- Hey everyone, Chris here from IELTS Advantage.
And in this video, we're gonna look at the one thing
that will improve your Task Two essays.
So if we go onto our website,
you'll find more success stories
than any other IELTS website in the world.
And all of these success stories,
so from 6.5 to about seven,
8777,
from 6.5 to about nine,
about seven,
about 6.5 to seven,
all of these people did one thing really really well.
And we're gonna share that with you today
so that you can be successful too.
So, let's have a look at what we're gonna do in this lesson.
All of those students had failed the test multiple times.
They were really struggling,
especially with IELTS tests.
Because they were making these mistakes.
So first of all, we're gonna highlight these mistakes.
And last week, we did a free course
where about 20,000 people were in there,
and we'd seen these mistakes
again and again and again and again.
We got questions about these mistakes
over and over and over again.
And none of them were focusing on this one thing
that would improve their scores.
And when they realized this,
their performance improved dramatically
and their essays improved dramatically.
So we're gonna share these big mistakes with you
so you can avoid them,
and then share the one thing.
I'm also gonna share a structure with you
that encompasses this one thing.
The one thing is not structure, by the way.
We're gonna show this to you.
And because we're feeling very generous this week,
we're gonna give you a free gift
at the end of this video if you stay with us
and also a free writing course.
Absolutely free, that you can sign up today,
that will extend and elaborate on all of the things
that we have done today.
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Okay, so the biggest mistakes
that we see people making every single day are these:
so when we were running a free course last week,
we were getting asked the same questions
over and over and over again.
Questions like, how many words in my introduction?
How many words should I put in there?
How many sentences should I have in my introduction
and on my main body part, or else my conclusion,
or my whole essay?
How many conditional should I use?
Should I use the first conditional, the second conditional,
the third conditional?
How many high-level words should I use?
Is it okay to use simple words
or should I use complex words?
Or should I band nine words?
Which tense should I use?
Should I use a passive or the active tense?
And should all my sentences be complex
or is it okay if some of them are complex
some of them are compound and some of them are simple?
So if you're asking these questions,
it's a very very very high likelihood
that you are going to fail.
And that might sound very very strange to you.
Because you think that all of these things
are really really important.
They're not, alright?
If you are focusing on
how many words are in your introduction
and how many conditionals you use
and thinking about all these different tenses
that you need to use or you think that you need to use,
is it easy to write an essay
thinking about all of these things?
Absolutely not.
It is my job to write essays.
There is no way that I could do that,
thinking of all of these things.
So number one, you're wasting your time
during your preparation,
and you're not focusing on the things that really matter,
but number two, you're going into the test thinking,
okay have I read,
have I enough sentences, enough words in this?
Paragraphs, have I used enough conditionals,
or which tense did I use?
Did I use passive uh (mumbling),
just, you're going to go crazy,
you're going to go insane.
Your writing is going to be a reflection of your thinking.
And if your thinking is very confused,
guess what your writing is gonna look like?
You're gonna be in all sorts of trouble.
So forget about all of these things
that don't really matter,
and focus on the one thing that does matter.
The one question that the examiners
really asking themselves,
when you boil it down to the absolute one question
that the examiners are asking themselves
when they're looking at your writing is
does this person know how to write an essay in English?
Okay, there's a lot more to it than that,
but if we had to boil it down to one question,
does this person know how to write an essay in English?
When you are writing,
this is what you should be thinking about.
Do I know how to write an essay in English?
How can you make yourself better at that thing?
Well, we need to ask yourself
the purpose of writing an essay,
or the purpose of writing anything.
Why do we write anything?
Think about that for a second.
Put it in the comments.
Why do we write?
Most of you who are struggling for years
to get the score that you need
never ask yourself that question.
Why do we write anything?
To clearly communicate with the reader.
What's the one thing you can do to improve your scores?
Clearly communicate with the reader.
So let's go back here
and have a look at all of these questions.
How many words should be in my introduction?
Does that help you clearly communicate with the reader, no.
How many sentences should I have?
Doesn't help you clearly communicate.
How many high-level words should I have?
Doesn't help you.
Which tenses should I use?
Doesn't help you.
Should I use passive or active?
Doesn't help you do that.
And should you use complex sentences or simple sentences?
Doesn't really help you do that.
In fact a lot of these things actually stop you
clearly communicating with the writer.
I think about it a different way.
Imagine you are writing an email in work,
in your native language.
Or you're writing a letter to someone in work,
would you ever go into that and be thinking,
I need to use the past tense and the present progressive
and the future tense,
and I need to use 17 high-level words,
and I need to use some passive and some active,
and there should be this number of paragraphs.
You would never ever ever think that.
What would you do?
You would think,
how can I just clearly communicate with this person
who's reading the email or reading the letter?
And that's the one thing that you should be doing
when you are writing your essay.
How can I take the ideas in my head,
the argument in my head,
and put it clearly onto paper
so that when the examiner is looking at it on Test day,
or after Test day and they're giving you your marks,
am I clearly communicating with them?
Do they understand what I think about this question?
So let's have a look at a structure
that will help us understand it.
So first we need
a question.
So have a look at this question:
"In recent times, young adults are spending less time
"with their families and more time with friends.
"Why has this occurred?
"Do you think parents should force their children
"to spend time at home?"
All right, if you're looking at this question
and you're thinking immediately,
how many big words do I need to use
and how many words and how many sentences
and how many different tenses?
You're not actually thinking about the question.
You're not actually thinking,
how can I clearly answer this question?
And I'm gonna give you this structure
that would help you actually do that.
So in your introduction,
you're gonna paraphrase the question,
which will allow you to demonstrate to the examiner
that you've understood the question
and you know how to paraphrase.
Outline answers to both questions.
Again, you're making it easy for the examiner
to look at your writing and understand exactly
what your argument is gonna be,
what your answers to both questions are going to be.
Main body paragraph one,
you're gonna answer the first question,
you're gonna have a topic sentence,
this is my answer to the first question,
here's why I think it,
here's evidence to support my point of view.
Extremely clear, extremely easy to write,
and easy for the examiner to understand.
Main body paragraph two,
you're gonna do the same thing,
but you're gonna answer the second question.
Conclusion, you're gonna summarize
answers to both questions.
So this introduction, this main body paragraph,
this main body paragraph, this conclusion,
and this whole structure,
is just geared to making it easy for you
and easy for the examiner.
And if you do both of those things,
you're going to improve your score.
And if you focused on that one thing,
how can I just clearly communicate
the answers to both of those questions,
that one question, it's a double question,
then you're gonna do very very well.
Grammar is important, vocabulary is important,
coherence and cohesion, task response;
they're all really really important.
But if you focus on that one thing,
your grammar is going to improve.
You're not gonna try and use fancy grammar
that you don't know how to use.
You're gonna focus on using grammar
that helps you answer the question clearly.
Same with vocabulary, same with coherence and cohesion,
same with task response.
You're just going to focus on
answering the question clearly.
So if we look at that again,
try and use this approach.
Abandon, forget about all of those other things,
and just think, if I was answering this question,
how can I clearly communicate with the examiner,
writing an essay that is as clear
and as easy to understand as possible?
So, your free gift.
Write your essay in the comments below.
So in the comment section below, write your essay,
type it out, and then what I'll do for you,
is we will send you a free PDF
with a step-by-step checklist
that you can apply to your essay
to make sure that it is as good as it can be,
and also a sample answer for you to compare.
So if you want that free PDF
with a complete checklist and the sample answer,
then write your essay, put it in the comments below,
and we will be in touch to send this PDF to you.
That is just a quick video.
You know it's like a 10 minute video.
You're probably going to be a little bit lost at this point
and have a lot of other questions
and need some more detail on
all of the things we've talked about.
If you have any more questions and you want extra help,
there is a free course.
Click the link in the description below,
it's either above or below this video,
or linked in this video,
you'll be able to find it, don't worry.
Click the link and you can immediately join our free course,
IELTS Essay Builder,
that will take you through all of this
in an incredible amount of detail,
and improve your IELTS essay writing capability.
All right?
So, also last but not least,
if you need help with anything else,
feel free to get in touch with us.
Chris@IELTSadvantage.com is my personal email.
Either myself or one of my team will respond to you.
We answer every single email that comes through.
So if you need extra help,
feel free to do that.
Hope you enjoyed the video,
let us know in the comments below,
and subscribe for future videos.
Thank you, bye bye.