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Winsdor

Summary

Industrial Area Transformation:

- Conversion from industrial to residential area. - Housing facilities as main feature; no factories. - Traffic circle connecting industrial core to new housing and smaller circle in the south. - Addition of shops, playground, medical center, school, and seven residential buildings. - Residential amenities planned for the west.

IELTS Exam Preparation:

- Aim for a score of 7 or above. - Learn advanced sentence structures and vocabulary. - Avoid memorizing idioms; focus on topic-specific vocabulary and lexical chunks. - Discourage use of filler expressions like "in this essay." - Continuous learning through films, news, and interaction with credible English speakers. - Practice and dedication are key to excelling.

IELTS Writing Tasks:

- General module: Write a letter in personal, semi-formal, or formal style. - Academic module: Write a report based on visual data (graphs, charts, maps). - Report format: Context paragraph, overview paragraph, 1-3 body paragraphs. - No conclusion or personal opinion in the report.

Essay Writing Tips:

- Thesis-led essay: Present position and support with two reasons. - Two-question essay: Answer two distinct questions in separate paragraphs. - Discursive essay: Present two opposing views and endorse one. - State opinion in the first paragraph. - Write four paragraphs with one idea per body paragraph. - Use examples from personal experience. - Use a variety of linking expressions and sentence structures. - Avoid vague phrases, fake statistics, memorized phrases, and "in this essay."

IELTS Essay Task Position:

- Present a clear and fully developed position in the introduction. - Structure: Introduction, two body paragraphs, conclusion. - Example essay agrees children from poor families are better prepared for adult life. - Support position with relevant examples and arguments.

IELTS Writing Webinar Summary:

- Host: Sam, teacher at Windsor School. - Webinar focus: English tests and formats, IELTS Writing section tips. - Tests discussed: TOEFL, Duolingo, IELTS. - IELTS Writing: Two tasks, assessment criteria overview. - Participants encouraged to share experiences and test preferences.

Types of IELTS Reports:

- Academic report: Describe trends and changes in quantitative data. - Example: Further education in Britain, analysis by gender and study mode. - Map report: Show changes in an area, e.g., Norbiton industrial area development. - Use specific details and topic-specific language.

IELTS Writing Section Preparation:

- Determine module based on goals: General for immigration/work, Academic for university/professional. - Task 1: Letter (General) or report (Academic), 20 minutes, 150 words minimum. - Task 2: Essay, 40 minutes, 250 words minimum. - Grading based on task achievement, cohesion, coherence, lexical resource, grammar. - Consider spelling and vocabulary usage. - IELTS score validity: 2 years. - Test format: Paper or computer.

Summary made by Jill White Voice Notes Assistant (https://t.me/JillWhite_voice_notes_bot?do=open_link)

All right. Looks like we've got a few people already here.

We'll give the other folks a few minutes to join. Hope everyone's doing well tonight.

Look at that. Our numbers are blooming.

Great. So if you're already here, you can go ahead and send a message in the chat.

Let us know who you are, where you are tonight. Is everyone joining us here from Moscow or from other parts of Russia?

We've also got the Q&A feature enabled, so if you've got questions, that'd be a good place to put them. I'll take a look at questions as they come, and I will address all of them by the end of tonight's presentation.

Oh, hello, I'm from Kazakhstan. That's exciting.

I've got lots of colleagues and former students from Kazakhstan. That's great.

What time is it in Kazakhstan right now? It must be getting late.

All right, numbers keep growing. Got 10 folks.

We'll give everyone a couple more minutes before we begin. How is the weather where you guys are?

It's been all over the place here in formerly sunny St. Petersburg. Oh, hello from Kaliningrad.

Great. I've spent lots of time in Kaliningrad.

I used to go there for work. Nice people, good fish, good restaurants.

We've got one from Moscow. Terrific.

When's the last time I was in Moscow? Oh, actually, no, it was like two years ago.

I was in Moscow like two years ago. Moscow and Tula, very nice trip that I took.

All right, let's see. Now we're up to 12, looking good, 13, lucky 13.

If you're just joining us, feel free to join us.Feel free to write in the chat where you are joining us from what city, what country. It looks like we have a nice international presence here.

And also in the chat, you could include whether this is your first, uh, attendance at one of our IELTS marathon webinars, or if you've attended several before, this is our fourth this week, we've got one more coming up tomorrow. So go ahead and answer in the chat.

If you've visited our webinars before, have you been here earlier this week? Maybe you even saw me speak about the IELTS speaking test a couple of days ago.

Be very impressive. If you guys went to all of them.

Wow. Our show says it's his fourth webinar.

That is real dedication to learning. Terrific.

Yeah. It's a nice way to end the day, right?

Get a little bit more knowledge, feel a little bit more confident about your future plans. Okay.

Second one for Exana. Great.

Hope you find it informative. And this one is very information heavy.

We've got lots of facts and figures, right? Nazeem fourth, Svetlana fourth.

We have some really dedicated students here. This is great.

It's my second as presenter, as host. All right.

Eliona fourth also. Yeah, this is nice to see people so motivated, so focused on their academic futures.

Yeah. After attending all of these sessions, you'll be in a very good position to take these tests with confidence, with calm, and of course we have one more tomorrow where our founder, Julia, will be talking about making the choice of where to study abroad.

So see if you can make it a clean sweep, five out of five webinars this week. All right.

Let's give folks maybe one more minute and then I can start in with the content. We are up to 2021.

Our numbers are growing. Hope everyone's had a nice dinner tonight.

Cause I'm going to be speaking nonstop about IELTS writing, format, assessment, and strategy for the next 90 minutes. Now we'll try to get everything covered in that time and make the presentation interesting and easy to follow.

Fingers crossed that I succeed. All right.

We've got 23 folks. Let's get started.

So good evening. Welcome to the fourth session.

Oh, here we go. Another message here.

Oh, another English teacher. Terrific.

So this will be good for you and your students. Yeah.

So let me start again. So good evening.

Welcome to the fourth session in our week long IELTS.marathon series of webinars. My name is Sam, and I've been a teacher here at the Windsor School for over eight years now, currently located in St. Petersburg, but I've also worked, lived, and taught in Moscow briefly.

So I'm leading tonight's presentation about the writing paper on the IELTS exam, along with an overview of how this skill is tested on other exams as well. So if you're interested in something besides the IELTS, you'll get some information there as well.

All right, so we've got a nice full house here. Lots of people have attended the other webinars.

If this is anyone's first time, that is not a problem. You're more than welcome to contribute your questions, your thoughts in the chat, or to ask a question.

I will be looking at the chat and the Q&A button throughout tonight. So any questions you have, I'll be more than happy to try and answer.

So let's begin. IELTS Writing, Format Assessment and Strategy.

So before we get into that, I wanna tell you a little bit more about the Windsor School. So we've been operating since 2003 with a specialization in preparing students for the IELTS, along with other exams, which we'll get to shortly.

We have offices in Moscow and St. Petersburg, and also provide lessons online, much like this. Our staff is international.

If you study with Windsor, you have a very good opportunity to interact with certified English teachers from the US, the UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and others. And we also have many qualified Russian teachers as well.

So today, these are the issues we're going to tackle. We're going to talk about different English tests and formats.

Then we're going to focus on the IELTS Writing, the assessment criteria. Then we're going to look at the two writing tasks on the IELTS, Task 1 and Task 2.

And as we wrap up, I will give you some tips, some do's and don'ts. And finally, questions.

I'll handle any questions that I was unable to get to earlier. And again, this is the agenda I've prepared, but feel free to ask questions or leave comments in the Q&A or the chat as we go.

I'll see all of them and answer them as best as I can. So three major tests that you might be interested in taking, the TOEFL, the Duolingo, and the IELTS test.

These all evaluate your writing abilities in different ways. So the TOEFL test includes one integrated task and one independent task, which is more like an essay task where you don't need to react to any information that they give you.

You have 50 minutes total for writing.and this is done exclusively on the computer. You are graded on the content of what you write, the organization, the language, and the grammatical variety.

On the Duolingo test, writing is assessed in a very different way. You have several short integrated tasks.

These are just part of a 45-minute test which has lots of different tasks throughout. Some of them include write about the photo where you're given a photo to react to.

You might have to complete a sentence using your knowledge of collocation, syntax, and grammar. You might have to complete a passage by selecting prefabricated chunks and ordering them in the correct way.

You might have to summarize a conversation that you've listened to, so another integrated task. And of course, you have to provide a writing sample at the end, which is like a traditional essay.

Now on the IELTS, you only have two tasks, and they're largely independent tasks. We'll talk more about the specifics a little bit later.

You have 60 minutes to complete both of them, and you can take the IELTS on paper or on the computer. It depends on your preference.

It depends on your test center, and the assessment criteria are always the same. They're very clear.

They're going to evaluate the content of what you write, how you organize your texts, the language that you use, and of course, the grammatical variety that is present. Now go ahead and enter in the chat which test you are interested in.

Is everyone here for the IELTS, or are some of you interested in the TOEFL or Duolingo test? Or perhaps there's another test that you'd like to know more about.

I know there are a couple more that exist. I prepared a student for the CELT test a few years ago, which was a fun experience.

All right, so one for IELTS. Has anyone here taken an IELTS or a TOEFL or a Duolingo test before?

Do you guys have direct experience with these assessments? You know, were you happy with the results?

Was it a stressful experience? Was it fun?

Were there better ways you could have spent your day? Okay, so mostly IELTS, considering other options.

Yeah, it's good to know what's out there, right? Oh, no experience at all.

Great, so this will be really enlightening. Okay, mock IELTS.

Great. Duolingo.

Yeah, I've actually taken the sample Duolingo test. I took it a couple of times.

It's a nice way to kill 20 minutes. No experience on these tests.

Great. So as I said earlier, the focus for today is going to be on the IELTS, the IELTS writing section.

So let's dive a little deeper. The very first question that you need to ask yourself is when you take the IELTS, do you want to take the general module or the academic module?and which you take, it's going to depend on your goal.

So if you need to take the IELTS to immigrate, if you need work experience, or if you are going to school lower than the university level, the general test might be the appropriate one for you. These are the normal situations where the general test is used.

However, if you're going to university or college, or if you're going for a postgraduate education, so if you're going to graduate school or professional school, or if you need to register as a professional, as a lawyer, as a doctor, then you'll need the academic. You need to check with your institution which test you need, because there are differences.

There are differences in the content, and there are differences in how they are graded, the receptive skills, anyway. The writing section is also a little bit different on the general test compared to the academic, which we'll talk about in a little bit of time.

So again, in the chat, feel free to write. Are you looking at the academic IELTS or the general IELTS?

What is your goal? Do you want to live abroad, study abroad, work abroad?

Do you know where? Do you have a target country, a target university, or a target profession?

And if you don't, stay tuned until the end of today's webinar, because I've got one resource that can help you make your decision in the future. Oh, someone's interested in the UKVI.

All right, great. We talked a little bit about this on Tuesday.

This is where your speaking test will be video as well as audio recorded, but no difference in the writing section, so nothing to worry about there. Okay, someone else?

General, academic, what is your goal? Target university, target job?

Oh wow, Tatiana wants to be a teacher for preparing people for the IELTS. Today's going to help you out, for sure.

You'll get most of the information you need. Okay, academic.

Yeah, academic is definitely more popular here in St. Petersburg. I'd say the vast majority of students I've prepared have gone to take their IELTS academic, but a handful have taken the general.

If you're interested in immigrating to Australia, that's one where I've seen a lot of general candidates come through. So remember, when it comes to choosing general or academic, consult your institution.

Consult your target country, your target university, your target employer, to make sure you take the correct assessment. Okay, oh, Pratt University, fantastic.

So let's get a little deeper into the writing section of the IELTS. So for the general and academic, there are some commonalities.

You'll be given 60 minutes to complete the section. Task one is worth 33% of your final mark, and the IELTS recommends you distribute your time this way, 20 minutes fortask one, and you need to write 150 words minimum, and probably less than 200 words total.

If you're taking the general module, you will write a letter, and we'll get into the different types of letters. But if you're writing the academic module, you'll be responsible for writing a report about some data set.

And we'll look at some examples later. Now, for task two, the obligations are basically the same, you need to write an essay.

The IELTS recommends that you spend 40 minutes writing at least 250 words, and we recommend keeping that word count under 300. Task two is worth 66% of your final mark.

So it's more important, but never forget about part one. And in this case, you will have an essay.

So in the chat, go ahead and write. If you like writing in English, is this something that is easy or fun for you to do?

What experience do you have writing in English? Have you written many essays?

Have you written many reports? What are you concerned about when it comes to your writing skills?

Let's see how people feel about their writing abilities in the chat here. Okay, let's see.

Okay, oh, Oksana interested in learning her own level, getting some paper. Okay.

Yeah. So when you take the IELTS, your score is valid for two years.

This is very important, because if you prepare, but you're not planning on traveling to a new country or starting university, in that two year period, your score will expire. So you'll have to take it again to certify the level that you performed at.

Okay, let's see. Elena, degree in English.

Great, never taken an international exam. Okay.

Yeah, taking the academic IELTS is a great way to establish credibility with students. Right.

So if you can show that, oh, look, I took the IELTS, I got a seven and eight and nine, you know, 7.5, 8.59. If you can demonstrate that to your students, to your clients, you have much more credibility than an instructor who said, you know, who didn't have that qualification, who didn't have that piece of paper.

Okay, or writing is easier than speaking. Interesting.

Okay. Eliona, writing seems to be the hardest.

Yeah, most people would agree with that assessment. This is the section that intimidates most people.

Okay, spelling is difficult. Mm hmm.

What is my score on writing? Well, I've never taken the IELTS, but I'm pretty sure I would be able to score an 8.5 or nine.

If I took this test, I can tell you that I've taken the GRE, the Graduate Record Examination, three different times because my score expired, and I managed to get the highest score of six, all three times. Right.He's a scientist, he doesn't mind writing.

Great. Yeah, practice is key on an assessment like the IELTS.

It's just about building the skills. And another question here that's important is, what format of the test will you take?

What physical format will you take the IELTS on the computer or on paper? So you have to ask yourself, am I more comfortable writing in English by hand or using a keyboard?

This might just depend on when you last used English in the classroom or if you use English at work. So in the chat, go ahead and share.

Are you comfortable typing in English or would you rather write by hand? Are you worried about these tools at all?

And beyond your own comfort, what's important here is what your test center has available. Most places will be able to accommodate writing and computer tests, but you need to double check, right?

You need to double check what is actually available when you go down on test day. Yeah, looks like we've got some like computers, some by hand, computer.

Yeah, on the receptive sections, if you went to the webinars earlier this week, this makes a pretty big difference, right? You can mark up a reading text by hand and for listening, maybe you have some issues with spelling or something, that transfer time can help you out if you're taking it on paper.

But on the other hand, listening is a little bit nicer if you have headphones on the computer test and if you're used to reading on a computer, the reading section doesn't look so foreign, doesn't look so strange. All right, let us continue.

So how are you graded on the writing section? What are they looking for?

So the names of the criteria change a little bit. On task one, you're graded on task achievement and on task two, you're graded on task response.

Regardless of what they're called, this criterion refers to the completeness of the response. Do you answer the question?

Do you do what the question asked? The next criterion is cohesion and coherence.

This refers to whether or not you've presented your ideas in a logical way. Do you use paragraphs?

Do you use transition devices? Do you use linking expressions?

And can you reference your ideas without repeating the same words again and again? Are you able to use pronouns correctly?

Are you able to use phrases that refer back to previous ideas? Next, you're graded on lexical resource.

Can you use topic appropriate vocabulary? So if you have an essay about the environment, do you know the words and phrases to talk about the environment?

If you have an essay about technology, do you know the words and phrases that are most commonly used to talk about computers, machinery, engineering, etc.? Here, you're also graded on paraphrasing, collocation, and spelling.That might be unfortunate for some of you to hear, but yeah, spelling absolutely counts.

And finally, you're graded on grammar, range, and accuracy. So accuracy and grammar, you're trying to be accurate all the time.

That's nothing special, right? You always want to speak correctly, but grammar range is where you can make a big difference in your performance, using a variety of different complex sentence structures.

We'll look at some examples later. If you're here on Tuesday, I talked a lot about this on the speaking webinar, right?

So participial constructions, like having been a student, I understand the financial struggles in major university towns. Being a fan of astronomy, I absolutely believe that government should fund the space program.

Sentences like this are really valuable to show your ability to communicate in a more advanced, a more comprehensive way. And if you are still anxious about writing, at Windsor, we actually offer a writing essays course where you can build on these skills and general writing skills more broadly.

You can actually customize your experience. You can buy a special package that gives you the correct amount of feedback for your needs.

We'll talk a little bit about the writing essays course later, but that is one resource you can absolutely count on to improve your performance in essay writing. So let's break down task number one.

So if you're taking the general module, you will be tasked with writing a letter. This letter will be a personal, friendly letter, or a semi-formal letter, or a formal letter.

The context will be given to you. It'll be some type of everyday situation.

For example, writing to a campus housing authority about a problem, maybe with your roommate, with your room, something like that. Writing to a new employer about time management.

Writing to a local newspaper about a construction project, or writing to a landlord about a problem with your heating, or maybe with your cooling, or maybe with your kitchen. Most of the structure for this type of task is provided for you.

The IELTS will tell you this is the situation, this is the problem, these are the points you need to cover, and this is how you should begin your letter. Now, these are called everyday situations.

Let's see in the chat how many of you have actually done something like this in English? Have you ever written a letter of inquiry or a complaint to someone?

Have you ever written to someone in a semi-formal or formal context in English? Who's had this experience in real life?

Who's had this experience in real life? Because I definitely have done this before.

I've written to landlords, I've written to.local businesses, I've written to newspapers. I don't think I had any problems with campus housing.

Luckily, right, yeah, Yelena's had this issue. It's, you know, it's a good skill for life.

And if you've done it in real life, it's not as intimidating to do it on the IELTS. All right, okay, Tatiana's done it, okay.

Great, done it for business partners. So maybe this formal context, semi-formal letters would be no problem for you if you've done it in reality.

So let's look at a real example of what this might look like. So this is one example, task one general.

Question format. You live in a room in college which you share with another student.

However, there are many problems with this arrangement and you find it very difficult to work. Write a letter to the accommodation officer at the college.

In the letter, describe the situation, explain your problems and why it's difficult to work. Say what kind of accommodation you would prefer.

Write at least 150 words. You do not need to write any addresses because it's not that real of a letter.

And finally, the prompt says, begin your letter as follows, dear sir or madam. What kind of letter is this?

Write in the chat, go ahead and write in the chat. Is this a friendly letter, a personal letter?

Is this semi-formal or is it formal? We can actually tell from just the directions, right?

Yeah, Yelena, Tatiana, Nazim, formal. Exactly, dear sir or madam.

This is a dead giveaway that you need to write in a formal style. You're not writing to a friend, you're not writing to a colleague that you know.

So let's take a look at how you could approach a task like this. Also leave in the chat if you've had a roommate experience like we see here in the picture.

Has anyone lived through something like this? Right, formal letter of complaint, very good, very comprehensive.

So let's take a look here. This is a real response from the IELTS with a grade, with an assessment here.

So I'm going to actually read the text and then we'll look at what the examiner said about it. So they've written, dear sir, dear madam, I'm writing you to express my dissatisfaction with my roommate and request for an other accommodation next term.

My main problem is that I cannot study in my room because my roommate always has friends visiting. He also has parties, which usually ends early in the morning, several times a week.

Furthermore, he often borrows my things without asking me. I cannot accept this situation any longer, especially because I have very important exams next term and I really must study hard.

This is why I would be very grateful if I could have another room next year. It would be most convenient for me not having to share my room with somebody else.I'm looking forward to hear from you soon.

Yours faithfully, the candidate's name." So in the chat, go ahead and write your comments. What do you think?

Is this a good letter? Is this an effective letter?

What do you like about it? What do you notice about it?

Because you should think like an examiner when you're writing as a candidate. If we look at the examiner's comments, it says, the answer reads quite fluently.

It's well organized. And there's good use of conjunction to link points.

There are some grammatical errors, but these do not affect the reader greatly. And there's evidence of some more complex sentence structures.

Band seven, right? Band seven.

It's a good score. There are a couple of minor errors.

That's right. But let's look at all the strengths first.

It follows the format. It includes the three bullet points.

And it ends properly. You can see here.

It says, yours faithfully. This is the sign off that you'll use if you're writing a semi-formal or formal letter.

In real life, of course, you can say other things, right? You could say sincerely.

You could say with respect. But for the IELTS, make it easy on yourself.

If you have a semi-formal or formal letter, just write yours faithfully every time. It's nothing to worry about.

It'll be correct. There are a couple of issues with basic grammar, like looking forward to hear, rather than looking forward to hearing.

Parties, which ends, right? A little bit of number confusion there.

But that's not a big issue. And in the comments, Nadezhda noted, it should be divided into paragraphs.

Yeah, I agree. This would definitely be better if you had more visible paragraphs.

You can see here that the candidate made these brackets in the middle of the text to try and show where the paragraphs should be. A better strategy is to leave a full blank line, leave a full empty line in between paragraphs.

This probably could have been organized with three body paragraphs or at least two body paragraphs. That very small decision could have elevated this to the next half band or next band.

So yeah, good eye there. But it's a good example still.

7, solid score. So this is what's expected of you on the general test.

Depending on the actual prompt, the actual language used will be different. But the assessment criteria are pretty direct here.

So now let's move on to the academic, which seems much more popular here and is more popular in general, in my experience. So here, you have to write a report.

You have to write a report. The IELTS is very explicit about what they want here.

If you go to IDP's IELTS website, they explicitly say, your first sentence is also your first paragraph. It should provide context.

Paraphrase the information from the prompt. Just say, what are we looking at?

Is this a bar graph?So what does it say? Is it a line graph?

If so, what does it show? Is it a pie chart?

What does it show? Is it a map?

What does it show? That's your first sentence, your first paragraph.

Your second paragraph is also just one sentence long, and this is where you should provide the overview. What's the main obvious visible trend or fact about the data that you're looking at?

So if you're looking at quantitative data, this might be the general trend. Do the lines go up?

Do they go down? Do the bars rise?

Do they fall? Do they stay the same?

If it's a process or diagram, what is the number of stages? How many chunks of related actions make up the process or cycle that you're looking at?

And if it's a map or a series of maps, what are the major changes between one map and the next? Or what's the consistency between one picture and the next?

We'll look at examples of all of these, so don't worry if it's not clear right now. But then you want one to three body paragraphs organizing and comparing the information that is provided, and IELTS is explicit.

There's no conclusion required here. You don't need to say anything about whether this information provided is good or if it's bad.

You shouldn't speculate about why the data look the way that they do. You don't need to speculate about what effects these changes or trends will have on people.

None of that. All you're doing is reporting information using topic-specific language and organizing your text grammatically according to standard English.

That is it. No opinion, no speculation.

So let's take a look at some of these types. The first most popular, most famous type is the academic report about quantitative data.

So it could be a pie chart, line graph, bar graph, table. In this case, we actually have a pie chart with a table.

That's quite common when you have two graphic organizers. So if you have a task like this, your target language is of quantitative of quantitative comparison of change over time about the relative size of different shares.

So phrases like the values fluctuate. There is a vast difference visible among or between these data points.

The number of closures here in the third one plummets rather than goes down, which is also okay. It's still accurate, but you want to be able to describe trends accurately and in different ways if you have a quantitative set of data that you're responsible for analyzing.

So let's go a little bit deeper. Let's look at a real example of what one could look like.

So remember, we need 150 words minimum, and we need to be able to put it together in 20 minutes. So this is an example I've prepared.

Hope it's good.So here we have a chart, right? And the prompt says the chart in further education in Britain in three periods and whether they were studying full-time or part-time.

Summarize the information by selecting and reporting the main features. Can we have a closer view of the task?

I'm not sure if I can make this any bigger. Just a second.

Maybe. Is that better?

So you can have some comments in the chat. Is it easier to see?

It's a bit. Okay.

Yeah. You know what I can do is I can share these images a little bit later with you guys, but for now pay attention to the language more so than that.

You just need to see what the bars are doing. So I'll explain what's happening here.

We've got part-time students in the gray bars and full-time students in the dark bars and the black bars. And it's also divided with males on the left and females on the right.

And what should be obvious here and this is what you've got to do. Let's do.

Yeah. So if you look at the numbers for part-time males, they drop and they go back up a little bit.

But if you look at the numbers for females and for full-time males, they're all going up. If you get a quantitative task like this, the first thing that you've got to do is make some notes like this, right?

What are the obvious trends that you can identify? So let's see how we can actually respond to this.

The numbers of men and women in Britain who are studying either full-time or part-time at the tertiary level are shown in the chart. You'll notice that I used different language to contextualize the data.

I didn't repeat the same words from the prompt. While complex structure, while both part-time and full-time female students grew in number, this was true only of full-time male students with the number of part-time males actually declining.

So here we have the overview. Notice that there are no numbers in the overview.

You just want to give a broad picture, but no data in the second paragraph. Part-time male students in 1970-71 numbered 1 million, but this figure dipped to just over 800,000 in 1980-81, ultimately reaching around 900,000.

Men enrolled full-time, however, saw their numbers steadily climb from 100,000 to over 200,000 during the same period. Female students attending university part-time in 1970-71 numbered around 700,000, but they surpassed 1 million by 1990-91.

Similarly, full-time women students initially had the absolute lowest count on the graph, but drew even with their male counterparts.by 1990-91. The growth in this category between 1980-81 and 1990-91, though, was the most modest among the displayed data.

So you can see the organization is quite clear. We have a male paragraph and then we have a female paragraph, which includes some comparison.

Everything that the prompt wants is here. There's no opinion, there's no speculation, and we have lots of numbers.

Maybe not all the numbers, right? We've got 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12 data points on the chart, but we don't really have time to say something interesting about all of them.

But we do have specific details mentioned. We have some complex sentences and we have some topic-specific language describing trends, right?

Something steadily climbs during the same period. These figures, they numbered.

There was growth in this area. These are the kinds of lexical chunks that you need to make a good showing on this part of the test.

Let's see in the chat, who is looking forward to writing a quantitative data report? Who thinks this looks like a fun task?

Who thinks they'd like to try something different? Or maybe some of you have experience with something like this.

This might be something you do at work. Let's see, any comments about the quantitative type before we move on?

All right. It's not very easy.

That is a fair assessment. Yeah, it takes practice to be able to find these things quickly.

Paraphrase, amazing, okay. Let's see, I've never written task one before.

I think it's quite challenging. Yeah, it takes some practice, but I've been doing this for eight years, so I was able to write this pretty quickly.

I hope that inspires some confidence. But again, it doesn't have to be perfect in order to get a good score of 7 or above.

You just have to meet the assessment criteria. And this is a good opportunity to see, you know, what it looks like, and then you can practice on your own after we wrap up.

How long did it take me to write? I think this probably took me maybe 15 minutes because I spent a lot of time editing, because I found myself kind of repeating sentence structures, and I was looking for ways to add extra details and find synonyms, and basically, yeah, try not to be repetitive to make it sound interesting, even though that's not the goal, right?

Beauty isn't the goal, but I need to demonstrate to the examiner that I have a lot of words that I can use to put this together.This task together, you know, this I'm not done yet. I could say more if I wanted, but I'm out of time.

You have to be good analytic. Okay.

Yeah. Um, that's an interesting comment.

You don't need to have a mathematical brain to do this. If you can just identify these trends just with these lines, if you could describe those lines as a dip, as a steady rise, as a market increase, for example, that's pretty much what you need for your lexical resource score.

Uh, you don't need to get any deeper into what the numbers mean. Okay.

Leona writes similar texts for university. Great.

So this won't be such a stretch on a tie. It's better to spend 15 minutes than to be corrected.

Yeah, exactly. For all of the writing, it's much better to finish, get all the basics down, and then you can edit, you can make tweaks, you can make changes.

You can make corrections. They're not expecting it to be perfect.

The first time around, they're expecting it to read like a draft, like a good draft. So let's look at another, Oh, let me get rid of these marks.

Okay. So the next task that you might have map change over time.

So here, let me just move my window a little. So here the task is the maps show an industrial area in the town of Norbiton and planned future development of the site.

Summarize the information by selecting and reporting the main features and make comparisons where relevant. So lots of features here.

You have to pick and choose, uh, in a task like this. One of the most important things that you can look for is to see whether or not a compass is provided a compass rose, because if so, you can then organize what you're going to say based on these Cardinal directions, right?

In the Northern part, the Southern part, the East, the West to the North of in the South of et cetera. So here's my, uh, my sample here.

The two maps show changes planned for the town of Norbiton's industrial area. Again, changed the language.

It's not exactly as written in the prompt in the future. Norbiton is to have a greater number of traffic circles, roads, and residential amenities again, no numbers, but we have some more specific details, uh, to talk about the picture.

Initially, the Northern Norbiton industrial area has no development consisting only of farmland North of a river. The town lies to the West of the industrial region, right?

The town is here, right? In this area.

Let me highlight that, right? The town is here and five factories lie to the East of a traffic circle.

East of a traffic circle with three additional manufacturing facilities to it's Northwest and Southwest, right? So the it's refers to this traffic circle.

This is an example of referencing. I don't want to say traffic circle, traffic circle, traffic circle.

I can use pronouns to indicate what I've.already mentioned. The circle connects one long road in the southern part of the area and one running to the east terminating at a factory.

Okay, next paragraph. In the future, no factories will remain with the dominant feature being housing facilities.

The traffic circle will now connect the original core of the industrial area to a new housing development across the river and to another smaller traffic circle that has been added to the road in the south. In addition to the seven residential buildings, shops, a playground, medical center, and school have also been added to the scheme.

I don't want to say map again, so I used scheme instead. So this answer is 174 words, so a little bit more than 150, but not too many more, right?

You want to have enough time to do task two. We've got lots of details here, we've got lots of paraphrasing here, and some relevant lexis.

Residential amenities initially consisting of lies to the west in the future. In addition, these expressions aren't difficult, you just have to know that that's the type of language that the IELTS wants.

So who's excited about writing about a map or maps? You can leave something in the chat here.

20 minutes for maps? Does this seem easier or more difficult compared to a quantitative style task?

And again, there's no speculation, right? There's no opinion.

I don't say, this is terrible, you're destroying the economic heart of Norbiton. No, there's nothing like that.

I don't say, this is a wonderful place for families. None of that is relevant to the task.

Oh, we've got a couple questions. It isn't important to write exactly 150 words?

Nope, it says write at least 150 words, at least, that's your minimum. There's no upper limit, there's no hard limit to how much you should write, but again, 20 minutes, 150 words, we recommend under 200, really 200.

If you write 200 words, you're spending too much time on this. I actually saw some of the samples that you guys sent in for practicing this task, and this was actually a consistent problem.

People were writing 200, 220 words describing the data that they had. It's just, it's too much.

You're spending too much time, and it's not going to help your score here. You want to distribute your time more evenly, and by evenly, two-thirds of the time needs to go to task two, and just one-third to task one.

Yeah, Natalia points out, you have to actually read the map. That does make things a little bit more difficult.

Elena thinks, maybe it's better than graphs. Yeah, maybe it is better than graphs.

I think it depends on what kind of information you're used to looking at in your life. All right, and one more, then we'll dive.into the essays.

The last type of prompt that you might have is a diagram known as a cycle or process. So here we will call this a process diagram because it shows you a sequence of actions that ends in a product.

We have a result, right? This is the brick making process.

So if you were to write this, if you were going to do this yourself, you would first need a context sentence, and you just need to say we have a diagram about the manufacture of bricks. That's it.

That's what it is. Your overview will say that you have three stages, right?

Three distinct sets of actions. Let me draw this for you guys, right?

So this is like stage one, this is like stage two, and this is like stage three. And depending on how you count, you can say we have 1, 2, 3, maybe 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, I think 9 steps in this process, although you could count it differently and say 7 or 8.

There's not a hard and fast rule on this, it just needs to make sense. But your overview needs to tell us that there are three stages, or that there are seven to nine steps.

If you don't include one of these pieces of information, you can include it later, you can include it as your final sentence. But then you'll need three or four paragraphs total to explain what's happening here.

And your target language in this kind of task, it's not actually about number, and it's not about visible change, but it's about sequence. So just looking at this, you might say, okay, let's see, first, the digger gets the clay, then it goes to this roller, then it goes to the wire cutter, then it goes to...

Okay, in real life, you can tell a story by just saying, then this happens, then this happens, then this happens. But on the IELTS, if you get this type of task, you need to be able to show a sequence of events using more varied vocabulary.

So if you just say first, second, third, fourth, that's okay, but you're probably going to be stuck at a score of about five, if that's how you show sequencing. So let's look at a good example that avoids this pitfall.

So this is a real one, I didn't have to write this one, which was a little bit of a relief. So let's take a look.

The process by which bricks are manufactured for the building industry can be outlined in seven consecutive steps. First, the raw material, clay, which lies just below the surface of soil in certain clay-rich areas, has to be dug up by a digger.

Then the lumps of clay are placed on a metal grid in order to break up the big chunks of clay into much smaller ones, which fall through the metal grid onto a roller, whose motion further segregates the...bits of clay. Sand and water are added to make a homogenous mixture, which is then either formed in molds or cut into brick-shaped pieces by means of a wire cutter.

These fresh bricks are then kept in a drying oven for at least 24 and a maximum of 48 hours, several dozens if not hundreds of bricks at a time. The dried bricks are then transferred to a so-called kiln, another type of high-temperature oven.

First, they are kept at a moderate temperature of 200 to 980 degrees Celsius, then at a high temperature of 870 to 1300 degrees Celsius. This process is followed by cooling down the finished bricks for 48 to 72 hours in a cooling chamber.

Once the bricks have been cooled down and have become hard, they get packaged and delivered to their final destination, be it a building site or storage. Right?

That's a lot. I think they went a little bit over the 150 minimum here, but this is comprehensive.

Every single step is detailed very well. We have lots of complex sentence structures, lots of subordinate clauses.

We have which, we have whose, and when it comes to sequencing, we have first, we have then, and then we've got, let's see, a couple others. We have a lot of then.

We have first used twice, which is, that's okay. Right?

This process is followed by. So this writer's done a great job of explaining what's happening to what things in what sequence using a nice variety of language.

Nothing's used inappropriately there. That having been said, though, it's not perfect.

It's not 100% perfect, but it's very good. The first paragraph gives us the number of stages.

It gives us the materials. And here they also gave us an overview there.

They added a little bit too much detail, I think, when talking about the lumps of clay and clay rich soil, and it's under the surface. That's a little bit much for this.

They could have just been a little bit more direct, but each paragraph covers a distinct stage in the process. Cohesion is managed very well.

The sequence language is done well. We have passive voice as well as active voice.

Very minor errors here. And there's no conclusion.

They don't say anything like, and that is why the construction industry thrives, because of brilliant brick making. They just say, this is what happens.

The end. Band nine.

This is an official band nine. You can absolutely write something like this, as long as you know what to do.

Use sequencing language, use complex structures, be direct. We have some positive comments here.

Already some good words. Very beautiful.

Even bricks can be beautiful. Why not?

So why don't you guys write in the chat what you think is the best task one for you? Do you feel the most confident about writing a quantitative task or a map task or a process task?

Which do you think would be the best map?for your skills. All right.

Any preferences? I personally like the map tasks.

I like the diagram tasks. I don't really like the quantitative ones because I start thinking maybe I'm going to miss something or, you know, I want to talk about all of the information.

It's not always possible. Right.

Got a fan of process. Okay.

A fan of the quantitative. Interesting.

Mm-hmm. Graphs.

Definitely. Okay.

Is there any strategy to save your writing? If you don't know how to paraphrase the given vocabulary?

Okay. I'm not sure quite what you mean here.

If you're writing on the computer. Yeah, you can just go back and delete, you know, more basic words and add better words.

If you need to if you're writing on paper, you might just want to take a couple of minutes to make some notes to come up with some synonyms. If you don't feel comfortable diving right in.

All right, map and process. Look, okay.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Yeah, Yelena is not quite sure how she would do this because she hasn't done it in real life. That's why we practice, right?

That's why we practice. Great.

So let's move on to the essay task to task to write. Oh, we've got a data scientist chiming in quant and qualitative data require the same basic set of skills.

So both should be no problem. Yeah, this is a good attitude to have the assessment criteria are exactly the same.

As long as you know what the examiner is looking for. You can put together a credible report.

Mm-hmm. Very good point.

So task to the essay, please leave a comment. If you like writing essays, if you like writing long-form pieces in English, we've got to talk about how you're graded here.

Task response. You must take a position on whatever question you were given.

Even if it does not ask you to going to repeat that take a position on the issue, even if it does not ask you to I will show you a very specific example that illustrates why this is important, but it is impossible to get a good score. And I mean a seven or above if you do not present in the very first paragraph and opinion or position on the IELTS essay.

This is straight from the assessment criteria your greater on cohesion and coherence. Do you use paragraphs?

Do you have a variety of linking expressions your lexical resource? Do you have topic specific vocabulary collocation and spelling?

So here it's about the actual topic rather than the task like we saw earlier and finally grammar range and accuracy complex structures variety of sentences. Oh, wow.

We've got a journalist in the house. We've got folks who like writing essays.

This is a great response. So I've decided to share with you just band 9 the top right the best kind of score that you can get a level 9 response.

The prompt is appropriately addressed and explored in depth a clear and fully developed position is presented which directly answers the question orquestions. Ideas are relevant, fully extended, and well-supported.

Any lapses in content or support are extremely rare. Now, when it comes to lexical resource and grammar and accuracy, I don't think there's much that needs to be said about that, right?

It's the same for all of the English that you use. You need the right vocabulary.

You need the right variety. You need the right variety of sentence structures.

Cohesion and coherence. I've got good news.

This is one of the easiest places to improve on the IELTS essay task. So let's look at some examples.

Oh, I got another journalist. Fantastic.

All right. So for task two, if you were taking screenshots, if you are taking notes, this is the slide to keep.

You are recommended to spend 40 minutes on this task. You should write 250 words minimum.

And again, we recommend 290 words maximum. Keep it under 300 just for the sake of feasibility.

The format that I'm showing you here meets the assessment criteria. You do not need to think about whether you're meeting the assessment criteria if you follow this format.

It's easy to remember, and it's easy to adapt for different questions. So let's walk through this.

Introduction. This is your most important paragraph.

Your very first sentence should be what we call the big picture. You should have one sentence that is related to the topic, but not directly paraphrasing or repeating the question.

You want to contextualize what we're talking about. The second sentence should paraphrase the prompt or the question.

That gets us deeper into the actual task. And the third sentence, this is where you present your position explicitly.

The IELTS says it is a good idea to write. In my opinion, it seems to me, for me, I think, in my view.

Explicitly state what you think. There's one caveat to that, which is that if you are confident in your writing, you could write without saying I think.

You can present your opinion as fact, but that's a little bit more sophisticated. We can talk about it later.

But you need to say what you think in the very first paragraph. This is the biggest difference between the IELTS and how essays are recommended to be written in Russian high schools, universities, etc.

I've been here for eight years. I know exactly how they're written.

You know, here's an issue. There are opinions about it.

This essay will tell you what I think will come to a conclusion. Never do that.

Russian university, Russian high school writing tips are absolutely worse than useless on the IELTS. You will definitely get a bad score if you follow that format.

So introduction, most important paragraph, body paragraph one, start with the purpose of your paragraph, give an example, explain how it's relevant, and then link it to the main argument. Body paragraph two, you'll do the same thing.

Give us the purpose of the paragraph, an example, and an explanation linking it to our issue.link to the main argument. And finally, the conclusion is just like the introduction backwards.

Here, you're going to start by telling us what the issue and your position are and you will end the whole essay with a conditional sentence explaining why this is important. That is not new information.

It's just summing up why we care about this issue. So your essay reads a little bit more like an intelligent discussion and intelligent consideration rather than something you were forced to do for an exam that is making you miserable.

Let's dive into examples. All right.

So the simplest type of question that you have, we'll call a thesis-led prompt. A thesis-led prompt presents an opinion in the question.

There's an opinion given and it asks, do you agree or disagree with it? It does not ask you to compare one view with another.

Again, even if you've been taught to always present two points of views in an essay, that is not relevant here. Let's look at this one.

Children who are brought up in families that do not have large amounts of money are better prepared to deal with the problems of adult life than children brought up by wealthy parents. To what extent do you agree or disagree with this opinion?

To make it easy for you should always simply choose agree or disagree 100% one way or 100% another way. This isn't about nuance.

It's not an interview for a job or college admissions. Say yes or say no and provide two reasons in support of what you want to say.

Let's look at how to answer this. So here is a real example of an IELTS essay responding to this question.

I do agree to the statement that children brought up in poor families are better prepared to deal with the problems of adult life than children brought up by wealthy parents. Very clear position.

Children of poor parents are prematurely exposed to the problems of adult life. For example, learning to survive on a low family income and sacrificing luxuries for essential items.

These children begin to see the realities of life in their home or social environment. Their parents' own struggles serve as an example to them.

These children are taught necessary skills for survival as an adult from a very early age. Many children, for example, work on the weekends or holidays or either collect some pocket money or even contribute to their family's income.

Good example is the many children who accompany their parents to sell produce at the market. They're making a direct contribution to their families in terms of labor or income.

Children of poor families also are highly motivated. They tend to set high goals to improve their economic and social situation.

A relevant example would be Mr. Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft Corporation. He had an impoverished background, but he used his talent and motivation to set up the world's largest computer organization.growing up poor, but whatever.

However, there are some problems that children from poor backgrounds do encounter. Many of these children who are robbed of their childhood while working may feel cheated.

They often turn to crime. This, however, is a small group.

And summing up, children with impoverished backgrounds are able to deal with problems of adult life because of early exposure, family role models, and sheer motivation. Yeah, what do you think?

Pretty good? Excellent standing ovation or polite applause?

Clear position in the first paragraph. We know what the author thinks and they develop it throughout the rest of it.

Each body paragraph has a strong topic sentence. Examples are provided.

Some of them are abstract. Some of them are concrete.

Some of them aren't even true, like the Bill Gates example, but they tried. Throughout, we have noun phrases, collocations, subordinate clauses.

But it's not a perfect essay. We have one, two, three, four, five, six paragraphs.

Probably a little bit too much content. We probably could have put this together in a solid four paragraphs, but that's okay, right?

They got a band eight. Again, they started off strong with a position and they proved it throughout.

Thesis-led essay. So in the chat, could you say, what do you think?

Could you write a thesis-led essay on this topic? Do you feel like you could comment on whether poor children's lives could make them ready for adulthood, or is that too abstract?

Let's see, we have one comment. It sounds like this person doesn't have children.

Yeah, who knows? Everyone struggles with IELTS in life in different ways.

Yeah, what's interesting is they really considered this. I mean, this would be a more interesting spoken response.

They could have organized this in a more limited way, but they had a lot to say here. Nice essay, I think the topic's understandable.

How many arguments should be provided? Yeah, great question from Ileana.

Two arguments. You want one position.

So I think, yes, children who grow up poor do benefit, and two reasons in support of why. Or the opposite, I don't think children who grow up poor are better prepared for life, and two reasons why.

One body paragraph for reason number one body paragraph for reason number two. Every time, this will meet the assessment criteria.

All right, let's look at another one. So this is the trick type of essay.

There's another thesis type essay that has a little bit of a trick in it. Look at this prompt.

It is important for people to take risks, both in their professional lives and their personal lives. Do you think the advantages of taking risks outweigh the disadvantages?

Now, many people will say, oh, easy. Advantages and disadvantages, I know how to do this.

I did this in high school.And they will write a poor essay if they do that. It is not asking you about the advantages and disadvantages.

They're asking you a yes or no question. Do you think the advantages outweigh the disadvantages?

That's a yes or no question. Yes, they do, or no, they don't.

This is also a thesis-led essay. You need to say yes, they do, or no, they don't, and two reasons in support of why.

If you instead write about the advantages and disadvantages, you're basically going to waste a paragraph talking about something that they didn't ask for. So just like a thesis essay, you're going to present your position in the first paragraph, two reasons in support of that position, and then one body paragraph covering each of those.

So here's a beginning of this that I've written myself. We take a chance with every decision we make.

Abstract, big, broad idea. While some people are risk-averse in all spheres of their life, others gladly take leaps of faith every day.

Getting closer to the question. The benefits of doing so are clearly more advantageous than timidity because one develops courage and knowledge from the experience.

So by reading this, you know exactly where this essay is going. Do I think the advantages outweigh the disadvantages?

Yes, I do. Why?

Because by taking risks, you develop courage and knowledge. So you can expect a body paragraph about courage and a body paragraph about knowledge.

That's it. The first paragraph does almost all of the work in getting you a good task achievement score or task response score and cohesion and coherence score as long as you follow up that model.

So remember, if the question says, do you think the advantages outweigh the disadvantages? This is a thesis-led essay.

It's not asking you to examine advantages and disadvantages. Now let's look at a different type, two-question essay.

Normally I ask my students, why do you think we call this a two-question essay? It's for a very simple reason.

There are two questions in the task. So you need to answer two distinct questions in this type of prompt.

Again, this needs to be done in the first paragraph. In this case, the question is, some children spend hours every day on their smartphones.

Why is this the case? Do you think it's a positive or negative development?

So two questions. Why do they do this?

So we need one paragraph answering that question. And is it a positive or negative development?

One paragraph answering that question. And again, it's not asking for both advantages and disadvantages or both positives and negatives.

Just what do you think and why? So again, I didn't wanna write a whole essay, but here is more or less the structure of how you could respond to this.

As social creatures, children want to connect to others. Big picture.

Since smartphones link them to their friends and family, young people spend many hours daily.using smartphones. While these devices can strengthen relationships and even be educational, this widespread and constant use is surely a negative phenomenon.

So look, the answer to the first question, why? Because kids are social, they like to talk to their friends and family.

Is it good or bad? It's definitely bad.

So if I were to write the rest of this, my second paragraph would talk about smartphones being appealing because they strengthen relationships and have educational value. The third paragraph would talk about why smartphone use is negative.

I would explain why that's a bad thing. And the conclusion would look like this.

Today's children use their smartphones constantly. Context, right?

Despite the beneficial facets of this behavior, it's key to recognize that it is problematic. That is in fact problematic.

Without occupying their time in better ways, phone obsessed children will be at a developmental disadvantage. So why do we care about this?

We care because if this is what they do, they will be developmentally disadvantaged. This wraps up the whole essay.

It tells us why we're talking about this issue in the first place. So two question essay, pretty straightforward type of format.

If you've got questions about this, go ahead and put them in the chat or in the Q and A. We're going to move on to the next type of essay here.

Oh, this is the one everyone likes. This is the one everyone thinks they know.

It also has another trick to it. The discursive essay or the advantages and disadvantages essay.

I've put these together because the format we recommend is exactly the same. So in a task like this, two opinions are presented to the test taker.

Two opinions are presented. Those views are that there are advantages and disadvantages to something or two more specific views about some phenomenon.

To successfully write a response, you need to explain both views and you need to endorse one of these views. You need to say which view is correct and you need to do that in the first paragraph, not in the last paragraph.

You don't discuss the advantages and disadvantages in the first paragraph and say, in sum, I think, no, your opinion goes in the first paragraph. It has to every single time.

And the further nuance for this type of task is that you should explain the point of view that you do not endorse first. And I'll explain why in just a second.

This is because when the reader finishes reading your essay, they should agree with you. You didn't write the essay yourself.

You wrote it to explain why you have one view. The reader should agree with that.

It doesn't make a lot of sense to explain the reasons why your point of view is wrong before you leave your audience. They're going to leave with the ideas you don't support rather than the ones that you do.do support.

So, let's look at this example. Let me move my window a little.

Some people believe that professionals, such as doctors and engineers, should be required to work in the country where they did their training. Others believe they should be free to work in another country if they wish.

Discuss both these views and give your own opinion. Now, notice here it says to give your own opinion, but sometimes the prompt will just say discuss both views.

In such cases, it's still important to endorse one of the views for the very simple fact that you get a seven or better on your task response score if you present and develop an opinion. Just saying that two views exist doesn't do that.

That's just stating a fact. You have to always present an opinion.

So, here's my model. Human needs know no bounds.

Doctors and engineers are needed all around the world, not just where they're trained or where they're originally from. While professionals at high demand may feel loyalty to their alma mater, it makes more sense for them to go where their skills can make the most difference.

So, big picture, contextualizing the question and the position. And the position that I've taken here is that they should be free to travel.

Now, if I were to write the rest of this, the next paragraph would discuss this point of view where they should be forced to work in the place where they trained. I will explain that point of view.

Maybe it's crazy, maybe it's bonkers, or maybe it's reasonable. That's the paragraph where I explain this other point of view.

Some people think this. Maybe it's a good idea, maybe it's not, but it's not the most convincing.

The third paragraph is going to explain with examples and reasoning why the point of view I endorse is correct. And the final paragraph will drive that point home.

People require medical care and innovation worldwide, similar to what I said in the first paragraph. Rather than being limited in where they can address these needs, doctors and engineers should have the freedom to work where they please.

If such a policy were adopted, these workers' potential for healing and invention would be unlocked. So again, why do we care about this issue?

Well, if you agree with me, if we support the idea I like, this is the future that we see. The last sentence the examiner reads is complex, is a conditional.

They're thinking, this writer is probably a seven plus, if you leave them with that, even if there are flaws elsewhere. So that's the discursive advantages and disadvantages essay.

I know it looks different from what you might be used to, but this is what the IELTS demands. All right, we're doing pretty well on time.

We've still got 20 minutes. I think we're going to make it guys.

All right. So do's and don'ts.

So these are the quick and dirty bits of advice for writing a successful essay. Do state your opinion in the first paragraph.

This is the most important thing that you can do to set yourself up for success. Do write four paragraphs with one idea per body paragraph.

Don't write a sprawling essay with six or seven paragraphs, each consisting of two or three sentences. Take one idea, really develop it in each body paragraph.

Do skip a line between paragraphs, especially if you're writing the paper-based format. Skip a line, one blank line between paragraphs so the examiner is 100% sure that you're using paragraphs.

And of course you can just hit enter or return twice if you are writing on the computer. Do use examples from your own country, from your family, from your job, from your student experience.

You do not need to be a scholar of, you know, labor history or scientific invention or, you know, gender inequality or environmental policy. You absolutely do not need special knowledge to get a good score on the essays.

That's very important. Use examples that you know.

Use examples that are real. Do use a variety of linking expressions.

Don't rely on first, second, third, fourth. If you say on the one hand in one paragraph instead of following up with on the other hand, use a different transition.

You could say in contrast. However, still, despite this fact, mix it up.

Mix it up. And of course do use a variety of sentence structures, a variety of complex structures, simple structures, compound structures.

Show the examiner that you have this facility with different types of sentences. Grammatical accuracy is important, of course, but you are always focused on that.

Grammatical variety is where you can make a real change in how you are evaluated on the IELTS. But with dos, there are also don'ts.

Here's some things you should not do. So again, do not ever write, many opinions exist, or both opinions have a right to exist, or there are different ideas about this issue.

This is what Russians would call water. It doesn't say anything.

It does not prove anything. It does not move a thesis forward.

You can actually just say what the opinions are and then endorse one or the other. That is much more effective writing.

It's much more useful writing. Do not write in this essay.

The IELTS explicitly says memorized phrases like in this essay or this essay will are frowned upon. They are useless.

They do not make you look like a more competent writer. They are crutches.

They make you look weak. And finally, do not include fake statistics.

Do not write about some made-up magazine that conducted some study. Don't say some social scientist you invented did a survey or did some research.

Use real examples from your life, from your experience, from your observation, from your city, from your country, from your family.family, don't make stuff up. The examiner can't verify this and therefore these will be negative marks against you on the test.

Right? So you might have to unlearn some bad habits as far as the don'ts go, but trust me, this will make your writing much better.

All right, let's see. Almost done.

So conclusion. So now what, now you know all about the IELTS writing section.

You know how long it is, you know what the tasks are, you know what the expectations are, and you've got some strategies. This is a great opportunity to demonstrate your writing skills in English.

You should think of it that way, not as a big, scary assessment, but as a chance to show the examiner, a chance to show your future employer, your future university, or your future country, the skills that you have as an English writer. So by understanding the test format and assessment criteria, you can prepare to show off your skills in the best way possible, you have nothing to worry about.

Now, remember there's more you can do than just enjoy this presentation. We also offer the writing essays course where you can further hone your abilities.

And tomorrow we have one more webinar hosted by our founder, Julia, where she'll be talking not about exams per se, but about this journey to finding the best country, the best institutions, et cetera, for you abroad. If you haven't decided just where you're going, maybe tuning in tomorrow can help with that.

So same time, 7.30 in the evening, Julia will be presenting in Russian. So you can relax if it's been a little too much English for you these last few evenings.

She'll be discussing how to choose where you will study abroad. Very important topic, something that everyone should definitely consider.

So she'll be discussing both the decision-making process, the ins and outs, the nuts and bolts of how to make a journey abroad work for you. In addition, if you tune in tomorrow during tomorrow's webinar, we'll also announce everyone who has won a prize for participating in the IELTS marathon.

You'll be getting promo codes and special offers for exam preparation, along with other products related to the study abroad quest that so many people have. So if you've made it through four, you can come back for one more and that'll help you on your English journey further.

All right. So as always, all the information presented here came from official IELTS sources.

They came from IDP, from Cambridge, from the British Council, and from a couple of published IELTS practice books. I think I used IELTS 17 and IELTS 11.

So all the questions that you saw, all the graphs that you saw, they are all from real exams. I didn't make any of that up.

So you can feel confident in going forward after viewing this presentation.All right, so let's open it up to questions and comments in the chat. I guess I can leave this this slide up.

All right, let's see. Tatiana.

I am great at reading tough handwriting. It can show some recommendations to those right by hand.

Yeah. Writing by hand.

You've just you've got to practice I mean have someone read over your handwriting. To see if it's legible and if not, you just might have to go back and practice a few letters here and there, practice making things legible you can also write in block letters, rather than in cursive.

This can also be something that you can use to help out the legibility of your responses discursive essay so even if I disagree with the first opinion I should still write why it may be reasonable. So, yeah, this is a great question.

If you disagree with one of the two views, you just need to explain why that view exists. So for example we saw the essay about.

Oh my god we've we've disappeared just a second. Let me go back to the example that we had.

Is that gonna share. Hold on, let's go back.

Yeah, so some people believe that they should stay. So, you could say that this view is, you know, it's just ridiculous, because blah blah blah.

Or you could say it's reasonable for these reasons, but these reasons are more limited than the correct view, which is the one that you have. You just have to explain why some people might think this, because it's asking you to discuss both.

Okay, I'll come back to that one just a second. How many spelling mistakes are okay.

How much will I lose. So Tatiana's question about spelling is a very important one.

Spelling counts, but basically a handful of spelling errors which we even saw on these good models are okay. But if you have consistent spelling errors that will lower your score so if you just never spell one particular word right, or if it becomes hard to read.

That's when you might have problems but for a score of seven or above, you know, two or three mistakes here and there, they're not, they're not going to tank your score. Okay.

Some kind words from Jelena thank you very much, happy to happy to happy to be here, and happy to share my information my expertise. So Tatiana asks about punctuation rules.

There are a couple of resources that I can recommend for punctuation. The main one is just understanding how commas work in English.

Russian also uses this punctuation mark, but uses it very differently. Everything you know about commas in Russian just forget about them, because they don't apply to English.in here.

One resource that I use in my classes is this two-part quiz about commas. You can take a look at that, do the exercises, look at the answers.

That'll really help you punctuate more accurately when it comes time to tackle the writing section. Let's see what else.

We've got a lot of work to be done. Okay, and we've got a couple of Q&A questions.

Let me open those up. What have we got here?

Oh, we have three questions. My god.

All right. Artyom asks, is it better to aim for higher bands in preparation for writing in IELTS?

Like my minimum target band for writing should be no less than 6.5, but should I prepare, read essays and vocabulary for 8 or 9, or is it better to read essays and train vocabulary for exactly band 6 and 7? That's a great question.

I will respond to that with a cliche, right? There's this expression where people say, shoot for the moon, even if you miss, you will land among the stars.

And that's really the best thing that you should do for the IELTS. If you're a trainer, right?

If you're a teacher, if you're a tutor, if you're working with me, I'm always going to be pushing you for a 7 plus. And if you can consistently hit the 7, that's fine.

But our goal is always going to be to make it as high as possible. I had a student recently, he ended up with a 6.5, in fact.

But I don't know how to train someone for a 6.5, but I know how to train someone for a 9, if that makes sense. So you should always be pushing yourself.

You should always be picking up new skills, new lexical chunks, new sentence structures, because even if your total English skills are, you know, maybe in the 6.5 area or the 6 area, adding these more advanced, more complex structures to your repertoire will absolutely help solidify that position or even move you up a half band or a full band. So I hope that answers your question.

Artyom Xenia is asking, is it necessary to know or use idioms in any IELTS section? Yeah, so learning idioms for idiom's sake is not a good strategy.

As a matter of fact, if you speak in nothing but idioms, as I've seen some prospective candidates do, you will end up getting a 6. That doesn't show that you can speak English credibly or write in English credibly.

It shows you have a good memory for idioms. Far more important are lexical chunks and vocabulary items that are topic specific.

So if we're looking at quantitative data, knowing terms like this value rose steadily, there was a dramatic fall, these figures plummeted, right? These chunks are far more important than saying anything figurative or idiomatic, although that would be probably inappropriate for that type of task.

So I would say idioms are useful if you come across them in real life, but just memorizing lists of idioms is not really useful. I would say.The best source is to look for credible English speakers in films, news broadcasts, real life, and pick up language from them.

Those are the trusted sources for New Lexus. OK, Irina does not understand why we cannot use the expression in this essay.

Because the IELTS says do not use the expression in this essay. It is a completely useless expression.

It does not do anything. It's just memorized language that children use in school.

IELTS IDP site specifically says you are not rewarded. You're, in fact, penalized for using phrases like this.

They add nothing. There's an expression in English, maybe in other countries as well.

But for effective writing, you should show, not tell. So you don't need to say in this essay you're going to do anything.

Just do it, right? You don't have to say in this essay, I'm going to discuss these two views.

Just say the second view is correct, and then explain why the second view is correct. Explain why the first view is lacking.

There's just no need for these filler expressions. It just shows a lack of ability or a lack of confidence, really.

And again, the IELTS says don't do it. So don't listen to me.

Listen to IELTS. OK, some other questions or concerns.

We've got a whopping six minutes left. All right.

So I hope you guys found this useful. There's a lot to learn when it comes to the IELTS writing section, but it's all learnable.

There's no reason to be intimidated by any part of this test. After you practice for a few weeks, a few months, in some cases, you'll be in good shape to give your best showing when it comes to test day.

Yeah, and of course, a good way to continue to improve your vocabulary in a very low-stakes environment is to check out our Telegram channels. We've got links to them in the chat.

We've got However Only and the channel Windsor English. Academic Lexus is provided here on a regular basis.

I think it's even updated daily. It's a faster way to learn English than probably any other one.

So this is a good way to stay connected to an English-learning community and to make use of those phones that you and children, according to the IELTS, have in front of themselves all day. All right, so some kind words from Margarita and Irina.

Thank you very much. Yeah, Irina, you're absolutely right.

It is hard to train yourself in a new way after you're used to writing or speaking or doing something one way. That's absolutely true, and I understand that struggle very much.

But the good part is, once you do it, you've learned two things. One, you've learned a new way to write, and two, you've learned that you can relearn.

So it's a challenge that you can actually welcome when it comes time to take the IELTS to change your universe.city, change your country, change your job, et cetera. It's all a part of transformation.

Okay, Nuri, thank you. Marina, thank you.

Senya, thank you. Terrific.

Yes, it's been great meeting all of you guys over the past week. I think my voice is actually doing a little better than by the end of Tuesday.

Great questions, great participation from everyone. I hope I've answered all of the questions.

And if there's nothing else, I guess we can get back to our evenings. We can relax a little bit or write an IELTS essay.

Whatever you guys are in the mood for. All right, folks, have a great evening.

Be sure to check out our essay writing course, check out Julia's webinar tomorrow, check out our Telegram channel. Stay engaged, stay positive, stay focused.

But first of all, stay relaxed. All right, good night, everyone.

Full text made by Jill White Voice Notes Assistant Link: https://t.me/JillWhite_voice_notes_bot?do=open_link Telegram: @JillWhite_voice_notes_bot

Advices

OPEN UP THE WORLD: экспертный марафон по международным экзаменам, [07/05/2024 22:28] Если у вас есть опыт написания текстов — неважно, школьных сочинений, рабочих емейлов или рефератов и курсовых — вы знаете, что этот процесс во многом напоминает пазл или конструктор. Разница лишь в том, что детали вы тоже создаете сами.

Основной принцип пазла сохраняется: чтобы картинка сложилась, элементы должны быть соединены в правильной последовательности. Так и в эссе любого типа есть обязательные компоненты: ◾Introduction ◾Main body ◾Conclusion

Экзаменатор, который будет проверять ваше эссе, должен легко понять, какой тип эссе вы выбрали, просто бегло посмотрев на ваш текст. Поэтому первые предложения каждого абзаца должны вводить главную идею, которую вы рассматриваете в этом отрывке. В последних предложениях абзаца подводится промежуточный итог.

У введения и заключения также есть своя структура. Например, в введении у вас обязательно должны быть general statement и thesis statement. А в заключении нельзя вводить никаких новых идей — только подводить итоги тому, о чем вы рассуждали в main body.

Композиция — одна из главных составляющих хорошего академического эссе. Разобрать ее в деталях и попрактиковаться можно будет на курсе Writing Essays с нашим преподавателем из США Алексом. Старт уже 15 мая.

🔗 Записаться можно по ссылке: https://online.windsor.ru/y/4e12169

OPEN UP THE WORLD: экспертный марафон по международным экзаменам, [08/05/2024 22:13] В предыдущем посте мы сравнили написание текста с составлением пазла. Если composition (https://t.me/openuptheworld/107) — это скорее общая “картина”, то детали могут соединяться двумя способами: на уровне слов и на уровне идей. Поговорим о первом.

Cohesion — это связность предложений между собой. Грубо говоря, мы оцениваем, насколько текст cohesive, в зависимости от того, как заканчивается и как начинается каждое предложение. Предложения должны перетекать друг в друга, а каждое последующее быть связано с предыдущим.

Чтобы показать это, мы используем различные инструменты. Например, стоит обращать внимание на то, какую информацию вы сообщаете в начале, а какую в конце предложения.

В основном, английское предложение строится по следующему принципу: в начале предложения мы указываем уже знакомую информацию, а в конце сообщаем новую информацию. Посмотрим на следующий пример:

The ancient Egyptians buried their pharaohs in tombs called pyramids.

Как вы думаете, какое предложение будет следующим?

A. In Giza, near Cairo, are the most famous pyramids. B. The most famous pyramids are in Giza, near Cairo.

Правильным ответом будет B. Почему же? В первом предложении в конце мы называем то, что является новой информацией: The ancient Egyptians buried their pharaohs in tombs called pyramids. Затем мы начинаем с того, что уже является известным: The most famous pyramids are in Giza, near Cairo.

Оба варианта грамматически правильны, однако более естественным для английского является второй вариант.

Это не единственное, что может сделать ваш текст более связным. Все способы будем обсуждать на курсе Writing Essays (https://online.windsor.ru/y/4e12169). Потренироваться можно будет на занятиях и в письменных домашних заданиях — есть тарифы с подробным фидбэком от преподавателя. Стартуем уже 15 мая, запись по ссылке 👆

OPEN UP THE WORLD: экспертный марафон по международным экзаменам, [10/05/2024 20:18] Студенты часто говорят, что главная проблема не в языке, а в том, что нет идей, о чем писать!

Хорошие новости — идеи непосредственно зависят от ваших языковых возможностей. Ведь иногда сложность вовсе не в том, что вам нечего написать. Скорее, вам так кажется, потому что не хватает языковых инструментов, чтобы порассуждать.

Здесь нам помогут collocations или chunks — сочетания слов, которые часто употребляются вместе. Мы уже неоднократно рассказывали, как чанки сделают речь более правильной и беглой (https://t.me/windsor_english/1332).

Если вы знаете подходящие collocations, вы сможете сжато и точно описать свою идею. Так вы сразу перейдете к главному, а не будете ходить вокруг да около, “заливая” всё водой.

Ваш ответ также будет оценен более высоко, ведь экзаменаторы смотрят не только на то, насколько грамотно написан ваш текст, но и на то, насколько все идеи в нем согласованы и имеют смысл.

У изучения collocations есть еще один неочевидный плюс — у вас меньше возможностей ошибиться в построении фразы, а, значит, количество потенциальных лексических и грамматических ошибок снижается!

Интересно, какие бывают виды collocations и как научиться определять их в тексте? Присоединяйтесь к курсу Writing Essays с Алексом — это одна из тем, которую будем подробно разбирать на занятиях. Старт уже 15 мая.

Записаться можно по ссылке:

https://online.windsor.ru/y/4e12169⁠

⁠

Текст должен быть согласован не только на лексико-грамматическом уровне, но и на уровне смыслов. Если продолжить сравнение с пазлом, то детальки могут подходить друг к другу по форме, но не составлять вместе картину.

Многие студенты забывают об этом и пытаются “имитировать” coherence — ту самую связность идей — в тексте.

Такой текст может быть грамматически и даже лексически корректным, однако не быть coherent. Посмотрите на пример ниже:

The Austrian composer Mozart was a musical genius. He has got a swimming pool. It actually tingles on your skin to tell you it’s working. Water would then come out of fountains such as the one shown here. And that is why dogs still chase rabbits.

С одной стороны, этот текст является связным. He во втором предложении отсылает нас к имени Mozart в первом. It в третьем предложении может подразумевать swimming pool, упомянутый во втором. Слово water тематически относится к бассейну, а такие слова как then, such as и that is why создают связи между словами, вводят примеры или объяснения.

С другой стороны, этот текст совершенно не имеет смысла! О чем он? На какие вопросы отвечает? Что происходит? 😂 Всё потому, что тексту не хватает coherence — тематической связности.

Этот пример несколько преувеличен, однако порой студенты добавляют в свое эссе всё, что кажется им хотя бы относительно подходящим по теме или добавляют вводные слова в надежде, что все предложения окажутся связаны, а у вас будет эссе подлиннее.

Но вводные слова только помогают вам построить логическую последовательность, они не создают логику на пустом месте. Этот, казалось бы, очевидный в родном языке факт часто забывается, когда пишешь на английском.

Студенты, которые проходили первый поток курса Writing Essays, отметили, что модуль про Coherence был одним из самых полезных. Сейчас запускаем второй поток) На курсе будем разбирать подобные примеры, а также тренироваться делать свои тексты связными во всех смыслах. Присоединяйтесь, вы еще успеваете: https://online.windsor.ru/y/4e12169

General how to improve your writing

Task response

Your score will increase if you:

pay attention to ALL issues in the essay question

write about the issues rather than just the general topic

answer the essay question with relevant main points

plan your supporting points so they don’t go off the topic

write over 250 words

Coherence and Cohesion

Your score will increase if you:

have either four or five paragraphs but not more and not less

this means you should have two or three body paragraphs only

have just one central topic in each body paragraph

organise your ideas logically

use a range of linking words

avoid errors in linking words

Lexical Resource

Your score will increase if you:

pay attention to collocations (which verb matches which noun)

paraphrase carefully to avoid errors

use a range of words appropriate for the topic

spell words correctly

avoid making errors (errors will lower your score – see table above)

avoid using informal language

Grammatical Range and Accuracy

Your score will increase if you:

use different grammar tenses (conditionals, perfect tenses, passive voice, past, future etc)

pay attention to word order in your sentences

use a range of sentence structures

use the correct punctuation (full stops and commas)

avoid errors in grammar (errors will lower your score – see the table above)

common grammar errors: articles, plural nouns, uncountable nouns, word order)

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