- Hey, Chris here from IELTS Advantage,
and here are five things that you can do
to instantly improve your IELTS essays.
Normally, it takes a very long time
to help someone go from, say, a band six to a band seven.
But there are five things that I've helped students with
that instantly will improve the level of your essays.
So, let's start.
Okay, so, number is improve your grammar
by identifying your main weaknesses or your common errors.
So, grammar is 25% of your total mark.
It's really, really, really important.
If you are making lots and lots of grammar mistakes,
it's impossible for you to really get a seven or above.
You need to produce something called error-free sentences.
And if you're hoping to get a seven or above,
more than 50% of your sentences need to be error-free.
So what I see when I'm working with my students is
normally they'll have one or two areas of grammar
where they consistently make mistakes in those areas.
So that could be something like punctuation, or articles,
or verb-subject agreement, or tenses,
or one of the many, many other areas of grammar.
So, let's say that you have a problem with
prepositions and articles.
They're in every single sentence.
So if you are making mistakes in every single sentence,
you're gonna get a six or below for grammar,
and that's gonna make it pretty much impossible
for you to get a seven or above.
So, what you need to do is you need to identify
what your common grammar errors are,
and then work to improve those areas of grammar.
And you can do that by showing your work to a teacher,
by showing it to someone who
is a high-level user of English,
or you might have a friend who is really good at English
or is a native English speaker.
Show then your essay and say,
"Can you tell me the area of grammar
"that I need to work on the most?"
Fix that area, and you will eliminate
sort of 70 to 90% of your mistakes.
So the second way to instantly improve your essays
is simplify your vocabulary.
This might sound counterintuitive,
because what most people think is, "It's an English test,
"they're testing my vocabulary,
"so the more advanced vocabulary that I use,
"the higher my score is going to be."
And that is true to a certain extent.
They are testing your range of vocabulary,
but at the same time,
they are testing the accuracy of your vocabulary.
So what happens if you try and use lots of words
that you don't know how to use?
You're gonna make mistakes.
That is gonna lower the accuracy of your vocabulary.
And again, if you're making lots and lots of mistakes
similar to grammar,
it's impossible for you to get a seven or above.
So, a really good analogy is weight lifting.
If I go to the gym, I can lift 50 kilograms no problem.
But if I try and lift 150 kilograms, I'm gonna fail.
My muscles are going to fail.
Same way with vocabulary.
I would love for you to be using
the most amazing high-level band nine words
and get a really high score,
but you're incapable of doing that at the moment.
You should be improving your vocabulary all the time
and trying to improve the range.
But when you are in that test,
you should use the vocabulary that you currently have
and focus on accuracy.
The alternative is to try and use lots of words
that you don't really know how to use yet.
You are guaranteed to get a low score,
because you are going to make lots and lots of mistakes.
So, improve your vocabulary long-term.
Work on in every single day.
But for now, simplify your vocabulary.
Only use the words you're 100% sure about,
reduce the number of mistakes,
and you are going to improve your score for vocabulary.
The third thing you can do to instantly improve your essays
is to plan.
So, the thing that students always say to me
when I suggest planning is,
"What am I going to do?
"How am I going to do this?
"I don't have time."
Timing is a big issue for them.
But the number one thing that I see
when I am talking to a successful IELTS student
and what I say to them,
"What was the number one thing
"that changed everything for you
"in terms of improving your
"IELTS Writing Task 2 performance?"
They will always say planning.
And again, it sounds counterintuitive.
If you spend time on planning,
that means less time writing.
You're gonna run out of time.
You won't get everything done and you will fail.
But it actually saves you a huge amount of time.
Let me again give you an analogy.
So, imagine you are going on holiday
and you are in a strange city.
Would it be waste of time
if you are going from your hotel to a museum
to type the name of the hotel into Google Maps
and then just follow Google Maps to the museum?
Or, would it be better just to
start walking around and try and find it yourself?
Which is gonna take you more time?
Of course it's gonna take you more time if you just
run around and you don't really know where you're going.
Planning is like a Google Map for your essay.
By thinking about the question, planning out your answer,
using a structure, trying to think of ideas,
and planning everything out before you start writing,
you are investing that time
in the same way that investing time
into typing the address into Google Maps is saving you time
not means that you are totally focused on
your writing at the writing stage.
You don't have to think of ideas,
or structure, or explanations, or examples,
because you've done all of that thinking
and it's there in plan form
so that you won't get lost when you're writing your essay.
How many times have you completely messed up your essay
because you start writing, because you haven't planned it,
and then you get lost, and then you have to go back?
You just lose track of time and you lose track...
You lose your coherent thought
and you just can't get everything done in 40 minutes.
Plan everything first, and then write,
and you'll be able to get everything done on time.
So the fourth thing you can do
to instantly improve your essays,
and this is a big one,
which is focus just on clearly answering the question.
Put yourself in the examiner shoes.
Here she is looking at your script.
Which thing that you think that they want to see?
Do you think that they want to see that you've
used a lot of high-level vocabulary incorrectly,
use some tips and tricks,
or memorized essays, or fancy structures, or fancy grammar,
and fixed phrases that you've memorized?
Or, do you think that they want to see whether
you have understood the question
and clearly answered the question using clear English?
You might again not believe me
because it sounds counterintuitive,
because you think the examiners
are looking for fancy things,
and therefore you're going to show off,
and you're going to go online
and find some videos that says,
"Learn these five top tricks to get a high score."
If those words, then everybody would get a high score.
The average score worldwide is band 5.5.
Those things simply do not work.
We have I think 12 examiners or 12 ex-examiners
working for IELTS Advantage,
and we talk about this all the time.
If all students did was just have this mindset shift
from stop showing off and using tricks
to just clearly answer the question,
then they would be able to eliminate 95% of the things
that lead to a low score.
So, put yourself in the examiner's shoes.
Have some sympathy for the examiner.
All they want to know is did you understand the question
and can you write clearly in English.
So help them do that by focusing on those things.
So the fifth thing is focus on what's important
and ignore everything else.
There are lots of important things
that you need to focus on,
but what students do, mostly, is focus on things
that really do not matter.
You wouldn't believe the number of emails
that we get from students who say,
"Should I use a pen in the test
"or should I use a pencil?"
I was like, "It doesn't matter."
90% of the questions we get about Writing Task 2
are types of questions like that,
like, "Should I use a pen or a pencil?"
It doesn't matter.
If you don't know how to write an introduction
or main body paragraph, or conclusion,
or understand the question, or generate ideas,
it doesn't matter if you have the fanciest pen in the world,
or write with your finger.
It really, really, really doesn't matter.
So, what I'm gonna do for you is,
below, I'm gonna give you a free course
called our Five-Day Challenge.
And in this Five-Day Challenge,
it's gonna give you five lessons that will show you
the most important things that you need to focus on.
It will give you a challenge at the end of each video
so that you can write introductions
and main body paragraphs and conclusions.
And the most important thing,
we give you feedback on your work, and it's 100% free.
So click the link below to get access to our
five-day writing challenge.
Hope that you enjoyed that video.
If you did, give it a like,
and let us know what you think in the comments below.
And if you have any questions,
just put them in the comments.
We answer every single comment.
Or, if you have an email,
if you wanna reach out and get our help
with your IELTS preparation,
we answer every single email that you guys send to us.
Chris@ieltsadvantage.com.
Chris@ieltsadvantage.com,
you'll see it here on the screen,
is my email address.
Either myself or one of my team
will answer any questions that you have.
Hope that you enjoyed the video and see you again soon.
Bye bye.
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