How to Collect Vocabulary and Ideas for IELTS & TOEFL Writing

everybody Adam again welcome to right to the top in today's video I want to talk to you about your preparations for the IELTS or TOEFL exams now I've actually made a video similar to this one in the past I decided to redo it and give you a little bit more specific look at the idea Bank so today I'm gonna look at how to create an idea Bank for yourself and how to use it as a practice tool now although I know some of you maybe don't want to buy one of these I have these for sale on my site make your own it's free it just requires effort put in the effort and you will actually gain a lot more by doing it yourself ok so let's get right into it I'll show you all the pieces all the things you're gonna need to include in it and then I'll show you how to use it so the key elements of the idea bank now again just to refresh our minds what is an idea Bank it's just a collection of vocabulary topics questions essays for specific topics if you find that you don't have good ideas when it comes to the essays and that's a big problem for a lot of people it's not just you a lot of people they just can't come up with ideas they don't know what to write about how to support an argument so that's what the idea Bank does so you're gonna include vocabulary you're gonna collect all the vocabulary about a particular topic you're gonna put in your key synonyms so you'll find that certain words you're repeating a lot for example in education you're probably using the word student a lot so you want to make sure you have alternatives for the word student okay subtopics so your general topic is education or technology what are more like specific or smaller topics that they may actually ask you about so technology is big the Internet is big you want to look something more specific like what you can do on the internet if it's good or bad and I'll show you some examples you want to make create you want to start collecting actual questions questions that you might see in the essay section or the task 2 section of your IELTS or TOEFL exam again I'm going to show you examples of these now you want to collect examples you want to think of examples these are examples that you're going to use to support your arguments in your essay and these should be as much as possible Universal examples and then sample essays you can get them online you can get them all kinds of different places and you should also have your own that you can compare and see the differences in styles scores etc let's get right into it so the first thing I want you to understand is what are the main topics that you're gonna come across in the IELTS or TOEFL exam these are the most common topics now do I recommend that you create an idea Bank for each of these topics no that's a lot of work a lot of time maybe a lot of some of it is gonna be a bit useless for you in particular concentrate on the weak area the the topics that you find that you just don't know about or you have no ideas about create an idea Bank for that topic if you have a problem with education you don't have enough vocabulary or you just don't know what to say you don't know what kind of ideas or what kind of questions they may ask you about start working on an idea Bank for education if you have a problem with questions about society or questions about advertising or animals start creating an idea Bank for those topics that I mean you I'm guessing you've taken some practice tests by now you've seen a few sample questions some of them gave you a hard time work on that topic now let's get into the actual details vocabulary what are you gonna do for vocabulary first you're going to brainstorm so let's say let's say you're talking about technology we're going to look at technology this time just as much as you can write down every single word or every single phrase or every single expression that you can think of about technology this is called brainstorming just say to think think think think and write when you've done your brainstorming you have your color of words now you need to make that collection bigger much bigger so now you're going to search the internet you're going to go online you're going to go to your search engine Google Bing whatever you use you're going to put whatever topics or technology plus ESL or technology plus vocabulary or technology plus English vocabulary and you're going to see a list of sites now you may have to go through five six seven ten different websites to collect all these words but the effort is worth it the more effort he put into it the more you get out of it right as you're building this you're already starting to learn vocabulary and remember words right so you're going to search and collect so now you have let's say 300 words in expressions and car locations now you need to categorize them you need to put them into categories that way they're easier to remember when you're reviewing them okay so categories people concepts inventions etc all the different things that you can group things into different idea bags will have different categories of course now keep in mind when you're done with all of these words you have again a lot of words three 400 words a lot of them will be new words to you a lot of them will be very everyday simple words that you know very well label these all the words every word you know put a green sticker or a green mark or put a one or put a yes or put a K whatever it works for you all the words that you you sort of know you've seen them before or you've heard them before but you're not a hundred percent sure put an orange or a two or a DK or SK etc and the words that are completely new to you that you really don't know they're brand new words to you put a red or a 3 or a DK or whatever symbol works for you that way you know which words to start working on first all the words you don't know you start working on them find out what they mean find out how to use them start during them and then as they pass from red to orange you can still review them but go to more new words the orange words review review eventually they become green the words you know etc and that's how you build your vocabulary in your categories make sure you have a category for just four verbs a category just for phrasal verbs or you can put them with the idioms idioms and phrasal verbs together and make one for call locations for example let's go to education again if you sometimes get confused and you think about make homework in your writing you say students need to make homework make homework is a bad collocation it's not the correct collocation you do homework you submit homework you complete homework make sure you have these collocation correctly down in your in your idea bank and the most important use all of the new words use all of the new expressions just remembering them won't help you you need to actually use them you have to put them in a contextual situation in a context in an essay in whatever it is you're doing okay and then that's your vocabulary and remember words are ideas once you have more vocabulary you already have more ideas so you if you do only this part of the idea Bank you've already done pretty well for yourself okay but there's more to do a lot more work to you let's go to the next one oh sorry let me give you an example so this is from the at my idea Bank about technology in the internet this is one category people and I have anonymous technical technical support staff techie repair person all kinds of different words but some again some of them you know I'm sure some of them you don't know it like a lot of you know user and host or engineer but you know technophobe phobe means or phobia means fear a technophobe is a person who is afraid of technology okay well you have here you have technical file file feel oh love a technophile is a person who loves technology new words start using them instead of just saying user or a person who uses the internet person person who doesn't like the internet use technophobe technophile all of these are people you're some of you might be a little surprised how many people are involved in technology now the internet here issues censorship is an issue like should government censor the Internet should they open it etc okay so copyright copyright things just because something is on the internet and you can see it for free doesn't mean you can use it right there are copyright laws and rules so all kinds of different issues I can ask about the internet all vocabulary so does that have the vocabulary I start having the ideas okay now the next thing I want you to work on in relation to vocabulary key synonyms so again remember I said you don't want to use students students students student you want to have synonyms ready for the word students so you don't have to use it a lot so here it is much easier to maintain contact with family so people use communicate or maintain contact you can also say keep in touch with interact with communicate with reach out to connect with these are all different ways of saying the same thing make sure that the words that you think are commonly used when you're talking about technology make sure you have alternative ways to say it okay subtopics now again remember I mentioned you have your general topic technology but then there are all kinds of different things that they can ask you about technology or about the internet for example a subtopic about the Internet online shopping what are the positive aspects of online shopping what are the negative aspects of online shopping and start thinking of different ideas the positives you could save time you can save money the negatives it's just too easy to buy is press a button so you're spending too much money you're buying things you don't need okay so lots of good points lots of bad points try to give yourself at least 20 or so subtopics and then again once you have all of these different ideas they can ask you any question you'll have thought about the general topic enough that you can answer any question now speaking of question you can get a lot of these online just search different IELTS and TOEFL websites but also start creating your own and don't just create like do you agree or disagree questions make sure that you're asking all the different types of questions that you might see agree disagree yes no advantage disadvantage compared with opinion without opinion open for IELTS make sure you have some two-part questions as well just be careful that you you're ready for anything that comes your way now what I mean here by adapt topics to the question types try to take certain topics in the question and ask more or less the same thing in a different style of question so one of the questions I just showed you before has an over reliance on technology made young people more or less creative these days so this is a yes/no question fine take the same idea the same subtopic and ask it in a different way young people have allowed machines to perform so many way dot-dot-dot do you agree or disagree with this statement so I took my yes/no question I've made it in two agree disagree and then I took I wrote the same question a little bit longer a little bit more you know overly written but sometimes you're gonna see this and I made it in to discuss both views and say which you agree with so I yes/no agree disagree discuss and give your opinion same topic how machine use affects young people's behaviors and brains essentially take the questions adapt them to the different types of questions that you might see now okay let's look at examples now what do I mean by examples you have to have very concrete examples to use in your essay if you're presenting an argument or if you're presenting a a cause or a process you want to back it up with some concrete examples so you can use surveys or studies or research you can use your own experience ideally this is the best if you can have your own experience and a topic use that but again as long as it fits the situation as long as it suits the topic make yourself list so for example for technology think of some famous project like the Mars rover Sputnik etc think of people entrepreneurs Elon Musk Steve Jobs Jack Ma these are all famous people that everybody knows use them to support an idea I use Steve Jobs for all kinds of different essays because he's good for technology for education for art for society etc he's a very good example for lots of different topics so try to think of examples that you can use on more than just one very specific essay and then apply it to all different types of things and of course the most important thing you need to do is study sample essays now what you should do is find very good essays online and find real essays written by real people as much as you can don't just study seven you need a 7.5 so you study only 7.5 essays doesn't work that way study 6 7 9 all the different types of essays that you can find and compare why did this essay get a 6 and this is why did this essay get a 6 while this essay got a 7 what's the difference there's a big difference between 6 & 7 banned on the IELTS you need to figure out what that difference is check the grammar check the structures like sentence structures paragraph structures oh cab do they give good examples do they give any examples how's the logic do ideas connect and flow are the arguments developed enough are they complete are they persuasive does the person provide enough support for a position how's the organization from introduction body conclusion a little bit of style always helps all of these things together work to change your band score so study all the samples you can find and see what the difference is are okay now you finished your idea Bank what do you do with it well for task 1 it's just mostly the vocab you're gonna use the vocab but essentially you just need to practice you need to summarize things for the IELTS the academic look at stock charts look at gold charts look at diagrams processes pie charts etc just find all these things that you would see on the test and summarize it to say what do you see now if you're not sure what to find these a good way to do is this again search engine Google I use just put pie charts in the Google search box it'll give you a whole bunch of things at the top you'll see all news images etc just click on images you will see lots of pie charts pick one summarize it go to the next the next the next you'll find a lot of stuff on the Internet it's a good tool for the IELTS general you're gonna have to write letters just think about everyday life situations if you're gonna complain praise ask for something ask about something update someone invite someone think of all these situations think of a recipient think of the context write a letter formal informal semi-formal so for practice one and the same thing for TOEFL write TOEFL listen to something summarise it read something summarise it ideally if you can find an article and a podcast or a news report about the same topic compare the two summarize it so this is just practice task 1 just practice do do you do but usually that's not where people have the most problems most people have the most problems with the SI so that's what we're going to talk about and by the way here are some good places to get things to watch and listen to and read so News Channel's National Geographic Ted calm etc now with the idea back for the task to the essay what are you going to do how are you going to practice use the questions so you have all your vocab that's fine that's for the writing part start with the questions you should collect anywhere from 40 to 50 to 60 questions in my idea Bank I have the different types of the different question types and I put at least ten questions for each question type take those and then just start using the questions take the questions one two three four and write a plan for each maximum five minutes question number one plan question number two plan three plan for plan five minutes each question number five plan and write a complete essay in the forty minutes or again at the beginning take as much time as you need but eventually get it down to 40 minutes for the TOEFL get it down to thirty minutes when you finish your essay question number six plan seven plan eight plan for plans one right by the time you're done you'll have a whole bunch of essays now you need to start assessing what you've written so plan write repeat just do this again and again and again three to four minutes for the plan then assess and review how is the writing scored learn how your writing is actually scored it's very important to know this you can find a link up here for a video an introduction to this topic anyway what errors do you repeat now the problem is you need someone to show you the errors or you need to know how to look for your errors yourself but look at all your sample essays and see where which mistakes or which patterns do you repeat what are you doing the same in every si and try to avoid that okay what is it find out what your weak area or areas are what is your strengths so your weak areas review it practice it improve it your strengths make sure you use them more often in your writing how is your timing does it take you two hours to write it work till four to get it down to an hour 45 then an hour and a half then an hour then 40 minutes etc lots of things to do but again you're getting all this from your idea Bank which helps you create these sample essays yourself so there it is in a summary create an idea Bank practice assess review practice and then repeat again again and again the most important thing you need to remember about preparing for the IELTS or TOEFL or any exam is that it takes a lot of work there are no shortcuts the idea Bank is one of these ways to get you to your goal okay now I just want to show you one last thing before I go Thomas Edison invented the light bulb again we're not going to get into the different theories this is a quote from him genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration first of all you could use this in your essays as an example for whatever you want technology education etc but what I want you to make get out of this is the fact that this is true genius is about hard work you're gonna get your score by working hard not by taking shortcuts start working on your idea Bank practice practice practice okay and that's it that's your idea bank that's how you're gonna start working on your improving your writing and you can apply it to other sections of the test as well if you have any questions please go to YouTube and ask me in the comment section I do read all the comments but I can't reply to all of them so read each other's comments try to answer them answer the questions if you can good luck with your studies come back real soon don't forget to subscribe to my channel and I'll see you again soon bye

Channel: Write to the Top

Views: 49,240

Keywords: IELTS, TOEFL, English writing, writing skills, language test, English grammar, English vocabulary, how to write an essay, essay writing, test tips, English test, vocabulary, IELTS speaking, test preparation, study tips, IELTS high score, TOEFL high score, lexical resource, collocations, idea bank, essay ideas, IELTS Reading, TOEFL reading, IELTS writing, TOEFL writing, IELTS strategies, academic vocab, academic vocabulary

Id: Ul3_LHA_ljk

Length: 22min 12sec (1332 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 06 2019