How to Plan the IELTS Task 2 Essay

hi welcome to write to the top I'm Adam in today's video I'm gonna walk you through the steps through the process of creating a plan for your IELTS task 2 essay now it's very very important that you learn how to do this that you practice creating plans for essays so that when you get to the actual test center on test day you can do it right away write your essay and get a good score now one of the most common mistakes that people make on the essay section of the of the test is that they read the question they read the task and start writing an essay right away it's almost guaranteed you will lose points doing it that way unless you have enough practice planning and you can think of it quickly and start writing but I'll talk about how to practice at the end so let's start why should you plan let's start with that it's very important because people often think it's a waste of time okay the reason you want a plan is you want to make sure that you understand the task and this is where people a lot of people make their first mistake they read the question too quickly or they read the task too quickly they don't fully understand what they need to do and as they start writing they're already getting away from the task it's like the purpose of the task and they're losing points before they're even halfway into their essay okay now I have a good video about that about common errors misinterpreting the task there's a link up here you can follow make sure you understand what is being asked of you first then you want to make sure that you have a clear path from your thesis whether it's an opinion where whether it's a demonstration whatever from your thesis all the way to the conclusion you want to make sure there's a logical process to get from one to the next and you want to make sure that you stick to that process that you stay on track throughout the essay a lot of people they start writing and they're on the right track they're thinking correctly about the task but then they started losing focus and they started losing control and they go off on a tangent they go off to a completely unrelated topic or they don't actually answer the question they've been so make sure you know where you're going throughout the essay now if you think that planning is a waste of time it's actually the opposite if you learn how to plan and you can make create a good plan in three four five minutes you will actually save yourself time because as you're writing the essay you won't have to waste time thinking what should I say what what should I talk about next what examples should I use what words should I use you already have all that ready for you at the beginning all you have to do is look back every once in a while at your plan and make sure you're on track and write your essay basically putting the plan into words into sentences into paragraphs okay so you actually will save time by planning and whenever you come to the place where you have to put an idea whether you had to put a reason where you have to put support an example etc you already have the ideas ready just plug them in and you're ready to go and you have the vocab ready or at least some of the vocab ready you don't have to think too much as you're writing you have good words ready to use because vocabulary is very very important in the essay section that's where a big chunk of your score is coming from okay and planning will help you relax you don't need to panic you don't need to think oh my god I don't know what to say now you already thought about it say what you put in your plan put it into your essay I've seen a lot of people write a plan and then ignore it they don't look at it again they forget all about it and then they write their essay that is a waste of time because you spend time thinking about it and then you're spending time thinking again don't do that do it once at the beginning and then just concentrate on the English on the sentences and paragraphs after that now a lot of you a lot of people have told me that they have a hard time coming up with ideas first of all it takes practice second of all you should have your idea Bank you should be building an idea Bank already in preparation for your test if you're not sure what an idea Bank is there's a link up there you can follow that how to create an idea Bank or you can go buy an e-book from my website a couple of them are already done and you can work with those okay so let's get into the process we're going to look at three tasks three sample tasks and I'm gonna walk you through the process of one of them deeply and then the other two as examples so number one understand the task make sure you read it carefully okay some people think that parents should discourage their children from pursuing an education in the arts they argue that children should instead focus on the maths and Sciences as these are areas that can lead to good jobs and help Society do you agree with this approach to education so the question is do you agree with something so you have to say yes or no and then support that choice right now the question is not asking you which is better arts or maths do you agree with this approach so the approach is some people think that parents should discourage their children from pursuing an education in the arts so the approach to education is to stay away from the arts okay they argue that they argue that means this is the support they give for that belief so it's that belief that you have to argue about should children study arts or not that's the question okay that's what you have to answer let's look at a couple more as cities become more crowded and cars increasingly the reason I'm not gonna read everything is because I already saw the questions okay what can local governments do to make public transportation more attractive to residents and how can they fund these public transportation systems when you have a two-part question and they're both open questions what how right away you don't even need anything in the task that's all set up it's background information what you asked to do in the essay is actually answer these two questions and these two questions can be presented alone everything that comes before it in the task streets highways trains buses etc this is just a little bit of background information to help you start thinking about it so yes read it of course get some ideas from there like about different means of public transit but concentrate on the two questions what can government's do how can they fund it how can they get the money to support these public transportation systems okay number three we're gonna look at three altogether when it comes to foreign travel some tourists prefer to let a guide point out to highlights and deal directly with the locals others would rather discover a place on their own and get to know its people so basically you're looking at two ways of traveling and then you have to compare the two and say which you prefer so now I'll talk about the word compare a lot of people think that compare means look at the similarities of both or look at the benefits of both or the advantages of both compare means look at this like what is same what is different right look at the two of them and how are they similar how are they different now especially when they says which you prefer you can't only look at the good sides of both because if you say guided tours are good because ABC solo tours are good because ABC so I choose a the guided tours well why if this is good and this is good why do you choose this one right you can say that one is more good like better than the other one but the easier approach is to say what is good and bad about each and the one that has more good is the one you're going to prefer right so I'll show you when we get into the actual planning of it so next you have to isolate the topic and question debate issue so what is the topic we're talking about education what is the question with a debate or the issue depending on the question type so should they study the arts or not okay all rights only and then stem so I still pull it up so I put me in the circle I put my general topic education and then should they study arts only and then I'm gonna give some ideas about that and should they study stem stem science technology engineering maths they're all these subjects are put together into a group called stem so I'm putting myself a little bit of a parallel and I'm not saying arts yes no I'm saying arts only yes or no as compared to other things like the stems projects okay so isolate all the different topics you're gonna discuss and get ready to build on them next get your ideas get your vocab vocab synonyms related to topic words that are related to topic words that are specific to the issue or debate transitions have your translate ready because you a lot of people forget to use transitions and this is going to cost you points so education generally and I'm taking first I want to take the words in the task parents should discourage their kids and I'm gonna look for some synonyms because I want to rephrase this in my introduction urge encouraged studies rather prefer concentrate fields etc I'm looking for things to take from the task itself to rephrase in my introduction to introduce the topic education generally curriculum stem graphic design embrace adapt one-dimensional objects all the ideas that you can think of the come with education if you're studying only signs then you're very one-dimensional if you're studying arts and science your multi-dimensional etc some I have some transitions whereas in contrast because I'm going to look at two things I'm gonna agree or disagree so I want to look at two sides of things I'm gonna use whereas I'm going to use in contrast I'm gonna use more over to add points etc just have them ready you probably you should know them already by now put them down on paper so you remember to use them and then I'm thinking about art so I'm gonna look at painting music photography different types of arts what is good about it imagination creativity stem technology engineering coding computers what does stem mean again you can put a lot more words I'm just giving you an example here of what you can put down okay step 4 think of your support how are you going to support one or the other so create all rights gives us child creativity it gives them critical thinking skills and gives them soft skills how do you interact with people how to communicate how to think outside the box those who study only stem are one-dimensional they're limited they have limited employable skills they can only do one thing what's good as they get technical skills so at the end my idea is that both of them are necessary so this is going to be my thesis the conclusion of the plan is that both are necessary and that's going to be my opinion and then I'm gonna outline my actual essay and again you don't need to be this detailed in your plan the more you practice making plans the quicker you can do all of this and you'll you'll find your own way to plan this is how I create a plan this works for me I do the circle I do the vocab I do the two different parts and I think about what I'm gonna say in each paragraph everybody has their own way of planning find the way that it works for you the way that you can do it effectively but within five minutes maximum okay and the more you practice it the more you'll find which way works for you I'll show you a couple of other ways anyway my thesis I disagree that parents should discourage their children from studying the arts all rights are just as important as maths and Sciences that's my thesis body in the first body paragraph I'm going to support why art is important all right and technology together to ends get rid of one of those for example graphic design so art then technology have already embraced this is the world we live in now there's no such thing as separation anymore everything works together my second body paragraph why is art another good reason for art it provides useful skills for work for example it builds critical another spelling mistake critical analysis adaptability get rid of the eye and critical and if you want a third body paragraph so in my essay I'm gonna have three short paragraphs there is precedent so now I'm gonna look specifically at an example and apply it to my support I'm gonna look at Steve Jobs and Apple how he used art to create a big technology company and then of course I'm gonna write my conclusion okay so do I have to write all those things down my thesis body one body to know you could do it it's a bit of a waste of time that way all I do here is I'm gonna look at I'm gonna go to my arts in my stem I'm going to circle the ideas I'm gonna focus on I may write a couple of both I'm gonna put down my thesis somehow and then I'm gonna have this general idea and then I'm gonna start writing my essay now begin writing the essay that's your next step now step number seven is crucial and this is the one most people forget or ignore refer back to the plan before beginning each new paragraph so a lot of people as I said before they'll make the plan which is good but then they'll forget about it or they'll just ignore it they won't look at it again and they'll write and as they're writing they're thinking of new ideas they're thinking of new vocabulary so again if you do that the plan was a waste of time anyway make sure you finish your introduction go back to your plan think about okay this is what I'm going to talk about now write your first body paragraph finish your first body paragraph look at your plan okay this is what I'm going to talk about next next body back to plan body and then conclusion is a pretty straightforward after that okay don't ignore your plan it's there to save you time it's there to help you relax and it's there to help you follow your path and thesis to conclusion in a logical way that the reader can follow and comprehend remember you're being tested on your task completion coherence and cohesion lexical resources and grammar it's not all grammar it's not all vocab it has to make sense make it make sense and make sure you answer the question okay let's look at the other two examples I gave you before so some people they do a much shorter plan they just write the main topic the main question main ideas are gonna talk about paragraph one paragraph two and some vocab so public transit how to promote and fund those are the two questions one idea taxes people will want to save money so they'll use public transportation instead of cars which cost gas and time and by you by doing this they will also get more revenue because more people are using it more money for the systems in my second argument start have like how to do it raise a campaign about education or educate the public about pollution the environment make them feel bad about driving hopefully they'll use more public transit and this will bring in money from fairs Excel and some vocab vocab bus-train tax toll thoroughfare highway etc and then start writing your essay the last one when it comes to the two so compare the two so I have travel that's my main topic versus solo so one against the other compare the group few hassles language barrier efficient safety security schedule solo freedom and adjust you can adjust the things authentic experience off-the-beaten-track remote adventure so you put in your vocab and your ideas together you have the two one is better than the other there's some general idea some general vocab and then you end your essay you're gonna say so here I have a lot of good and good but like the group that guide takes care of the hassles he deals with all the people there's no language barrier because he or she can speak for you it's efficient it's safe but the soul of one gets you all of these so remember you have to choose one so I'm gonna choose solo and I'm gonna focus on these things as opposed to the group travel or the guided tours etc okay and then I'm gonna write my essay and that's basically all there is to it now how do you practice what do you what should you do one collect a bunch of questions get yourself a list of tasks as many as you can if you go online in Google or Yahoo or whatever your search engine is just right IELTS writing topics and you'll get a lot of different websites with a bunch of questions collect them all try to get yourself like 30 40 50 as many as you can then plan three essays plan the fourth and write the essay plan three the fourth plan and write so don't plan don't write fifty essays necessarily practice planning take a task give yourself five minutes make a plan take another task five minutes plan a third task 5 minutes plan fourth task 5 minutes plan 30 minutes write five minutes look over again make sure everything's okay so that's all there is to it if you have any questions about this please ask me in the youtube comment section I'll be happy to help you out if you like this video give me a like and don't forget to subscribe to my channel and coming come back soon for more lessons on vocab grammar test tips etc see you then bye bye

Channel: Write to the Top

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Keywords: IELTS, English writing, English, writing, language test, English test, task 2, IELTS academic essay, how to write, essay writing, quick tips, test preparation, test tips, study tips, pass the IELTS, IELTS high score, common errors, how to write an essay, how to use, better writing, writing skills, how to plan, how to write in English, IELTS high band, IELTS writing, IELTS essay, IELTS strategies, IELTS band 7+, band 9 essay, essay planning, engvid Adam, TOEFL writing

Id: eMdslt0bFdk

Length: 17min 46sec (1066 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 02 2018