hi there it's asiya think about this how many small mistakes do you make in
your writing a missing article here a missing comma
there don't seem like a big deal right but
in order to achieve pan 7 for your grammar you must produce
frequent error-free sentences it means that many of your sentences
must be 100 percent correct and those little errors may really
stand in the way in this video i'm gonna show you seven
common grammatical mistakes that ielts students make
which you can avoid just by watching this video
i think you're ready let's get started
these are nouns you can't count and some of them are pretty
obvious like water snow but some are not let me show some of the
uncountable nouns which are frequently used in
ielts and which cause a lot of mistakes the first culprit is
advice in english it is uncountable even though in my mother tongue russian
you can count them but in english it's just
advice you cannot use it with an indefinite
article an and it requires
the verb in a singular form advice is if you want to highlight
that it's only one piece you say a piece of advice he gave me a great
piece of advice or you can say some advice could you
give me some advice and you cannot form the plural form
either there are some other similar nouns
like information again it's uncountable and you can say a piece of information
or some information here is a great example this service
offers information and advice on possible careers
you see no articles you can use definite articles with
uncountable nouns the advice the information when it's
needed research again it's uncountable you just
say research shows but there
is a similar word which is countable studying one study two studies
according to a recent study on aircraft noise
or just according to recent research traffic it means
the vehicles on the road at a particular time
and you can see the traffic was good or i got into heavy traffic
and you can't count it and you can't form the plural form either
people get used to the constant noise of the traffic
the next word is slightly different because it seems like it's plural
but it is not news news is singular news
is and we say that is great news or what's the latest news again you can
see a piece of news and one more
money in english you can't count them money is and a well-known phrase is
money is the root of all evil it's good to know you can use it in your
essay you can agree or disagree with it if needed you say to earn money
or to spend money unlike most uncountable nouns
this one actually has a plural form monies but it means
sums of money lawyers often use it and you can say a statement of all
monies paid into your account but
basically you can just use money everywhere
now i'm going to show you a sentence and i want you to find the mistake
all mistakes children spend most of their time at school
however their future life choices often depend
on the example of their parents do you see mistakes i can see
too okay here is the main rule do not use
however to link two sentences into one yes
it cannot be used this way here is how to correct it
children spend most of their time at school
full stop capital letter however comma the future life choices
depend on the example of their parents yes
however cannot link two sentences into one and we always
put comma after the word however if you still want to keep all that in
one sentence you have to use although and actually
put it in the first sentence although children
spend most of their time at school common their future life choices often
depend on the example of their parents that's extremely important for ielts
let me show you one more example please find
any mistakes most people want to find a high pay job but money
is not the best motivator for most employees
do you see any basically in formal english you should not
use but at the beginning of sentences in informal english you can when you
talk to a friend when you send an email to a friend
but in ielts writing task 2 don't and there are several ways to
correct this sentence first of all we can join two sentences
into one we put a comma but and that's it
but it's the opposite of however however can't be used to join two
sentences into one and but can't be used at the beginning
so in our example we can simply use however
and keep two separate sentences don't forget to put the comma after
however or we can use although although
most people want to find a high paid job comma money is not the best motivator
for most employees please note that
you place although you the other sentence
not where you put but or however here is another rule for you
separate linking words or discourse markers
with commas linking words are very important in ielts writing
they link your sentences and your ideas together
and ielts examiners specifically check that you use
a variety of formal linking words and that is important for your coherence
and cohesion score you should not forget that you should
put commas before and after most of those
linking words let me show you some examples if you
have them at the beginning of the sentence on the other hand
children are ultimately responsible for their
academic achievements or the lack thereof
so we say on the other hand common additionally by visiting
other countries people learn about other cultures again we put
additionally comma and then we say by visiting other countries comma
so the second comma is here because that's a phrase
before your subject the subject is people
and if you have a long phrase before you put a comma
sometimes you have linking words in the middle of your sentence
water is particularly scarce in arid regions
for instance in africa for instance we put a comma before and
after the other sentence is slightly different
people who live in cold countries such as norway
have to spend more on heating so here we have a phrase such as norway
and we've added that and actually we could remove it and our sentence
would be people who live in cold countries have
to spend more on heating and because we edit that phrase we put a
comma before and after have a look at this next
sentence is anything wrong 4 out of 10 adults
aged between 30 and 60 do not exercise regularly
what do you think the rule is spell out numbers from one to ten
four and ten you need to write letters not numbers basically
the best way to memorize what i'm saying is to
practice writing your essays and i've created the
ielts writing task to workbook in the pdf format
and it will help you to get started it's absolutely free
the link will be in the description now let's continue the next rule is
do not use very with strong adjectives in general we use very
to make our adjectives stronger that's why it's called an intensifier
but some adjectives in english are already strong and you
can't use them with very let me show you some of them for
instance when you want to say that something is
very bad you say awful
terrible dreadful and none of them can be combined with very very big
is enormous very clever it's brilliant very good it's excellent
ideal perfect wonderful very tasty it's delicious and very tired
it's exhausted let me show you how to use adjectives describing distance
size or age properly there are a lot of mistakes here
if you want to say the problem lasts for 12 months
but you want to use an adjective you say a 12 month program
please note that you put a hyphen 12 hyphen month
and you don't need to use s it's just months no yes
here is another example this student is 18 years old
so here we have the plural form 18 years but when we want to make an
adjective we say an 18 year old student and please note that here we need two
hyphens 18 hyphen year hyphen
old student and no s in year actually if you take the academic test
that's a great thing when you describe a group of people you can see
instead of people between 20 and 30 years old
you can say 20 to 30 year old people all in one
adjective that's really complex english just don't forget to put hyphens
everywhere and just year no s
actually i'm thinking about making more in-depth
videos on how to use articles and different verb tenses
in ielts writing are you interested if you are please leave me a comment
saying which video you'd like to see first articles
or verb tenses and depending on how many comments i
receive i will see if you want those videos and i will
prepare them please don't forget to download the
ielts writing task to workbook and thank you for watching me
today good luck with your preparation and your
exam bye