IELTS Writing Task 2 explained hi there my name's Ben Worthington in this video I will
show you my 7-step CTR method for writing strong clear coherent band 9 essays that score
high on the task response let's jump straight into it so step number 1 is to classify the
question you probably know in IELTS there are 5 types of IELTS questions now it's fundamental
that you identify which question you have to answer this is really important because
if you mess up at this point then you're going to be going way off track later on in your
essay so this is why it's really important to get it crystal clear before moving to the
next step it's really important with this step I cannot emphasize enough how important
this is this is why in my online course we have a full exercise developed towards training
the student into identifying a question and then moving on to the next stage step 2 assign
tasks to each body paragraph here we can write 3 body paragraphs and do the 5-paragraph model
or we can do 2 body paragraphs and write the 4-paragraph model I prefer the 4-paragraph
model and I always have the reason is it’s because in the IELTS exam you do not have
a lot of time and to develop a strong coherent convincing argument that strengthens your
claim that’s got evidence that’s got examples you need to be writing quite a lot so if you
spread that time over 3 paragraphs you're only going to get 3 thin paragraphs whereas
if you focus that time and build 2 strong body paragraphs that present your case very
convincingly then you're one step closer to convincing the examiner and plus your points
are going to be much clearer which all goes back to cohesion and coherence now let's have
a look at a typical Task 2 question we're going to focus on the infamous question type
all IELTS students love discuss both views and give your opinion imagine we get this
beautiful question some people think parents are responsible for transporting their children
to school others think it is the government's responsibility discuss both views and give
your opinion so here we've identified quite quickly and easily what type of question we
are going to write now next stage is to assign tasks for each paragraph here this will probably
be my body paragraph number 1 and this will probably be my body paragraph number 2 and
it's here so I split it up now I know exactly what each body paragraph is going to be about
and because I have it crystal clear in my mind it's going to make it much easier to
write which will make it much easier to read so finally we brainstorm for ideas step 3
brainstorming for ideas now a lot of IELTS teachers will say that you read the question
identify the keywords and then brainstorm for ideas this is terrible terrible advice
setting you up for a miserable failure the reason is because back in 2014 I used to do
the exact same process but I quickly realized that I would generate lots of ideas but I
would only use half of the ideas in the essay and the reason was was because I was generating
ideas on the topic which is okay but I needed to generate ideas related to the topic and
the specific task this is why it's very important to extract from the question your key paragraph
ideas or your key paragraph idea which is the text from the question and then generate
your ideas on this specific idea and keep in mind the actual task so is it a 2-question
IELTS question or is it the discuss both sides and give your opinion let's jump into a real
question that's being – that was seen on the exam recently and we’ll develop this
process further here we have a quick brainstorm of ideas as I said before we have cut up the
question and allocated each part of the question to a certain paragraph this makes sure that
we're going to get full points for task response now we've generated quite a lot of ideas that
are very specific to this paragraph in this case as you can see my position my position
for generating my ideas comes directly from the question because it says discuss both
views this will be viewpoint number 1 and this is viewpoint number 2 and some good questions
to ask yourself when you're generating ideas is parents are responsible for school transport
ask yourself why are they response okay and that's going to give us the answer they're
responsible because it stops bullying they may live in a remote area where the school
bus can't get to and another way is you could say how are they responsible and each response
with each question will push you to developing clearer more coherent paragraphs now after
we've got these ideas the magic really happens let's go to step number 4 step number 4 is
organizing your ideas okay so as I said before your position in this case has to be that
of the question which is parents responsible for school transport as I said here we've
developed it a little bit further with our ideas you can see I've dropped a few ideas
by the wayside because I just wanted to focus on this specific part of the paragraph so
I just narrowed it down to one or two ideas I've put them into more coherent sentences
just for my notes and I decided that it's safer for children it's easier the parents
got more flexibility so this is why they should do it now I also need to give an example I
need to really develop my argument in favor of this point of view so I need to give evidence
and this will help me convey a strong and convincing argument and if it's strong and
convincing it's usually clearer to read which means it's clearer so it's usually clearer
to write which means it's clearer to read so you're doing the examiner a favor in the
sentence guide in the online course I have we go into this in much more detail and it's
very easy it's like a 3-step process and you've actually got the sentence structures you need
in order to drop your ideas in it's really really helpful now let's move on to step number
5 now because we know exactly what we're going to write for our body paragraphs we can focus
now on our introductions and conclusions and we're going to do a very similar process we're
going to plan what we'll write for the introduction and what we’ll write for the conclusion
but now it's much easier because we've got a very good idea about what's going in our
body paragraphs and this is another reason why this CTR method is really really strong
for cohesion and coherence because we've identified the ideas that we'll be writing about in our
body paragraph we've organized paragraphs around these but now we're also going to use
these ideas in our introduction and our conclusion then step 6 all we have to do is transfer
these notes into a strong coherent essay which is just basically a case of writing up and
transferring from here to there writing up and just following the plan that you have
made before here's a very important tip a very useful tip if a new idea pops into your
mind generally speaking ignore it keep to this strong coherent plan that you've already
developed and that you've already checked the task response and it already flows and
you've really organized it well do not risk popping another idea into your paragraph unless
you're absolutely certain it can work but more often than not it's usually better to
stick to the plan that you've already written and also this new idea will cost you time
and maybe you have to reorganize some sentences some ideas to really make it cohesive so at
this point we do not want creativity we just want to transfer it and write it now final
step stage 7 or step 7 what you need to do now you've finished writing and hopefully
you've got five minutes left check for mistakes this is really important hopefully as well
during your preparation you were getting feedback on your essays we can do this online at ieltspodcast.com
go there and you can get your essay corrected get feedback see where you're making mistakes
and it's really important that you get professional expert feedback because not only are you going
to improve faster but going back to step 7 when we're checking for mistakes you're going
to know what mistakes you have made in the past so if you were smart and got your essay
corrected then you might realize that you make mistakes with articles the use of articles
or the use of prepositions now what you do is go through your essay and look for articles
and prepositions and try and self-correct them if you are self-correcting them the examiner
doesn't have to and obviously you're going to score higher also we're avoiding throwing
away silly points -- we're avoiding making silly mistakes and we're avoiding throwing
away valuable points so here's a brief summary about what we've just covered step 1 identify
the type of question step 2 assign tasks for each paragraph step 3 brainstorm for ideas
step 4 organize the ideas into coherent paragraphs step 5 plan your introduction and your conclusion
step 6 write it all up no new ideas transfer from a bundle of notes into a strong cohesive
coherent essay and then the final step check for errors so that's the 7-step CTR method
for writing strong band 9 essays now if you need more help or you need more feedback then
come and visit us at ieltspodcast.com if you like this video make a comment on which step
helps you the most