Can you see this? A blank page!? A blank page! I am so scared of blank pages,
so white, empty and intimidating. How can we turn this terrible blank page into a beautiful
essay? With magic...? By planning of course! My name is Toby, this is SMASH English, and here
is everything you need to know about planning your B2 First essay!
Oh and of course before you plan your essay you must know what the structure is of the essay you
are planning for so please watch my video all about essay structure for your B2 First essay!
If you don't understand the structure then this video won't make a lot of sense
and that's a terrible thing... So why is planning so important? Because every essay
must include certain things and if you don't include these things you will lose marks! An essay
must inform the target reader and be relevant for marks in CONTENT. It must hold the target reader's
attention for marks in COMMUNICATIVE ACHIEVEMENT. It must be well organized for marks in
ORGANISATION and it must include complex and less common vocabulary specific to the topic
and complex grammatical structures for marks in LANGUAGE. If you don't know what content,
communicative achievement, organization, and language are
then please watch my video all about the Cambridge assessment scale for your writing exam! Because
if you don't know what the examiners want then how can you give it to them? You can't
and that's also a terrible thing. Because an essay must include so many different things
you must plan because if you don't plan you could forget some of these things and if you
forget some of these things you will score lower marks and if you scored lower marks you would cry
and if you cried I would cry and that's a lot of tears... and a lot of conditionals... hey...
Conditionals? Watch! All of them! Yes! Let's talk about the first thing you must do when you start
your essay... you walk into the exam room, you open the paper, you see the question and then...
What? Well every essay starts with an introduction. Wow! An introduction! The
introduction should present the topic and rephrase the question. So the first thing we need to do
is identify what the topic is. If we don't know what the topic is we cannot begin our introduction
and that's another terrible thing! Remember the topic is not the same as the question. The topic
is more general than the question. Let us look at some examples. Here the topic is having siblings.
The question is whether it is better to have siblings or not but that is not the topic.
The topic is more general than the question. In this case: siblings in general. Here the topic
is online friendship. Here the topic is school or education. Here the topic is speaking english.
Again notice that the topic is more general than the question so once you have identified the topic
write it down. Now we need to identify the question. Let's look at some examples.
Here the question is "is having a brother or sister better than not having one?". "Is
it possible to make real friends online?". "Is school still necessary now that we have
online learning?". "Is it possible to survive in today's world without knowing
english?". Now that we have identified the topic and the question we need to search our brains
for some specific vocabulary related to the topic, so think of some and write them down.
No more than three words or three expressions or so, don't go crazy! Spend 30 seconds doing this.
For example if our topic is DIET we could write words and expressions like rich in vitamins,
low in calories, healthy, sedentary lifestyle, cut down on something, put on weight, lose weight.
You get the idea! Now this next step is very important! We must decide what our third prompt
will be! Remember you are given two prompts that you must include and there is another one:
"your own idea"! So think about what your own idea is. Once you have your third prompt we need
to think about how to order our paragraphs. Remember I want you to include one paragraph
for each prompt. That gives us introduction, prompt, prompt, prompt, and a conclusion. But,
I want paragraphs two and three to agree with each other and paragraph four to disagree with
paragraphs two and three. This allows us to connect paragraphs two and three together using
a "not only...but also..." inversion and it allows us to use a concessive clause at the beginning of
paragraph four to create a contrast. Again watch my video about essay structure because that is the
structure we are planning for in this video and it is the structure that will give you high marks
and high marks are fantastic! I love high marks! I really do! So for example our question is this.
Let's think of the prompts like sub topics related to the question. So work and travel
are related to speaking english, let's add international friendships. OK, of course
I have no friends but for this I will pretend that I have one friend and they are international
and I will use that experience to answer the question. So now we have our prompts:
travel, work and international friendships. Now we have to decide which prompts agree and
which prompts disagree. I think speaking English is very important for travel
because everyone all over the world can speak English thanks to SMASH English! So say thank
you to SMASH English and press subscribe! Thanks! For the same reason I think speaking English is
very useful for international friendships because everyone can speak English, everyone can connect
using the language of English. However I do not think speaking English is necessary
for work. There are many jobs that do not require speaking English such as being a zookeeper,
a deodorant tester, or a pet food taster. This means that our two prompts that agree are travel
and international friendships so travel will be our paragraph two, international friendships
will be our paragraph three, and work will be our paragraph four. We're done! So let's have
a look at another example. First let's think of another prompt. We need another topic related to
school. Let's say social life. Now we have three prompts: convenience, resources, and social life.
I think online learning is more convenient because you can learn anywhere. I also think
the internet has more resources than a physical classroom. However I do not think online learning
can replace the social life of a school. So paragraph two will be about convenience,
paragraph three will be about resources, and my fourth paragraph will be about social life.
Paragraphs two and three agree and paragraph four disagrees allowing us to use the essay
structure I have given you in my video all about essay structure so please watch it... yeah. Next
i want you to spend a couple of minutes thinking about specific vocabulary related to each prompt
that way you can include it in your essay and get higher marks for language. So we have the prompts
travel, work, and international friendships. So it could be: to set off on a holiday! We could
use vocabulary like: to check in, to check out of a hotel. We could use vocabulary like jobs,
employment, unemployment, qualifications, get to know people, form connections, true friendship.
All of these would be fine for an essay like this. For our essay about online learning and school
we have the prompts resources, convenience and social life. For resources we could use: wealth
of material, limitless potential. For convenience we could say: in the comfort of your own home,
any place anytime. For social life we could have: face-to-face interaction and atmosphere. All of
these would be fine. And lastly the conclusion, and the great thing about the conclusion is that
it writes itself! All the conclusion does is reference what you've said before in a logical
way and then connects it to your opinion and this is built into the structure so you don't need to
worry about how to write the conclusion! All you need to worry about is what your opinion is! Now,
the examiner does not care if you are being honest or not so just invent an opinion as long as it is
related to the question and to the prompts that you have discussed before! Understand what your
opinion is, follow the structure I gave you in my video all about essay structure and your opinion
literally writes itself! How great is that! That is great! So useful! Thank you, Toby!
Remember the structure is carefully designed to tick all the boxes of the Cambridge assessment
scale for your writing exam so if you follow it, if you plan, follow the structure, write the essay
with all of this stuff in your mind then you will get high marks! I promise! I promise! And that
is how you plan your essay for the B2 First Cambridge exam! Identify the topic, brainstorm
vocabulary related to the topic, identify what the question is, think of your third prompt,
organize your prompt so that two agree and one disagrees this gives you your paragraph order,
then brainstorm vocabulary related to each prompt and finally identify what your opinion is for
your fantastic, wonderful, magical conclusion! And then you're finished and you can write it
yeah... If you liked the video don't forget to SMASH that like button, subscribe if you
haven't already, leave a comment down below! My name is Toby and this was SMASH English...