Hi everyone! I'm Teacher Luke an expert Duolingo English Test teacher,
and this is my second video on the writing for 50 words or the writing about a topic question type.
Like I said this is my second video on this question type, so if you haven't seen my first one
yet I highly recommend you do so. You can click this card here. In the first video I give you some
simple tips on how to organize an answer, and then I show you a sample answer for an "argumentative"
writing prompt. In this video, we're going to look at another one of the writing questions
the "recount". So just in case you don't remember or you're new, let's take a look
at the different styles of writing questions that the Duolingo English Test ask you.
So when you go to the Duolingo English Test website you can find this information. It
shows the types of writing they could ask you to do when you do the test. So there are three
different styles, we have the "describe", the "recount", or the "make an argument".
The recount, which we'll talk about today, is all about talking about your own experiences.
Like I said in my first writing video I gave an example answer of the argumentative writing,
so how to make an argument paragraph-- the link is in the description below. So yes, in this video
we're going to talk about the "recount" I'm going to give you some quick tips on how to structure
your recount answer and then I'll show you a sample answer, and we'll analyze it together.
But before we start that, if you think this video is helpful for you please give it a thumbs up and
subscribe to my channel. It really does help me a lot! So let's take a look at the scoring criteria
first. This is really important to know because you need to know what you're being assessed on.
That way you can tailor your studies to the criteria so let's take a look at that now.
So this writing criteria is the same for both of the writing tasks: this one the
50 words writing and also the describe an image writing task. The criteria is exactly the same,
so let's check that quickly now. The first point is grammatical accuracy and complexity.
Grammatical accuracy refers to the correctness of your sentences in terms of grammar when you're
writing. So basically are you able to write error-free sentences. And complexity refers
to the type of grammar you're using. Are you just using simple sentences
or are you using a mixture of simple and complex sentences, this is what we mean by complexity.
Next one we have lexical sophistication and diversity. This simply refers to your vocabulary.
So basically are you using the correct words to represent your ideas, and are you using a
mixture of vocabulary? It's important that you don't repeat the same words over and over again
because that is not diverse. You want to be able to show diversity through your vocabulary. The
third point is task relevance basically did you answer the question. So I see a lot of students
when they do this writing task they don't actually answer the question, instead they write something
loosely related to the topic but it doesn't really answer the question. If you do that you will lose
points for task relevance. Next one is length. so of course for this task you need to write at
least 50 words; however, I recommend that you try to write more probably around 100 to 150 words.
And lastly we have fluency. In writing fluency is also known as cohesion. Do your ideas
link smoothly and does your paragraph as a whole look like one solid paragraph rather
than a mixture of individual sentences. This is what we mean by fluency in writing.
Okay so that's the criteria for the writing assignments on the Duolingo English Test
there is a lot to consider here. However, I think it's quite fair because in order to be able to
write a good paragraph in English you need to be able to do all of those things very well and
it's also the same criteria on the IELTS and TOFEL exams, so it really does test your English writing
skills fully. Okay so now let's take a look at how you can organize your recount paragraph.
so very similar to the argumentative style your paragraph should include these three important
things a topic sentence supporting sentences and of course you need a concluding sentence
so basically every type of academic or formal paragraph you write in english should include
the same elements topic sentence support in sentences and a concluding sentence
this is pretty standard and usually mandatory for formal styles of writing like you will do
in this Duolingo English Test but what is a topic sentence how can you write support in
sentences and also how can you do a concluding sentence let's now take a look at an example
from the Duolingo practice test i'll show you how i planned my answer and then i'll show you how i
actually wrote my answer out and we can analyze that together so let's take a look at that now
so this is one of the recount questions on the Duolingo English practice test
and it goes like this films can tell us a lot about the country where they were made what
have you learned about another country from watching its movies
so right away you can tell that this is a recount because it's asking you to talk about your
own experiences in this case your own experience watching foreign movies and what you've learned
about a country from those movies it's not asking you to describe the movies
and it's not asking you to make an argument for or against the movies it's just asking you to
talk about your experience so let me show you how i planned my answer for this question type
okay so first things first right away i realized that this question is asking me about my own
experience so i have to write about my experience okay so of course on the Duolingo English Test we
only have five minutes to do this so for planning you need to start thinking quickly so i know it's
about my own experience and now i have to pick a country i want to talk about so i'll choose korea
because i've watched a lot of korean movies and i think i've learned a lot about korean culture from
those movies i want to try to think of at least two things i've learned because you have to write
over 50 words and writing 50 words about one idea might be a bit tricky okay so quickly two things
okay i learned about korean eating culture i also learned a lot about korean language
from the movies okay next point very quickly do i have some examples to back up my ideas yes i do i
can think of some examples so that's good and then lastly i have to think about my structure
so how so how am i going to organize my paragraph so just like we talked about i'm going to start
with a topic sentence and then i'm going to write two supporting ideas with support in sentences and
lastly a concluding sentence okay so i've done the planning in my head so remember on the Duolingo
English Test we only have five minutes to do this writing task so you gotta do this really quickly
i recommend you spend about 20 seconds maybe 30 seconds planning but no more than that if you
spend more time than that then you won't have time to actually write out your whole answer
and remember when you do your planning it's gonna be in your head don't say your answers out loud
because that's against the duolingo test rules and definitely don't write them down on a piece
of paper that's for sure against the rules so you have to do all the planning in your head
okay so my planning is done let me now show you my answer so this was my first sentence
i am particularly fond of korean movies and i have learned so many aspects of korean culture
from watching its movies this is what we call a topic sentence the topic sentence here kind
of paraphrases the question and indicates what i'm gonna write about next which is what i have
learned myself from korean movies so this would be a good topic sentence for a recount paragraph
then i'll move on to my supporting idea number one which is one of the most interesting things that i
have learned is about korean eating customs when dining in korea it's commonplace to share food
so this is my supporting idea one this is directly related to the topic sentence because it talks
about one thing i have learned about career from watching korean movies it's also important to
include transition phrases when you're jumping from topic sentence to support in sentence one
my transition phrase here was one of the most interesting things that i've learned this
transition phrase indicates to the reader that i'm now going to talk about my supporting ideas
and of course i will add an example to this idea to back it up you want to include examples
whenever you can so i use the phrase for example this is a simple one you can use when you're
going to talk about an example so for example at a restaurant koreans usually order a large
amount of food that is shared among all guests rather than each person ordering their own dish
which is typical in western countries so the sentence in green is the example which backs
up my supporting idea number one and at the end i wrapped up my supporting idea number one with kind
of a summarized sentence eating the korean way means eating from the same bowl since sharing is
a big part of their culture and this is enough for one idea remember in the duolingo english test you
only have five minutes so you can't be writing lots and lots of examples instead i recommend
that you write one idea provide one example and then wrap up your idea with a summarizing sentence
after you've finished supporting idea number one you should move on to supporting idea number two
my example answer goes like this another useful thing i have learned is the korean language again
i used a signal phrase here another useful thing i have learnt this signals to the reader that
i'm moving on to a new idea and of course just like in supporting idea number one i provide an
example even though i am studying korean at a college watching korean movies has taught me a
lot of spoken idioms and slang expressions that do not appear in textbooks this is an example and i
used a contrasting sentence structure even though so i'm contrasting studying korean at a college
and studying through korean movies and what i have learned differently from those movies
which were spoken idioms and slang expressions and just like in my supporting idea number one i
wrapped up this idea with a summary of sorts in this case it was a result this has helped me to
expand my knowledge of spoken korean and made me sound more fluent of course i could write
a lot more here if i had more time but i only have five minutes and i think this is enough
for the Duolingo English Test lastly it is important to write a concluding sentence
mine is to sum up from my experience watching foreign movies can be a fantastic source of
education as well as entertainment and the same as all the other sections i include a
transition word here to show that i'm going to conclude my paragraph i used to sum up which of
course is a concluding transition phrase it shows the reader that i'm about to write my
conclusion so it's important to include these transition phrases here's the example in full
it's a bit small on this screen i know but i will write it in the description below and you can
read it from there the word count for this was 175 words a lot of students ask me whether they should
write their answer as one full paragraph like i have here or separate it into small paragraphs
so this is a really common question i get asked and to be honest i don't think it's very important
whether you write it as one paragraph or as separate smaller paragraphs i think the important
thing is that you follow the criteria that the Duolingo English Test team set for us remember
grammatical accuracy and complexity lexical sophistication and diversity task relevance
length and fluency i think those are much more important things to be concerned about however
if you want my opinion only my opinion i think writing as one paragraph is a bit better because
you only have five minutes and usually when you only have five minutes to do a writing task you're
only expected to write one paragraph and that's it for this video i hope this was helpful remember
my full answer is below in the description so definitely go and read and study that and
that's it thanks for watching this video all the way to the end and i'll see you next time bye