4 Keys to IELTS Band 8+ in IELTS Writing Task 2

are you aiming for band eight in ielts writing well i've got the keys for you four keys that will help you to reach your ielts goal and because this is youtube i'm saving the most important one for last by the way if you're here looking for five magic words that will get you to ielts eight or four sentences to memorize that will guarantee you band nine this is not the place for you you cannot hack ielts i'm sorry to tell you what i'm going to share with you are the requirements according to the criteria and i'm going to show you what you need to do and how to do it but the hard work the doing that's up to you i'm going to show you one key for each criterion from grammar then vocab one for coherence and cohesion and one for task response so here we go four keys to band eight in ielts writing why you need to do them and how to do them key number one find and fix your errors so obvious right but why do you need to do it let's look at the criteria we're zooming in on grammatical range and accuracy here i've got 9876 if you're aiming at band 8 look at this second dot point the majority of sentences are error free the examiners take this really seriously so you must present more than 50 percent the majority of your sentences absolutely perfectly no errors at all if not you simply can't score band eight check out this example here's a beautiful essay this essay addresses the question answers the question really thoroughly the position is clear the vocab is gorgeous there is a huge range of grammatical structures it's an excellent essay however there is an error in every single sentence except for one and the errors which you can probably see here are tiny there's a missing article there's a verb which doesn't agree with the subject little things like that but they are all through the essay so automatically this writer has missed band 8 in grammar so the majority of sentences definitely are not error-free this writer would be probably looking at a band 6 for grammar which is makes some errors in grammar and punctuation so finding and fixing your errors is crucial but the big question is how do you do it let's break our house into two categories how do you do it while you're preparing for the test and then how do you do it on test day how do you find and fix your errors before test day during your preparation number one is get feedback now i'm biased and of course i think the e2 language feedback is the absolute best thing in the world but however you do it give your writing to someone an ielts expert and get feedback from them and i don't mean get a score get information from them what is wrong with your writing where are the errors how can you improve on those things it might be grammar it might be linking words whatever it is you have to know so that you can fix them second thing is to take action on that feedback don't just get your work back from your teacher or your friend and think okay put it aside no you've got to take action do something to improve do something to get rid of those little errors the third thing you can do is to create your own error hit list this is just basically a list of the errors that you make regularly for most people there are two three or four grammatical areas where they often make mistakes so maybe articles or subject verb agreement or prepositions or verbs whatever it is you should know what your weak areas are and write them down so to look something like this this is a pretty common error hit list that we would see at e2 one subject verb agreement so maybe the teacher is correcting errors with your subjects and your verbs something like people is or the problem are those are subject-verb agreement issues so write it onto your error list and write the corrections from your teacher to try to cement it in your mind you might have articles in there maybe spelling or any number of things make sure that you know what your errors are then on test day write and edit with those errors in mind so if you have trouble with articles as you're writing think carefully about the articles when you're editing look at the articles are they there are they in the right spot and so on and the second thing you can do on test day is edit with fresh eyes and mind you've done one hour of writing on test day let's say 56 minutes of writing then you need to use those final few minutes to edit carefully and it's really difficult when you're tired and you're probably sick of looking at the same piece of paper or the same screen but this is your chance to lift your score from band six those little areas up to band eight so 56 minutes in sit up take a deep breath maybe tap yourself on the head give yourself a fan and then look at your writing as if you have never seen it before fresh eyes fresh mind look for those errors find them and fix them key number two use topic specific vocab now why is this important let's look at the criteria lexical resource and zoom in now band nine there are a few things you need to do but one of them is skillfully use uncommon lexical items many people misinterpret this to mean crazy bizarre words that even the most advanced english speaker wouldn't use i want you to shift your perspective of less common or uncommon common vocab from strange to topic specific so if you're given an essay topic about um crime then the examiner wants to see crime related vocabulary if your topic is about advertising the examiner wants to see words and phrases related to advertising so things like marketing and billboard and up and spam those kind of things so how do you do it before test day input input input this means get english in as much as you can read widely listen to podcasts watch movies watch tv shows watch documentaries ted talks try to absorb english in any way that you can we've got these things that e2 called topic toolkits which are designed just to do that give you exposure to language based on a theme you can find a link in the description below to our video all about it so english in number two create a vocab system so you're getting all these new words from reading and listening you need a way to learn them to retain them recall them so one really simple way to do it is to use flash cards simply write the word on a piece of paper the meaning or the translation on the back and every day just flip through and keep those words fresh in your mind you might just want to use a vocabulary notebook or an app in your phone as well number three practice demonstrating your vocab it's one thing to know a word or to recognize a word and it's another thing to produce that word and when it comes to ielts writing of course that's what you have to do get that word out onto the paper so you need to practice that before the test if you've learned or if you have a big set of flash cards with vocabulary that you know you've seen it a lot you've heard it but if you've never written it it will not happen accidentally on test day you need to practice using it beforehand so work on demonstrating your vocabulary range before the test on test day itself that's your time to show what you know the examiner can't give you points for what's in your brain it has to come out into your writing second bit of advice here is to avoid generic sentences so look at this sentence for instance although this is a serious problem there are a number of possible solutions totally fine sentence but it's not very interesting it's not demonstrating range it's certainly not demonstrating uh mastery of uncommon lexical items this is a better sentence although the rising crime rate is a serious problem there are effective ways to tackle it using a combination of harsher penalties and better rehabilitation programs so immediately that's a stronger sentence it is topic specific and i'm demonstrating range to the examiner essential for band eight key number three master your linking why do you need to do this now we're looking at coherence and cohesion here we'll zoom in i want to look actually up at band 9 for this one which says uses cohesion in such a way that it attracts no attention you know when you read a piece of writing and you don't even notice the linking words that is band 9 coherence and cohesion where the linking is smooth every sentence is connected but you don't even notice the linking words that's why you need to be aiming however a lot of people sit down here at band 6 which says uses cohesive devices or linkers effectively but cohesion within and or between sentences may be faulty or mechanical two serious words in ielts faulty linking mechanical linking so how do you do it in your test preparation before test day number one thing is to learn how the different types of linking words are used all linking words are not created equal so a word like words like but however although they have a similar function but we use all three in completely different ways you need to know how to use each of them properly that includes punctuation so there's a couple of links below in the description section make sure you watch them and learn them second point is how to avoid band six mainly you've got to learn what is faulty linking it's basically an error with your linking word and what is mechanical linking and avoid doing that on test day only use linkers that you are 100 confident with if you're not really sure about where to put a comma with the word however or although don't use it if you have just one or two errors with your linking words you're gonna drop to band six so make sure you do that work before the test and on test day don't take risks with your linkers two check that your sentences are holding hands as you read through your work try to see that each sentence has a grip on the sentence before and after this can be just a little word like it or they or this or a bigger linking word like additionally subsequently and three aim for linking that attracts no attention this brings us to key number four as i said this is the most important thing that you need to know about scoring ben seven and definitely scoring band eight this is an area where a lot of people lose a lot of points however it's a super simple thing to do so key number four is to answer the question it's really simple right but you would be surprised how many people do not do this on test day so why is it so important well according to the criteria in task response at band 8 you need to sufficiently address all parts of the task what a lot of people will do is address the task only partially so there might be one element of the question that you just miss maybe you didn't read it carefully enough or you're just rushing through it missing one element your score is going to plummet down to band five even if it's beautifully written you of course need to avoid that on test day so how do you do it before test day as you're preparing read sample questions read lots of sample questions you can find them in cambridge material on the e2 site of course all over the internet read sample questions you can find sample questions from recent tests and analyze them carefully look at samples as well look for really high level samples preferably written by examiners or x examiners band 8 and 9 samples and analyze them look at how the writer has dealt with every part of the question third thing is learn how to write paragraphs not essay templates if you know how to write an introduction a conclusion and body paragraphs we teach two different structures here at e2 then you can answer any question you don't need to memorize a template for each different question type it doesn't work like that and in fact you should let go of the idea of question type is it opinion question is it advantages disadvantages it doesn't matter on test day you have a question or several questions and you have to answer them so when you're there in your test the number one thing you can do is read the question a lot read it re-read it re-read it as you're writing keep looking back at the question even the most advanced writers need to do that you have to stay on topic and you have to deal with every part of it make sure that you deal with each part equally and thoroughly answer all parts of that question let me show you a recent task 2 question just to show you what i mean this task says children nowadays spend more time on screens and less time doing active or creative things why do you think this is the case what measures could be taken to encourage children to spend more time doing active and creative things now some of you might be thinking it's a double question or it's a course solutions question it doesn't matter what we need to do is look really carefully here so yes there are two questions but there are many elements in those questions so i've got the word why here why why do you think this is the case but notice in the sentence before there's a lot of information so i have to answer in my essay why do children spend more time on screens and also why do they spend less time doing active things and also why do they spend less time doing creative things so already i need to mention these three things i also have to talk about the measures that could be taken to encourage children to spend more time doing active things and more time doing creative things so there's a lot happening in this essay question if you rush ahead and start writing and miss part of it you'll come down to band five so answer the question by the way if you want to read a full sample essay on this question you can download it from the link below quick recap our four keys to band eight number one find and fix your errors particularly those little grammar errors two use topic specific vocabulary number three master your linking and four answer the question or questions and that's it now it's over to you if you want more help come and study with me on e2language.com in our live classes our 101 tutorials or submit your work for feedback and be sure to subscribe to our channel here on e2 ielts to keep up with us see you soon [Music]

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Id: ZiU4I1bXgNw

Length: 17min 54sec (1074 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 05 2020