Online academy

Find your band. Then raise it.

IELTS, SAT and everyday English. Full practice tests that mark themselves and show the reasoning, study materials you can keep, and live classes when the practice stops being enough.

Take a practice test → Browse IELTS tests
band 5.5
4.05.06.07.08.09.0

Most people sitting IELTS need to move about one and a half bands. That is a measurable distance, not a mystery — and it is mostly made of specific, repeatable mistakes.

Three tracks

Pick where you are going

Exam

IELTS

Academic and General Training. Reading, Listening, Writing and Speaking, with full mock tests on real exam timing.

  • Reading
  • Listening
  • Writing
  • Speaking
  • Mock tests
4.0typical journey9.0
Open IELTS → Exam

SAT

Math and Reading & Writing for the digital, module-adaptive SAT. Short video lessons and a question bank tagged by skill.

  • Math
  • Reading & Writing
  • Practice tests
  • Video lessons
Open SAT → Foundation

General English

Levels A1 to C1, built around speaking fluently rather than memorising rules. Homework marked the moment you send it.

  • Grammar
  • Vocabulary
  • Reading
  • Listening
  • Practice
Open General English →
How practice works here

Every answer comes with its reason

A score on its own teaches nothing. The point of a practice test is what you learn in the ten minutes after it.

Marked the moment you finish

No waiting and no answer sheet to cross-check. Every question is marked in place, right where you answered it.

The passage points back at itself

Each explanation links to the paragraph the answer came from, and the text lights up. Finding the sentence is the skill being tested.

Scores you can compare

Raw scores convert to the band scale used by the exam, so a test in August means the same thing as a test in November.

Practice tests

Start with a full paper

Seventy-five IELTS Academic Reading tests, written in-house and released as they clear checking. New tests every week.

See all tests →
Materials

Everything else you need

Guides, prompt banks, vocabulary and grammar, written for the exam rather than adapted from a textbook.

Open materials →
Classes

Practice on your own. Get unstuck with a teacher.

Software is good at telling you that a sentence is wrong. It is not good at noticing that you have avoided the same structure forty times because you are afraid of it. That is what the lessons are for.

We write once, on opening day. Nothing else.

Spot saved. We'll write to this address the day we open.
Ask about classes →
Home → IELTS

IELTS

Academic and General Training. Four skills, one band score, and a very specific set of things examiners are listening and looking for.

AcademicGeneral TrainingBand 4.0 – 9.0Live classes
Sections

Where do you want to work

Reading

Three passages, forty questions, sixty minutes and no extra time to transfer answers. The section where timing decides the band.

Full testsAnswer keys

Listening

Four sections that get harder as they go, played once. Spelling and number formats cost more marks here than comprehension does.

Adding soon

Writing

Task 1 and Task 2, marked against Task Response, Coherence, Lexical Resource and Grammatical Range. Task 2 carries twice the weight.

Prompt banksGuides

Speaking

Three parts, eleven to fourteen minutes, face to face. Fluency and Coherence is judged on how you keep going, not on how correct you are.

Cue cardsAdding soon

Practice tests

Full papers on exam timing, marked in place, with the reasoning behind every answer and a band conversion at the end.

75 tests

Materials

Band descriptors explained, vocabulary for describing data, grammar that raises Grammatical Range, and question-type walkthroughs.

Library
Reading

Available now

Released as each test clears checking. Two people sit every paper cold before it goes up.

All 75 tests →
The four criteria

TR · CC · LR · GRA

Writing is marked on Task Response, Coherence and Cohesion, Lexical Resource, and Grammatical Range and Accuracy. Your band is the average of the four, rounded to the nearest half. Most people lose their marks in the same two every time — which is useful, because it means the fix is narrow.

Read the descriptors →
Home → SAT

SAT

The digital SAT is adaptive: how you do in the first module decides how hard the second one gets. Preparing for it is different from preparing for the paper exam, and most material online still has not caught up.

Digital formatModule-adaptive400 – 1600No essay
Sections

Two sections, four modules

Math

Algebra, advanced maths, problem solving and data analysis, and geometry and trigonometry. A calculator is allowed throughout.

Video lessonsQuestion bank

Reading & Writing

Short passages with one question each, across craft and structure, information and ideas, standard English conventions, and expression of ideas.

Video lessonsQuestion bank

Practice tests

Full papers that behave like the real thing: the second module changes difficulty based on how the first one went.

In production

Materials

Formula sheets, grammar rules that the exam actually tests, and worked solutions for the question types that come up most.

Library
Question bank

Practice by skill, check on the spot

Questions sorted by the official SAT domains and skills, each marked easy, medium or hard. Choose an answer, press Check, and the explanation opens right there.

Open the question bank
Practice tests

Full papers, Bluebook layout

Two Reading & Writing modules, a break, then two Math modules with a graphing calculator. One question at a time, exactly as on test day.

More SAT content is being built now

The section structure above is live and the lessons are being recorded. Reading and Writing goes up first, Math follows. If you want to be told the day it opens, the fastest way is Instagram — that is where releases get announced.

One thing worth knowing. A lot of SAT material still refers to a “verbal” section and to an essay. Both belong to the old paper exam. The current test has Reading and Writing, and no essay at all — if a course you are looking at still says otherwise, it has not been updated since 2023.
Home → General English

General English

For everything that is not an exam: work, travel, study, and being able to say what you mean without rehearsing it first. Levels A1 through C1.

A1A2B1B2C1
Sections

Five places to practise

Grammar

Explained through what it lets you say, not through tables. Tenses, conditionals, articles, and the structures that carry meaning rather than decoration.

ExplanationsExercises

Vocabulary

Words in the company they keep. Collocations and full sentences rather than isolated lists, because a word you cannot place is a word you will not use.

Word banks

Reading

Graded texts with questions that check understanding rather than scanning. Each one comes with the vocabulary it introduces.

Graded texts

Listening

Real speed, real accents, with transcripts you can open after the first attempt and not before.

AudioTranscripts

Practice

Short sets you can finish in ten minutes, marked straight away, so that practice fits into a normal day instead of needing one.

Quick sets

Speaking with a teacher

The part no exercise replaces. Live lessons built around talking, with correction that arrives after the sentence rather than in the middle of it.

Live classes

The first lesson sets your level

There is no point starting at B1 because a website said so. The first session is a conversation, and the plan is written afterwards around what you can already do and what you need the language for.

Home → Practice tests

Practice tests

Written here, from scratch. Nothing is lifted from a textbook, which means you have not already seen these passages and neither has anyone else.

0 reading tests 40 questions each 60 minutes Band conversion

Nothing here yet

No tests match that filter. Try “All”, or take the paper that is open now.

Open Test 1
Why they are not all here at once. Each test is three original passages and forty questions, and every question has to have exactly one defensible answer. Two people sit each paper cold before it is published. Drafting is fast; checking is not, and skipping the checking is how practice tests end up with questions students can argue with. New papers go up every week.
Home → Materials

Materials

Guides, prompt banks, vocabulary and grammar. Written for the exam, in plain language, by the people who teach it here.

Nothing in this shelf yet

This part of the library is still being filled. Try another filter, or take a look at what is open now.

Show everything
This library is being filled now. PDFs, reading passages, listening files, vocabulary sets and grammar notes go up as they are written and checked. Releases are announced on Instagram and TikTok before they appear here.
Home → About

About Born to Learn

An online academy for English, IELTS and SAT, run from Almaty for students who need a score to get somewhere.

What we are trying to do

Two things, and they only work together. Practice that is available at any hour, marks itself, and explains its reasoning — and lessons with a teacher who can see the habit behind the mistake.

Software is very good at telling you that a sentence is wrong. It is not good at noticing that you have avoided the same structure forty times because you are not confident with it. That is the part a person does.

Where the material comes from

Every passage, question and prompt on this site is written here. Nothing is copied or reworded from a published textbook, which matters for two reasons: it is other people’s property, and reused material is material your competition has already memorised.

It also means the bank keeps growing. New tests go up every week rather than being fixed at whatever a book contained.

Get in touch

Ask about classes

Tell us which exam, when you are sitting it, and roughly where you are now. We will come back with what the plan would look like. If a placement lesson makes more sense first, we will say so.

Or message us directly — both reach the same place.

Got it. We'll come back to you on this address.
A note on the AI marking. Automatic scoring usually lands within about half a band of a teacher’s mark. We will not claim an exact match: no tool can guarantee that, and anyone promising it is not being straight with you. The score is there to show direction and specific mistakes, not to hand down a verdict.

Practice one part

Pick one passage, task or module and work through it on a shorter clock. Answers are marked the same way.