Hi, everyone. I'm Jade. What we're talking about today is writing a conclusion
for an IELTS exam or a CAE exam, so I'm going to give you two ways to write conclusions so
that when you get to the end, you don't just sort of put a full stop that doesn't really
say anything extra, that doesn't feel like a conclusion. Because when you write a conclusion,
a good conclusion has a different tone, there's something that feels finished about it. And
more generally, your conclusion should be your last chance to impress, to show that
examiner all that English that you know and how fluent you are when you're writing in
English, and you should leave the reader with an additional thought in the end, ideally,
when you're writing a conclusion. So let's look at a typical IELTS kind of question.
"Some people think that parents should teach their children to be good members of society.
However, others believe school is the best place to learn this."
And then the IELTS question would say: "Share your experience, and give reasons for your answers."
So let's imagine that you've already written your essay.
So, how do you begin your conclusion? The... The
first way I'm going to tell you, I'm going to call it the "As I have discussed" conclusion,
and there are three parts to writing this conclusion. And I'm giving you the structure
so that you can see how you can put a conclusion together just by putting different pieces
in there. And now, this is... This is great for an IELTS essay. It's not a super imaginative
kind of conclusion that would be great at university, but for IELTS, it's...
It's good for IELTS.
So, here are the three parts for this conclusion:
"As I have discussed"; then:
"However" sentence with "I" or, you know, using your subjectivity, basically;
and then making a moral or social observation in the first conditional.
So let's have a look. So, "As I have discussed", what
we're doing is we're just taking that phrase, basically, and this shows the tone... This
establishes the tone of conclusion: "As I have discussed". You're basically saying:
"Well, I already told you all of this, but now I'm summarizing."
"As I have discussed, there are advantages and disadvantages to the question."
I've shown both sides of the argument. You could just learn that, you could learn that whole phrase
to begin a conclusion. What do you follow it with?
You follow it with a "However" sentence.
So, there may be advantages and disadvantages, but there's a catch.
"However, I think parents should be responsible for teaching children to be good members of society."
So this is you saying: "Yeah, I see both sides.
This is good about it, that's good about the other side.
But, you know, for me and in my opinion",
because now we're using your subjectivity
by saying: "I think", you can... You can finally make your position clear,
make your position known. Maybe in the rest of the essay, this is discursive... This is a discursive essay.
You've been showing both sides of the argument. But if you write your essay in a way where
you don't use: "I think", "I believe" in the rest of the essay before, it can be quite
powerful just to use "I think" once at the end in your conclusion.
So, again: "However, I think parents should be responsible for teaching children to be
good members of society."
That bit's done. What do we do next?
Well, sometimes people like to end essays by giving a grand statement about morals and the world,
so you can also do this in your IELTS exam. And this is what I'm talking about when I say:
"Make a moral or social observation" to do with the question, of course, not just the general one.
So here's an example:
"If children are taught to be good members of society,
the world will be a better place."
So, it's in the first conditional, because we've got "if", then
we've got the past simple, followed by a clause with "will".
You can use that conditional structure in your essay, in your conclusion.
I think that's good because you're showing
the examiner you know how to write conditionals. So, because these essays are marked on your
style, but also your grammar when you're writing English, displaying a range of structures,
it's good to write this moral... Moral or social observation in the conditional. So,
that was the first way you can write a conclusion. When we come back, I'm going to show you the
second way you can write a conclusion for IELTS or CAE.
Let's have a look at the second way to write a conclusion for your IELTS or a similar discursive
essay. So, in this conclusion, we have a different structure to follow.
First of all, you can make a subjective opinion statement. What do I mean by "subjective"?
That basically means using "I". As I mentioned, you should not really use:
"I think", "I think", "I think"
all the way through your essay, but it's okay to use it just in the conclusion for impact.
Then you include the sentence or statement with:
"The most important reason is", blah, blah, blah.
And then, again, you make a moral or social observation. And this time, if you
want, you can use a second conditional, and I'll show you. So, let's have a look.
A subjective opinion statement:
"I think parents should teach their children to be good members of society."
So we're just taking...
We're taking...
You know, there are two sides to this question. There's:
"Parents should teach their children to be good members of society",
and there's: "School should teach children to be good members of society",
so now you just show us what you think.
"I think parents should teach their children to be good members of society."
That bit's done.
Now we need to do the statement with the most important reason. So you've already
given your reasons for this in the main body of your essay. Now you just elaborate and
tell us a little bit more about which reason you think is the most persuasive reason or
the most important reason. For example:
"The most important reason is because parents can share their life experience
with their children."
There, I'm implying that maybe school teachers can't do this.
This bit's done.
And then, again, a moral or social observation.
We're using the second conditional this time, and we use the second conditional to talk about imagined situations,
so that means hypothetical situations. And it's different because we are using "would",
and we're using the bare infinitive of the verb, and in the first clause
we're using past simple.
So let's... Let's read that last one:
"If schools were to teach this"
-teach children how to be good members of society-
"the role of the family would be destroyed."
So that's quite moral, quite a strong opinion to leave your essay with, and it does establish that:
"I'm finished now. My very important essay is complete."
So, there are two ways of writing your conclusions for IELTS, CAE, or a similar discursive essay.
There are many more imaginative ways to write essays; this is not a fixed rule.
What can you take from this? You can take some phrases,
you can start to think about the structure
of your conclusion that you're writing, and hopefully when you get there in your exam,
you won't get stuck in your conclusion, and you won't just rewrite the answer.
You'll have something a little bit different to say, also something that displays a little bit
of clever grammar, like a second conditional in your essay.
So, yup, if you did like this lesson, please subscribe here on my engVid channel.
Also you can do a quiz on this, so you can take this lesson a little bit further,
do a little bit of extra work on it.
Plus you can subscribe on my personal channel, because I've got two channels.
So, yep, I really do wish you luck on those exams, but I'm going now.
[Banging noise]
[Laughter]
Neigh.