A 5-Minute Tutorial on How To Start IELTS Writing Task 2
Hello.
My name is Ben.
Ben Worthington from IELTS Podcast and probably a few other English websites, if you recognize
my voice.
In this video, we're going to look at the IELTS Writing Task 2.
It's quite simple and we'll go straight to it.
Let's go.
So what you need to do is try to get used to extracting 2 ideas.
2 positions from the question.
Once you have these 2 positions, building the essay becomes a lot easier.
It becomes a simple process.
Let me give you an example.
"The internet has had a significant influence on the culture of many societies."
"To what extent would you say that the internet has positively or negatively affected the
development of your society?"
Very typical IELTS question.
What the first thing we do is extract 2 points.
We're answering the question and we're extracting 2 points.
I would say that:
Reason 1.
Communication cost have fallen dramatically.
Skype, Messenger, What's app, all the rest.
Reason 2.
It's being a massive game-changer in certain sectors, especially in the retail book shops.
For example, Amazon.
We've got 2 positions/ 2 points.
This is a fundamental skill to have.
We're going to look at it one more time just so you'd completely understand it.
Another question:
"The idea of having one job is becoming old fashioned."
"The new fashion is to have several jobs or ways of earning money."
"To what extent do you agree or disagree?"
Can you see how we have two views here in the question?
Then a "To what extent do you agree/disagree?"
This can be quite confusing.
And this disrupts our effort to get the 2 simple points.
So what we need to do is just agree with both.
We need to extract it and we need to say:
"One job is old-fashioned."
"Several jobs are the norm."
"To conclude, my opinion is in favor of the new trend."
Just to put our opinion at the end there.
Now, another question here, same type/similar type:
"Because of the new subjects such as computer programming studies, numerous education centres
have dropped music from the curriculum."
Once again we got 2 positions.
"School is dropping music."
Explain why.
Because of new technology, computer programming, blah, blah, blah.
"Music is important for children because..."
Now there's lots of types of questions.
So if you want to be 100% certain that you get position 1 and position 2 under control,
go to IELTS Podcast and download the sentence guide.
We have 2 ideas.
Now we can build a simple essay around these two points.
To start with, the essay will be basic.
This is a skeleton essay.
And then later, we put on the muscles,
we put on the flesh,
and we fill it out,
and we get something that is much more acceptable.
But to start with, we need the basic structure.
So to summarize:
We extract 2 ideas, and each idea is going to be the basis of each paragraph.
Getting P1 and P2 is fundamental.
That's why in the sentence guide, we're going to it into massive detail.
'Cause there's different types of questions and it can get a little bit tricky.
And also, if you start the essay off wrong, you're going to finish wrong as well.
So it's crucial.
It's critical to get P1 and P2 under control.
With these ideas, we can drop them into the skeleton essay plan.
The essay plan is an outline of each sentence we will write.
The introduction looks like this.
We'll use the acronym GOT.
So we'll start of with sentence 1 (General sentence).
Then we'll place our Opinion for the second sentence.
And then for the third sentence, we'll just use a universal one.
This is especially useful for students who struggle writing.
And they could put a grammatically perfect sentence in there.
So here, we've got the same question.
And in the next video, we'll go and apply the acronym and I'll show you how to do it.
So click on the next video.