IELTS Writing Idea Generation

here from the general doing well and welcome to our latest YouTube live lesson so we tried this yesterday and it was pretty successful so and we've created this new studio and what we're going to do live IELTS lessons when we bought a lot of fancy equipment to allow us to do that and hopefully it'll become a regular thing so we're thinking of doing it like three days a week no one may be Monday Wednesday Friday at 1:00 p.m. and today's lesson is all about idea generation so what we're gonna look at in this lesson are a few things so we're going to look at a very common question that we get asked about idea generation is what if I open the test paper on test day and I know nothing I know nothing about the topic I can't think of any ideas so we're going to address that then we're going to look at what is a good idea because there's no point in generating ideas if you're generating bad ideas so we're going to look at the the things that you need to think about when you're generating ideas so that you can generate those ideas and use those ideas in your essay then we're going to look at does brainstorming work so many of you will say yes and many of you will say no so we're going to look at whether that's actually a good idea or not if you ask you know a hundred IELTS teachers how do you generate ideas 99 of them will just say brainstorming and we're going to talk about whether that is actually good advice or not then we're also going to look up better ways to think of good idea so I'm going to share with you two techniques that I share with my students that help them generate really good ideas very quickly and ideas that they can actually use on test day and has resulted in some really really good scores also we're going to look at this question so this is a question from Cambridge English from one of their books we're going to use this question at the end and because we're live you guys can answer the question send me ideas I can look at my phone and we can comment on those ideas and help you out in that way okay so let's begin if you're watching this live just let me know that you can hear me that you can see me say hello also let me know where you're watching from it's always interesting to see where people are watching from and also if you want to see more of these and you can hit the subscribe button hit the bell and then you'll be given updates next time we go live and and you'll be able to see everything okay so what if I know nothing so we get this question at least a few times a day people emailing us saying what if I open the test paper on test day and I look at the task to a question and I know nothing I just don't know how to start I don't understand the topic I don't know how to think of ideas so the first thing we need to think about here are fake questions so if you look at most IELTS websites the majority of them have fake questions and this is where this fear comes from because if if someone is producing IELTS questions and they don't know what they're doing normally what they do is they think that all IELTS is really difficult therefore I must create really difficult complex questions if you look at real IELTS question so once produced by Cambridge if you don't go into the IDP websites the British Council website the official IELTS website you'll see that task two questions are not really that complex they are on very common topics normal common everyday topics like education health the environment technology and the questions are designed in a way that anybody with half an education will be able to think of some ideas for them the other thing is misreported questions so many students after they do the test what they'll do is they'll go online they'll go on some blog or they'll be chatting to someone they'll tell people this is the question that I got 99% of those questions are misreported this isn't the students fault but it's very very difficult for someone to do a whole question finish the test and then remember that question and then be able to tell everyone accurately what it's like if you don't believe me go and look tomorrow on Saturday after the test and you will find 20 different versions of the same question and if there's 20 different versions of the same question that would indicate that maybe people are not really remembering them as accurately as they can so if you're looking at faker misreported questions no wonder that you're worried that you're not going to be able to answer the question because you're looking at questions that are far more difficult than what you really get on the test so only look at official questions then you also need to think about the common topics so the common toss to topics not can we accurately predict exactly what is going to come up no but are there some topics that come up again and again and again yes I've analyzed thousands of past questions and there there are some topics like education technology health environment government these everyday topics that do come up quite regularly and so how can you use this information what you can do is use the common topics as part of your IELTS preparation process so what I tell my students is depending on how much time you have could be five minutes a day it could be 20 minutes a day it could be 30 minutes a day what you should be doing is log into every day into a popular English news website so BBC news New York Times The Guardian something like that and at the top of the website you'll see education news the environment news what else technology news all these common topics so all you do is just click into that you can go under the BBC website right now and you'll see that if you read one story about education one story about technology one story about the environment are you going to find it difficult to think of ideas if you did that every day during your IELTS preparation and only takes five minutes you can spend longer on that if you want to work on other things but it really doesn't take that much time so if you're looking at real questions and you're also reading the news each day and reading about these common topics you should have no problem thinking of ideas and understanding the question on test day so that's the first thing next what is a good idea so it doesn't matter how amazing an idea generation technique is if it is resulting in bad ideas so we have to think about what a good idea is so that when you're generating your ideas you'll be able to pick the ones that are best and be able to use those in your essay so what is a good idea so the first one and the most important one it has to be relevant all right it has to be relevant to the question if it is not relevant to the question it is not going to answer the question the number one thing that you must do is answer the question so if you have irrelevant ideas you're not going to answer the question you're likely to get about five for task achievement the rest of your essay is not going to be very good either because you're just you're starting off on the wrong track so imagine you are on a journey the end of your journey is when you finish your essay if you use irrelevant ideas you're going off on a tangent you're going to write about something that is completely unrelated to the topic so make sure your ideas are relevant second thing is can you develop those ideas so you might think of the most amazing idea ever but if you can't explain that idea if you can't support that idea with a relevant example it's useless because in the tests in the writing task - you're not just going to write a bunch of ideas you're not going to have a main body paragraph with six or seven different ideas you're going to have one idea and you're going to fully develop that idea with explanations and examples so unless you know about that idea and you can develop it you can explain it then don't use it the third thing is can you think of that idea quickly so if I give you six hours to think of an idea you know anybody can do that but can you think of ideas quickly so what you're trying to do is you're trying to think of relevant ideas that you can develop and that you can think of quickly so those are the three things that you should be thinking about if you can't think of relevant ideas if the idea is not relevant it's not a good idea if you can't develop it it's not a good idea if you can't think of it quickly it's not a good idea all three of those things must be present in any technique that you use to help you generate ideas and that brings us on to brainstorming so as I said at the start of this lesson if you go into any IELTS classroom today so all around the world there will be hundred different classes all teaching IELTS at the same time if you ask the teacher how do i generate ideas they will say brainstorming does this work no it does not work in fact it is the most useless thing that you could ever do on the test it does not help at all why is that well I brainstorming results in irrelevant ideas the way how you brainstorm is you just think of as many different ideas as possible so if you're just thinking of as many ideas it's possible what you're going to do you're going to think of irrelevant you're also because you're thinking just about as many ideas as possible you're going to think a lot of those ideas are going to be ideas that you know a little bit about but you can't fully develop them you can't explain them you don't have examples for them so what this does is it results in a huge number of irrelevant or useless ideas and it takes you a very very very long time to do that so you're left with a bunch of useless information you've just wasted a few minutes and then you have to sort through all this useless information a better way would be to quickly think of relevant ideas that you can develop and be able to do that pretty much instantly and not instantly it's probably the wrong word actually you don't want to do things instantly because that means you're not thinking about them but you should be doing them pretty quickly when I work with my students on my VIP course we aim to get them to the point where they can think that you know look at any question and think of relevant ideas that they can develop in a few seconds and that might sound a little bit ambitious but it's totally possible by using some other idea generation techniques I'm forgetting about brainstorming so if there's one thing that I would suggest to you to take away from this lesson is stop brainstorming I know that your teacher has probably told you that that's a really good idea but your teacher hasn't taken the time like I have to really work with students and consider what actually works and what doesn't and if you want to stick with brainstorming stick with brainstorming if you want a better way to do it keep watching this lesson alright so there are two ways that two primary ways that I help my students there are about five or six different techniques that I teach my students because everyone's brain is a little bit different so even the stuff that I'm telling you today and might work for some of you but it might not work for others so what I've done is I've a lot I've given my students many different ways of thinking of different ideas generating ideas so that it will suit different learning styles and the different ways that people's and people think about things but I'm gonna share with you two of the most effective ways so number one is called the coffee-shop method I developed this myself when I was working with students in the classroom so I don't teach in the classroom anymore I just a hundred percent online but I used to teach in you know teach sixteen students every day teaching them in all around the world and one thing that I picked up on one pattern that emerged was when I first walked into an IELTS class I would start the class maybe the first five minutes just chatting with the students asking them how they were talking about different things in the news or talking about current events and these were intelligent students that had no problem talking about these current events things in the news things that they were doing no problem at all as soon as the class started and as soon as I put a class 2 question in front of them the same students that had no problem whatsoever thinking of ideas they could it was like their brain completely shut down so I started to spot this over and over and over and again and when you spot a pattern like that obviously there's something wrong when you want to fix it so what I did was I spoke to the students and asked them why do you have no problem thinking of ideas before class but as when class starts you can't do it and it was because they were in something that I call test mode and so this affects your writing it also affects your speaking more than anything that people for example on the speaking test when you are talking to someone outside of class their fluency is great their grammar is great their pronunciation is great but then when they step into into the the real test everything falls apart for some reason again this is what I call test mode so what we want to do is we want to normalize the situation so even though it is a very stressful test and you're going to have you know there's a lot at stake I understand I speak to students everyday about how important this is we want to normalize it as much as possible and reduce stress as much as possible so that we can think normally so the coffee-shop method what it does is I say to my students imagine instead of doing the IELTS test imagine you're sitting with a friend and a coffee shop just in your in your in your imagination and you are discussing the question like tube normal people would in a coffee shop so it's probably better just to show you a real example of how this would be so here's a question today more and more tourists are visiting places where conditions are difficult such as the Sahara Desert what are the advantages and disadvantages for the tourists so this is a real question from Cambridge 12 and this is a very typical question and it's not difficult to understand but when students see this they over complicate everything they make it more complex than it really needs to be so instead of just looking at this question like an IELTS task to question imagine you're sitting with your friend in a coffee shop and you're saying like a lot of people are going to more extreme places on holiday these days what are the good and bad things about that for the tourists so instead of using words like you know advantages and disadvantages to simplify it what are the good things about that what are the bad things about that and by doing that you will be able to easily generate ideas that are relevant that you can develop and you can think of them quickly so no brainstorming just thinking about that for a few seconds and it will generate really good ideas pretty much immediately another way to think about this is something that I call the Family Fortunes methods so this is something that I developed with my VIP students because as I said before and one technique will work for some students but it won't work with other students because it's their brains don't work like that everybody is different everybody's brains are wired differently so there were some students who I was showing the coffee-shop method to and we're still having problems so I said okay let's think about this differently because I let's think about why you find this method difficult so they were still over complicating everything this is particularly with people who are very intelligent so I think about 1/3 of my VIP course there are doctors and engineers and lawyers and people like that like very very very intelligent highly qualified people and those types of people tend to overcomplicate everything and they find it very difficult just to keep things simple so this is for someone if you're a doctor or you know an engineer a lawyer someone who has a lot of Education this technique is probably for you so what is Family Fortunes Family Fortunes is a game show and basically what it is is you can google this and watch it on YouTube or something they ask the contestants questions and the questions are always we asked a hundred members of the public this question what was the top answer what was the most common answer and this is a great way to think of writing task 2 ideas so what you do is you look at any question and you think if we asked a hundred members of the public randomly what would be the most common advantage that they would say and what would be the most common disadvantage that they would say and if you do that you will always think of very relevant ideas you always think of ideas that you can develop because the these are the most common ideas they're the most straightforward ideas are the most simple ideas and you'll always be able to think of them quickly so some people like this one some people like that one there are many other techniques that I teach I'm not going to share all of them with you because that would be a very long class and my VIP students would be a little bit angry with me if I shared everything with you but hopefully that will help you I am generate ideas so now what I'd like to do is look at this question pick one of these techniques so either imagine you're in a coffee shop and you're discussing this with a friend or think what would be excuse me what would be the most the common advantage what would be the top answer for disadvantage weight and you could simplify it by you know what's a good thing about it what's it what's not such a good thing about it and keep it simple so in the comments let me know one advantage and one disadvantage and you will surprise yourself just how easy this is so what I'm going to do not is have a look on YouTube so I'm getting no notifications so let me see my assistant my glamorous assistant helps me again thanks Justin so hello to all the people saying alo I'm it candy Sanju Kieran Priyanka all of you okay so we're getting some comments thank you very much so Lynn lloyd says advantage unique experience excellent that is the most common one that's the most straightforward one that's the easiest one to explain perfect fish wash experience about desert so the question this question is not about deserts it's not about the Sahara Desert they say such as the Sahara Desert just to help you understand the question the question is about visiting places where conditions are difficult so extreme places so it's not about deserts hmm Maria complaining I didn't receive any notification complain the YouTube and I don't control YouTube and option exploring places yep perfect so you get the idea how easy it is to think of these things so let give me one bad thing could be one disadvantage one drawback of visiting a place that's that has an extreme environment like Antarctica or the Arctic was a hard a desert or Mount Everest or something like that Chavarria can you explain both methods briefly please already done that all right and if there's something that you don't understand let me know but tell me particularly what you don't understand about it because I don't I've already explained both of them twice so I don't want to make the video really boring by explaining them both again so the negative thing go meet health problems yeah so the negative part of visiting the Sahara Desert or Antarctica is something could happen to your health or you know you could have an accident you could get a disease there's not many hospitals around there that's a pretty probably number one reason why people don't go on holiday up mind everest you know some people do and but you know most people don't because maybe it's not the biggest reason because it doesn't really have you know beaches and cocktails and you know things like that did it the disadvantage complex preparation yeah it's expensive to go to those places so it's you know what is the average holiday cost thousand two thousand dollars probably to visit Antarctica it's gonna cost ten to twenty thousand dollars you know language barrier hmm so that's that idea wouldn't really make sense because you're going to have a language barrier anywhere you go so if I'm an English speaker it doesn't matter where I visit I'm going to have some sort of language barrier so all of you are getting it so all of you are thinking of great advantages and disadvantages so if you're watching this video you're obviously worried about idea generation but hopefully I simplified it for you and showed you that don't really need to worry about it this is all you need to do don't worry about brainstorming and use you know seek out people who have actually thought about making it easy for students and one of the things that some schools and some teachers do is they tell you IELTS is really difficult and you need my help a lot of teachers a lot of schools will tell you that that something's really difficult and you don't really know what you're doing because that sells courses because that means that they'll be able to take your money because if I told if everybody said it's not that difficult actually it's pretty simple then people wouldn't join IELTS courses anymore and you know I don't think that schools want that to happen so do you have any questions guys I have Justin's phone so I can see your questions coming in so hang around for another half about 10 or 15 minutes if you have any questions and I will answer them for you if not and I'm a deep share your one advantage and disadvantage so there's many of them so what we're trying to do is we're trying to think of something that's relevant that that you can develop and you can think of quickly ok so what's an advantage of visiting a place where conditions are difficult so let's think of some no other tourists so you're not going to have to deal with other tourists and that's a huge advantage and it's a unique experience that's another huge advantage you are you know you're doing something that not many other people get to do and I think those are probably the two most common ones that people would say a disadvantage is the obvious one is it's dangerous there are there's a lot of risks so it's not about thinking of as many ideas as possible it's about thinking of ideas that are relevant that are simple that are easy to explain and you can think of quickly and a lot of people also think that you know there's some magic idea that will get you a high mark there's no there it doesn't work like that all right it's not like some ideas will get you a higher mark than others it's as long as you're answering the question and you've developed those ideas that's all that matters really when will be your next live session probably Monday around the same time I think I won't be doing them at the weekends because that's better things to do at the weekend Nancy is it better to do tasks to you first it depends on it depends on you some people like to do tasks to for some people like to do tasks one first try both and see which one you prefer germane and agree or disagree should we choose one or go eighty twenty percent don't think of the IELTS writing test like a mathematical equation that I've seen a lot of people doing this like oh I'm gonna agree 80% or 70% on one side and like how do you even do that linguistically keep it simple agree or disagree do you agree or disagree what's the simplest way of doing that I agree or I disagree keep it simple option does the exam location impact the results no it doesn't one of the things that you need to in order to be successful so I've helped my course I'm not saying that I have the best course in the world because how would you even judge that but I have more successful students than any other online IELTS course in the world and I've picked up some commonalities things that successful students have in common on things that unsuccessful students have in common successful students focus on what actually matters they focus on the things that will actually get them a high score unsuccessful students focus on everything else so that's an example of something that just doesn't matter it doesn't matter where you do the test doesn't matter which country doesn't matter which city it doesn't matter if it's a local examiner or native english-speaking examiner doesn't matter what matters on the writing test is task achievement coherence and cohesion vocabulary and grammar focus on those things and nothing else matters Nancy I've seen text with two or three paragraphs which is better to do Nancy I don't know what you're referring to you need to give me context because I don't know what you're thinking so if you help me understand what you're what you mean I'll be able to help you Tran hello in Vietnam turn or maybe you're not in Vietnam but you're from Vietnam with a name like that I think the coffee thought the coffee shop the coffee shop method really works because every time I make my friends right after someone offers a topic they positively come yeah good good Maria mostly what type of question usually comes up so that's an example of shortcut thinking you're looking for shortcuts instead of actually doing what you're supposed to do and so if you're thinking like oh can I like figure out which question comes up most often or which topics and then I'll be able to just focus on that and everything will work out well that's the easiest way to fail you have to get good at everything so there are many different types of question like opinion questions discussion questions advantages and disadvantages questions there are variations of all of those things there are problem solution calls the solution direct questions double questions if you want to get the score you need get good at all of those things and if you don't you won't get the good scores very very simple that is not what you want to hear you want me to give you some tips and tricks but they don't work so should we write two main ideas in one paragraph no one main idea in one paragraph and develop it Sonya my problem is at is essay generation or idea generation what can I do that's what the whole lesson is about so maybe you may you joined us late that's fine and immediately after we finished this lesson the recorded version will go up on YouTube and you can watch the recorded version I'm in deep thank you for replying to my emails yep we reply to every single email people sent us and unless it's a nasty email and then we don't reply to them but 99% of emails will you reply to Surendra I can't speak fluently okay so there are many many things that you can do to work on your fluency but let's think of some of the common ones and one of the most one of the main reasons why people struggle with fluency so when you struggle with fluency you will pause and hesitate you'll be mMmmm most of the time in the speaking test that happens for two reasons either the person is trying to think of the correct grammar and vocabulary so they're they're accessing their short-term memory trying to think of all of those things or they're trying to think of ideas and that can cause problems too so ideas is easy speaking test you don't get any marks for ideas as long as you're answering the question the quality of your ideas doesn't really matter and so don't worry about thinking of impressive ideas on the speaking test so that's that one stroked off the list the second thing is grammar and vocabulary the better your grammar and vocabulary the better your fluency is going to be they are linked so there's a short term and a long term strategy there the long term strategy is improve your grammar and vocabulary that's going to take you a while but that's the best thing to do the short term thing like if your test is tomorrow is accept the fact that you're going to make grammar and vocabulary mistakes some students have terrible fluency because they're so afraid of making a grammar and vocabulary mistake in this lesson I've probably made grammar and vocabulary mistakes everybody makes grammar and vocabulary mistakes when they're speaking because our brains just don't can't keep up with our minds sometimes and to get about nine and speaking you don't need perfect grammar and vocabulary you want to minimize the number of grammar and vocabulary mistakes that you're making as much as possible but don't allow perfectionism to stop your to lower your fluency so hopefully that helped em also practice and the more you speak the more fluent you'll get very very simple what time is it okay but 10 more minutes guys and I'll try and answer as many questions as I can't Mohammed tomorrow is my exam what advice for today I can't help you in one day what I can't help you with is this number one go to bed early get as much sleep as you can and sleep does affect your performance number two get a really good breakfast tomorrow you're going to be in there for a long time number three get there early make sure that you know exactly where it is and you're not rushing around get there and you know feel comfortable in your surroundings and number four keep it simple focus on what actually matters so in the speaking test on the writing test just focus on clearly answering the questions do not focus on showing off how great your grammar and your vocabulary is or memory you know using memorized phrases or anything like that just focus on clearly answering the questions it's an English test they want to know can you clearly communicate in English if you focus on that you'll do much much better than trying to think of your crazy grammar and vocabulary the now Lloyd it may sound stupid but what is the best writing to a pen or pencil um it's not stupid but it is doesn't really matter pencil probably better because you can erase it quickly but again in the writing test whether you answer the question and you know clearly write your answer and your grammar and your vocab those are the things that are important and not what thing you have in your hand how to expand the idea quickly don't expand it quickly and you're not your purpose is to expand your ideas effectively not quickly you want to try and think of ideas pretty quickly but you shouldn't excuse me do things quickly just for the sake of speed and you want how to expand your ideas is to effectively is to write a explanation and example my brain is starting to shut down a little bit so if I start making mistakes or become a little bit incoherent apologize um [Music] someone says lack of ideas during exam even though I have many ideas when I'm at home what should I do in that condition those two things so what's the video again and review those two things iemon deep I have shown my writing essays to a teacher he says that I write very simple be very very careful almondy that the person you're showing your writing to knows what they're doing if you're I don't know because I haven't seen your writing but most people who say that there Isle Tech sports don't know what they're doing most students who come to us they have failed multiple times because the people giving them feedback don't know what they're doing either even if your teacher got a bound eight or about nine on the IELTS test doesn't mean they're actually a good teacher or know what they're actually doing if they have many many many many successful students and they actually know what they're doing and they've been doing this for years and they're successful and you know all those things then trust them but if they you know just did the test last week and got a bound eight and then the next week they're a teacher be very very careful and so you know use someone that that is reliable and does task 1 in writing need a conclusion no it needs an overview how can I improve my reading skills right I'm gonna do quickfire Rhino because I only have 5 minutes left so I'm gonna answer all the questions really really quickly how can I improve my reading skills read Chris I have a question for you if I wrote my listening in uppercase that's fine you can there's no problem writing them in uppercase is it important to use high level vocabulary in writing tests to know it's important to use vocabulary properly and effectively appropriately accurately just throwing in a bunch of high level vocabulary and you probably don't know what high level vocabulary actually means so be that's one of the main reasons people get a low score for vocabulary and is there any way to improve writing parts in a short period I like look at me like I'm a fat guy like if I wanted to lose 20 kilograms could I do it in a week no are there lots of people out there that would say you know take these diet pills on you lose 20 kilograms in a week yes there are lots of scam artists out there don't don't change your mindset a little bit you will get any IELTS score you need eventually but you can't do that quickly like you just just can't do it you know certain things there are lots of things you can't achieve in this life but there are lots of things that are impossible and you know moving from bound 5 to band 8 in one week that's impossible I said I was going to answer these questions quickly and I'm going on a run the reason why I'm quite passionate about this is because I see students being cheated on getting the wrong advice every single day and this makes a huge impact on your future not only are you wasting a huge amount of time you're wasting a huge amount of money who's phoning me sorry um you're also delaying your future life so the reason why you are doing IELTS test is because you want a better life maybe in a different country every time you feel the tests you are delaying that better life so that's why I get really passionate about this because a lot of the things that you're being taught are preventing you from actually doing that so you know make sure you get the right advice obviously I do practice a lot speaking I practice a lot of speaking but I don't get the desired score get feedback on your speaking if I listen to you for 15 or 20 minutes I'd be able to tell you exactly what bad scores you would get why you're getting those bond scores and exactly what to do to improve that's the kind of help that you need okay guys so I have to go because I've got stuff to do ahem I've got my VIP students that I'm going to be doing a zoom session with them in a moment so I have to go if you have enjoyed this video please give it a like please share it with anyone else you think um needs it and subscribe if you want to get our live lessons you know update on the live lesson so subscribe hit the bell if you don't want to do that doesn't matter either but hopefully you enjoyed this lesson I enjoyed it and it was it was cool to read all your questions um answer them I'm gonna go guys thank you very much if you need anything go to aisle 2 advantage com my email address is Chris a tile to advantage com if you need help with your IELTS preparation bye bye

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Keywords: ielts, ielts writing, ielts ideas, writing task 2, ideas, thinking of ideas, idea generation, ielts advantage, task 2, ielts writing idea generation, subscribe, Chris Pell, Idea generation, www.ieltsadvantage.com

Id: 4FQhIFBrj4w

Length: 41min 37sec (2497 seconds)

Published: Fri May 11 2018