despotic teachers in my career. Everyone turns to them when the going gets really tough. They are nearly always very experienced teachers who know not only all the pupils but their parents too, having taught many of them. During my first year of teaching, one of my classes rioted, pushed all the furniture out of my room, and swore at me. I called in the despot of my school, the deputy head, and he blasted them away with a sound telling off. Most manuals don’t advocate this approach to teaching, but I have to admit it can be very effective, even if morally dubious. Despotic teachers often extract fantastic work from their pupils, and rarely have to use their full armoury – their reputations are usually enough. They are often highly organised, making their classrooms into small fortresses and in my experience nearly always achieve above-average results, because they teach the syllabus to the last letter.

D The opposite of the despot is the caring teacher. They become surrogate parents for their pupils. Many don’t have degrees, and have been appointed as ‘mentors’ or ‘support teachers’ to help struggling pupils plan out their lives – working out ways in which they can do their work most effectively. Usually, pupils love seeing their mentors, and learn from them the vital skill of ‘taking responsibility for their own learning’ (as it’s known in the jargon). I’ve taught some pupils who were really going off the rails – skipping school, getting into fights – yet when they were taken under the wing of one of these teachers, they transformed and blossomed. Unlike the despot, the caring teacher works with lots of people: parents, other teachers, social workers. What she or he manages to do is make pupils see they can control and shape their own lives. The teachers might mother her charges to death in the process, but the end result is nearly always a happy pupil who has achieved very much against the odds.

E The charmer, on the other hand, is quite different from both these previous staples of the teaching profession. They can be a disorganised species, living off adrenaline and wits. They are frequently highly academic, and are in teaching to be mates with their pupils, to understand them and play with them. With this sort of teacher, the classroom becomes one great big, bouncing playground of learning. Take Martin, one of the best teachers I’ve come across, who would prepare his lessons on the hoof after reading the newspaper, and would totally change direction mid-lesson if hit by some new inspiration. He was very disorganised, but did everything with a wink and a smile.

F Finally, there’s the most controversial but often most effective kind of teacher: the rebel. These teachers see school as a place that should aim to transform society, and they believe that our children have been brainwashed by our capitalistic society into making certain assumptions about inequality, exploitation, injustice. They see the classroom as the place where these children can be ‘deprogrammed’ – and make amazing teachers because they are so passionate and persuasive. Even if you disagree with their politics, you have to admit they deliver blinding lessons, whatever their subject.

G But the crucial point here is that none of these teachers learned their skills by getting a good degree: they learned them on the job. All could improve by watching other good teachers in the classroom and learning from their techniques. However, there are some ‘generic’ traits which should be borne in mind when discussing what’s best for our schools. All the best teachers motivate their pupils to work hard, and assess them very regularly. There is now a great deal of research to suggest it is how you use your assessment of your pupils’ achievements to plan and shape succeeding lessons, not your subject knowledge that is the determining factor of how well they achieve.

Questions 1-7

The Reading Passage has seven paragraphs A-G. Choose the correct heading for each paragraph from the list of headings below. Write the correct numbers i-x in boxes 1-7 on your answer sheet.

List of Headings

i A less systematic style of teaching a class

ii The commonest characteristics found in teachers

iii A forceful method rarely recommended in teacher training

iv The impact of teachers with a radical vision

v A series of stages for classifying teachers

vi A false assumption about effective teachers

vii The attitude of many teachers towards pupils

viii A way of bringing about change in individuals

ix Getting results through careful consideration of pupil’s needs

x The importance of having a suitable personality

1 Paragraph A

2 Paragraph B

3 Paragraph C

4 Paragraph D

5 Paragraph E

6 Paragraph F

7 Paragraph G

Questions 8-13

Do the following statements agree with the views of the writer in the Reading Passage?

In boxes 8-13 on your answer sheet, write –

YES if the statement agrees with the views of the writer.

NO if the statement contradicts the views of the writer.

NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this.

8 More difficult behaviour is often seen in pupils towards the end of the school day.

9 An in-depth understanding of his or her subject is key to enhancing a teacher’s success.

10 Getting involved with those who are close to pupils can achieve positive effects.

11 Teachers who make friends with their pupils are not generally successful.

12 Despite failing to conform, certain teachers have an undeniable ability with pupils.

13 Good teachers accept that a pupil’s enthusiasm for learning comes from within.