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Illustration of the DiscussEarth mission model: premium members fund sponsored accounts for refugees and displaced learners preparing for IELTS and TOEFL

Our mission

A mission for displaced learners

DiscussEarth is more than a test-prep platform. Our core mission is to give refugees and displaced people the English skills they need to study, work, and resettle — by funding one free account for every paying subscription. Learn more about our mission →

Global partnerships

We're working to partner with refugee organizations to identify and support the learners who need this most.

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Sponsored accounts get the same full access as paying subscribers — no watermarks, no limited tests.

Where we're at

Impact & credibility

We're early. Here's what's real today, and what we're tracking as we grow.

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Partner organizations
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Community

Weekly topics & discussion

A shared topic bank ties tests and discussion together, so you read, write, and speak about the same real-world ideas.

Sustainable development

The role of agriculture in global food security.

Weekly topic

Academic writing

Building a clear thesis statement and logical flow in IELTS essays.

Study group

Cultural integration

Stories of resilience and adapting to a new academic environment.

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AI in education

How technology is bridging the gap for learners in remote areas.

Discussion

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3

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Maria

Free sample

Reading + Writing, Test 1

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5.5

Reading band

6.0

Writing band

Review your answers

Reading, test 1

Writing, test 1

Today's topic

Community

Coral reef bleaching: should governments fund restoration?

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Every test follows the real IELTS and TOEFL structure: the same sections, the same timing, the same question types you'll see on exam day. IELTS Listening and Speaking audio is recorded in British English, matching the accent used in the real exam; TOEFL Speaking uses American English, matching ETS's own exam. Writing and Speaking responses are graded by AI against the official band descriptors, not a generic opinion, so your results map onto the same scale as the real exam.

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Reading · Test 1 · Passage 2 of 3
38:12

The Phoebus cartel and the economics of planned obsolescence

In 1924, representatives of the world's leading lightbulb manufacturers convened in Geneva to address what they saw as a troubling commercial problem: their products lasted too long. Bulbs that endured for 2,500 hours or more were, from a revenue standpoint, an obstacle to sustained profit.

The resulting agreement, known as the Phoebus cartel, established a maximum bulb lifespan of 1,000 hours. Manufacturers that exceeded this limit faced financial penalties, while those producing shorter-lived bulbs were rewarded. The cartel coordinated production across borders, dividing global markets and setting technical standards that ensured conformity.

Economists have since debated whether such coordinated lifespan reduction constitutes a net harm to consumers or a rational response to market incentives. The case against is straightforward: consumers paid more over time, replacing bulbs that could have lasted longer. The case for is more subtle: shorter product cycles may have accelerated innovation, driving down costs and expanding access to electric lighting more broadly.

The Phoebus cartel dissolved by the early 1940s, partly due to wartime disruption and partly due to antitrust pressure in the United States. Yet its legacy persists in the economic concept of planned obsolescence — the deliberate design of products to require replacement — which critics argue remains embedded in manufacturing culture to this day.

Contemporary examples are not difficult to find. Smartphone manufacturers have faced regulatory scrutiny for software updates that slow older devices. Printer companies have been accused of programming cartridges to report as empty before they are depleted. In the European Union, right-to-repair legislation introduced in 2024 represents a direct legislative response to what regulators characterise as a systemic pattern.

Questions 14–18

Do the following statements agree with the information given in the passage? Write TRUE, FALSE, or NOT GIVEN.

14. The Phoebus cartel set a minimum, not maximum, bulb lifespan.

15. Manufacturers exceeding the lifespan limit were financially penalised.

16. Economists agree the cartel was illegal under Swiss law.

Questions 19–20

Complete the sentences. Write ONE WORD OR NUMBER only.

19. The cartel's meeting was held in .

20. Bulbs were limited to a maximum of hours.

1
2
3

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Study Profile
Reading · Test 1 · Results

Band score

5.5

Modest user

Correct answers

27/40

67.5%

Time taken

54 min

6 min remaining

Passage 1 · Questions 1–5

1
TRUE
Your answer: TRUE
2
FALSE
Your answer: NOT GIVEN
Passage: "Manufacturers exceeding the limit faced financial penalties..." — this directly contradicts the statement, making it FALSE.
3
NOT GIVEN
Your answer: NOT GIVEN
4
1000
Your answer: thousand
Passage: "...a maximum bulb lifespan of 1,000 hours." — the correct form is the numeral 1000.
5
Geneva
Your answer: Geneva
Show all 40 questions ↓
BandCorrect answersYour score
9.039–40
8.537–38
8.035–36
7.533–34
7.030–32
6.527–29
6.023–26
5.5 ←19–2227/40
5.015–18
4.513–14
4.010–12

AI feedback

Strength

Strong performance on sentence completion — you read for specific information accurately and chose the correct word form.

Watch out for

You confused FALSE and NOT GIVEN in 4 questions. If the passage contradicts the statement directly, it's FALSE — not NOT GIVEN.

Next steps

To reach band 6.0 you need 23+ correct — just 4 more. Focus on TRUE/FALSE/NOT GIVEN before your next test.

What's next?

Community

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Everything in Basic, plus DEB (your AI speaking coach) and the Vocabulary Builder game

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Schools & institutions

Group plans for your whole class

DiscussEarth offers group licensing for universities, language schools, and test-prep centres. Provision your students in bulk, track progress across your cohort, and pay a single invoice — no individual sign-ups required.

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English certification shouldn't depend on where you were born

For millions of refugees and displaced people, an IELTS or TOEFL certificate is the key to a university place, a job, or a new country. But quality preparation is expensive, and largely out of reach for those who need it most.

Wales, UKborn
Taiwan2001
Vietnam2002–03
Japan2003–24
Costa Rica2024–now

The founder

Simon's story

Simon Whalley is from Wales, in the UK. He has been teaching English since 2001, starting in Taiwan, then Vietnam, then Japan, where he stayed for over two decades before moving to Costa Rica in 2024.

DiscussEarth founder badge illustration of Simon

While teaching in Japan, Simon noticed a gap. Quality materials for test preparation were hard to find, so he found himself photocopying and making do, piecing together resources from wherever he could. Even as an experienced, qualified teacher, he struggled to find good materials for his own students.

After moving to Costa Rica and working with students preparing for the IELTS, he ran into the same problem again. What options existed were expensive, and still not quite what his students needed. So he decided to build something himself, and to keep it affordable for everyone.

Illustrated story of DiscussEarth: Simon's journey from Wales through Taiwan, Vietnam and Japan to Costa Rica, struggling to find quality affordable test prep, deciding to build it himself, and creating the model where each premium member funds a sponsored member Illustrated story of DiscussEarth: Simon's journey from Wales through Taiwan, Vietnam and Japan to Costa Rica, struggling to find quality affordable test prep, deciding to build it himself, and creating the model where each premium member funds a sponsored member

Simon is an economic migrant himself. He understands that people moving to a new country need to learn the language, but they don't always have the money for expensive materials and resources. That struggle led to a harder question:

If an experienced teacher was finding it this difficult, what must refugees and displaced people be facing, without his training or his resources?

That question is where DiscussEarth came from. Simon didn't just want to build something cheap. He wanted every paying subscriber to directly fund a free account for someone who couldn't pay at all, through partnerships with refugee settlement organisations. Sponsored accounts get the same full access as Premium subscribers. No watermarks, no limited tests, no second-class experience.

It matters because IELTS and TOEFL prep courses can cost hundreds of dollars. For someone who has lost their home, their career, and in many cases their community, that barrier is insurmountable. Building DiscussEarth this way means the same preparation is available to everyone, and every paying student knows their subscription is doing more than buying access to tests.

What DiscussEarth is

Real exam-length tests
20+ full-length IELTS tests per skill, with a growing TOEFL library — all written to real IELTS and ETS TOEFL specifications, not cut-down practice sets.
AI feedback, scored to the rubric
Every writing and speaking response is graded against the same criteria examiners use — real band-level feedback, not a generic AI opinion.
Practice that connects
A shared topic bank ties tests, forum discussions, and AI speaking practice together — so students read, write, discuss, and speak about the same ideas.

Want to partner with us?

If you work with refugees or displaced communities and want to explore sponsored access, we'd love to hear from you.

Get in touch

We're here to help you on your IELTS and TOEFL journey.

Questions about your account, a test, pricing, or anything else.

Bringing DiscussEarth to a class, department, or whole institution? Tell us about your school and we'll put together a licensing option.

If you work with refugees or displaced communities and want to explore sponsored access for your students, we'd love to talk.

Frequently asked questions

When you sign up, you get a free diagnostic test covering all four skills — Reading, Writing, Listening and Speaking. You'll get a band estimate for each skill before deciding to subscribe. No credit card required.
Basic gives you full access to the test catalogue for your chosen exam. Premium adds the community forum, daily AI chatbot practice, and tailored course materials.
Your subscription covers one exam type. If you need both, contact us — we can discuss options.
Yes — paying every 3 months instead of monthly saves you 13% on Basic plans and 17% on Premium plans.
For every active paying subscriber, we fund one full Premium account for a refugee or displaced person. Sponsored students receive identical access — no restrictions.
Yes, any time. You keep access until the end of your billing period. There are no cancellation fees.
No. DiscussEarth is an independent preparation platform and is not affiliated with the British Council, IDP, Cambridge Assessment English, or ETS.

Privacy Policy

Last updated: 12 July 2026

DiscussEarth ("we", "us", "our") provides IELTS and TOEFL exam preparation, and operates on a 1-for-1 model: every paid subscription funds a free account for a displaced learner. This policy explains what information we collect from people who use discussearth.com (the "Service"), why we collect it, and what rights you have over it.

1. Information we collect

Account information. When you sign up, we collect your email address and password (handled by our authentication provider, Supabase — we never see or store your password in plain text). You may optionally add a display name and study-goal information to your profile.

Test and progress data. We store the tests you take, your answers, scores, band/level results, and study streaks so we can show you progress over time. For Writing and Speaking tasks, this includes the text you write or the speech you submit, since that content is what our AI grading is scored against.

Community content. If you post in the Community forum, your display name and post/reply content are visible to other subscribers.

Payment information. Subscriptions are processed by Stripe. We do not receive or store your card number — Stripe handles that directly and shares with us only what's needed to manage your subscription (e.g. plan type, renewal date).

Communications. If you contact us through the Contact page, we receive whatever you submit (name, email, message) in order to reply to you.

2. How we use this information

We use your information to: provide and improve the Service; grade and give feedback on your Writing and Speaking submissions; track your progress and award XP/streaks; manage your subscription and billing; respond to support requests; and maintain the security of the platform.

3. Service providers we use

We rely on a small number of third-party providers to run DiscussEarth, and share only the data each one needs to do its job:

  • Supabase — account authentication and our database (profiles, test progress, community posts).
  • Stripe — payment processing and subscription management.
  • Cloudflare Workers — routes your Writing and Speaking submissions to Anthropic's Claude AI for grading, and proxies other API calls.
  • ElevenLabs — generates the spoken audio used in Listening and Speaking tests.
  • Microsoft Azure (Pronunciation Assessment) — scores pronunciation in Speaking tasks by analyzing short audio clips of your speech.
  • EmailJS — delivers messages submitted through our Contact form.

Each of these providers processes data on our behalf under their own privacy and security terms; we don't sell your information to anyone, and we don't share it with advertisers.

4. Data retention

We keep your account and progress data for as long as your account is active, so your test history stays available to you. If you delete your account, we delete your personal data within a reasonable period, except where we're required to keep records (e.g. payment records for tax/accounting purposes).

5. Your rights

You can review and update your profile information at any time from your Account page. You can request a copy of your data, ask us to correct it, or ask us to delete your account and associated data, by contacting us at team@discussearth.com.

6. Children's privacy

DiscussEarth is intended for learners preparing for university-level English exams and is not directed at children. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13.

7. Security

We use industry-standard practices — including row-level security policies in our database and encrypted connections — to protect your data. No online service can guarantee absolute security, but we take reasonable steps to safeguard your information.

8. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy as the Service evolves. If we make material changes, we'll update the "Last updated" date above and, where appropriate, notify you directly.

9. Contact us

Questions about this policy or your data can be sent to team@discussearth.com.

Terms of Service

Last updated: 12 July 2026

These Terms of Service ("Terms") govern your use of discussearth.com and the DiscussEarth platform (the "Service"), operated by DiscussEarth. By creating an account or using the Service, you agree to these Terms.

1. The Service

DiscussEarth provides IELTS and TOEFL exam preparation materials, AI-assisted feedback on Writing and Speaking tasks, progress tracking, and a community forum. As part of our 1-for-1 mission, each paid subscription funds a free account for a displaced learner.

2. Accounts

You must provide accurate information when creating an account and are responsible for keeping your login credentials secure. You're responsible for all activity that happens under your account.

3. Subscriptions and billing

Basic and Premium plans are available for IELTS and TOEFL, billed monthly or quarterly through Stripe. Subscriptions renew automatically at the end of each billing period unless cancelled beforehand. You can cancel at any time from your Account page or by contacting us; cancellation stops future renewals but does not automatically refund the current billing period. Free accounts are limited to one test per skill before a subscription is required to continue.

4. AI-generated feedback

Writing and Speaking feedback, band scores, and CEFR mappings are generated by AI models against published IELTS/TOEFL scoring rubrics, and by our own scoring logic for objective sections. These are study aids intended to help you practice — they are estimates, not official scores, and are not issued by, affiliated with, or guaranteed to match results from IELTS, the British Council, IDP, Cambridge Assessment English, or ETS (the administrators of TOEFL).

5. Acceptable use

When using the Service, and especially the Community forum, you agree not to: share your account with others in a way that circumvents subscription limits; post abusive, hateful, or illegal content; attempt to reverse-engineer, scrape, or disrupt the Service; or use the Service for any purpose other than genuine exam preparation.

6. Your content

You retain ownership of the essays, responses, and forum posts you submit. By submitting them, you grant us a license to store, process, and display that content as needed to operate the Service (for example, sending your essay to our grading system, or showing your forum post to other subscribers).

7. Our content

Test questions, passages, audio, and other materials on DiscussEarth are our property or licensed to us, and are provided for your personal study use only. You may not redistribute, resell, or republish them.

8. Disclaimers

The Service is provided "as is." We work hard to keep test content accurate and the platform reliable, but we don't guarantee the Service will be uninterrupted or error-free, and we don't guarantee any particular exam outcome from using it.

9. Termination

You may stop using the Service and delete your account at any time. We may suspend or terminate accounts that violate these Terms, including abusive conduct toward other users or staff.

10. Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms as the Service evolves. Continued use of the Service after changes take effect means you accept the updated Terms.

11. Contact us

Questions about these Terms can be sent to team@discussearth.com.

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