7 Steps to Planning & Writing the BEST Answer: FCE Writing Tips

do you plan you're writing answers is it effective why should we plan is it a waste of time in this video I'm going to answer all of those questions and I'll show you how to effectively plan in my way let's get started hi everyone my name's Anu and welcome to super easy FCE the place to be for weekly tips and tricks to pass the first certificate exam don't forget to subscribe by clicking the red button down below and you can start learning all of my secrets okay so a lot of students tell me that planning is a waste of time but let me tell you a secret examiners can usually tell if an answer has been planned or not planned because most of the time a well-written answer is a well planned answer okay so let's talk about why we plan first and then I'll show you how to plan so the examiners are looking for four specific things in your answer content communicative achievement organization and language if you don't know what these are check out my last video it's all about what the examiners are looking for I'll link it down in the description box so let's look at what happens when you plan your answer when you plan your answer everything you write is related to the question and it answers the question completely when you plan your answer you can make sure that your structure and register is exactly what the examiner has asked for in the question your answer will be organized and easy to understand you can spend more time thinking about how to make your grammar and vocabulary better because you already know what to write so your final answer will have fantastic grammar and vocabulary short you will do all of the four things that the examiner looks for content communicative achievement organization and language now some students complain that they don't have enough time to plan actually you probably don't have enough time because you haven't planned your answer when you write without planning your writing and thinking at the same time you're gonna write some unnecessary things then decide it's not important or relevant cut it out and then write it all again does this sound familiar you can avoid all of this mess by planning well at the very beginning so in short plan your answers okay so let me show you how I plan here is an example essay question for part one of the writing exam some people say that young people spend too much time in front of the TV what do you think here are the notes that you need to write about why the TV is so popular books and reading and your own idea now you have 40 minutes to write this task I actually recommend you spend about five to ten minutes reading the question and planning your answer don't panic it's okay to spend this much time remember a good plan means you will be able to write faster and better now because you're writing an essay you will need five paragraphs an introduction a body paragraph for each topic and a conclusion if you need some help with the structure of an essay let me know in the comments below and I'll make another video for you writing about the introduction and conclusion doesn't need much thinking I don't think you need to plan them so the first thing I do is I write down the three main points on the page like this the examiner wants the Third Point from you so quickly think of one more thing you could add to your argument I think that young people are also interested in sports and keeping fit and not just TV so I'll add that in next I quickly think about each topic and I put down what I want to say in bullet points so under books and reading I'll say that they're becoming less popular most students will only use textbooks and a lot of them are starting to use video instead most young people prefer visual things like film now these are the three main points I want to talk about so while you're planning remember not to use any full sentences just write any key words that you need and also any cool vocabulary that you remember about this topic writing down these words as soon as you remember them make sure that you use them in your final writing as well now when you actually write this paragraph do not change your mind only write what you decided on during your planning time if you don't do this you will waste time thinking again and you will not get very high marks for a disorganized and messy essay so let's change the plan into a paragraph unfortunately the popularity of books has decreased since the invention of the TV many young people use books at school and universities but when they need to learn something specific they choose educational videos it seems that young people prefer learning visually instead of books once I finish writing this paragraph I quickly look at my plan and take all the points to make sure that I included everything I wanted to now check your sentences to see if you can make it even better are there any simple words that you know synonyms for synonyms are words that have a similar meaning for example I've used the word choose let's change that to opt for to opt for is a synonym of choose here you should also check for repetition often when we are writing really fast we start using the same words especially the subject of sentences for example in this paragraph I've used young people twice now so let's change the second one to this generation if you change the subject make sure you conjugate the verb correctly to I'll have to change prefer to prefers so that it matches with this generation now one more thing I do in my plan is write this weird sentence and this is really important please more cupcakes right now no you're not going crazy and yes this is my biggest tip this is just a cool way to remember a list of different things that I think you should use these are passive modal verbs conditionals contrasts relative clauses and negative inversion now having this list in front of you is great because you can then try and use it consciously in your writing to be honest you probably cannot use all of them but you can probably use most of them in one piece of writing so make sure you check the list to see if you can make it sweeter like a cupcake for example I have used a really simple way to contrast I've used but now I don't recommend this for your level you're supposed to show the examiner that you're an upper intermediate learner a b-2 star so let's change that too although in this way you can make small changes to your answer very quickly and improve your score making small changes at the end means that your answer doesn't look too messy and the examiner will appreciate that okay so let's go over my method of planning again lay the plan out on the page each paragraphs topic on the top right two or three sentences for each paragraph just keywords not full sentences next write down please more cupcakes right now write it down I promise you that if you have it in front of you you're more likely to use it take each point once you've written them down check if you used any simple vocabulary and if you can change it to something more advanced also check for repetitions and then remember to make the sentences sweeter use cleese more cupcakes right now okay so I hope this video made the planning process a little bit easier for you did you like this video if yes give me a thumbs up and make sure you subscribe by clicking on the red button down below if you haven't already watched my video on what the examiners are looking for then make sure you watch it I promise you won't regret it keep practicing and I will see you next time bye

Channel: English To Pass

Views: 32,281

Keywords: first certificate exam, cambridge english, fce exam, cae exam, cpe exam, fce, first exam, fce test, examen first certificate, fce preparation, fce english, fce writing, fce english test, planning a writing, fce planning, b2 english

Id: ya6dALTbmGs

Length: 10min 10sec (610 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 22 2018