Hi! It's Asiya and recently I've discovered something you should know
about IELTS Writing. First I noticed it in the official IELTS model answers then
got in the feedback from IELTS progress check and later got verified by former IELTS
examiners. I believe this mistake affects most Task 2 essays and
prevents many people from achieving a band 7 score. So you should definitely
know about it, and in this video I'm going to tell you what this mistake is and
show you an example of what you should do in your essay instead. I've also
prepared a PDF file with the essay for you to download. Ready? Let's get started!
okay let me give you some theory first and then I'm gonna show you an example
one of the main elements of any task 2 essay is the ability to present your
ideas if you have a look at IELTS band descriptors you will see that in order
to get a band 7+ score for your task response you need to present extend and support main
ideas if you don't do that your task response score will be stuck at a band 6
level even if your vocabulary and grammar are very good so that's a major
score loser for people with good English skills you've probably heard people
saying you should develop your ideas or you haven't developed your ideas but
that's not new what's new is that the importance of doing that is paramount
you're not gonna get a good score for your essay if you don't do that and you
need to do it in a specific IELTS way so what does it mean to develop your ideas
it's all about how you structure your essay and how you structure your body
paragraphs in particular let me show you what you should do the first sentence of
any body paragraph should give a big idea
that's the topic sentence and you're going to talk about this idea in the rest of
your body paragraph just one idea per paragraph and then later in this
paragraph you should explain your idea you should give some examples and you
should give some points to support your main idea and that would be a high
scoring body paragraph let me show you an example so I've taken a topic from
IELTS Cambridge book number 14 here it is nowadays many people choose to be
self-employed rather than work for a company or organization why might this
be the case what could be the disadvantages of being self-employed let
me show you my first body paragraph here is
the big topic sentence an increasing number of people today opt to work for
themselves instead of looking for a job because of the income and lifestyle that
self-employment may potentially provide okay I mention two reasons why people
decide to become self-employed income and lifestyle so I'm going to talk about
these two points in my body paragraph and explain them more in depth okay
let's start with the income smart people with ideas and initiative do not have to
wait for a promotion at work and are free to implement their ideas as fast as
they like while getting all the revenue their business receives for themselves
so I'm talking about the income that means that some self-employed people earn
significantly more money than those with similar experience working for a salary
and now I'm going to switch and talk about the lifestyle moreover not having
a boss means that people can choose their working hours and number of
holidays among other things not surprisingly more and more people are
leaving the safety of a salary job to become self-employed the last sentence
here rounds up the paragraph so this paragraph is 122 words long half of the
required word count that's alright because the ideas are well supported and
developed in this body paragraph so it's gonna get a high score in total my essay is
282 words long and has two more body paragraphs where I talk about
disadvantages of being self-employed so I have three body paragraphs in total
because body paragraphs are key what's less important in your essay well
your introduction it may sound bizarre but you can skip your introduction
in favour of your body paragraphs and that's exactly what I did in this essay
basically the first body paragraph I showed you is the first body paragraph but it's
also the first paragraph of my essay and that helps me to save some space and
present my ideas very well and fully develop them without making my essay very
long and you can do it I checked it with former examiners
that's all right you can check for yourself if you open IELTS Cambridge
book number 14 you find an official model answer without an introduction and
also a band 7 essay without an introduction either you just start right
from presenting your point your first view your first point and the beginning
of your first sentence should present the topic just the way I did and that's
enough of course you don't have to skip your introduction you can write it in a
traditional way that's fine too I'm not gonna read the other two body
paragraphs and the conclusion right now instead I've prepared a PDF with the
full sample answer for you to download the link is going to be available in
just a second but first I want to summarize the main point today in order
to get a band 7+ score for your task response you must present, extend
and support main ideas just the way I showed you in this video and if you want
to learn how to write band seven essays I also have online courses on task 1
and task 2 the link is in the video description box below
and now please download the sample answer the link is on the screen in the
video description box below thank you for watching me today good luck with
your preparation and your exam bye