IELTS Live - Questions and Answers for Transparency

welcome to today's live ielts class my name is adrian and i'm streaming to you from beautiful central europe i hope everybody is having a great weekend so far staying healthy staying strong and this is a member's chat class focusing on questions and answers about the alts exam i host this kind of class once every couple weeks for our members to have a chance to ask any questions that come up during their studies about the ielts about the english language hi muksud welcome to the class i see members joining in hi abhishek that's fantastic this class students again as usual is presented to you by aehelp.com for academic ielts success please visit us there for general ielts check us out at g ieltshelp.com on both of our websites we have lots of information uh for you to succeed on the ielts exam in fact we just added a knowledge base as well that covers a lot of the common questions that come up uh hi carolina hi janil hi rajvir so if you are uh logged into your my student account on our websites i'll just uh kind of show you this really quickly so uh you have your uh uh home page here at aehelp.com this is the academic version of our website you can click that big red button to join hi carolina hi daniel hi regvir and we've just added a knowledge base i'll show you that real quick where you can find that so i'm just going to darken up the screen so you can see the brighter background here so when you go to your my student account and you can create a free account of course as well and then you get into your my student account you have lots and lots of opportunity to find answers to your questions a good place to search for information are through these three functions the forum the blog and then the contact us the blog has lots of sample speaking tasks to writing lots of answers about the writing section the forum is where you can actually chat with other students and get information any of our members using these functions on the website the forum the blog and just recently when you click on the contact us button then you get redirected to our zendesk knowledge base where you can send us an email i have to be a non-admin login here so that's not going to work right now but anyway when you click on that contact us button here you're going to end up at our knowledge base i'm logged in as the admin so you won't see it right now but um and you'll find lots of answers to common questions there okay all right roger says i'm using the blog that's great yeah there's lots and lots of goodies and these are free to use for everyone so you don't have to buy our premium package although that is a good idea and then you have uh similar tools in the general version of the website as well at glshelp.com you can click the big red button to get access to all of our materials exams videos but again lots of goodies there just by clicking the green button and joining the free version of the site as well so check that out okay and check out the knowledge base we're going to be adding more and more information to that over the next few weeks okay abhishek says sometimes the blog registry says i'm using the blog yeah we're adding a lot of content to our blogs these days so those are good to use okay i'm going to brighten up our lives here a little bit and again members this is a question and answer q a class so any questions that you have about the ielts exam i titled it transparency i think it's because a lot of people who need to take the ielts for immigration school work they have a lot of questions it's not always a perfectly clear exam of what's going on or how it works so we are british council registration center partners so we have a direct communication line with british council to ask them any questions so even if i can't answer a question for you in this live class you can always send me an email adrian aehelp.com and i can definitely find out the answer for you from the people who administer and create the actual ielts exam okay members here's your chance to ask me any question that you might have thought of while you were studying i'll open the floor for you about ielts or about english as well and i'll do this as a first come first serve basis so whoever asks me the first question i'll address that and then the second and third so kind of a rank ordered fashion and just an important note as we do this so as we get into this question and answer session next week everybody who's uh watching this video uh please note that next week um there's no class on wednesday so uh i'm going to start classes on thursday next week so next week we're going to have uh thursday friday and saturday two classes on each of those three days but no class on wednesday usually live classes start on wednesday but not this week okay so please take a note of that okay so i see that carolina has a question carolina says i'm studying for the general ielts i would like to ask you if you can make live classes for task 1 letters carolina i would love to it's my the issue right now is i'm a little bit short on time and i don't really want to mix the general ielts topics with this uh youtube channel because it's academic english help and i don't want to confuse the many thousands of people who aren't necessarily clear about um the difference between general and academic ielts so carolina the best help that i can give you about that right now is just to use the general ielts uh website and uh check out the general alts youtube channel okay we do have another youtube channel and i don't do live streaming there at this moment just because there aren't as many viewers so um it's not a as valuable investment of my time at this point and unfortunately time is the issue carolina but uh definitely check out the other channel so other ielts uh channel is um general so other i should say other ielts youtube channel i used to do it but there just weren't enough viewers so i had to allocate my time elsewhere so other ielts youtube channel is general ielts help so you can find task 1 letter writing videos there and on the website of course www.gileshelp.com okay so check that out uh carolina on a positive note carolina i will be making some new hd videos uh for task one letter writing over the next few weeks so keep your eye out for that okay um so i'll just post that also uh new hd task 1 letter writing videos coming up in the month of november okay so uh keep your eye out for that okay that's that's the best i can do to answer that question for now um okay let's see abhishek says the linking words are different in both speaking and writing task two to score higher band or we can use any okay um so abhishek uh remember abhishek always clear questions so practicing asking clear questions is important so what you're asking me abhishek's question is um what linking words should i use in my speaking and writing that's the kind of open version of your question abhishek um yeah that's an interesting question abhishek let me uh explain a little bit about linking words that's a very good question by the way abhishek i was just thinking about this the other day let me see if i still have this uh okay so uh let me darken up the screen here i know it got really bright but i'm going to answer your question very accurately here uh abhishek and give you a lot of clarity uh does everybody know what sheet i just put up on the board here for those of you who are studying for ielts this is a very important sheet okay um this sheet let me zoom in on it okay all right so this sheet what you're looking at here and i know that i'm going to be just a silhouette while i'm explaining this which is totally fine most of you know what i look like anyway um so this is the ielts task to writing band descriptors and you see in the brackets here it says public version okay uh so this is what's available to you the public um teachers uh students uh agents uh people taking the exam of course there is an internal administrative version that's a lot more detailed but you don't need to worry about that because that would just be confusing to follow the try to follow the administrative version and you really don't want to be robotic anyway so abhishek the reason i open this up is um because uh this uh sheet of course tells you what they're looking for in task two writing okay and the speaking has something similar okay so bec john says yes it's the marking criteria janelle says yeah i'm familiar with this absolutely so this is the al's task of writing band descriptors this is basically the foundation of how ielts examiners are trained what kind of points they need to pay attention to okay so as we've talked about before for the writing you get marked on task achievement coherence and cohesion uh lexical resource grammatical range and accuracy okay so those are the four categories they're not separate from each other in reality they're connected okay so you're going to have more coherence when you have task achievement and if i find this quickly here [Music] okay all right there is a piece of information here so right now i'm looking at the band 6 description for task completion and for coherence okay so take a look at this this is where it kind of gets interesting i don't know how many of you actually read through this carefully but it's worth a good read a couple of times so you really know what you're doing okay so notice here with coherence that it says arranges information and ideas coherently and there is a clear overall progression okay so remember how we talk about always the flow of the paragraphs and then here the next point is uses cohesive devices effectively so cohesive devices okay in a big way are those linking words now besides linking words what else is a cohesive device can anybody tell me that okay and i'm going to really get into this subushek because i think a lot of students make big mistakes with these linking words so so i'm going to explain this over the next couple of minutes so it's going to be a lot clearer for people so aside from linking words what are cohesive devices okay conjunctions conjunctions back gen are a form of linking words so sure okay linking words okay let's say conjunctions we can be more specific uh then we can also say leading expressions okay like first of all and so on uh abhishek very good yeah grammar grammar is absolutely a key part of a cohesive device so using a grammar strategy you can link ideas okay says collocation words collocation words babik are not really cohesive devices it's more lexical resource so that would belong to this category here of lexical resources uses adequate range of vocabulary okay all right so that's what that belongs to okay maxus says vocabulary yeah yeah so vocabulary does in general create cohesion the most important idea to keep in mind for a cohesive device is information okay so information flow so having good flow of information where we can see that step by step progression of information that is going to be your strongest tool for creating a cohesive essay you can write a band 9 essay without using first of all therefore consequently and so on by simply just having really good information and in fact high level writing in university so when you get into your third fourth year university classes professors and academics don't actually like to see these kinds of words too often like therefore and consequently they really just want concise uh writing where information is linking information okay that's really really important and there is a an interesting point in here i'm going to quickly find it for you um here it is okay now this is an interesting one and this is for all of our viewers so everybody watching right now you're gonna get a gem here with this i'm not sure how many of you have seen this and this is coming straight out of ielts okay it's not my words but it's the words of the people who are the alpha and omega of the ielts exam uh this is the band five uh descriptor okay so for students who are scoring band five in their task two and take a look at this this is interesting uh for uh coherence and cohesion um look at this one presents information with some organization but there may be a lack of overall progression so this is what happens uh you get a band 5 when you're writing an essay where your ideas seem to jump around where you don't have a clear thesis you don't follow clear points in the body paragraphs and your essay kind of jumps around a bit then you start losing band scores and you get into this band 5 range and here's where it gets really interesting too look at this so uh maybe repetitive because of lack of referencing and substitution oh and here this is the one i'm looking for makes inadequate inaccurate or overuse of cohesive devices so abhishek this is what i really wanted to kind of emphasize because as soon as you asked your question this is the band and the description that came to my mind here okay and especially this one here all right is everybody with me on this the overuse of cohesive devices everybody following me there so a lot of students watch videos online and go to ielts classes where unfortunately the people don't necessarily have a clear idea of proper essay writing and they just kind of teach these templates that they've watched online or they got from other people and it's not accurate and unfortunately they're teaching bad information to aisle students so you have to use the answer to your question abhishek simply put is you have to use only necessary linking devices correctly in context so the important point for all of you and i'm you know trying to save your band scores here is uh you must never use linking words or leading expressions just to use them for the sake of word count and uh bad i'm going to call them bad ielts templates okay so you sh you know you learn these kinds of uh here let me brighten this up here you learn these kinds of advice online and in certain classes like when you're starting your paragraph you should start like uh first of all okay or on one hand on the other hand okay so uh do many of you see these kinds of um [Music] tips or tricks from certain ielts classes like to start your first paragraph like this or first and second paragraph like that i guess you do because i see these all the time when students send us their essays and the irony is that a lot of students think that they're getting better scores because they're using these but actually they're losing scores okay so um in many cases remember this okay in many cases ironically you are actually losing band scores uh when writing these linking words or expressions [Music] because ielts considers this wordiness and an overuse of linking words so of course many of you might be a little bit disappointed right now and go oh really um so you're thinking well all right you're telling me what not to do so what should i do the simplest answer to what you should do is always think about information first think about being original and think about linking with information first so always think about being original and linking or creating cohesion through information okay and in university that becomes standard that's very important all right this is the reason that you need a direct thesis statement in your introduction and good topic sentences that deeply define your thesis points in your body paragraphs okay so um that's it abhishek says okay got it all right and that's so very important because again just to recapitulate one more time so notice how i'm using this word now in context to recapitulate to recapitulate when you're over using cohesive devices you're down at a band five level okay you're down at a band five it's not even a band six you're down at a band five uh level so be really careful with those cohesive devices it doesn't mean don't use them or never use them but just be very selective with it okay all right okay everyone so let's get back to it let me just brighten this up here and i'll go to the next question any any is that clear members about the cohesive devices did everybody pick up the main point and idea that i was making with these cohesive devices and this is not just for your writing but it's also true for your speaking okay in the speaking interview if you're over using these kinds of linking words again it's dropping your score if the ielts examiner feels that you're unnecessarily saying these words just to sound good your score is going down down down okay all right okay um so let's keep going here and think of questions everyone i know we got a few more here i can see that okay um okay so muksuk says can you please uh explain how to use the words whereby and thereby okay sure muksu i can do that okay um so think about the word where think about the uh preposition by think about the word there think about the preposition by when you understand those in the english language then you can kind of figure out and feel how these words are used okay where means a an un unidentified location and there means in a specific location okay so i'm going to break this down to you in the etymology of the language so the understanding of these words their origins and what they mean and by the preposition means in this method okay so that's what you have to think about so where an unidentified location in this method there in a specific location in this method now that might seem a little bit confusing so let me simplify it for you so whereby the two together is um through this method okay so that's how you want to think about it uh muksud is when you're thinking of using the word whereby you're basically creating this idea for your audience through this method okay let me give you an example sentence okay so many people come to understand languages whereby they dedicate a minimum of five hours study time to learning consistently over uh an entire year okay so here's my example sentence to kind of give you an understanding of this okay so where an unidentified location now the reason why muksu this is sometimes confusing for people is because they think about this as a physical location and they're thinking of the word where as representing something physical but when you use the word whereby it can be non-physical okay so this can be used uh to represent abstract ideas okay and that's kind of where the trick is in all of this so it doesn't have to be a physical location or concept it can be an abstract uh sorry it can be an abstract concept okay so meaning through this method so have a look at this example many people come to understand languages whereby they dedicate a minimum of five hours study time to learning consistently uh over an entire year so if i replace whereby with through the method okay so many people come to understand languages through the method of dedicating a minimum of five hours study time to learning consistently over an entire year okay now thereby when you add the two together so thereby means as a result of the action okay so think about it like that so thereby a specific location in this method okay so meaning as a result of the action so um by here's my example sentence okay [Music] um after mastering the english language students can gain much confidence in their communication thereby ensuring high band scores on the ielts exam okay so here's an example of thereby and it's underlining in there of course there we go um so uh this is the example of thereby as a result of the action or as a result of the specific situation again there here doesn't mean something physical it can be abstract so it can be an abstract feeling or concept okay okay so after mastering the english language comma that's a dependent clause students can gain much confidence in their communication thereby meaning as a result of gaining this confidence in communication so as a result of gaining confidence in communication ensuring a high band score or ensuring high band scores on the ielts exam okay so that's how you use uh thereby and whereby is that clear now everyone sammy says how about hereby sami i'm gonna stay away from that right now i don't want to load you with too much information so sammy let's save that one for next time okay uh there are other forms of something by um and there is a hereby as well um but uh let's uh let's stay away from that you can probably figure that out sami if you follow the same logic that i just showed you with thereby and whereby okay so but i'm going to stay away from here by because might get a little confusing if we keep going down this rabbit hole okay all right okay romaine is asking uh it's connected so i'm gonna take romaine's question here romaine is asking um is this a correct use of whereby i ended up getting fit whereby taking a lot of exercise no romaine that is not correct simply because of the language use so let me correct the sentence you kind of have the right concept it's it is a bit tricky to use these i i do know that it's i'm making it seem like it's easier um but it's not that easy you have to practice it okay so uh not ended up getting fit that's a bit awkward romaine so i got fit whereby i uh went to the gym for an hour a day for three months um that would be okay i got fit whereby i went to the gym for an hour a day for three months okay so that would be the more concise accurate way to express that all right okay let's keep going yeah keep practicing these students and then ask you know when we're doing the uh speaking when we're doing the writing classes these live classes try to use these thereby whereby when i catch them when i see them i'll make an effort to either say that they're correct or to make an adjustment and correct them depending on how you're using them okay so we'll have a speaking part 3 class coming up in not so long so and then i'll i'll try to catch those and give you some feedback all right okay um so let's see what else we have coming up okay rajvir says while writing the take home message in the conclusion sometimes i tend to think a lot to ensure that i do not include a new idea and only write the relevant information um yeah yeah you're getting to a really good question here i think rajvir uh so regime says do you have any tips to come up with it quickly that is a million dollar question uh rajvir so um what can i do to come up with take home messages quickly for the conclusion uh which do not introduce novel ideas uh-huh that's a great question rajvir um and you know rajvir honestly there isn't uh unfortunately uh a perfect answer to your question that's that's my honest truth um the reality is that in quality writing a good thesis and a good take-home message require the most thinking and contemplation so even the the best um authors uh rajvir when they're writing a quality piece of um literature whether it be a persuasive essay or a scientific journal they're going to spend most of their time thinking about their thesis and then at the end thinking about their take home message phd masters students when they write their research papers will take weeks uh thinking and rethinking these two very important parts of their literature whereby they'll write the other parts notice the whereby whereby they'll write the other parts of the of the literature much quicker so let's say they'll have like 20 pages of a research paper they'll write the 14 or 10 000 words roughly they'll write the uh 10 000 or so words for the entire research paper in a matter of a week or two and just that one sentence for their thesis statements and their take-home messages they'll think about those for a month okay uh so you don't really want to rush through these i guess is the point that i'm making here okay um so you shouldn't rush these uh give yourself time uh to come up with good take-home messages okay one way to kind of help your thinking or help along your thinking is ask yourself what has the audience or what should have the audience learned through my discourse also questions like how can my audience use the information i have given in their everyday life also ask yourself what can society so think of the individual and think of society regime that's a good way to kind of divide your attention when you're thinking of the take-home message so what can society and or the individual gain by learning the information i have presented and in order to not go off topic and not introduce a new idea because that's really bad okay again that's dropping your coherence and cohesion dramatically when you introduce a new point in your conclusion so do not introduce a new point in your conclusion okay so when i'll say as you are thinking of these questions and answers always keep the topic controlling ideas and thesis key points in mind okay so never lose those always have those uh in your head all right and that's the best tip i can give regiver after that it comes up comes down to your life experience to your perspectives and what you want to say i mean that's where the magic happens is with the take home message that's where we create real world change through our literature and through our communication okay all right so a really good question rajvir and that question is at the heart of good literature for essays okay how do i come up with good take-home messages hopefully quickly of course that don't introduce new topics that's a very very good question for any author to contemplate okay all right [Music] so hassan says how can i improve my reading and listening comprehension okay so how can i improve comprehension right um basically hassan uh that's a really big question hassan um to answer it in a big way uh practice visualization okay using different kinds of mnemonic devices okay there are a lot of mnemonic strategies and devices that you can research online mnemonics is the um strategy and science of memorization okay so uh connecting ideas to visual images to past experiences and so forth so check out mnemonic devices hassan online and of course it's just a lot of practice a lot of visualization as we've covered in class before okay all right so that's that's the best way i can answer that for you os is saying i'm still feeling it a bit difficult when i do mock tests and listening what is the best way to train especially when searching for listening material i found them similar and uh repetitive in many websites yeah uh okay good question roger yeah so when you're practicing for the ielts make sure to use specific materials like mock tests as well as general materials like listening to bbc radio and especially dedicate a few hours each week to listen to dialogue conversation among native british of course for the isles english speakers the reason i say that os is because a lot of times i find that students are spending much time listening to monologues where it's a single person like myself giving you a monologue where it's simply just a lecture okay and that's good it's a good idea to listen to lectures there's definitely that in the ielts exam but to challenge yourself more and perhaps a faster way to improve your comprehension for listening and this is going back hassan to your question as well is to really listen to conversations and i know that that's a lot more challenging because there you have to follow multiple styles of diction of individual language use and it's more difficult to follow that because your brain is divided rather than just focusing in on a single individual and then learning their addiction and then being able to follow them better but you have to do that okay and because in the ielts you do have these dialogues and you you have situations in the listening words three people talking as well right um so make sure that you're dedicating time uh in the week i would say at least maybe three four hours spread out throughout your week where you're actually listening to dialogue in conversation okay that's really important and that should help speed up your learning uh os for the listening section okay and you don't have to just listen to um listening materials for ielts specifically but you can broaden your study materials to intellectual kinds of conversations on a variety of topics okay so whether it be nature science technology uh whatever your interests are uh choose different topics and i'm sure on youtube and uh and on other sites you can find these um riveting conversations among experts okay all right so um [Music] just kind of going through here all right um that's where i'm going to stop for today i see that there are more questions coming up as well but i'm going to stop there for today i think that's lots of information for today and it's quite a quite good questions today so quite i should say pertinent questions which means important and a lot of those questions if you really follow the answers that i gave you in this class um can easily make the difference of a half band score so for example not over using those linking words uh correctly uh introducing where by and thereby in your uh communication okay paying attention to that good take-home message at the end of the essay that does not introduce new ideas uh these little gems uh can definitely bump up your band score so those were some great questions okay and uh we'll keep going um you know uh if again i didn't get to your question and it was something that you feel is really important uh you can ask on the forum on the website so remember where i showed you the forum um it's okay to send me an email of course you can do that but asking the question on the forum is beneficial because not only can i answer your question there but also your question will be visible to other ielts students and they might have the same question and of course it can be very valuable for them too so it's more sharing when you ask your questions through the forum so i highly recommend checking out the forum at aehealth.com and glthelp.com and then asking your questions there and getting your answers there and there you can also of course get answers not just from me but some of my colleagues and other students as well who might have some good insights and advice regarding your inquiry okay uh you're very welcome back john you're very welcome hassan uh you're very welcome rajvir um and uh coming up in about 45 minutes we'll have speaking part three uh that will be following from yesterday's speaking part two class so make sure to tune in for that uh so i will be back uh thank you members thank you viewers hopefully i'll see all of you shortly i'm adrian signing out for now from budapest bye you

Channel: AcademicEnglishHelp

Views: 3,604

Keywords: IELTS, question, answer, speaking, reading, writing, listening, section, British, accent, part 1, part 2, part 3, high score, fluency, vocabulary, practice, sample, example, explanation, questions, types, complex, IELTS description, examination, dialogue, conversation, test, understand, examples IELTS speaking section, Lesson, Teacher, Learn, Student, Free, Intro, Tutorial, IELTS learning, interview, easy

Id: HI1b1nRMoP8

Length: 48min 31sec (2911 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 24 2020