hi guys it's asiya and today let's talk about the latest trends in the ielts exams
there are a few interesting things happening at the moment
particularly there is one in ielts writing task 2 that you should definitely know about
and also cambridge english released the latest official practice tests number 16 so let's have
a look into them too before we begin i just want to make a little disclaimer this is not official
information that's what i think is happening and i draw my conclusions from the exams i
take from reports of other candidates and from the official practice tests okay now let's get started
let's begin with ielts writing it seems that's where we need all the help we can possibly get
and the first task first is different for academic and general training students so let's
talk about academic writing task one here you may get charts tables diagrams or maps so i
asked people to vote and say which type of task they had in their recent exams
and the results are quite clear 45 percent of people voted for a mix of charts and tables
indeed that's what i had in my recent exam too i had two charts and one little table
the second most popular type of task is charts so that may be one chart perhaps a bar graph or a
line chart or several pie charts or a combination of both so all that belongs here and then
diagrams maps and tables were less popular but things may be about change because in the latest
practice test book two tasks are diagrams one is maps and one is charts there are no tables there
in previous books we saw many more charts and we saw more charts in real exams so maybe it's
a thing now that we may see more diagrams and maps in future exams too in any case you should prepare
yourself for all types of tasks in ielts general training the first task is a letter and you may
get an informal a semi-formal or a formal letter and you should be able to determine which type of
letter you need to write and choose the correct tone that's very important for a high score and
it seems that all three types are used in exams so you should prepare yourself for all three of them
now let's talk about the second task it's very similar in academic and general training exams
so we're gonna talk about all of them together and i try to analyze what kind of tasks people get and
i think here we can talk about types of topics and types of questions so let me explain first of all
let's talk about topics i think we can split all of them into two broad categories the first is
science and technology so these topics are more popular in academic exams
but some general training students get them too so here are a few examples driverless cars
cycling versus driving high consumption of sugar single-use plastic e-books versus paper books
space exploration uh people becoming famous by the internet social media topics fake news and
so on the second category is social topics which are mainly used in general training exams but
you may also get one in an academic exam i got one in the last exam i took
so for example children show less respect for doubts today than they did in the past or children
have more freedom today than in the past or their retirement age is increasing should children study
all the subjects at school or should they only study subjects they're interested in
why countries are becoming more similar today or is it a good thing that they are becoming
more similar so these are categories of topics now let's talk about the types of tasks types of
tasks too traditionally there are five of them two views in your opinion agree disagree advantages
disadvantages causes of a problem and solutions and two direct questions and in the past they
were all used relatively equally at least there was no clear trend but it seems that these days
a lot of students report tasks with two direct questions and indeed in the latest practice tests
we have eight new practice tests and five of them have two direct questions if you're not familiar
with this type of task it sounds something like this why is this is it a positive or a negative
development you see you have two questions and this particular example has two parts why
or reasons and then is it a positive or a negative development so you need to say what you think
and perhaps you will have two body paragraphs in your essay but some questions have three parts
here is an example what might be the reasons what are the advantages and disadvantages
so the first question asks about reasons and also please note that it's plural reasons
so you need to give at least two so that's one part but then you need to talk about advantages
and disadvantages so you have three parts and perhaps you will have three body paragraphs in
your essay here is another example what damage does plastic do to the environment what can be
done by governments and individuals to solve this problem so the first part is about the damage
and then what can be done by governments in individuals what can be done this is a question
about solutions but you need to offer some solutions for governments and for individuals
because the question mentions them you must address both in your answer so again perhaps you
will have three body paragraphs in your essay one of the things i really like about cambridge books
is that you have some sample writing answers and you see band score and comments from the examiner
i was hoping to see some high scoring answers but it seems that we were only given
two or three bands seven answers and one been eight no bad nine at all
most of them are band five or six so they can take quite a lot of mistakes
but you can still learn a lot some comments are really really useful i can show you a couple
for example you have a question like this what are the causes of this and
you see the word causes it's plural so that means that you need to offer several causes
and indeed it's written it is important for test takers to notice if more than one example
is required for each bullet point for example problems because if only one is provided this is
not a complete response to the question indeed if you don't address all parts of the task you will
harm your task achievement score if that's general training task 1 or task response score in task 2
so be careful that's an easy mistake to make even if your english skills are very good here
is another lesson i'm gonna read you a paragraph from my sample essay the language is quite simple
but you think about the linking words okay here it is first of all it is important to say that
marketing and advertising can make a difference in a competitive system furthermore companies
need to show that their new product is better than the previous ones or those from rival companies
thirdly this forces companies to innovate and improve their products for example apple brings a
new iphone almost every year or inventing it each time so what about these linking words were they
used correctly do you like this paragraph do you think it's a high scoring paragraph
here is what the examiner said if cohesive devices are placed at the beginning of each sentence they
seem as mechanical and indeed every sentence is similar first of all to the furthermore
and so on so avoid doing that you know i've read all the comments in all of the books and i can say
that i've learned a lot the only thing is that this knowledge is not systematized you have to
pick pieces and then fit them together if you want to learn step by step then please check
out my online courses because there is a system there and you will learn how to meet each band 7
requirement step by step and you will prepare in less time and these courses will help you achieve
a higher score i will link them in the description box below if you're interested please check them
out speaking about ielts listening and reading i haven't noticed any major changes it seems
that each test contains a regular combination of tasks but still tests change year on year
and you should try to use the latest tests in your preparation and you should use the
official test so these are the latest official tests they are created by cambridge english
the same organization that creates all the papers for ielts exams and whether you take ielts from
british council or from idp it doesn't matter the test itself is written by cambridge english
and writing a few questions is not as easy as it may seem a lot of work goes into ensuring that
the difficulty of each test is the same and third party organizations just can't ensure that that's
why you should practice using their facial tests a great thing is that these books also include
explanations to each answer you can download them online and if you are not sure why your
answer is incorrect you can go to this pdf document and find out in ielts speaking
many topics are used over and over again and the important thing is to practice your answers
but new topics are also been added regularly i try to track what kind of questions students get
and publish videos with sample answers to the most difficult ones so i'm releasing a new video
next week you can also download our pdf guide with recent ielts writing and speaking topics
it's available on our telegram channel and i will link it in the description box below
if you're not there yet please join our community
and thank you so much for watching me today good luck with your preparation and your exam bye