7 IELTS Writing Mistakes you must avoid to achieve Band 7+

hi there it's asiya think about this how many small mistakes do you make in your writing a missing article here a missing comma there don't seem like a big deal right but in order to achieve pan 7 for your grammar you must produce frequent error-free sentences it means that many of your sentences must be 100 percent correct and those little errors may really stand in the way in this video i'm gonna show you seven common grammatical mistakes that ielts students make which you can avoid just by watching this video i think you're ready let's get started these are nouns you can't count and some of them are pretty obvious like water snow but some are not let me show some of the uncountable nouns which are frequently used in ielts and which cause a lot of mistakes the first culprit is advice in english it is uncountable even though in my mother tongue russian you can count them but in english it's just advice you cannot use it with an indefinite article an and it requires the verb in a singular form advice is if you want to highlight that it's only one piece you say a piece of advice he gave me a great piece of advice or you can say some advice could you give me some advice and you cannot form the plural form either there are some other similar nouns like information again it's uncountable and you can say a piece of information or some information here is a great example this service offers information and advice on possible careers you see no articles you can use definite articles with uncountable nouns the advice the information when it's needed research again it's uncountable you just say research shows but there is a similar word which is countable studying one study two studies according to a recent study on aircraft noise or just according to recent research traffic it means the vehicles on the road at a particular time and you can see the traffic was good or i got into heavy traffic and you can't count it and you can't form the plural form either people get used to the constant noise of the traffic the next word is slightly different because it seems like it's plural but it is not news news is singular news is and we say that is great news or what's the latest news again you can see a piece of news and one more money in english you can't count them money is and a well-known phrase is money is the root of all evil it's good to know you can use it in your essay you can agree or disagree with it if needed you say to earn money or to spend money unlike most uncountable nouns this one actually has a plural form monies but it means sums of money lawyers often use it and you can say a statement of all monies paid into your account but basically you can just use money everywhere now i'm going to show you a sentence and i want you to find the mistake all mistakes children spend most of their time at school however their future life choices often depend on the example of their parents do you see mistakes i can see too okay here is the main rule do not use however to link two sentences into one yes it cannot be used this way here is how to correct it children spend most of their time at school full stop capital letter however comma the future life choices depend on the example of their parents yes however cannot link two sentences into one and we always put comma after the word however if you still want to keep all that in one sentence you have to use although and actually put it in the first sentence although children spend most of their time at school common their future life choices often depend on the example of their parents that's extremely important for ielts let me show you one more example please find any mistakes most people want to find a high pay job but money is not the best motivator for most employees do you see any basically in formal english you should not use but at the beginning of sentences in informal english you can when you talk to a friend when you send an email to a friend but in ielts writing task 2 don't and there are several ways to correct this sentence first of all we can join two sentences into one we put a comma but and that's it but it's the opposite of however however can't be used to join two sentences into one and but can't be used at the beginning so in our example we can simply use however and keep two separate sentences don't forget to put the comma after however or we can use although although most people want to find a high paid job comma money is not the best motivator for most employees please note that you place although you the other sentence not where you put but or however here is another rule for you separate linking words or discourse markers with commas linking words are very important in ielts writing they link your sentences and your ideas together and ielts examiners specifically check that you use a variety of formal linking words and that is important for your coherence and cohesion score you should not forget that you should put commas before and after most of those linking words let me show you some examples if you have them at the beginning of the sentence on the other hand children are ultimately responsible for their academic achievements or the lack thereof so we say on the other hand common additionally by visiting other countries people learn about other cultures again we put additionally comma and then we say by visiting other countries comma so the second comma is here because that's a phrase before your subject the subject is people and if you have a long phrase before you put a comma sometimes you have linking words in the middle of your sentence water is particularly scarce in arid regions for instance in africa for instance we put a comma before and after the other sentence is slightly different people who live in cold countries such as norway have to spend more on heating so here we have a phrase such as norway and we've added that and actually we could remove it and our sentence would be people who live in cold countries have to spend more on heating and because we edit that phrase we put a comma before and after have a look at this next sentence is anything wrong 4 out of 10 adults aged between 30 and 60 do not exercise regularly what do you think the rule is spell out numbers from one to ten four and ten you need to write letters not numbers basically the best way to memorize what i'm saying is to practice writing your essays and i've created the ielts writing task to workbook in the pdf format and it will help you to get started it's absolutely free the link will be in the description now let's continue the next rule is do not use very with strong adjectives in general we use very to make our adjectives stronger that's why it's called an intensifier but some adjectives in english are already strong and you can't use them with very let me show you some of them for instance when you want to say that something is very bad you say awful terrible dreadful and none of them can be combined with very very big is enormous very clever it's brilliant very good it's excellent ideal perfect wonderful very tasty it's delicious and very tired it's exhausted let me show you how to use adjectives describing distance size or age properly there are a lot of mistakes here if you want to say the problem lasts for 12 months but you want to use an adjective you say a 12 month program please note that you put a hyphen 12 hyphen month and you don't need to use s it's just months no yes here is another example this student is 18 years old so here we have the plural form 18 years but when we want to make an adjective we say an 18 year old student and please note that here we need two hyphens 18 hyphen year hyphen old student and no s in year actually if you take the academic test that's a great thing when you describe a group of people you can see instead of people between 20 and 30 years old you can say 20 to 30 year old people all in one adjective that's really complex english just don't forget to put hyphens everywhere and just year no s actually i'm thinking about making more in-depth videos on how to use articles and different verb tenses in ielts writing are you interested if you are please leave me a comment saying which video you'd like to see first articles or verb tenses and depending on how many comments i receive i will see if you want those videos and i will prepare them please don't forget to download the ielts writing task to workbook and thank you for watching me today good luck with your preparation and your exam bye

Channel: Fastrack IELTS

Views: 57,682

Keywords: ielts, ielts exam, ielts test, ielts exam preparation, ielts preparation, how to prepare for ielts, ielts tips, ielts writing, ielts writing task 2, ielts writing academic, Fastrack education, fastrack ielts, fastrack asiya

Id: tMtXq9pnax4

Length: 14min 5sec (845 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 22 2020