Hello everyone, it's Chris from IELTS daily. I have a very special class for you today. You
are going to learn about resources and things that you can use on the internet. And the topic of this
particular question is Cambridge IELTS books, are they a good resource? This is going to be about
writing, and you're going to do some listening and speaking practice as I go along. Here we go.
When preparing for the IELTS test, candidates such as you are faced with many dilemmas, one of
which is: "what are the best resources to help me reach my score?', and "which resources can I trust?".
The first thing to bear in mind and bear in mind means remember,
is that some sources are better than others especially on the internet. You will find
hundreds, if not thousands, of sites which claim to be reliable sources of IELTS materials.
The reality is that many of them are actually very poor quality, contain
incorrect information and myths, which can very often harm your score, rather than help it.
So, why is today's video focused on the Cambridge books?
Before answering that question, I should begin by declaring that IELTS daily has no affiliation to
Cambridge or any of the other publishing companies which make up the IELTS test.
Just like you, I spend many hours researching more about the fundamentals of the test,
the types of questions which appear in the Cambridge books,
and to find out if there are any noticeable changes to the test format.
That brings me on to today's video. I recently bought a copy of Cambridge 14.
Published in 2019, it isn't the most recent of the Cambridge books, but is a great resource
nonetheless. One of the first things I do whenever I look at the Cambridge books is to take a look at
some of the sample writing answers at the back. I play a game of "if I were an examiner'. I cover the
sample score and I try to see whether my score matches what the official examiner's score is.
As I got through to Test 4, Writing task 1, I was pleased to see an examiner-written answer.
Interestingly, I've noticed that Cambridge have stopped publishing 'very good answers'
in their most recent books. For me, that's one of the most disappointing things.
If anyone from Cambridge is watching this video, take note. When candidates are preparing for the
test, they need to see more sample answers from band 7, 7.5 and 8, so they can see just what
the standard of response is. Band four and five essays, I feel anyway aren't particularly helpful.
So back to my story. I was reading the sample response in Cambridge 14.
It was a response related to a map or floor plan of a garden. Before and after.
These tasks are pretty challenging for test takers because they really have to summarize
the information and changes well. I always find that a good overview in a map or floor plan task
is really tricky. As I begin reading the sample response, things were going pretty well. We'll
read the sample very shortly and I'll talk you through the response and my thoughts on it.
The first thing to point out is that at the top of the answer it reads: 'This model has
been prepared by an examiner as an example of a very good answer. However please note this,
please note that this is just one example out of many possible approaches. So consider the wording
used here. Firstly, they say it's 'prepared by an examiner'. For me, this suggests that an examiner
has taken the time to write a response which they would be expecting to see during the test.
Great. But then it says "a very good response". The question here is: why very good? Why not 'perfect'?
I sense if they were to say it's an 'excellent' or a 'perfect' or 'band 9.0' response, they'd be
kicking themselves if people found mistakes in the answer, so that's probably why they say very good.
Speaking of mistakes, that brings me on to the topic of today's lesson.
That is: mistakes in teaching resources. I find that as we run IELTS Daily and more and more wonderful
students join, we have to be extra careful about the quality of the content we put on the internet.
At the time of creating this video, we had 580 000 YouTube subscribers. Amazing.
That means we have 580 000 people looking for mistakes in our work. A big challenge, right?
I want to show you this writing sample from Cambridge just to highlight that even the 'most
trusted' sources don't always get it right. The response in the book looks something like this.
There it is on the screen. When I first looked at the response, my first instinct
tends to look for features of organization.
Are there good paragraphs? And are the paragraphs clear? Is there a clear overview? Etc. When I saw
this response for the first time, I was pleased. Everything was looking good so I started reading.
'Grange park was opened in 1920, a rectangular area with access from Arnold street, Arnold
avenue on the north side and from Eldon street on the south side. There was a fountain in the
center, with a stage for musicians situated center left, a glass house to the right of Eldon street
entrance and a pond for water plants in the north east corner opposite'.
A good start with complexity in the first sentence, where it says with 'access from
Arnold avenue'. I like that. In terms of grammar, they have the passive past form where it says
'was opened'. That's the passive form which is great, um good start. 'Around the edges of the
park there were rose gardens with seats nearby for people to smell the flowers and listen to music'.
Now my first query here would be the potential lack of a comma around,
um after 'around the edges of the park'. Let's find that 'around the edges of the park',
this for me would need a comma after it.
Around the edges of the park, there were rose gardens with seats nearby.
I just feel that um a comma would fit here, but I have to admit that when I write,
I am terrible with the use of commas but I know that IELTS examiners are extremely strict,
possibly too picky when it comes to the commas in the grammatical range and accuracy.
Okay. So far, so good, things are looking good and I like the fact that they have
made the writing flow well, it's easy to understand and to follow. On to paragraph two.
'The park has altered considerably since then'.
Great, so we start with a topic sentence here, and there's a change of direction.
The writer has used the present perfect tense to show an unknown time.
So they've said 'since then', and they've said 'has altered', that's the present perfect tense.
Now, very sorry, 'now there is one largest rose garden
occupying the central area where the fountain stood, and with seats all around it'.
Now, would I use large-ish in academic writing? This is a tricky one. I'm not sure I would use
large-ish. Large-ish means quite large. Um, I would say now there is one quite large rose garden.
There's great complexity in this particular sentence, they've used a gerund clause here,
and they've used a 'where sentence'. That's really showing great range of um grammatical structures.
'One of the smaller rose gardens remains on the north side of the park.
The band stand has also been replaced, by an amphitheater for concerts and associated seating'.
Let's have a look at this sentence in detail. 'The band stand staged for musicians has also
been replaced by an amphitheater for concerts and associated seating'. The first time I read
this, I really queried the use of this comma, and however I thought about it more, and I realized
that actually the comma does fit here because if I removed this comma, it would change the meaning
slightly. If I said the band stand has also been replaced by an amphitheater for concerts.
That would mean that something else has been changed or replaced, so if I put the comma here,
it says the bandstand stage for musicians has also been replaced
by an amphitheater for concerts and associated seating. I do think the comma fits there.
'The glass house has gone and in its places is a water feature; similarly,
where the pond for water plants stood there is now a children's play area with a café nearby'.
Now, this sentence was the most problematic sentence of the whole response and it's the
reason why I want to to talk about this today. Is the reason why I've made this video. There's
one really, really significant mistake which is a spelling mistake which is here, 'and in its places'
that clearly should be 'and in its place'.
I also feel that maybe we should use two commas here as an, as a feature to interrupt.
Listen to the sentence. 'The glass house has gone and in its place'. Do you hear how there's
a a slight pause before this? The, the sentence is interrupted by this in its place. I do feel
that commas would fit better here. I also have real doubts about the use of a semicolon here.
I feel there's just too much disconnect between these two sentences for there to be a semicolon.
If I were writing, I would put a full stop here and start with a 'similarly'. Okay.
And there's also really importantly, um, a missing comma after 'stood'
here, and this is quite an important one because there is a dependent and an independent clause,
and you need to be able to, um, mark the difference between those. So, you would say 'similarly,
where the pond for water plants stood, there is now a children's play area'. So we have a
dependent sentence and an independent sentence here.
That's a a grammatical punctuation mistake. 'Access to the park is still via the two original
entrances, but there is now a third entrance near the water feature from an underground car park'.
This final sentence is really good, no problems here.
Finally, there is a well-written overview and that's the last paragraph in the writing.
'Despite the apparently significant changes, the park retains the basic elements of flowers,
water, seating and music, with the addition of a café and a children's play area. Good overview.
So with these considerations in mind, would it be likely that a candidate may score 9 in the
test from this response? My thought is absolutely not. No chance. Examiners for IELTS are extremely
strict when it comes to spelling, punctuation and grammar rules. I've said in my videos,
I normally miss a spelling mistake and this takes my score from 9 to 8.5. What would I score in this
response? Well, I'd say it probably deserved task achievement 9, coherence and cohesion 9,
grammatical range and accuracy 8, due to the commas and the punctuation problems, lexical
resource 8, because of the spelling mistake. So, that would be an average and a final score of 8.5.
For those people who don't know. Let's say that the examiner did not make the spelling mistake
with 'in its places' and actually wrote 'in its place'. So there was no spelling mistake. That would mean
there were no spelling mistakes and they would score the following: task achievement 9, coherence
and cohesion 9, grammatical range in accuracy 8, because of the problems with the punctuation
lexical resource 9, that would leave an average of 8.75. And for those people who don't know,
0.7 marks within the writing and the speaking sections are rounded down to 8.5.
This, for me, is the most questionable aspect of IELTS marking,
when the 0.75 scores are rounded down within speaking and writing individual components.
One spelling mistake can take your LR mark from 9 to 8 and so your writing score falls from 9 to 8.5.
It's always worth remembering that we are humans and we make mistakes and you, as candidates, have a
job to make a judgment on whether those mistakes are enough to warrant you stopping using those
materials. Is a mistake like this, published in the Cambridge books, enough to stop you from buying?
Yes, please buy them and don't illegally download them. My answer is... no. Cambridge books particularly
from 10 onwards are the single best materials you can use for practice and in preparation for
the IELTS, so please keep using them. You can also follow one of the best IELTS accounts on Instagram
which I think is Pauline Cullen - who has written many IELTS books in the past, and has incredible
material on writing tips. The link to Pauline's Instagram is in the description below. I hope
you enjoyed this class, listening to my speaking and practicing your listening comprehension at the
same time. You know - watching movies and tv series with subtitles is the single best and cheapest way
to improve your English. As always, please like this video if you learned something and share it
with your friends. My name is Chris from IELTS daily. Take care of yourselves. Bye for now.