Hi guys! I'm Teacher Luke ,an expert Duolingo English Test teacher,
and today I have another video about the 50 words or more writing question.
In my previous writing videos I discussed the "recount paragraph"
and the "make an argument paragraph", today I'm going to look at the third type, which is the
"describe paragraph". If you haven't watched my previous videos yet, I recommend you do so
after this video, the links are below in the description. Okay before we start,
as always if you think this video is helpful for you please give it a thumbs up and subscribe.
It really does help me a lot! So let me start by very quickly looking at the scoring
criteria. This will help you to understand how the Duolingo English Test team assess your writing.
So you can find this information on the Duolingo Test website, basically your
writing is being scored on these seven points: grammatical accuracy, grammatical complexity,
lexical sophistication, lexical diversity, task relevance, length, and fluency.
So those are the seven points you're being assessed on. I have made a whole video discussing
this if you're interested in watching that, the card is here. And in this video at the end we'll
look at my sample answer for the described prompt and analyze it using this criteria. Okay so let's
take a look at my sample answer now, remember this is for the describe question prompt and
the question i'll use comes from the Duolingo Test practice site. So let's take a look at that now.
So this is the question on the Duolingo English practice Test, it goes like this. "In general
people are living longer today. Discuss some of the implications of this phenomenon."
so right away we know that this is a describe writing prompt because it doesn't ask you to tell
your own story, that's a recount, and it doesn't ask you to make an argument. It's not asking
whether you agree or disagree with something, it's just asking you to discuss the implications
or describe the implications, so again you don't have to make an argument. You don't have to say
if you agree or not you just have to describe what's actually happening. In my opinion this
type of paragraph is easier than the make an argument one. So I have written a sample answer
for this question, let's take a look at that now. And as we go through it, I'll talk about the way I
organized the answer, this will be helpful for you because in the Duolingo Test you only have five
minutes to do this, so if you have a structure in mind, that can really save you a lot of time.
So let's take a look at my answer. So you should always start with a topic sentence. The same as
in the other writing prompts as well. My topic sentence for this question goes like this: "Life
expectancy is increasing all around the world and this has both positive and negative implications."
So right away, when you read this topic sentence, you know what i'm going to talk about I'm going to
talk about a positive and negative implication. Topic sentences outline what the rest of your
paragraph will discuss, so it's really important to include a topic sentence when you start your
paragraph for this question type. And of course after you've written your topic sentence you have
to follow it up with some supporting ideas. For the Duolingo Test you only have five minutes to
do this, that's really short. But I still would like to see two supporting ideas in a paragraph,
so let's take a look at my supporting ideas now. So this is my supporting idea number one.
"One of the most concerning implications is the burden it has on the taxpayer.
Since more and more people are living longer and having longer retirements, there is a shortage of
funds available for essentials such as pensions and healthcare. As a result younger people are
picking up the bill through higher taxes." So this is my supporting idea number one I have one
implication the implication is the burden it has on the taxpayer. "it: refers to "life expectancy
increasing". Then I gave an example, since more and more people are living longer there is a
shortage of funds available for essentials such as pensions and healthcare. This is an example
and I followed up the example with the result so how does this affect society now?
"As a result younger people are picking up the bill through higher taxes." This is a good way
to write your supporting ideas, you have your idea or in this case your implication, then you
provide some examples and if you can you can write the results. The result refers to the consequence
or the outcome of the implication, so this is a good way to structure your supporting ideas.
Like i mentioned earlier I think you should try to get around two supporting ideas in this paragraph;
however, if you think you don't have enough time one is okay. But for me I had enough time so let's
take a look at my supporting idea number two now. Supporting idea number two. "On the other hand,
there are social benefits of this phenomenon one benefit is that grandparents have more time
to spend with their grandchildren which can help build a stronger sense of community and
encourage family values again in this supporting idea I followed the same structure my implication
is that there are social benefits the example is that grandparents can spend more time with
their grandchildren and the result is that this can help build a stronger sense of community and
encourage family values okay so that's supporting idea number two i hope you see now that each of
my supporting ideas have the same structure and it's a very good way to structure your
ideas it's not the only way but it's a way that i like and I think it's very time efficient too
which is important for the Duolingo Test. So those were my supporting ideas, but it's not over yet,
we have to write a concluding sentence. Every good paragraph always includes a concluding sentence.
"To conclude life expectancy is going to continue to increase;
therefore, we need to accept the implications, positive and negative, it will have on society."
So I wrote this conclusion in just one sentence, but you can break it up into two if you want
to--there's no rule for this when you're writing your conclusion. It's important to include a
transition phrase, my one in this one was "to conclude". For academic writing, "in conclusion"
and "to conclude" are by far the most common. And here is my essay in full. In total this was 131
words, So I understand that's a lot. For a lot of you, 131 words is probably not possible to write
in just five minutes and that's okay! You can still follow this structure and write less words,
but if you can write more and make your sentences accurate and correct I recommend you do so. Okay,
so that's my sample answer if you want to download this ppt file you can
by becoming a member of my channel. Just go to my Youtube homepage and click that join button.
So is this a good answer? Well let's analyze it based on the criteria we looked at earlier.
So you all remember the criteria right? Well let's go through these points one by one to see
if my paragraph does well based on this criteria. In terms of grammatical accuracy, I am a native
English speaker so writing accurate and correct sentences is not that hard for me. My essay
doesn't contain grammatical mistakes. Writing grammatically correct or accurate sentences
is very important if you want to get a high score in production so make sure to study grammar at
the sentence level before you take the Duolingo Test. Now let's take a look at complexity, this
one's a bit more subjective. Okay so grammatical complexity refers to the type of sentences you're
using; are you just using simple sentences or are you using more complex, more difficult
grammatical sentences. You should include both simple and complex sentences in your paragraph.
These sentences here in yellow are complex sentences. The first one "Since more people
are living longer, there is a shortage of funds." This is known as a cause and effect structure,
"since" indicates the cause then you have a comma and then you write the effect. This could be
easily broken up into two simple sentences, but to show grammatical complexity, I wrote them as one.
Same as the second example I used a "which clause", "which can help build a strong sense
of community". This "which clause" adds extra information to my idea. Again this also could
have been broken up into two simple sentences, but to make it complex I used the "which clause". In
grammatical terms this is known as a non-defining relative clause, again it shows complexity. Most
of my other sentences would be considered simple sentences, meaning they only have one idea in each
sentence and that's fine. You should include a mixture of simple and complex sentences.
Okay so that's the grammar part done now let's take a look at lexical sophistication
and diversity lexical just means vocabulary by the way
lexical sophistication basically means the vocabulary level
so are you using more difficult words or are you only using easy words and diversity means
to the range or the mixture of words you're using basically are you just repeating the
same type of word over and over again or do you use a mixture you should try to use a mixture
the words i've highlighted in yellow are what i consider to be lexically sophisticated we have
these chunks life expectancy shortage of funds picking up the bill phenomenon these are some
examples of sophisticated words and throughout my paragraph i didn't repeat many words so that
shows diversity next up we have task relevance and length task relevance basically means did you
answer the question this prompt asked us to write about the implications of people living longer
and i discussed two implications of that issue so yes i did answer the question i also gave examples
as well this is all involved in the task relevance scoring criteria and next up we have length so for
this task you must write at least 50 words however since length is in the criteria it suggests to me
that they want you to write more so the more you write the higher score you will get for length
however it's really important that you know that if you write a very long paragraph but it's full
of grammatical mistakes you won't get a high score grammatical accuracy is more important
than length i wrote 131 words which might be too many for a lot of you guys and that's fine
i think if you can write around 75 to 100 or 110 that should be enough but if you can write more
and keep your sentences accurate then that's very good okay the last one we'll look at is fluency
fluency in writing can also be known as cohesion basically how well your paragraph flows how smooth
is it so let's take a look okay so for fluency and cohesion one thing we can look at is linking
words throughout your paragraph you want to use these linking words to show the reader where your
essay is going it's like a signpost or guidance for the reader okay so let's take a look at mine
i wrote one of the most concerning implications one of the most is a linking phrase to show that
i'm going to talk about an important idea next we have as a result of course this is a linking
phrase to show that i'm going to talk about a result of something on the other hand is a linking
phrase used to show contrast so the opposite idea one benefit is obviously to show benefits
and lastly i wrote to conclude like i mentioned earlier two concludes a good linking phrase you
can use to show the reader that you're about to conclude your paragraph linking phrases are very
important to use and they add fluency and cohesion to your writing so that's my sample answer for
this writing prompt with an analysis based on the criteria i hope this has helped you to understand
how you're scored and the style of paragraph you should write like i mentioned before if you want
to download my ppt file you can by becoming a member of my channel just go to my channel page
and click join and also if you would like me to make more videos like this please write yes
below in the comments and that's it thank you very much for watching and i'll see you next time bye