E2 IELTS General Writing Task 1 | Informal Letters | TOP TIPS with Jay!

hello everybody my name is J I'm one of the expert IELTS teachers here at e to language what we're going to do in this live class is look at IELTS general writing task 1 and we're going to focus on the informal letter which you may get there are three types and informal is one of them more specifically I'm going to show you what an informal letter prompt looks like I'm going to show you what an IELTS eight or nine model letter looks like I'm going to talk to you about structure flow vocabulary and grammar and we'll finish by looking at some top tips for writing high scoring informal letters okay and everything that we're going to do today is going to be based on these weird-looking things which are the criteria they are the things that the IELTS examiner's look at when they're marking your writing so everything each language does is based on these criteria we direct you towards those higher scores based on what IDP British Council and Cambridge University do okay all right so let's start by talking about the question prompt you mention it's test day you open up your book and this is what you see it says you should spend about twenty minutes on this task it also tells you some other instructions down here it says write at least 150 words you don't need to write any addresses and it also tells you how to begin your letter but this thing here is critical right a friend we already know that it's an informal letter a friend who lives in another country has invited you to come and stay with him or her on your next holiday you are too busy to accept the invitation write a letter to your friend in your letter a thank him or her for the invitation B explain why you cannot come C ask him or her about other times to visit it seems pretty simple but there's a lot of things that you need to do in order to maximize your score here even if you're a native English speaker and you can write a fantastic letter there are some real little tricks that you need to understand okay let's look at a model letter which would be an eight or nine I'm not going to read it to you because I'll read it to you in detail in a second when we look at it section by section but certainly on your paper in front of you or on the computer if you're taking the computer-based IELTS this is what your letter should look like I just want to draw your attention to the three distinct paragraphs that we talked about a B and C right this stuff's fine you can memorize this sort of stuff here but this is the critical thing that you need to focus on here and you can see that it's distinct separate paragraphs alright let's talk about the structure each of those paragraphs is based on one of the dot points and what I have not done is mixed my paragraphs together so dot point one is based only on dot point one it doesn't introduce information from dot point two etc I've kept them kept them clear and separate so how we start the letter the first thing you do well here it says dear Raja this is taken directly from the instructions where it tells you how to begin your letter dear editor okay that's easy the first paragraph I had to thank my friend Raja yard for the invitation and actually this is kind of difficult because I don't want to just write one sentence on this dot point because I need to keep my paragraphs at about the same number of words so I really needed to be imaginative and think of different ways of to thank my friend for the invitation so what I wrote was thank you so much for your invitation it's a really generous offer to put me up at your place in Tokyo remember he lives in another country I'd really like to come and it's very kind of you but unfortunately I won't be able to make it due to my hectic work schedule okay so I've thanked my friend for the invitation I've also made some sort of connection to the second paragraph I haven't mixed it because I have now in the second one I need to explain why I cannot come okay I've said in the first paragraph that I've got a hectic work schedule and now I'm going to elaborate and extrapolate on that and explain it in more detail I've just started a new teaching job and I've been working around the clock it's been intense exclamation mark I don't mean to complain I've been enjoying it immensely and the school I'm working at is actually our old high school which has been a lot of fun do you remember mrs. Brown she's actually my supervisor so almost everything from this paragraph relates to the reason why I cannot attend third paragraph I need to ask my friend about other times to visit could you let me know of another time I can visit because of the school holidays I'll be free in the new year and I'll also be free in winter so if you're available then I'd certainly love to escape the call to visit you and then I sign off in a friendly way in an informal way not a formal way I just say something like I can't wait to hear from you your friend Jay all right cool so what we found with structure there is we want to keep the paragraphs about the same number of words we don't want to mix our ideas between paragraphs it's okay to sort of say something that will introduce the next paragraph and you also have to be imaginative in each of these paragraphs so that you can increase the size of them flow is also very important and what flow means is that each of the sentences that I write link to the next sentence and link to the following sentence and so on and so forth and the way that we do this is instead of inserting many different ideas I take that single idea of thanking my friend or explaining why I cannot come and I elaborate on that single idea okay and I push myself to come up with different ideas related to that single theme and if I can do that I'm going to write much more interesting paragraphs rather than just inserting lots of random information this is a really tough thing to be able to do okay vocabulary is also critical so I've highlighted some of the key vocabulary here and you'll notice that very few of them are single words because when we're thinking about vocabulary were often thinking about natural sounding phrases collocations for informal letters phrasal verbs etc okay so let's have a look at some of the collocations generous offer for example put me up at your place that's a phrasal verb my hectic work schedule there's a nice collocation an interesting adjective of hectic working around the clock is an interesting phrase or an idiom almost I don't mean to complain is a good phrase enjoying it immensely is a good collocation a lot of fun a good collocation and then something interesting happens down here I've said I'll be free in the new year and I'll also be free in winter so if you're available then now it's okay to use the same word once or twice but on the third time I didn't want to write free again so I changed it to the word available even though that's a little bit more formal than free I didn't want to repeat the same word a number of different times so just be careful if you are repeating words again and again stop think of a different synonym and use that just to show off your vocabulary range okay and lastly certainly love to escape the cold is a very nice phrase and escape the cold is an interesting phrase in itself so I've used a range of different vocabulary and of course all of the word forms are correct which is good okay let's talk about grammar so what you need to do in order to boost your score is not just get the grammar accurate but you also need to show a range of different grammar and more specifically you need to use a range of different sentence types okay so you might be a fantastic writer in English but if you just write simple sentences or compound sentences you're not going to get a high school for grammar and it's going to bring down your overall average score as well so you really need to think about inserting different sentence types showing off the full range of grammar that you have and the different sentence types that you are able to write for example some of these sentences like I'd like I've used a modal verb here you can also say I've used a contraction instead of I would and I'd do two so here this sentence in fact is a really important sentence because I've used a subordinate clause due to my hectic work schedule I'd really like to come and it's very kind of you but unfortunately I won't be able to make it due to my hectic work schedule these kind of linking words that create those sentences we have an independent clause like a full sentence but then another clause that sort of hangs off it like due to my hectic work schedule these are very important there's a video that I did on these I'll put it in the description below you should watch that after this one because if you do not use these types of sentences in your essay and in your letter the maximum score you get for grammar is 4 okay you absolutely need to consciously insert these sentence types into your letter let me show you a few more okay here's another one here which has been a lot of fun there's what's called the subordinate clause because we've got the independent clause the full sentence if you like and then the part that hangs off it oops what else we got we've got one here as well I've started a sentence with because and this also creates one of those sentence types because of the school holidays I'll be free in the new year and I'll also be free in winter so if you're available then I'd certainly love to escape the call to visit you this is a complex sentence on a number of different fronts first of all are views that because conjunction if conjunction I've used some modal verbs this is an excellent sentence that IELTS examiner's love because I'm showing the full range of my ability here for example I've written a question form which is also fine as well so again just to recap this grammar part it doesn't matter if it's 100% accurate that's only half of the trouble the other half is that you need to show a full range of different sentence types you must consciously write various sentence types into your letter okay I can't labor that one enough okay so let's look at some top tips for informal letters then first of all you need to plan before you write you don't need to spend a long time planning but remember what you don't want to do is mix your dot points together you want to keep those paragraphs separate so just stop for 30 or 40 seconds right at the start and think okay I need to use my imagination do I have a friend that lives overseas maybe I can use that as an idea and then write to your plan you should use the person's first name like rod yard or Tom or John whatever not mr. Smith you should start with a friendly greeting like it's so great to hear from you again don't write I am writing to because that's formal number four as we discussed you need to give each bullet point equal attention that means that each PAP each paragraph should be roughly the same number of words okay number five you should use contractions like I'd four I would and she's four she is etc that's fine in informal letters number six exclamation points are fine you should try to write one into your letter seven this is critical you need to use your imagination number eight you can use phrasal verbs in informal letters like as we saw put up or get off for example number nine you should avoid formal connecting words like however therefore as a result these are not appropriate for informal letters what is appropriate for informal letters our words like so but etc those types of conjunctions ensure so sign off in a friendly way for example I can't wait to see you not I look forward to hearing from you okay so keep those top tips in mind if you enjoyed this video and you like what eetu language is doing please click the subscribe button hit like leave a comment and share this with your friends the subscribe buttons just down there and if you click the little bell every time that we release a video you'll be you're getting alert on your phone so you can watch it straight away that'll be cool and lastly if you need some help with your IELTS maybe you've failed a couple of times perhaps you're just concerned because you think your English might not be good enough check out a two language comm where a hundred percent online test preparation on the platform we've got overviews methods practice questions mock tests grammar lessons etc off the platform you can take one-on-one tutorials with expert arts teachers and in some cases X IELTS examiner's you can join our daily live group classes on IELTS reading IELTS writing task 2 etc and you can also get feedback on your writing including your letters what you do is you write your letter on the platform on e to language comm you submit it one of our expert teachers will assess it send it back to you tell you exactly what you're doing right and tell you exactly what you're doing wrong then you can go ahead and take a tutorial and focus in on that if you need to cool I think that's all there's the website there WWE 2 language comm thank you very much watching hope it was helpful remember you probably need to practice this stuff what I'm teaching you is just a theory so do put pen to paper or fingers to keyboards and do some of this practice thank you [Music]

Channel: E2 IELTS

Views: 938,763

Keywords: IELTS, E2, e2 jay, e2langauge, e2language, e2 IELTS, e2 language ielts, ielts writing, IELTS Writing Task 1, task 1, informal letter, ielts letter, english test, writing task 2, ielts general, ielts academic, ielts liz, IELTS informal letters, ielts general writing task 1, ielts general writing task 1 informal letters, ielts informal letters, IELTS general, IELTS academic, IELTS e2, IELTS jay, ielts preparation, e2language ielts, ielts tips, ielts test, esl

Id: lBHf7LCWhVs

Length: 15min 11sec (911 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 22 2018