How to Get Your IELTS Writing Task 2 Essay Corrected Online hi there my name is Ben Worthington
you've probably listened to some of the podcasts or seen me online and in this tutorial we're
going to look at some of the questions you should ask when you're considering an essay
correction service probably questions you never have thought about and then I'm going
to just show you how you can actually do this online we’ll look at different ways so the
first question you need to ask yourself is are they covering the criteria are they covering
task response lexical resource cohesion and coherence grammatical range and accuracy these
are the four criteria as you probably know with IELTS with the writing task and in order
to be able to be competent do giving an essay correction you need to be well-versed in these
four areas and a good way to make sure the person is well-versed just make sure they've
got the right credentials and maybe they worked at British Council maybe they were an ex-IELTS
examiner there's lots of different ways that you can look into this next question does
the tutor who's correcting your essay do they take into account your specific needs for
example I know that writers of Spanish as native Spanish speakers they write incredibly
long sentences because that's normal and encouraged in the native tongue whereas in English it's
not so common especially in academic English it’s more a mixture short long sentences
also I know that with Indian writers sometimes they think that for example a lot is one word
and it's not it's two words likewise with the Chinese writers or Asian writers sometimes
the pronunciation can be difficult and just being aware of these specific issues helps
the essay corrector given a better correction let me give you an example so Eastern European
students often have issues with the use of articles this is common in most English learners
but with some of these Eastern European and Russian students they have issues and if the
teacher is not aware of this then they can spend too much time on the wrong area you
know like this teacher should be able to communicate this and say look it's not just you who's
got these issues it’s typical for people from your native language and this is how
you can solve it okay now and the other thing about students of English with pronunciation
issues this is one reason why we offer why video corrections are valuable for these types
of students because you will hear the correct pronunciation of the words you've used this
is invaluable when it comes to using these words in the speaking and it also just drives
the learning to a deeper level I'll go into this in more detail in a second so is the
person qualified we kind of touched on this already like I said look for tutors with experience
correcting essays look for student tutors who've got experience with British Council
with IELTS IDP possibly ex-IELTS examiners or even current IELTS examiners if you can
get this this is fantastic and it'll help you a lot rather learn some random -- on the
internet you just decided to – hey, I'm going to do essay corrections okay and another
point I just remembered try and go for the businesses that are specialized in IELTS don't
go for you know like general English website that's offering iBT TOEFL all these other
different qualifications try to go for the ones that are specialized because they'll
be more well versed they’ll be more up-to-date and just better at the job next one experienced
and trained we've gone through this before but it's just important that you ask these
questions you know let's see I'm not going to talk about the actual specific qualifications
here I'm going to focus more on the ability to do the corrections because I know from
experience that when tutors do the corrections they usually focus on the negatives that the
student has done so you'll get your PDF back and it'll say this was wrong this was wrong
this is wrong you're a useless student get away from me probably not so negative but
you will get this it’s just highlighting all the negatives and I think this is terrible
and it hurts because when you're preparing for IELTS your motivation can go up and down
you know and getting a PDF a stale boring PDF and it just slams you with all the negatives
that you've done in your writing this can be really demoralizing so when I take on essay
correctors I train them and I say okay fantastic you're an IELTS examiner that's awesome that's
exactly what I need however what we're going to do is when we're correcting the essays
we're going to do a video correction so the students can hear you they can hear the pronunciation
and we're also going to praise the student when they do well and this will just help
motivate and I think it's a fundamental aspect of the teaching experience and of the learning
experience and it just helps the students in my experience improve much faster you will
improve much faster if you're getting positive feedback on your work and of course it's realistic
we're not just going to say oh wonderful work I can’t understand the work no they're going
to be balanced and realistic but if we do see elements of excellent writing good writing
we will recognize that as well as the negatives so next point can they offer solutions to
the issues to your issues with your writing so one thing is saying you've done this right
you've done this wrong you've done this wrong you’ve done this right can they take it
to the next level can they give you a solution for what you can do next I always tell the
people I have working first I say look try and give the students the next step tell them
what to do next because we are in a position of doing this daily and we see these issues
so a student might have problems that as I said before and we see this daily so we are
much better positioned to help that student take the next step to improve their writing
then possibly the student is you know when you say go to this resource get this book
do this do that this is an important part of the learning process as I mentioned before
next point we're almost finished don't worry is the response time adequate okay when you're
preparing for IELTS you probably want to get ahead you probably want to get to the country
Canada you want to get your student visa you want to settle in Australia you want to start
practicing medicine in the UK all these issues and you IELTS as this obstacle and like I
said before motivation comes in waves some days you’re super pumped the next days you
don't want to touch it with a barge pole so this is why I insist that when we get the
essay corrections we do it and we give it back to you in 24 hours ideally I'd like to
do it faster the current IELTS essay corrector we've got at the moment she's already struggling
with too much work that I can't shorten that time so anyway and it's important because
as I said your motivation comes up and down and when you writing the essay you're probably
really motivated and if you have to wait two or three days there is an element of chance
you might not be as motivated a few days later and this is another reason why when we send
the essay correction back to the student we also give them another question or tell them
the next step to take hopefully the student has the same level of motivation and this
is another reason why we try to be positive when we are giving back the essay correction
okay now can you trust the service okay is this just some random English teacher just
thrown up a website or is it a site that’s like using encrypted technology for the credit
card do they have a track record of success all these issues need to be addressed
so I'm going to just show you another YouTube channel I have and this is where I've been
putting all the video corrections that we've been doing since we started not all of them
sorry but the vast majority and look you can see 3,000 essay corrections that's a lot you
know we've been helping tons and tons of students and you can see if you probably look at the
date this video was posted April the 11th they’re just getting posted every single
day 8th 7th it’s just daily we’re just putting videos up there so the main thing
is just to do some good research check it out and don't be afraid and just try and follow
the criteria that I mentioned before okay my name is Ben Worthington thank you very
much for watching this video and all the best with your IELTS preparation and if you need
help if you need any help just go ieltspodcast.com you can sign up for IELTS materials yeah there's
just lots of more resources there all right my name's Ben thank you very much for watching
have a great day and good luck with your IELTS preparation