Hi everyone, it's Chris. Today we've got a writing feedback session where we're
going to be looking at a sample student answer. I know you guys find this
really useful because lots of you need a band 7 in the IELTS writing test. So what
we'll do is we'll look forensically at a student's sample script, give some
feedback and then see what you guys can do better.
Keep watching.
I know how hard the IELTS writing task is particularly the essay so we're going to
look at a student's sample answer, one that they've submitted and we will look
at what they do well and the areas of the writing that probably could be
improved. It's going to be useful for you guys because maybe you'll notice some of
the mistakes that they make. Right, let's have a look at the essay itself. The
first thing that we should always do is to look at the question,
and you will see the question on the screen now which says that 'some people
argue that flights around the world should be reduced dramatically in order
to help prevent climate change. Supporters of this idea claim that
people should switch to using trains and public transport.
Do you believe this is a good solution?' Well obviously the first thing that you
need to do is think, 'what do I think about this particular
question?' 'What type of question is it?' And it's clearly an opinion type of
question. Do you think it's a good solution
or not? Therefore you would have to be able to
justify your position and have a clear position throughout.
And really the essence is making sure that you answer the correct question.
And many people go off topic, they don't necessarily answer the question properly.
In the case of this student we will work through line by line having a look at
each kind of paragraph and see whether they are answering the question.
So the student starts out by saying that 'many people argue that the growing trend
of air travel constituting a major percentage of global climate issue'.
Now, I suppose the thing here that for me this is really something called a
'fragmented sentence'. A fragmented sentence is when
it's not complete. It's kind of,
you're expecting something else or maybe it's broken. Not a great start because
it's already going to be a problem with the grammatical range and accuracy.
'Some are supporting other massive transports such as trains and public
transport'. Okay,
that's um, kind of paraphrasing the question. A couple of problems that I see
here. Now, the first is the collocation of the word 'massive transport'. This is a
lexical resource mistake. We don't collocate the words 'massive' and
'transports'. The second problem is that it's a grammatical mistake because
'transport' is really um, usually a singular noun therefore
that would be a collocation problem. So they said 'some are supporting other
massive transports such as trains and public transport'.
So I can see they're trying to paraphrase the question. 'In my opinion, I
strongly disagree with this message and
in this essay I will give my reasons with examples to
support my view'. Right, okay. Let's think about this. The
first thing that I want to say is I would normally avoid sentences which say
things like 'I agree with the latter view',
'I'm going to discuss my view in this essay'. It's too
vague and it doesn't really give your opinion.
If you want to give or if you want to score a band 7 in the writing test, you
have to have a clear position throughout your response.
And in this case the writer does give a position, they said 'I strongly disagree
with this, with this message'.
And so what this is saying is
when you've got the word 'this message', think about it.
It's a very vague sentence. It's not particularly concrete.
It relies on the examiner remembering the previous sentence.
My advice to you is be specific. The question asks
'is it a good thing or is it a bad thing whether if people switch from using um,
planes to using things like public transport
and trains?' So, in the in this case um,
try and have a really clear position on that.
When you say 'I agree with this message', you are just relying on the examiner to
remember what you've said. Then the person said 'and in this essay I
will give my reasons with examples to support my view'.
If I were the person I would remove this whole sentence. I've deleted the whole
sentence because it doesn't really add much. It's,
it feels like you're you know writing more words
but it's not really adding to your argument.
These type of vague and generic sentences
are probably learnt or memorized phrases. My advice to you is avoid, avoid, avoid.
Try not to use these type of vague sentences. So the conclusion is finished.
I kind of know the position which is they
um, strongly disagree. And they strongly disagree with um, the
fact that they should use trains and public transport.
Okay. Now, the first thing that I want to say
is that if you want to score eight or above in your task response,
you need to consider the other side of the debate
because without consideration of the opposing side,
it's more difficult to kind of give your supporting side. Therefore, for people who
need an 8 and above you do need to consider the other point of view somehow.
And there are sophisticated ways of doing this.
I don't think in this case this person is probably going to do this because
they said they strongly um, support, disagree with this idea.
But let's see. Maybe they acknowledge um, the other side,
I'm not sure.
First, I am opposed to the suggestion of all, of
using only railways or buses. So that's a topic sentence. They are
saying they are opposed to using railways or buses. Now the problem is
that they don't really acknowledge the idea of moving or switching
from planes to the other types of transports.
'From my view', it should be 'in my view', 'I think the individual objectives of
transportation are different. Some people may commute to work for a
short distance.' In this case it would be 'may commute
a short, oops, a short
distance to work.' And this would be an example of
'kind of awkward word order.' Now, this here in the middle when you've
got the 'for example', we very, very, very rarely if ever
use 'for example' between two commas in the middle of a sentence.
Um, you could say something like 'there are
for example some reasons why.' But the problem is they've tried to,
um, shoehorn in and 'for example' here. And it doesn't really fit. And this could
create problems for coherence and cohesion, the CC score
because you need to accurately use these cohesive devices to make sure that they
are used properly and accurately. A very strict examiner would notice this
mistake. So they said 'for example, 20 kilometers
comma.' So there's
quite a lot of punctuation problems here. Just in the very first section of this
writing where we are now, there are a number, in fact there's
probably the same number of mistakes as there are
sentences. So therefore there's probably a cen, a mistake in each sentence. And
this is going to impede your grammatical range and accuracy because remember
grammatical range and accuracy. How accurate are your sentences.
'Public buses or subways could answer their transportation.
What if we have to meet an important customer to sign a million dollar
contract at a city in a different country in another continent?
I do not think that a ship or even a high-speed train
could substitute air transportation.' So what they're saying is
they're giving a very specific example of somebody who's going to be signing, um,
a multi-million dollar contract. Now, is that the type of example that we should
probably be using in the essay? I don't know, I'm just querying whether
they've used a good supporting argument here. Um, there are probably better
examples where you could think about things which are not so niche, not so
specific. So the position again, I do not think
that a ship or even a high-speed train could substitute air transportation.'
So the position is, is
remaining. The position is that they are against this idea of being able to
switch between planes and public transport.
Okay. So overall, um, there are some things that we should
look at, look out for. The grammatical range and accuracy; there are
a number of mistakes throughout the paragraph.
The lexical resource; are they using a wide range of language? Yeah, actually
they've got some good language, 'multi-million dollar contract',
um, they've got 'in a different country in a
in another continent' but that should be 'on another continent.'
The preposition is wrong there. Um, 'I do not think that a ship or even a
high-speed train could substitute air transportation',
that's okay. Um, I like the fact that they say 'what
if we have to meet an important customer?' So that that's a rhetorical question and
it should, um, really have a question mark. And remember that you have to use a wide
range or a wide variety of complex sentences in your language if
you want to get to a band seven. And this person is showing that they do have a, a
range of language that they can draw upon. The problem for me however is
that the accuracy isn't particularly strong.
Now it continues on with 'another reason that I think
we should not blame purely flights is that global warming crisis,
is that 'the' global warming crisis does not mainly come from airplanes
but is also generated', so we've got some,
um, passive tense problems there. 'Generated
from the run-down factories, old cars and decreasing areas of forests.'
Now, what do I think about this? The first
thing is that unfortunately there's a little bit of kind of off topic going on
here. So my question would be is the person really addressing the question at
hand? And the question at hand is 'is it a good idea or not to switch?' And
they're going a little bit off topic by talking about
whether we should blame you know airplanes for this problem with
the environment. I see where they're going,
I'm just querying whether they are going slightly off topic. Just slightly off
topic. Okay.
'We obviously see many old industries, for instance,
coal and oil production.' Again that's a mistake where you're putting the, the for
instance, in commas in the middle of the sentence. It's not how it's used and as a
result this would probably have some CC impact as well. A negative mark on the
Coherence and cohesion. Using the cohesive devices incorrectly.
'Producing large amount of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.
The absorption of greenhouse gases is another main problem.'
Now the thing for me here is that this is really off topic.
Okay? I
am not convinced at all that this is answering the question of whether it's a
good idea or a bad idea. 'The absorption of greenhouse gases is
another main problem.' Why is that related to the question? That's my question, um,
from, at this point. 'Many rainforests in hot climate
countries are cut down in order to increase their agricultural
products.' Again, this is for me now becoming in the
realm of really, really off topic, so I'm going to put it in yellow. This is not
relevant to the question and therefore will probably seriously affect the
the ability to score highly in the task response.
'This results in a reduction of main, of a main greenhouse gas consumer.'
Um, not relevant at all.
'Or', comma should be 'in other words', excuse me.
'Or, in other words.' And there shouldn't be a comma before.
'Carbon dioxide eater'. So I, I don't know whether you guys agree
with me here but this is really off topic.
And that is a multiplier to this pressing problem. I, I'm really struggling
to follow from this half of the paragraph
where the writer is going. And if we go to the the band descriptors, there are
some things in task response which say, 'are they answering the question?' 'Do they
provide relevant main ideas?' 'Are those relevant main ideas supported?' And I'm
struggling here to find any relevance and
unfortunately this is probably going to limit this person to a band five
in the task response. They're really trying in terms of their
language. They are making kind of
continuous grammatical mistakes throughout.
The area where they are strongest is the language aspect and
to some degree the cohesion and the coherence however, there
are some of these and problems where they're using cohesive devices slightly
incorrectly in the sentence.
'In conclusion, focusing on a single pollution maker
like airplanes may only slightly solve the problem and
make people inconvenient
in other choices of transportation. In my opinion, it is a comprehensive problem
solving to many causes of climate change that would greatly benefit the solutions.'
This last sentence is really, really unclear to me. I'm not following that at
all. Does it answer the question? And this is
something that we should always, always remember. If we go back to the top of the
the question and it says, 'do you believe this is a good solution?' And you'll see
that at the top just there. I don't think that this is really, really
answering the question. Because the question says
'supporters of this idea claim that people should be should switch to using
trains and public transport. Do you believe this is a good solution?'
The last kind of third of this essay was pretty off topic for me and I don't
think that it would meet, um, the band six because
at a band six you do need to be presenting relevant main ideas and in
this case I just think this person is going off topic to a quite a large
degree.
Let's have a look at what score we think this person would get in the test.
So overall task response for me, this would probably be a band 5.
All right? Because, so if we go over to the band descriptors
we will see that actually the, um, for the task response
with we're looking at 'presents some main ideas but these are limited and not
sufficiently developed and there may be irrelevant detail.' And I think the
important point there is that the details of some of this are somewhat
irrelevant to the question. Therefore for me I would limit this to a
band five. If we go back to the Coherence and cohesion,
there is a small chance this person could score seven in task achievement
because there are you know logical
paragraphs, there's topics within each paragraph, the referencing is okay. The
only query that I think an examiner would look for is those 'for instance' and
'for examples' in the middle of the sentence. The cohesive devices that are
used somewhat incorrectly. The next one is lexical resource.
Lexical resource, um, it's probably the strongest area here. I think the language
was fairly, um, useful. It was pretty accurate, there were not many mistakes,
the collocations were okay. Do you remember we had this 'massive
transportation'? That would probably be overlooked here and I think it would
score a seven. Grammatical range and accuracy,
unfortunately, um, too many mistakes throughout. If we look at the band
descriptors you will see that the band descriptors say 'variety of complex
structures, you need to have frequent error-free sentences and you need to
have good control, okay, of grammar and punctuation.' I think the control here is
really lacking therefore I would give it a band six.
So overall, that would be a six overall.
And for those people that need a band 7, you
can see there are a couple of areas here where the person does well but there are
some areas that this person really needs to focus on and make sure they are
spending some time, um, working on the, the task response. Are they answering the
question properly? Are they sticking to the point?
My name is Chris from IELTS Daily. I hope that you found this useful. Now, maybe you
could try this essay in the comments below,
the students that are watching this maybe they could give you some feedback
on what they think you have done really
well. I'm going to come back with another essay writing session. I do hope you
found this useful. For now, keep watching all our videos. If you learned something
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