In this video we are going to look at some words that you can use in your IELTS Writing
and then we are going to look at a very useful technique that will stylistically improve
your writing and it's a really good technique it's really valuable because not even native
English speakers writers know how to use this technique not always I mean if you're in the
writing profession you probably will know but it's a technique that when you read it
when you see it you’re like ahh okay but it's really easy to implement so I’m going
to do a screen share now and then we will go straight into let's see I have to get to
your window and then we'll jump straight into it okay so let’s see present to everybody
that's the schedule but I'll switch it now so here we are Words for IELTS Writing now
the first word I want to share with you let’s move that down there so you’re not jumping
ahead the first word I want to share with you there is pivotal okay and especially pivotal
role because a pivotal role when we use them together as a collocation it sounds more natural
and it has a similar -- also that's what I wanted to say it sounds more natural and plus
there's less likely you make a grammar mistake because they're both together and therefore
you know you've just increased the chances of -- or reduced the chances of creating a
grammar mistake because maybe there's 9 words in a sentence now you've got 2 of those words
grammatically perfect together so just small details now it means it's something similar
to important pivotal and especially if we say pivotal role we can use it with regards
to people or places which you know it's a topic that we can see quite frequently on
the IELTS papers so let's just have a look at how we use this first of all let's just
have a look at this question this is a recent question seen on a recent IELTS exam and so
it's highly relevant and we're talking about women equality and you know equality between
the genders equality for men and women so immediately you can see I split the question
into two parts and I've allocated a paragraph to each part of the sentence this way I know
I'm going to get more -- not more points but full points regarding task response because
I'm not forgetting a certain part of the question let's go into it so countless women throughout
history have served pivotal roles in the shaping of societies so I could say have played important
roles which is not too bad okay but pivotal roles means like very important that they
manage to pivot or to steer something in a society especially the shaping of society
so this is why it's a really useful term to use and we could say London has had a pivotal
role in the shaping of England yeah CO2 brings -- climate change has played a pivotal role
in the shaping of the 21st century thinking you see so it’s quite versatile and it's
a good replacement for something that we'll be using quite frequently which is important
and the reason why we wanted to switch out important is because if we use it three or
four times the second third fourth time we're not going to get any points whereas if we
use a wider range and wider lexical resource a wider range of vocabulary then there's more
chance we're going to score higher also we're not repeating the terms and also it sounds
more sophisticated and it's less common and this is exactly what it says on the band descriptors
the official band descriptors it says using less common vocabulary and pivotal roles is
definitely part of that so let's move on to the next section which the next section and
the next word which is necessitating okay so when we're saying necessitating it's -- we
can almost interchange it with needing okay and once again it's a very similar issue to
what we just mentioned before if we can construct a sentence with needing and then interchange
it with necessitating we've upgraded the lexical resource and also personally I think needing
is much easier to construct it’s much easier to construct a sentence with needing than
it is necessitating so first construct the sentence with needing and then go back and
interchange it with necessitating but very importantly as well is to pay attention to
using these words that I'm giving you now to use them in context if we don't use them
in context we're going to be losing points so pay -- so basically practice with these
get some feedback on your essay write out 10 sentences with these phrases use the advice
that I gave you about interchanging it with like less or with more common vocabulary and
get some feedback otherwise you're not going to know whether you're improving or not you
can get feedback at ieltspodcast.com it's an essay correction section there it's 24
hours so it's quite fast as well let's move on now here the final one is counterparts
now counterparts is another word for colleagues for your colleagues or for your rivals or
for your fellow competitors and it's very useful in this in IELTS essay in your IELTS
essay because it's interchangeable not necessary it's interchangeable but you can use it if
you use it it's forcing you to make a comparison and when we're making comparisons we're using
higher-level vocabulary okay so we can see here so as to reach similar levels of strength
as the male counterparts here we've just made a comparison and we would have picked a point
for grammatical range and accuracy okay whereby female soldiers undergo brutal sports regimes
so as to reach similar levels of strength as their male counterparts and the good thing
about this is that counterparts is another one of those words that it's quite easy to
incorporate into your essay because even if you've got an essay about pollution we can
talk about scientists and we could say something like numerous scientists and their counterparts
have – that which basically means in this context they're colleagues have for decades
contended the effects of CO2 on the atmosphere just an example sentence there so it's relatively
easy once you get familiar with it and once you are aware of the ease of incorporating
this word into your essay now moving on we're going to go to the final and we’re going
to go to the final part let's just see where we are where is it sorry just give me 2 seconds
got you all right sorry about that I was just wondering which window has been shared okay
so we are where I thought we were that's fantastic it was very relieving as well so now what
we're going to do is we're going to look at stylistic improvements called parallelism
and the best way to describe this okay is to give you an example well to give you two
examples or a few examples the good and then the bad so let's go as you can see I've modified
the sentence from the essay and we're talking about and I'll start anyway although traditionally
roles such as security or positions necessitating aggression have often gone to men there's
no scientific literature or precedent stating women are less capable now this is grammatically
fine and reads okay and we've got a conjunction at the beginning we've got some higher-level
vocabulary there it's good now what I'm recommending in this video is we're not correcting but
we are improving our writing capabilities and as I said at the beginning this is something
that native English speakers and writers are not usually aware of it comes from the writing
profession so here we've got or positions necessitating aggression it's fine let's make
it better how can we make it sound better well we can chop these up okay and we can
make it into a list of three which always sounds better than a list of two all right
although traditionally roles such as positions necessitating aggression strength or fitness
have often gone to men there's no scientific literature so it's here it's one two three
and all these qualities now all these adjectives sorry all these words that are in the singular
form are just one two three and it's much much easier to read they sound smoother I'll
give you a better example okay so I'm going to switch it to cats because talking about
equality between men and women and for this specific example it could get a little bit
out of hand it's not really the focus of this essay so let's see perhaps one could argue
cats are physically weak smaller and less intelligent so can you see we've got these
adjectives okay and each time we've got it on its own here or we got it here physically
weaker then on its own and then we've got it with a – what’s it called now we’ve
got it modified by saying less intelligent okay so it's like here one two one one two
you see and now we can make it read and make it flow much better if we just say perhaps
one could argue cats are smaller weaker and simpler you see and then put this on at the
end but it just flows and reads easier and if your writing is flowing and reading easier
you're making the examiner's job much easier as well now they're not struggling you're
not creating reader strain it's just a lot smoother next one this is the second part
of the sentence but with modern fitness and science nutritional supplements and hormones
those differences between species can be negated considerably so once again it's one two one
or two one it's a bit of a mess and it reads and it doesn't read too good so let's just
read this sentence again perhaps one could argue cats are physically weaker smaller and
less intelligent but with modern fitness science and nutritional supplements and hormones these
differences between species can be negated considerably so you can hear if you've got
a good ear for English you can hear that this is like a moody sentence it's not difficult
and it doesn't -- it's difficult and it does not flow so one way we can modify this is
but with modern fitness science nutrition and hormones okay this is fine assuming the
modern applies to modern science modern nutritional and modern hormones these differences can
be negated or this is my favorite but with modern fitness nutritional supplements and
hormone modification these differences between species can be negated considerably so can
you see by using these stylistic elements we are boosting the readability and it just
makes it easier so this is just one element to try and incorporate into your writing I
would recommend doing this after you've written your essay and go back and try and improve
it obviously when you're practicing at home and in the actual exam perhaps just slow down
when you're coming to introducing a list like this and consider the option of introducing
parallelism just to help the flow of the reading and also it's more advanced you know we've
got -- we could say nutritional we could say nutritional supplements hormone modification
is much better than hormones so this is why it's a higher level skill and definitely worthwhile
introducing into your essays if you want to improve the flow of your writing so thank
you very much let's switch this back to my lovely mug shot as you’d say there we go
so thank you very much for watching if you need any more help with your IELTS writing
or with your speaking If you have some speaking confidence have a look at ieltspodcast.com
we'll be more than happy to help you my name is Ben Worthington and thank you for watching