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Hi there, guys.
This podcast is all about improving your writing.
Maybe you can write okay, but okay isn't good enough.
If you want a Band 7, 8, or 9, what you need to be doing is using more advanced structures.
And it needs to be more coherent.
So we're going to look at ways you can improve it.
And then after we look at the negative constructions, we're going to look at some formal writing
tips.
Anyway, I've been very busy.
I did a course with Stanford University.
Well actually, I did an online course at Stanford University.
The free one, which you can do at coursera.org.
I definitely recommend that for anybody, especially if you're in with sciences.
Lots of courses there, all published by the major universities.
You've got Stanford, Duke University, you've got lots and then there's (I think it's) ED
Ex as well.
With free courses from Harvard and California MIT as well.
So definitely check out those.
And the great thing is, you can study in English as well (which is a bonus).
Some of my students have been doing it and they've seen big improvements with their English.
Anyway, on with today's subject.
Today, we're just going to look at one of the components the teacher taught in the course
I did.
And what it does, it makes your writing more concise.
It makes it more succinct.
Because you can basically say more with less words.
What we've got to understand when we're writing academically, and we're writing professionally,
is that lots of students suffer from being wordy.
That means they say a lot of words when less can communicate exactly the same thing.
I've been describing it for the last couple of weeks.
As though we're taking like 5 liters of tomato juice and really reducing it down to a concentrated
tomato paste.
I'll give you an example.
All the downloads are gonna be available at the website.
So you'll have to go over there.
You can get the PDFs for this 'cause it makes it a lot easier.
For example, in our essay we've got a sentence and it says:
"The government has not got infrastructure that is suitable."
We can say this so it means exactly the same but less words.
What we'd say is:
"The government lacks infrastructure that is suitable."
And we've reduced it to 5 words.
It means exactly the same.
And if we can reduce it to less words, we can say more.
The essay's got more impact.
And it's easier to read.
"The government has not got..."
"The government lacks infrastructure that is suitable."
Another example:
"It is argued it is not logical to learn English just solely from a book."
Here, the teacher taught us that what we can do is:
Get the negative construction and use the Latin verb.
Which in this case would be "logical."
Get the main verb which use negative construction,
and then we use the negative version.
So we could say:
"It is argued it is illogical to learn English just solely from a book."
Can you see that?
We say, "It is argued it is illogical..." instead of saying, "It is argued it is not
logical..."
And once again, we reduce the words,
we show more vocabulary,
and we pick up points.
And another thing which you got to be aware when you're looking at your essay,
is if you're seeing words that are just repeating themselves.
In this case:
"... it is not logical to learn English just solely from a book."
"... just solely from a book."
You might as well say one or the other because saying both is a bit pointless.
So we could say the end sentence would be:
"It is argued it is illogical to learn English just from a book."
And we reduced the sentence by a few words,
and it became more concise,
more succinct...
And going back to that tomato sauce, instead of 5 liters of tomato juice we've got 50 grams
of concentrated tomato sauce.
The next sentence:
"Those students who cannot organize their study time efficiently in the time allocated
will always suffer really bad consequences."
We can basically say all this in 9 words.
I'll say it again:
"Those students who cannot organize their study time efficiently in the time allocated
will always suffer really bad consequences."
Of course if you've got the PDF in front of you, it's gonna be a lot easier.
So go over to the website and get your hands on that.
But I'll just explain what we can do here, okay?
So we've got:
"Those students who cannot organize their study time..."
Possibly, we could just cut those and we could say:
"Students unable to organize their study time..."
It's more concentrated.
And then we've got the negative structure:
"... who cannot..."
Once again, we can go into the Latin verb.
The Latin verb for "can" is "able to."
And the negative version of this is "unable to."
So immediately we eliminate 2 words.
We can say:
"Students unable to organize their study time efficiently in the time allocated..."
And once again, we've got 2 words (exactly the same words in the same sentence)."
Not a good idea.
What would be better would be:
"Students unable to organize their time efficiently..."
We don't even need "study time" because we've got "students," so we could just say:
"Students unable to organize their time efficiently..."
Then this last part:
"... will always suffer really bad consequences."
We could just say:
"... will be punished."
And we'll say more or less the same but with less words.
And I did go quite ruthless because I said:
"Students unable to organize their time efficiently will be punished."
I did cut out "allocated" because it's my assumption that is implied.
If you're organizing your time efficiently, we can get the similar message to "in the
time allocated."
This way, it's more concentrated and we're saying the same with less.
Alright then.
So just to summarize for those that are listening and don't have the PDF,
the first sentence was:
"Those students who cannot organize their study time efficiently in the time allocated
will always suffer really bad consequences."
I changed that to:
"Students unable to organize their time efficiently will be punished."
Now then:
"Nobody was able to conduct an analysis of the blood in the office because the office
had not enough pieces of equipment."
If you're writing like this, stop.
Print out your piece of paper, cut it up, and throw it in the bin.
If you're writing like this,
you need to really look at your writing
and see if you can spot those negative constructions,
try and find the negative verb,
and try and avoid word repetition,
and look for ways we can say the same but with less words.
For example, here we have:
"Nobody was able to conduct analysis of the blood in the office..."
Here, we have "Nobody was able to..."
We can do the reverse of what we did last time and we could say:
"Nobody could conduct an analysis..."
And you've probably heard me say "office" twice, which is a waste of words, basically.
What we could say is:
"Nobody could conduct an analysis of the blood in the office..."
That's fine.
And in the first version I say:
"... because the office had not enough pieces of equipment."
So we've already killed "the office" from the sentence.
And then we say "... had not enough pieces of equipment."
Well first we can get rid of "pieces" because it's not relevant to this sentence.
So we could just say "equipment" and that�s fine.
And we say "... had not enough..."
What we could say would be...
We've got a negative construction, we can look for the Latin verb that means something
similar, which is "sufficient."
The negative form of "sufficient" is "insufficient."
And what we have is:
"... because there was insufficient equipment."
"Nobody could conduct an analysis of the blood in the office because there was insufficient
equipment."
Now, if we really want it to go a bit further, we could say (which is a point I'm going to
explain in the next podcast):
"Nobody could analyze the blood in the office..."
We changed "conduct an analysis" with the noun,
we've changed it into a verb and we say:
"Nobody could analyze the blood in the office because there was insufficient equipment."
We've reduced it a lot, the sentence.
It's easier to read,
and it's less wordy,
so we can put in more information for the same amounts of words.
The next one:
"We were not unable to decide to do the necessary research needed."
Horrible sentence; this one needs printing out and burning.
What I'd say with this one is:
"We were not unable to decide..."
So if we're not unable, 2 negatives make a positive.
"We were able to decide..."
And we could also reduce.
We could get rid of the verb "to be" and we can just say "we could."
"We could decide to do the necessary research needed."
And you've probably guessed (I hope so, anyway) that we can also eliminate one more word from
that sentence.
From that sentence, it would be either "necessary" or "needed."
So the final sentence would be:
"We could decide to do the necessary research."
And then once again, saying exactly the same.
We've probably reduced it by about 3 or 4 words and gives us more space to communicate
another point.
And it's easier to read.
So you're going to get points for coherence 'cause this is a million times more coherent
than:
"We were not unable to decide to do the necessary research needed."
That's a mess.
That's a disaster.
Compared to that beautiful, concise structure:
"We could decide to do the necessary research."
Now, this is the final one.
At the beginning, we said one possible alternative in certain sentences would be:
Instead of saying "does not have," we could say "lack."
For example:
"The government does not have resources."
"The government lacks resources."
Well, another way (you can say, similar concept) for example in this sentence:
"The local government did not invest in the community for six years."
We could say, instead of "did not" which isn't the most sophisticated structure (you're not
gonna get many points for that).
What we could say to show the examiner good vocabulary, good grammar range, we could say:
"The local government failed to invest in the community for six years."
If you failed to do something that means you didn't do it.
So 2 alternatives there.
We've got "lack" (as a verb) and "failed to."
And of course, changing the negative construction and trying to use the negative verb.
Now, a few points for formal writing.
1.
Never use "get" please.
"Get" is wonderful for spoken English but never use it in your formal writing.
Use the Latin version.
Use the Latin equivalent.
For example, "I got a car."
We can say, "I obtained a car."
Instead of (let's see) "He got a prize yesterday."
"He achieved a prize yesterday."
The same for "purchase."
The same for "buy."
"I got a sandwich."
We could say "I bought a sandwich," or we could even say "I purchased a sandwich."
So stay away from the spoken forms.
Stay away from contractions because they're used more for informal/semi-formal writing,
and mainly for speaking.
So we don't use "get,"
we don't use contractions,
try to avoid negative constructions if you can,
try and use the negative verb.
This was the first part of a 3-podcast series.
And we got to the 2nd podcast will be available.
But if you really want to get a deep understanding of this,
and you really want to see the examples in front of you,
(which is a great way to improve your English because you can hear the words, you can hear
the sounds, associate them with the words in front of you)
(and it's just easier to understand if you can actually see sentences instead of trying
to hear the sentences/trying to picture the sentences),
If you want the PDFs go on to IELTS Podcast.
And when you sign up, you can get all the information and that extra podcast about the
interview I did with the ex-IELTS-examiner.
So go to ieltspodcast.com
Sign up.
Leave your email.
And enjoy the podcasts.
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