IELTS Live - Questions and Answers - What is What

hi students and welcome to today's live ielts class my name is adrian and i'm streaming to you live from beautiful budapest i hope everybody is having a good weekend so far staying healthy staying strong and being optimistic and productive in this class we are focusing on some questions and answers from our members to understand the exam and know what is what and of course this lesson is brought to you by aehelp.com for academic ielts success check us out there for general adults please visit us at g ielts help dot on both of those websites we have loads and loads of materials to help you understand the exam and improve your band scores hi john neil hi parmar hi pavon hi back john and i saw that we have a new member that joined in right at the beginning that was kapil gower if you're watching thank you for joining make sure to send me an email new members so i can hook you up with your perks we have four levels of membership each with their own perks and all you have to do is send me an email to adrian aehelp.com and i can enable those videos or practice exams or even the premium course depending on what you have for your membership hi hasna okay members so while i'm giving my little preamble here and uh er explaining the flow of the lesson start thinking about your an or your questions uh it can be any question related to the ielts or to the english language i will do my best of course to answer uh all of the questions in the order that i receive them uh if anybody wants to get our exam books in uh hard copy paperback you can do that from amazon just search for a helps academic outs or g helps general adults on amazon and you can get those mailed to you or even buy the electronic versions our websites look like this this is the academic website here with the blue background click that big red button to join the premium package and then of course the general version of our website looks like this with the green background you can click that big red button to join us there all right students so uh this is the last class for this week and of course we will continue on wednesday with a whole new set of classes for next week we will have a speaking part 3 for today as well after this class where everybody will be able to join the chat and that speaking part 3 will continue from yesterday's speaking part two so make sure you're here for that all right members so q a session let's start it off i know a lot of people are writing exams these days and if you have a question and you're thinking about it probably other people have the same question as well so just fire away and i shall do my best to give you the answer all right pavan uh is asking if the topic in speaking part two is uh about describe your job can i speak about internship what if i have answered that i'm a student in part one um yeah you can pavan so if you have an internship somewhere uh certainly that's considered a job okay um if you said that you're a student in part one this is where you have to be quick on your feet and you can still mention that you're working part-time as well to uh support your expenses and to have some pocket money for um hanging out with friends so uh pavan is asking um can i speak about an internship uh for those of you who aren't sure what internship means internship is like a training uh position while you are at school so for example um uh in law school students do internships in law firms as legal aides okay that would be an example of it so that's what we call an internship in turn kind of means like partly or part okay so and ship has this kind of meaning of working or doing a job okay stewardship for example is another word so can i speak about an internship when asked to speak about a job um what if i said a student in part one okay good that's a good question pavon so the answer is yes any job will fit the response okay and remember the most the reason why i wrote all this out pavan um yeah apprenticeship parmar exactly okay internship apprenticeship stewardship okay those are all different kinds of activities um so uh yeah remember this students okay um the ielts speaking examiner is not there to judge your honesty they are simply grading your english speaking or i should say english communication okay it's very important to understand this concept of english communication not just english so not just vocabulary and grammar but your ability to communicate as well okay so um you can make up anything so even if you don't answer i work in part one you can still make up a part-time job working as a cashier at mcdonald's for part two okay so does that make sense pavon you can absolutely make it up okay and if you're making it up definitely make up a job that is something that you're familiar with so think about your hobbies think about what you're learning at school and pretend like you're doing a job where you're getting paid for that okay so don't start talking about a job that you have no idea about okay so importantly when you make up means imagine information use what you know for example think of your hobbies think of your major and pretend that you have a paid position doing this work okay because then you can speak more about it all right please students don't say i don't have work okay so do not speak off-topic or negative so what i mean is if the card says talk about a job that you've done or talk about a job that you do please don't say i don't work so example i don't have a job but i plan to work in the future as it's better it really is it's just better to make it up okay it's difficult it's not that you couldn't possibly get a good mark if you say well i don't have a job right now but in the future i'm planning to work as a dentist because currently i'm going to school and studying dentistry yeah you could do that but i would only even think about doing it that way if you have really high level of english and you really remember to focus on the card and still answer those questions usually when students start with the negative and then go on to talk about what they will do in the future then they start going off topic so it's just better to make it up does that make sense everyone so that's kind of i know that started as pavan's question but that is definitely an important point for everybody because i have had a lot of students who will start to give a negative answer and then go way off topic and as the examiner i'm left wondering if the student really has no idea what they're talking about or the question or they're miscommunicating so it's very hard to give a good score for coherence and fluency when the answer is not focusing on the question is that is that clear so is everybody kind of um clear on the fact that in the ielts it's just better to make up an answer think of some general context think of a movie that you saw or something from your life but just make it up and just kind of give a false but believable answer okay so it's often a good idea to give a false but believable answer okay all right um let me just take the next one so uh that was a good question uh pavon and it kind of led me into some other important thoughts as well uh janil is asking in the ielts how many types of essays can they ask and task to which essay can i write my opinion and not j i know that's a really good question so janeila is asking um how many types of essays can they give me in task two and when should i write my opinion and when should i use the third person voice that's i think what you're asking here okay um so here's the here's the answer for you gineal okay so that's the question it's a good question janil it's one that's really confusing um here is a kind of a little bit of background for this okay in [Music] in many english-speaking countries and it's kind of not fair but in many english speaking countries students start to learn essay writing from grade seven okay did everybody know that and i don't know if it's like that in china and india in other parts of the world um it's probably different in some schools but there is an average uh in canada usually and in the us uk as well students do begin to learn essay writing at around grade seven okay and they continue that every year into university and then even beyond of course and i know that's kind of not fair because i think in some countries essay writing isn't really um a focus of uh school subjects as much maybe i'm wrong am i wrong there students i know we have students from kazakhstan here from india from some other parts of the world but am i wrong in my assumption that essay writing is not taught the same as in english-speaking countries it seems like that to me from from what i see with students from around the world that it's less common uh in in some other countries okay the reason i say that is because and you're going to see why i started talking about this gineal in just a second okay so most grade 12 students in canada us uk have a clear knowledge of essay types like persuasive narrative expository and descriptive as well as essay or author i should say voices uh first second and third person voice okay um so members am i am i wrong here like do you learn this in india in grade seven or eight what is a persuasive essay what is a narrative essay of course these are english words but in literature this is the same in india so i'm sure somebody who is majoring in literature in india would know exactly what i'm talking about and would know the words for these in hindi or punjabi okay okay so janiel says in india starting essays in fifth is standard but here it's given the title winter's morning pollution okay yeah pavan's saying the same thing as janelle so from grade 5 to 12 we do practice but we don't get the feedback and it's too rare okay says i didn't know um about this before and back john says well yeah in kazakhstan we didn't really focus on this yeah so it's kind of interesting how this is all missed in um in many places but this is the foundation for essay writing and it's expected that anybody who goes to university knows this okay and and they don't care where you're from or who you are okay so in university um in us uk um it is expected that students understand these basics of essay writing and this is where it gets interesting and for high band scores in the ielts this is also true this is where i'm going to come back and circle back to your answer gino okay so it's also true in the ielts and a lot of students that go into the ielts they study these templates from different websites of how to write an essay for ielts but there is no such thing okay the ielts doesn't really work that way the ielts expect students actually to kind of understand these basics of essay writing so students shouldn't practice the ielts writing by looking at templates but they should start by learning these kind of foundations so ideally this is a super important point ideally ielts students especially academic ielts students should not focus their writing and i know beck john that you've been doing a really great job of learning this because um your essays now look fantastic and i'm sure you can feel that so beck john has sent me some essays recently and i can see that they're clear 8.59 level essays because he can see the persuasive style and the voice and the structure and put it all together okay um [Music] yeah ha son you can do that if uh if um the the graph shows that i'll get to your question in a minute okay so um ideally students uh especially academic college students should not focus on their writing section by learning what i call ielts template essays but rather by focusing because these ielts template essays like this essay will discuss will get you absolutely nowhere in college or university okay so but rather by focusing on essay foundations okay now janil my easiest way to answer your question is if i go to my student account here because it's a big answer okay and i know it's a bit bright but i'm gonna help us out here in just a second and i go to the blog okay let me uh actually maybe i should show you where i got that from okay i'm just darkening up the screen here so you can clearly see the students and i'll i'll do a copy paste of this url here okay so this is in the my student account and the blogs it's absolutely free for everyone you can see some task two examples in here for different kinds of questions uh like this one here ielts task two writing band 9 simple but challenging and then there's one blog in here if you keep going through how to use commas vocabulary task 2 samples okay um and this is we put this up quite a while ago so it'll be here in just a second okay yeah so this one it's the last one on this page okay so this blog that we put up on in wow quite quite a while ago seven years ago uh task two writing question types answer strategies okay this is what you're looking for here janil and then if i click the read more then you will see a nice big answer to your question of how to understand the task two questions and how to answer them correctly how to think about them correctly okay so there's quite a bit here i'm not to read this all for you right now you can do that on your own and there's actually quite a few comments that you can read with students and people who looked at this as well okay daniel but the most important point is that you have to focus on the question if it's asking your personal opinion if it's asking a general opinion and if it's asking you to discuss both sides or if it's asking you to discuss just one side okay so here is the url let me just uh remove this hyperlink and then maybe i'll make it a tad bit bigger hopefully it's still yeah let's do that okay so so that's the url i just pasted it into the lesson notes as well okay so read over this gineal and then it's going to give you a lot more clarity all right okay but definitely students think about essay fundamentals instead of just thinking about templates you'll do way better in your task one task two essays okay all right so um [Music] okay hopefully that makes sense for everyone all right let me go to the next question here so bec john is say asking what would you suggest to do on a daily basis to prepare for ielts for those who are free all day to study wow that's a really interesting question back john it's a good one okay so back john's question is what should i do to prepare for ielts okay um if i have free time all day okay uh good question all right uh first things first baek john um that depends okay so it's kind of a tricky answer so it depends how much time you have until your exam okay but let's say for for argument's sake let's say you have one month okay all right um the first step that everybody should always do when you're preparing for an ielts exam is start with a practice exam that's timed get an assessment a score for your speaking and for your writing and figure out what are your weaknesses okay so start by completing a mock exam that is timed get it scored by an expert and identify your areas of weakness okay then make a study plan which targets these areas of weakness while also focusing some energy on the other sections okay as well find a book that you would like to read and read an hour a day this is if you have all the time in the day uh an hour a day every day last but not least [Music] find a speaking partner or speaking partners and i say that because it's good to have more of them speaking partners who you can speak to at least for 20 minutes a day every day okay aside from this you should do at least a couple of practice exams each week and then one more thing that i want to include here is very importantly do not just rush through a ton of material but rather get feedback on your work and mistakes and review and revise material okay so that's what i would recommend back john if you have all the time in the world uh number one start with a practice exam a mock exam that's timed and then get it scored so obviously you can score the listening reading sections on your own uh and for example for the speaking you can record that on your phone uh and for your writing you can type it into the computer and then you can actually send that to us and we can give you a score estimate so you know what your scores are now um an even smarter plan of course is to get some professional editing work on the writing and i think you've done this before beck john where you can clearly see whether it's a word choice grammar content uh where the kind of mistakes are and then target and focus on fixing those mistakes it's the fastest way to improve and then of course reading speaking regularly it's really really important doing regular exams and having um a strict study schedule so knowing that between uh nine and noon you're focusing on listening and reading skills uh between uh two and six you're focusing on writing and speaking skills okay so that's what you want to do all right those are the steps okay and stick to it stick to it be dynamic keep your learning interesting so you don't get bored it's very difficult focus on vocabulary as well when you learn vocabulary learn it in context okay all right um let's see in reading there is a marking tool so where can i use this feature pavan are you talking about the computer-based practice exam i don't recommend underlining uh in text if that's what you mean i'm not sure what you're referring to there i'm going to go to a couple of other students questions um so parmar is asking i often suffer from making uh spelling mistakes while writing my task one um how do i do this perfectly without making any spelling mistakes uh students um spelling is really important work on your spelling okay so spelling is very important in ielts so you have to work on this before your exam the best first step is go to your app store and download some spelling games that you can play daily okay uh let me show you what i mean okay so i know it's really bright again that's fine let me just uh darken up our world here a little bit so you can see this okay [Music] so um [Music] spelling games spelling games for kids so notice how as soon as i type in spelling at the top here you can see that up comes spelling books for free spelling games spelling games for kids so if you just click on spelling games okay boom right away um you have some of these coming up and um english spelling quiz abc spelling spelling game and then you see their ratings i'll download a few of them try them out uh there's actually some that are competitive okay so spelling bee games try that and then you get these ones here um national english spelling bee spelling bee actually means like a spelling competition um i think this one is quite fun i've tried it okay uh spelling bee crosswords so that one is maybe one that you can uh try out okay to improve your spelling uh definitely get a couple of these okay so that's what i would do as a start uh parmar if you haven't done that yet start start with that okay yeah so pavan you can use that highlighting tool for like keywords and things like that and the cbt but i don't recommend using it try to stay away from it okay if possible all right so um search for games spelling games and uh spelling bee games okay so search for those keywords all right okay uh so let me see the next question okay okay so hassan there we go we're getting to your question hassam so hassan is asking in task 1 yesterday in my overview i wrote three main points like a guide for the rest of the essay or the analysis and you explain these points thoroughly in details in the paragraphs yeah hassan you can definitely do that so in task one of the academic you should start your body paragraph the analysis or analyses with a more detailed explanation of the main feature that you just give me a second i'll get us back on screen here okay here we go just uh two seconds i'll get us back on screen here so that yeah definitely hassan that's what you want to start with now depending on the graph hassan um you might have one point there for the main feature two or three points but uh if possible yeah you can do it the way we did it yesterday if not then you know it might just be one main feature and you start with that and then you go into more detailed analysis okay so um explanation of the main feature that you mentioned in the overview okay this could be one two or three points but usually not more than that okay and it really depends on the graphs huh son okay so just pay attention to the content all right okay uh let's see um is that clear hassan are you still here okay you got my point cool got it i saw that okay um interesting question so uh danielle says how do i improve idiomatic language in writing and speaking that is a really really good question gino so good question how can i improve idiomatic language in speaking and writing okay first answer is read english story novels narratives okay where the story includes the dialogue of characters watch english movies yeah that's a tricky one uh janil because a lot of people will learn idioms in english and they have kind of an idea of what they mean but they have difficulty actually using them correctly and that's because using idioms naturally comes from being familiar with the native language okay there's no way around that so the only way that you can really learn how to use idioms well is by reading books where you see the idioms being used and watching movies where the idioms are being used it's definitely not a good idea to just randomly use an idiom thinking that it's okay because oftentimes i do see people forcing idioms in their writing and in their speaking and that definitely does not help the band scores okay it makes it really confusing all right so uh by watching movies by reading books where you come across these idioms um that makes that makes it um clear on how to use it or how to use them okay all right uh let me keep going here uh kapil there you are one of our new members uh so kapil yep that's a question we've been asked before a couple times so kapil is asking uh which one is better uh paper-based or computer-based um tests to do okay they both have their advantages disadvantages it really depends on [Music] it really depends on your skills okay so this is the question which should i do uh computer based test or paper based test okay um you should only do the computer based test if you are fluent in english touch typing okay definitely do not set the computer-based test if you don't know how to touch type fluently in english while looking at the screen okay so make sure that you are computer literate okay otherwise do the paper-based test if you are computer literate i would recommend doing the computer-based test okay so if you're not then do the paper-based test okay that's that's my suggestion all right uh some people have a better flow of ideas because this especially kind of matters for the writing section okay the listening and the reading i don't think it's a huge difference between computer-based or paper-based necessarily but definitely in the writing section is where you experience the biggest difference because it's a big difference whether you're writing 500 words by touch typing for an hour or you're writing for an hour by hand so you have to be aware of your own skills and think about you know am i more comfortable writing essays by hand or am i more comfortable writing essays by touch typing in english of course right so whichever one you prefer that's the one i would uh focus on does that make sense kapil yeah so corrections can be done easily on computer but um you can correct on paper based as long as you know how to okay by just doing a strikethrough and then writing in another word um so it's true kapil that you can correct easier on computer but it's sometimes easier to review on paper so they both do have their ups and downs also some people argue that they have a better flow of ideas when they're writing by using one hand right so this is where you have to kind of try both so try writing an essay for task two by typing try writing an essay by hand and see which one fits your style more if you find that it's the computer then do it go for the computer based okay all right okay um let's take one more question so hassan is asking as an ielts expert do you believe the alts exam is flawless is there a way the committee can improve the exam to benefit both candidates and examiners very good question hassan okay so is the ielts a perfect exam does it perfectly measure english ability okay that is a highly complex question hassan as you've realized with me the answers are usually not that simple okay firstly you must realize that there are actually two exams here academic and general and two versions paper and computer the science of measuring human thought processes including language is known as psychometrics okay all right hassan so you're going to get a little bit of an insight into the magical world of ielts and how ielts works okay so ielts is governed or the creation of ielts exams is governed by the esol examination board okay the board which is a part of cambridge university okay cambridge university of course being one of the oldest universities in the world easol and cambridge work together with british council and idp which is australian to distribute administer supervise the exam british council and idp work together with thousands of official ielts test centers and trained examiners markers that do their job based on very specific marking criteria or marking rubrics assumes maybe going oh i don't even ask this question okay we're going really far down this uh uh down this um gravy trail here now just let me close this notification here just a second i see that that kind of popped up okay all right um so uh that's so is that kind of clear how ielts the the world of ielts is working there's a good reason why it's such an expensive exam okay so the science of psychometrics measurement of human thoughts and behaviors of course it's a part of psychology i studied this i think that's why a lot of students kind of like my approach to ielts because i approach ielts the same way as the way who uh those who create the ielts at esol so we think about the exam kind of in the same way okay without going into too too much detail so the science of psychometrics measurement of human thoughts and behaviors focuses on creating tests that are highly reliable and valid these are two key words here and valid okay reliable means that the test will yield the same results as long as the candidate has the same ability meaning the results do not change in a test retest environment okay valid means that the test truly measures what it is designed to measure okay now i'm going gonna kind of so without taking you guys too far down this road of psychometrics i i'm not sure if you're still interested in this or not but um just kind of a concept here so among the famous english proficiency exams toefl ielts toeic pte um cell pic um duolingo has come on the scene now it is still clear that ielts has the highest level of reliability and validity followed by toefl okay therefore it is the preferred exam by institutions and um governments is it perfect i should say is ielts perfect no but it is the best we have at this time all right so uh there you go um that hopefully makes sense okay uh it's very difficult to measure human thinking and language as you can imagine the diversity around the world is incredible it changes very quickly within people language is continuously changing as well communication styles change cultural backgrounds so it's extremely difficult but ielts is the best that we have so far they could probably make an exam that would do an even better job of measuring english but you have to remember that there are other constraints like you can't have a person sit in an exam for 12 hours and you can't ask a person to pay 2 000 because then most people wouldn't be able to do it okay so keep that in mind as well okay that's kind of my closing remark as well right so keep in mind that the exam creation has limits like people's finances and energy okay arguably you could do a better job of testing somebody's english if you had them do 10 15 hours of examinations and of course they'd have to pay thousands of dollars because it would take so much more time from professionals but that's not realistic then people wouldn't have the opportunity many people to do this exam so we have to keep it realistic as well so within these parameters within the budget ielts is arguably the best out there right now okay and definitely they're always looking at how to improve it how to make it better more reliable more valid so all of that okay hassan i'm glad you enjoyed that answer it's a good question okay i think a lot of people never really think about that part of ielts so that was a good question all right everyone that's it for this class coming up in about 35 minutes i'll host uh one more class for today for this week of live streaming that will be speaking part three that will be a continuation from part two that we took yesterday if you missed that it's totally okay or you could also have a look at yesterday's part 2 video during the next 30 minutes check the cue card question so that you can engage the next class a little bit more hopefully i will see all of you in 30 minutes i'm adrienne and i'm signing out from budapest uh by the way you can get lots more info as i showed you on our websites through our blogs and interactive courses just make sure to visit us at a help.com for academic ielts and glthelp.com for general outs thank you for your great questions members bye for now see you soon you

Channel: AcademicEnglishHelp

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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: e7kxKFTQcxo

Length: 53min 29sec (3209 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 08 2020