The Honest Truth About Being An IELTS Examiner

A listener named Phillip once asked me a question I hadn't expected: he wanted to know how hard it is to become an IELTS examiner, why I did it, and why I eventually stopped.

It's not the most obvious topic for a language learning blog — Phillip himself admitted it was a bit of a tangential one — but I think there's more of relevance here than might first appear.

My time as an IELTS examiner genuinely changed how I think about language, and if you're an English teacher wondering whether to pursue it, I'd say it's well worth considering.

If you prefer listening to reading, hit play on the podcast version of this article below or on the YouTube version at the top of the page. Otherwise, here's what you'll discover in this post:

What Is IELTS?

For those of you who aren't learning English, you may never have come across IELTS — the International English Language Testing System.

It's an English proficiency test used widely across the UK and the Commonwealth, particularly in Canada, Australia and the UK itself.

It's the test you typically need if you're applying to immigrate to Canada, or if you want a place at a British university. For learners of English, it's a very significant hurdle, and passing it at the required level can open some significant doors.

Why Did I Train As An IELTS Examiner?

I trained as an IELTS examiner when I was living and teaching English in Japan. The honest answer is that there were a few reasons.

First, there was the money. English teachers abroad don't always earn a great deal, and working as an IELTS examiner is a well-known way of supplementing your income.

You give up a weekend day — examining is always done at weekends — but the pay is noticeably better than classroom teaching.

A friend of mine, Alex, used to treat his IELTS earnings as a dedicated holiday fund. His rule was simple: IELTS money meant you could stay in a hotel rather than a hostel. He was absolutely right.

But it wasn't only about the money. I was at a stage in my life where I wanted to keep learning and trying new things. I wanted the training, I wanted the experience, and I was curious about what the examination process actually involved.

That curiosity about learning — and a habit of saying yes to things — has been a significant part of how I've built what I've built over the years. The IELTS examiner training was just another expression of that.

What Does The Job Actually Involve?

Examining is a peculiar kind of work. You go along to the examination centre — usually with a group of fellow examiners — and you spend a full day in a room, seeing one candidate after another.

There's a script you follow to open each test; the whole thing is tightly controlled, which is exactly as it should be, since consistency is what makes the results meaningful.

It's tiring in a way that's quite different from classroom teaching. When you're teaching, you're on your feet, moving around, performing. Examining is the opposite — you're sitting still all day — but the mental effort is intense.

You have to pay close forensic attention to every candidate: their fluency, their accuracy, their pronunciation, their range of vocabulary and grammar.

Each of these is assessed separately against detailed descriptors, and you have to make rapid, well-grounded judgements on every single one.

As a classroom teacher, you rarely do this. You're focused on delivering your lesson, managing the group, keeping things moving. The IELTS speaking test forces you to slow right down and listen in a completely different way.

What Being An IELTS Examiner Taught Me About Language

This is the part that I think is genuinely valuable, regardless of whether you ever intend to examine anyone.

The training I went through to become an IELTS examiner — and the act of examining itself — taught me more about what it actually means to speak and write a language than almost anything else I've done.

When you have to assess someone's spoken English across multiple distinct dimensions simultaneously, you develop a sharpness of ear that you simply don't get from teaching.

You learn to hear where fluency breaks down, to notice the difference between a wide vocabulary used confidently and a narrow one deployed carefully, to pick up on pronunciation patterns that a listener might not consciously register but that nonetheless affect comprehension.

It's a forensic examination of speech, and it makes you a far more attentive observer of language — your own and other people's.

How Long Did I Do It — And Why Did I Stop?

I examined throughout my time in Japan — roughly a year — and continued sporadically when I moved to Qatar, where I was by then managing a teaching centre rather than teaching in a classroom.

The IELTS coordinators would ring me occasionally when they were short of examiners, and I'd go in. It kept my skills current, which matters: to maintain your credentials as an IELTS examiner, you need to do regular sessions.

When I moved to Egypt, I stopped. I think it was partly a financial calculation — I was earning more by then, and the prospect of giving up a weekend day for the IELTS fee was less compelling than it had been.

But it was also simply that my time felt more precious. Teaching all week and then examining at the weekend is a lot, and it catches up with you.

I've never been very good at saying no to things, especially when learning or opportunity is involved, and I worked myself fairly ragged in Japan as a result.

These days, if I wanted to examine again, I'd need to go through a refresher training — and that, frankly, is not high on my list of priorities. But I'm very glad I did it when I did.

IELTS Examiner FAQ

Should You Train As An IELTS Examiner?

If you're an English teacher working abroad — or anywhere, really — and you're wondering whether to pursue IELTS examiner training, my honest answer is yes.

The IELTS examiner training is intensive and the work is demanding, but both will make you a sharper teacher and a more perceptive observer of language.

The financial supplement is useful, particularly in the early years of an English teaching career when salaries tend to be modest.

And there's something quietly satisfying about being part of a high-stakes, carefully designed system — knowing that your assessments matter to the people sitting across the table from you.

What becoming an IELTS examiner ultimately gave me was a richer understanding of what language proficiency actually looks like in practice — not as an abstract concept, but as something observable, measurable and deeply human.

That understanding has stayed with me long after I stopped examining, and it continues to shape how I think about language learning today.

Olly Richards

Creator of the StoryLearning® Method

Olly Richards is a renowned polyglot and language learning expert with over 15 years of experience teaching millions through his innovative StoryLearning® method. He is the creator of StoryLearning, one of the world's largest language learning blogs with 500,000+ monthly readers.

Olly has authored 30+ language learning books and courses, including the bestselling "Short Stories" series published by Teach Yourself.

When not developing new teaching methods, Richards practices what he preaches—he speaks 8 languages fluently and continues learning new ones through his own methodology.