IELTS TOEFL Writing- Essay ideas (How to build an Idea Bank)

hi welcome to write the top I'm Adam today's video is about ideas now more specifically what I'm going to help you do is create an idea Bank now this is for people who are going to be taking a language test and you have a writing section in this language test and you have to write an essay to be more specific now many test takers have told me that the same problem every time they don't know what to write about they can't think of ideas for the topic but whatever the question is so what I'm going to help you do today is create an idea Bank so that you do all your thinking before testing that way you release some stress you don't have to worry too much you already have ideas ready to go for any essay topic that comes up so let's start with what is an idea Bank why do it how's it doing okay so first of all what is an idea Bank so what you're going to do is you're going to have a collection of words and expressions and synonyms you're going to create questions you're going to think of subtopics from a general topic you're going to think about more detailed subtopics you're going to think of your examples you're going to think of actual essays that you're going to be writing right so this is a whole collection that you're going to build long before test day and for very different topics you have to think about one of the common topics on these exams for example education health technology government Society all kinds of different topics if you do all your thinking before test day you will be much more relaxed while writing your essay so this is why create an idea bag do your brainstorming before now what is brainstorming when you get your essay question your essay task you very quickly have to plan your essay right so you have to think what am I going to write about it first of all do I have to give an opinion do I have to give some solutions to a problem etc what ideas am I going to use to support my argument what examples am I going to use to support my ideas right so a lot of people they get very nervous because maybe you get a topic that you've never really thought about or but if you thought about it before test day then when you see that question you're ready with your ideas your examples everything your keywords etc you're going to save time you're going to save energy you're going to reduce your stress now in most of these language exams the writing comes at the end or very near the end which means you've already been thinking in English you've been listening you've been reading maybe you've already done your speaking so you're a little bit tired you're a little bit nervous you're a little bit stressed out don't let these factors affect how you write have your ideas prepared and concentrate only on the actual writing of the essay the grammar the sentence structure is the vocabulary make sure you have your organization don't worry about ideas worry about English because that's what you're being tested on okay so now we're going to look at how to build an idea back what you should do long before testing now before I actually get there I have to say one thing and some of you are going to get a little bit nervous by what you're about to see because it takes a lot of hard work to create this idea Bank but if you want success you have to be prepared and preparation means hard work okay so let's get started first thing you're going to do is you're going to collect your key words so we're going to look at the topic of Education as an example okay you're going to think of as many keywords as you can possibly think of now the best way to do this just do a Google search or Bing search or whatever search engine you use put in your topic education plus and then vocabulary and then see how many sites come up you may have to go to different site and get a list get all your words together now think about the words and different groups for example facilities so think about schools think about places of learning what are what are they going to have there's going to be a campus which is basically the whole building all the infrastructure of a learning facility okay a learning institution classrooms lecture halls labs all kinds of different labs a studio maybe it's your doing some audio-visual things maybe you're doing all kinds of things that you need a studio like art etc there's a library of cafeteria the dormitory an auditorium a sports athletic facility a playground a gymnasium all kinds of different things that write them all down in one little group different types of schools this colleges universities Community College there's vocational schools technical colleges boarding schools all kinds of different schools put them in there you never know which one of these you're going to be using in your essay whatever the essay topic maybe think about course related vocabulary there's a course of study a curriculum a syllabus research thesis dissertation a teacher gives you a rubric and how he or she scores your assignments that sometimes your grade depends on attendance if you're writing a report you need to put in citation so all of these words are very important now you may have a lot of words maybe hundreds of words obviously you're not going to use them all but just by collecting these words and just by looking at these words you're already generating ideas and that you can use all of these ideas in any essay topic that comes up ok so that's step one let's go to the next so don't forget use these words don't just put them in a list and forget them go back to the list every once in a while look at it new words obviously look them up use them in sentences when you're writing your practice essays use as many of these words as you possibly can ok next think of subtopics now education is a very broad topic you can ask all kinds of questions about education so now you think of subtopics more specific aspects of Education so for example vocational school college or university so should you go learn a trade or should you go get a degree in some liberal arts program like humanities abstract courses or very specific practical courses Theory practical and then again I'll think of all the things that you can talk about content so when you're talking about these different types of schools we have theoretical versus practical education can have hands-on education skills knowledge concrete versus abstract trades now trades are people like carpenter a plumber they learn a very specific skill that they can then use as a job as a career think of the different instructors of the different schools and for example in a vocational school where you're learning an actual skill for a job you're learning how to do a specific job you will probably have teachers with real-world experience versus academia where all the professor's have been in the university their whole lives they might not know as much about the outside world in a college you can have masters your teachers have master's degrees in university your teachers have doctors doctor like PhDs real-world contacts scholars versus trained professionals ivory tower versus layman so I reach our this is an expression for people who are very disconnected from the man-on-the-street layman or the man on the street lay person okay think about the fees obviously a vocational school is going to be much cheaper than a university there's books tuition subsidies some schools give you subsidies and grants and scholarships some have government support think of all these little details and create yourself a list of possible topics possible ideas to use in an essay question that asks something about this now don't be afraid that by doing focusing too much on these little things you're never going to use them well you might first of all you might get a question specifically on this but a lot of this stuff will also carry over to other topics okay if you're talking about instructors you're talking about education and then you're talking about society you're talking about what governments can or can't do or should or shouldn't do when it comes to supporting educational institutions it must mandate a certain level of teacher qualifications etc who gives these qualifications etcetera so education a lot of these things will be connected to technology a lot of them will be connected to health etc next start creating questions now think about the question types that you're going to be that you might see on your exam for example you can see an agree or disagree question you can see a yes-or-no question a compare contrast or discussion question think about opinions no opinions so here are three possible questions schools should prepare students for the labor market and not waste time and money on theoretical knowledge do you agree or disagree to what extent do you agree or disagree do you agree or disagree with the following statement think about the different ways this could be set up as a question should college students be forced to take courses outside their main area of study why don't forget to follow up questions ok should college you're starting with a verb remember the answer must be a yes or a No at some point compared some students prefer to study near home while others want to study in a different city or even country compare these two options and say which you would prefer so once you have your collection of subtopics you have all kinds of different questions that you can create the more questions you can you can create yourself before test day the more questions you're prepared for on test day less stress focus on the writing ok let's move on to actually the question types make sure you understand which ones you should think about agree disagree yes/no compare contrast discuss advantages disadvantages open question what who when where how choice or preference questions with opinion without opinion hybrid sometimes you'll get a question that asks you discuss both these options and say which you agree with or which you prefer etc be prepared for anything if you have if you're doing IELTS you might have two-part questions you have two questions in the task create some of those types of questions don't forget follow-up questions do you agree or disagree why why not okay all these things so once you have your all your questions go to the next step ok so actually before we go to the next step another thing I want you to think about make sure that you take certain topics or sub topics and create different types of questions on the same topic so for example should college students be forced to take courses outside the main area of study why why not this is a yes/no question the aim of a college education should be to make students more well-rounded the students must take mandatory courses and subjects outside their area of concentration you agree or disagree some college students prefer to take horses outside their concentrations while others prefer to focus only on courses that are related to their majors compare these two approaches and say which you prefer then the compare contrast and preference right so same topic it's all about courses in your major and courses outside your major created in or presented in three different ways agree disagree yes/no compare and choose so make sure you do that with a bunch of your subtopics as well then start thinking of your examples think of concrete examples think of sort of blanket research examples think about expressions you can use think about different things that can be applied if you're thinking about concrete think of people think of things think of places so for example Steve Jobs now another thing you want to do with your examples if you want to think of examples that you can apply to many different topics many different subtopics so see Steve Jobs is a great example you can be used for a lot of Education questions he can be used for a lot of Technology questions he's a co-founder of Apple he dropped out of college so you can use that about is college really that important she took a calligraphy course because of interest so calligraphy is like a style of writing like artistic writing they've led him to create fonts on Macs all of you know fonts like Times New Roman Calibri Arial these are because he studied an artistic class so he didn't always he didn't only focus on technology he liked art he studied art so what did he do with that he used that art to use in his technology it's a very good example for arts versus stem classes so science technology engineering maths okay he also creative a presentation of you gave a speech at Stanford University if you want to use a quote in your essay by all means just make sure you remember the quotes properly or just have a very abstract but still focused example research conducted by Harvard University's Faculty of Education found that students who spend at least one hour doing homework everyday are three times more likely than their peers to have above-average grades is this true I don't know I do Harvard University's Faculty of Education did any research like this but it sounds true now keep in mind that the graders on your exams they're going to spend about five minutes checking your writing section they don't care if it's true or not true it just has to sound true and more importantly it has to support your arguments okay so if you're using this example your this is an essay about homework for example should students do more homework or less homework or no homework and you're supporting the idea that homework is very important and young kids should do homework this is going to support that argument okay it doesn't have to be true Harvard University you could put Princeton University you could put University of California it doesn't matter as long as it sounds true and it supports the argument you're the graders are not going to go check they don't care they care about your English and your ability to support and our end argument now once you've collected everything what are you going to do with all this information well you're going to take your keywords and you're going to start connecting them to the different questions in which they may be applicable in which they can help you actually answer the question then you're going to do the same thing with the examples keep in mind you've created your questions with the subtopics now you have your questions you're adding keywords you're putting examples now for all the questions you've created write out a plan ideally get yourself to the point where you can create a plan for any question in three to four minutes okay that's part of your practice part of your preparation then once you've gone through all the questions once you've written all your plans pick out a question at random and write a full essay okay the key to success on the writing section is practice and if you don't practice you will never get to that score you need I've had many people tell me I've taken the IELTS so many times I've taking the TOEFL so many times but I always fail that essay I always fail the writing section well then that's what you need to practice and you need to practice it hard every day and be very driven now I know that this is a lot of work to do so I've created an e-book there right idea it's called the right idea ebook the first book is about education you can purchase this through my site it's a PDF file you can download it you can print it it has all these things I just mentioned right in the book okay there are 43 pages in this book over 500 keywords over 20 subtopics there are 52 example questions about education and the different subtopics 20 examples that you can use and you can change and adapt to whatever the situation plus I gave you 10 sample essays high-quality 9 IELTS 30 TOEFL that you can study you could get more vocabulary from them you can see how I set up to the different question types okay if you want more information about this book please go to my website and you can find out more information about the idea Bank and about the ebook there's a link in the description box that you can follow to get more information and of course if you have any more questions by all means please ask me here in YouTube I'll be happy to help you out and if you like this video give me a thumbs up don't forget to subscribe to my channel and come back soon for grammar writing vocab lots of good lessons to help you pass your writing exam section on any test okay I'll see you again soon bye bye

Channel: Write to the Top

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Keywords: ielts, English writing, writing, language test, English test, IELTS academic essay, writetotop.com, TOEFL, independent task, independent essay, how to write, essay writing, test preparation, test tips, pass the IELTS, ielts high score, toefl high score, pass toefl, TOEIC, how to write an essay, subjunctive, GMAT, GRE, SAT, better writing, writing skills, how to write in English, IELTS high band, using the present perfect, idea bank, how to get ideas, essay ideas

Id: OyEo1Y1EAMc

Length: 16min 59sec (1019 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 15 2017