IELTS Questions and Answers

[Music] hi and welcome to WWE help calm and wwg outs help calm test preparation videos for the IELTS i have here today with me robin for part three of our discussion about IELTS what you can do what you shouldn't do and giving answers for part three we will be looking specifically at some answers given by students and what are acceptable ways of giving answers and what are not a very important lesson for you to make sure that you save all your marks don't lose marks on silly mistakes before we get into it remember that we have live IELTS classrooms streaming on YouTube from December 15th at 1430 london time 20 o'clock india time 20 to 30 beijing time and 9:30 a.m. new york times so make sure you join us for that market in your calendar where we can interact with you you can ask us questions and give us your comments and we can help you a lot to achieve success on your exams so thank you again robin for joining us let's talk about how answers work and for this section we will give lots of examples up on the board here for the students so they can see what kind of answers students gave in the past and if they got it right or wrong why before we continue can you tell us again a little bit about yourself and why you know so much about out seniors I have papers in the past I've trained people how to mark IELTS listening and reading I've seen a lot of answer papers and I've seen a lot of people lose easy marks so let's try to get some of those easy marks back sounds great okay well then I'll get right into question 1 great can I use capital letters for all of my answers some people find it easier to write in capital letters or they naturally write all in capital letters be consistent and make it clear the whole point is we need to be able to read your answer so if you want to write all in capital letters that's fine let's look at example 21 on the listening you'll see boxes is all written in capital letters focus is the spell correctly you would get the point okay so okay to use capital letters just be consistent yes and of course if it's a proper noun I should always begin with the capital letter right next question is grammar so writing plural singular apples instead of Apple if it's more than one Apple is this important absolutely one thing I also sort of testing with it you may be even realizing is your use of grammar grammar and agreement where does agreement and that comes across in several examples that we gave for example one dollar you don't need the S if it's two dollars and you write out the word dollars you do need to use an S so agreement is essential and verses aa for an Apple versus a potato that's important okay what if I was to write apples apples is completely wrong why because the agreement is wrong with the plural and of course you need an beforethey though okay clear now commonly in English and English speakers know this that numbers from 1 to 10 should be written as words this is general practice in the English language is this also true on the IELTS should I be writing words for numbers 1 to 10 or is it okay just to write the number 1 or 2 or 3 I recommend you actually write the number 1 to 10 for example and try to avoid spelling out the word if possible the reason is when you're spelling out the word there is more possibility for error and if you spell the word 2 incorrectly you have lost your point because you couldn't spell 2 however if you write the number two you'll get the point as long as two is the answer we have an example for this I think 40 is one of the very common mistakes or four is another common mistakes for this number thirty-two if you look at 32 on the reading it's not good that 43 is the answer however the student wrote out 43 they miss le mistake because 40 isn't spelled with a u so that is wrong I would recommend in writing 43 using minor no okay much better what about number 16 if we look at number 16 here the four percent and it's kind of written in an interesting way with word four four and then the word four percent and then percent given in brackets can you tell us a little bit about that one yeah the answer is probably meant to be four percent unfortunately the candidate could not spell the word percent so they lost the mark even though we know clearly they wanted to write percent because they also put the symbol so when it comes to symbols for example the percent symbol write the symbol especially if you don't know how to spell the word cuz that candidate just lost their mark okay so in this case the easiest way to write this answer and get a correct mark is just use the number 4 and then the symbol for percent and no confusion then and correct mark yeah number 21 we'd written 6 percent and that was the correct answer much more simple guaranteed answer less time great can I use abbreviations for my answers when should I use abbreviations so abbreviations of course meaning a short form of the word how does that work on nouns abbreviations can be used they need to be used correctly some of the most common abbreviations days of the week months of the year I'd say the most if you're going to use days of the week is MMO win for Monday instead of writing out the full word Wednesday is a difficult word to spell Saturday a difficult word to spell because it's easy to forget or use the wrong letter so write weg for Wednesday is safety for Saturday completely acceptable you'll get your point if you make a spelling mistake trying to write Wednesday you will lose your point also wouldn't you agree with me in this case Robin that if I'm using abbreviations and also for the previous question if I'm using the numbers and not words and for the symbols I'm using the symbol and not writing the word I'm not only decreasing my chance of making a spelling mistake but I'm also saving myself some time when I'm doing this for all the questions and also I'm saving myself mental energy because I'm having to think less I'm not having to write out the full word for sure listening and reading are the start of the test you still have a writing test to do so save your energy in terms of writing for your writing test yeah so numbers abbreviations are definitely a good idea learn abbreviations and following the video I'll remind you of this again but at the end of the video we'll put up some information that shows you the common abbreviations for days of the week months of the year and also for some of the symbols we'll put some information up so that you can learn these study these and make sure you use these during your exam to really save yourself some easy scores and easy marks okay so next question can I use acronyms for my answer so instead of saying as soon as possible writing ASAP or for your information fYI those ones are a little more subjective because you might not write fYI in a formal exam and it might not be the answer more common acronyms that you could be using our country names or proper institutions that are probably referenced in the story that you've just read for example the United States of America USA you can write the United States of America or you could rent USA you should have tried to avoid writing United esse okay that would be incorrect so if you're going to use an acronym make sure it's used correctly yeah or UK for United Kingdom for example all right anything sure yeah makes sense okay let's talk about using text language so of course living in the modern world I'm sure a lot of you students are used to using English in the texting world so writing just a you instead of why or you or lol for a laugh out loud and so on so there's a lot of common kinds of text language and symbols what happens if I do this in the owl so what happens if I give this as one of my answers on the answer sheet or use it in my writing exam I would avoid using the text language I know it's easy it's part of our everyday lives texting has changed the way we communicate but it's not how we communicate in formal situation so avoid it at all cost if you write great gr letter eight you will lose your mark because that is not how you spell the word great alright and what happens if the marker cannot read my handwriting so if my letters are so mixed up or so cramped together that it's just impossible to make out what the word is saying do I then lose that mark or will the examiner try to guess and once again don't make your examiner guess okay you want it to be very clear to your examiner you know how to spell that word so you need to practice your handwriting especially if you know it's a problem you're going to be using also play a pencil that's not very sharp so practice using a simple pencil writing on the answer sheets they are available so that you know how to answer in that space don't lose marks for poor handwriting it's not a good excuse if you make us guess it is very likely that you could lose your mark due to subjectivity to reading your hand and you made a very good point there Robin that when students are at home practicing for the IELTS take the time to print out an official answer sheet you can find these online for the listening and reading a section and practice writing answers in these Official answer sheets that you see up on here on the board as well with the pencil and using an eraser and so on so that you can really replicate or simulate the real test that's gonna help you again to be more comfortable and confident during the exam so the next question is about symbols and we've already talked about a little bit about this with the percent symbol example can I use symbols as the question so can I use a dollar sign instead of writing dollars and what if I put the symbol in the wrong place so I put the dollar sign after the number and not before the number well I get that wrong so how do symbols work symbols are acceptable but you need to write them clearly pound dollar for example they're quite common in the IELTS test and put them in the correct spot generally it's before the number sometimes you don't need them at all I don't advise you write out the word dollar you might make a spelling mistake you might forget your agreement at the end yeah because you can avoid plurals and singulars as well when you're using the symbol you don't have to write dollars or dollar it's just simply the symbol and that applies to both but I think what you said is very important to make sure that the symbol is very clear and it's the correct symbol also paying attention if it's a fill-in-the-blank if the symbol or the word is included in your answer sheet then you don't need to write that right so yeah so it's important to pay attention to that now in English articles are very common part of our language using ah and I've seen a lot of students use many articles and their speaking writing answers some students try to avoid them because they're scared of mistakes how do these work and outs and first of all are these counted as a word when the question is asking for two words only or three words only is ah one of those words or the one of those words yeah for sure articles are counted as words so if you're asked to write two words and you write for example number two on the listening you write the blue house it's wrong for two reasons that case because you're only - right two words blue is also spelled incorrectly so yeah that would be counted as a word and that would be a reason you'd lose it and that possibly would be included in the text in the question so it's redundant it's repeating itself so you don't need it so be aware if you're going to put them in they're going to be counted as they work okay so in a lot of cases it's likely that the article is not needed in the answer now that's not sure the some answers we'll need the article but but in a lot of cases it's not necessary and especially if that's making the answer into a three word answer as opposed to a two-word answer it's most likely that it's the article that's not needed for that answer that is correct and if you're going to use the article okay do mistakes with articles matters so if I say Apple instead of an apple is that considered one grammar mistakes a grammar mistakes so wrong is wrong yeah if I forget to put an S at the end of a word to show that it's a plural money should be a plural clearly from the question is that a mistake for getting yeses sure is that's an agreement grammar mistakes so if the answer is three apples in your wrote three Apple wrong all right and and we've seen where some students try to avoid mistakes by writing everything in singular form because they think that's gonna make sure that there's no mistake there but that's not a good way to do it you need to check agreement an agreement is part of how Iles is checking your current or usage so I know you've said agreement a lot but I'm very glad about that because it's one of the most common types of errors in one of the most common ways that students are losing easy marks very easy wait for candidates to lose marks and we we can see it when we're marking that you totally know the answer you didn't know a grammar component of that answer okay jumping back a little bit to counting words for fill in the blanks or for example in writing as well - aided words when words are joined together by a - these counted as one nor is two words counted as one word if it's a hyphenated word and if you're talking about counting words in your writing and your examiner's actually count your words yeah they sure do they count every word in your task one in tusk - and they write it down so that it can be double-checked if necessary so you should be counting all the words that you're writing for your writing exams okay and that's definitely something to practice at home so make sure you do word counts at home so that you know how much you write in those allowed times of 1524 team init's and so on so you have a good idea because if you don't write enough words then yeah absolutely so hyphenated words counted as one word very important to make sure that it is actually a hyphenated word and not two separate words right like well-known for example right numbers are another example of hyphenated words 23 is one word even though it's two words put together right okay every aisles seems to have at least one true false not given section if not more it's one more difficult types of questions to answer for students by the way we have videos on this so if you check our channel and our websites you'll find some strategies for true and false not given one confusion with these is how should I write these into the spaces should I write the whole word true or just the letter T should it be a big T small T what should I do once again you should practice writing we're truths word false you'd be surprised how many people make spelling mistakes when they write true or false or not given I'm T and F are acceptable as well Angie for not given if you write n is probably considered wrong because it could mean and for know and for false it's ambiguous so if you're going to write just the big first letter right T F or ng you can find out the full word make sure you can spell true/false and not given should be easy the answer will be rated and would you agree Robin that probably writing a big t a big F or a big ng is the most clear simple way of doing this of course and we've discussed before if you're going to write a large T or F for example number 37 in the reading yeah make it clear if it's and us getting difficult to read T or F and we're not sure yet don't know what if that's an F or a T because maybe it was a small T turned into a large T could be an F if you make us guess it's good chance you'll lose your point so be clear okay now a little bit about the writing should I separate paragraphs for task 1 task - so should I have a clear paragraph for introduction body one body two conclusion and should I indent these so what's what's the best practice make it clear once again after that your examiner knows you're starting a new paragraph especially if your previous paragraph goes right to the end of the line so you can leave a space or you can make an indentation some people even arrow in to exemplify that make it clear to your examiner that you are starting new paragraphs yeah you should you must use paragraphs yeah it helps the market definitely alright and in writing and in speaking a common question from students is can I use idioms and should I use idioms idioms can bring your mark they will bring your mark up to a higher level there's more native-like speech and writing however they must be used in relevant context so if you're going to use native make sure you use it correctly what happens if I don't use it correctly that does affect the understanding the flow so it won't make you lose marks but it definitely won't push your markup okay so definitely if I'm using idioms I should be a hundred and twenty percent sure that it's a corrected iam and I'm using it correctly in that context can I ask the examiner to repeat questions in the speaking if I didn't catch it the first time or if I didn't understand it the first time of course yes you can ask for repeats part one they'll probably just repeat the question possibly in part two it might be paraphrased or rephrase I'm depending on the questions so yeah you can ask to NASA say it again right and that might actually help me a little bit even to understand the question better if I wasn't clear or even by a little bit of extra time if I'm nervous or confused about the answer so not a bad idea maybe not good to do it for every question it might start to seem a bit strange but every third fourth fifth question might be a little bit helpful it is time to exam so you don't want to spend your whole time repeating questions because that will impact on how long you can answer which is you want examiner to hear how accurate including you are very good point now maybe the most common question for the speaking section of the IELTS is does my pronunciation affect my score so a lot of students are nervous about the way that they pronounce English in fact some students believe that they should have a very clear american-style accent or British style accent when they're pronouncing words yeah can you tell us a little bit about this pronunciation is important it's not the only thing you worked on you I marked on four things for your speaking you're marked on your Comerica range of accuracy lexical resource or vocabulary fluency and coherence and lastly under pronunciation so it's one of your four marks your examiner isn't looking at which accents you're using they might have a different accent from you altogether because it might be from a completely different country than you're familiar with it's all about how you get the word out and as long as you're pronouncing your words you know within the standard of Foods speech right so another way to say this maybe if you agree with me is that my pronunciation only matters as long as the examiner can understand what I'm saying so if the examiner can understand the word that I'm saying with my accident it's fine if my accent is so heavy or so awkward that it confuses the meaning of my speech then that would definitely be a negative the clearer your accent is in terms of understanding obviously the higher bands we look at makes sense okay and that concludes my questions and I think that answers most of the questions that students ask about the IELTS how it works and how answers works so thank you so much for joining us again and for your previous comments and explanations and insights and we hope that our students have learned a lot from this and will have a better experience with the IELTS and have higher scores thank you I hope these small tips can make a big difference thank you so much for watching again make sure do check us out on our websites at triple w AE help calm for academic outs and triple w dot G outs help calm for general outs do opt in for our live IELTS streaming lessons December 15th we'll see you there if you have any questions about topics that we discussed in these videos you can ask us and there as well Robin again thank you so much for your time really appreciate it and hopefully we'll talk to you again soon thank you bye-bye you

Channel: AcademicEnglishHelp

Views: 17,353

Keywords: IELTS, question, answer, true, false, not given, sheet, write, clear, messy, rule, test, exam, listening, reading, writing, speaking, section, band, score, sample, interview, conversation, topic, teach, learn, free, materials, information, explain, tips, trick, strategy, marker, general, academic, yes, no

Id: G2xyI1MXHGI

Length: 23min 38sec (1418 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 28 2017