IELTS Writing Task 2 | Opinion Essays EXPLAINED!

[Music] okay Silvana so we're going to work on this task to a question together let's have a read of it first in some areas of the US a curfew is imposed in which teenagers are not allowed to be outdoors after a particular time at night unless they are with an adult what is your opinion about this so what's the very first thing we need to do with this question is really didn't understand the question yep so let's have a read of it is there anything that you don't understand in this question actually they Tuesday's award that I don't understand curfew I don't know the meaning of it so we have two choices really if we see a question and there's a word or maybe one or two words that we don't understand with two choices we can just panic and go like oh I'm gonna fail and then this try our best or we can do something else which is guess the meaning from context so what what do you think I mean by guess from context it like you have to find the meaning of that word based on what you read it's on the meaning of this all sentence exactly exactly so if I just showed you that word without any other words around it it would be quite difficult to determine the meaning of the word but because we've got all of this extra information we can look at all this extra information and guess what this means so what do you think this means if I have a guest dependin I think it's like kind of restrictions exactly yeah it's a restriction it's just a fancy word for restriction a fancy word for restriction with curfew is really abide time it's a time that you you're desert there's a deadline that you have to be home before so if you have 11:00 p.m. curfew that means that you have to be home before 11:00 p.m. or your mum and dad are going to be so it's normally for children young adults your parents your guardian says you have to be home before a particular time so that would be perfect because what some people would do is they would panic and they'd be like IELTS is so unfair I don't know what this word means but often what they'll do is they will give you extra information so they've given you particular time so they've really defined it for you there so they're actually helping you out with this they know that many people will not understand this word so they've helped you out by giving you this context is there anything else which you don't understand apart from the word everything else so in some areas of the us curve curfew is imposed in which teenagers are not allowed to be outdoors after particular time at night on that so you fully understand what that means yeah if we what would happen if we didn't take the time to understand it we were stopped punny couldn't know what what to do where to start yes and we would also start to write about things that that were not related to this and because when when we looked at your writing before sometimes what you would do is you would write about the general topic rather than answer the question and there's a big difference between writing about curfews in general or writing about discipline and children or something like that rather than answering the exact question so number one understand we've done that okay what's the second thing we need to do now we have to understand the general topic so what is the general topic here is it talking about restriction in particularly at nine times ages permissions from the parents to the teenagers parenting yeah it's really about parenting yeah parenting and teenagers looking after children but let's just say it's okay why is it important that we understand the general topic first so we don't talk about yeah so we don't write everything about parenting or we don't write everything related to looking after children at night or something like that again we're wanting to answer the specific question what's the third thing that we need to do and we've done this then was the specific yeah topic okay what's the specific question that they're asking us so what are what things would you underline here he says in some areas over us I know not what curfew is so it's a and then teenagers and adults okay so it's not talking about young children it's not talking about you know people over 20 really it's just talking about people between the ages of 13 and 19 teenagers anything else we would adults and particular time know the particular time it's ID or so they might be able to you know stay up and watch movies or play games indoors but it's all about and whether they should be outdoors or not because this is going to inform your decision because we will then start to think about okay what is it about the outdoors that is dangerous why would parents not want children to be outdoors what is it about what the difference between a child being outdoors and a child being indoors so that helps us start to form our opinion and start up helps us to start to generate ideas without even getting to the idea generation phase by thinking about these things the specific thing and the fourth thing now we have to understand what type of question will they ask us yeah so what's the type of question and what is the type of question it's an opinion because that's gonna bug yeah my people what's weird about this it's got the what's inside no what is your opinion yes so again often students get up at free dart because it doesn't say do you agree or disagree because people learn these static rigid ways of answering a question and then when they they inevitably IELTS will often change the wording a little bit instead of saying do you agree or disagree they'll say what is your opinion about this or what do you think about this it but it's exactly the same as a do you agree or disagree question so we answered an exact same way yeah can we move on yeah okay good so what's the next stage that we need to get true you startle generate ideas okay so what are the two ways that we can answer this ask for my own opinion before we start generating ideas what are the two ways that we can we talked about before agree we can agree with this and we can disagree with it so you said to me earlier today could we you know some people say this some people say that I kind of believe that you can do that but it's very very complicated the simple way to answer these questions is just choose that one or that one okay so before we you know put a line down the board and then go like agree and disagree disagree is there one that you think as a mother that you probably are thinking about already yes I agree yeah so when I don't I don't think we need to do you know think of three or four ideas for this side because as a mother around somebody who knows a lot of by parenting you're probably going to choose this one anyway and so what an idea I would have is you know instead of brainstorming both sides and wasting a lot of time I would just do you agree yeah okay so let's talk about some of the ways that we generate ideas that we talked about earlier today because one of the problems that you had was how do i generate ideas I don't know how to do this and you were talking about brainstorming we were talking about so that's successful unsuccessful so waste of time so what was it one of the ways that we said the first one was that which is the old this one yeah so instead of trying to think of a high level idea or an idea that you know was going to impress people what's the first idea that pops into your head why would you not want your children out on the streets of London Jamis okay dangerous that's the most obvious answer what's another way that we could and the hundred people asked conduct people what if you asked a hundred people in London why do you not want your 15 year old daughter I want on the streets of London at 1:00 a.m. what would most of them say so I'm safe from them is dangerous dangerous so we'll give this a double tick yeah because you've you've generated the same idea twice by that but by a different method yeah if you let's say that would be the top option what would the second was popular option or the second most common option be because they too young do you know when they make decision then the one make the right decision maybe they just irresponsible yeah irresponsible reckless I won't think as much as another wedding I won't think twice okay so we've two good ideas well I would be careful just with these two ideas to make sure that they don't mean the same thing because you don't wouldn't want they're similar but I don't think they're they're the same thing but you would want to think about that before you start writing because what can happen is you write your introduction you write your first main body paragraph about this one and then you start writing about this one and you're like oh this is actually pretty much the same thing so you just check those this is more about third parties this is more about what other people could do to your children this is what the hell do to themselves which is probably the most worrying but what are some other ways that we could think of ideas if we wanted to you know keep going with this we have to put ourself in them somebody else position opposite position what they will whatever think so you're a mother what would a father say you are you are a nurse what would someone from a different occupation you live in London what would somebody in Paris say or Dublin say you're from Albania what would someone from a different country say can you think of any other ways of thinking about it putting yourself into someone else's shoes if I think it's dangerous somebody who say is safe because it depends where they leave his small village they know each other probably not a good four agreed oh no again these are just tools to help you so one you know if you're using a tool to fix your car one tool might not work that's fine put it down pick up another tool that actually does work this way of generating ideas just doesn't help you because what you don't want to do in the exam is go like Oh what would someone else think what would son you sit there and you start to stress about it and you start to worry about it we can move on to something else if that doesn't work that's why we have multiple ways of generating ideas number four is there any other way I have to ask myself yeah you personally so you as a mother imagine your son is 13 on his 13th birthday and he said I'm going to go into Leicester Square in London tonight and I'm gonna be there till 3:00 a.m. what would you say to him but what Expo he's arguing with you what excuse a dangerous for you you don't know so let's get your irresponsible you're too young so well when we have a double tick when we have more than one tick for we know that these are probably reliable relevant specific ideas that answer the question and we would always want to go back and just read the question again and think of our ideas do our ideas support our opinion so some areas of the US a curfew ISM is imposed in which teenagers are not allowed to be outdoors after a particular time at night unless they are with an adult I agree because the world is dangerous and teenagers are irresponsible does that make sense yeah I think I think got next so now that we have our two ideas what is the next stage I also start with them generating our main topic and planning paragraphs a two main parts so we have main body paragraph one we have our topic sentence we have our explanation we have our example main body paragraph two topic sentence explanation example ok we did this slowly before we're gonna do it fast night so I'm gonna give you two minutes so let's say for a minute okay so topic sentence is going to be obvious Sonata is dangerous but how would we describe that how would we hi is the world being dangerous a reason to put a car for your children because we see the increase in the violence out on the streets lots of crimes violence crime same thing not exactly the same yeah boxing is not a crime and it's violence but you know what I mean within this context violent crime yeah she still wants you repeating the same thing you know saying there has been an increase in violence there has been an increase in crime within this context that's basically saying the same thing so we could change that to a violent crime this is one of those questions also that this is so obvious to a parent you know that of course I don't let my children I had one am like but it's so obvious that people don't explain it properly because they think that the examiner and everyone else knows what they're talking about but remember we talked about before you the examiner can't phone you up and say did is this what you mean you mean is this what you meant and you need to explain it to them so why would an increase in crime in violent crime you as a parent because they're more vulnerable compared with an adult teenager unable to protect themselves remember we talked about outdoors the difference between outdoors and indoors how could we finish this up because we don't have the comforts of the house the safety of their own home you don't know who's who you're going to meet on the street you don't know the person you don't trust that person so linking it back to the question at the end I would encourage you to say it's therefore it's safer to be at home where the pond is gonna can see them because what what you tend to do is you will explain things and sometimes you'll start to just scatter lots of ideas okay there's an increase in violence there's an increase in crime they're more vulnerable they're not able to protect themselves maybe start with with one excellent and keep that as a logical chain okay as we talked about before and we were doing a question on why do people who work too much okay get fat okay why do they get diabetes they work too much therefore they don't move therefore they get fat therefore they get they get diabetes it's like a logical chain of events there's an increase in violent crime making them more vulnerable they're on it they're therefore they're unable to protect themselves and they're high risk therefore it's safer for them to be at home yeah so it's just one chain of events an example we can use where we talked earlier say we can't we have we can't use personnel examples but we have to make it more general you can first of all think of a personal example so you or your sister who has children or something like that and but then make it make it more general yeah we can refer to the numbers from the police saying that the shoulders increase in in crimes and especially the victims we can see more victim is teenagers rather than adults you live in London is there any examples recently in London you see lots of newspapers every time you open use paper you would say you know 14 years those bits dum-dum yeah so the big thing in London the past year two years is a massive increase in stabbings and the vast majority of the victims are young are young teenagers and so you know we could so you can think of your own personal examples and try and widen it out but also personal doesn't mean just you as a person it's the city you live in the country you live in so it could be London that could be England it could be Albania and you know what what's generally that you could the time I don't is there a general time that children have to be at home in Albania and in Ireland I would say you know for teenagers it's probably 9 or 10 p.m. same way expects you know bands will happen so there's lots of different ways that we can we can think of examples and what which one do you want to choose I thought I would choose the one from the newspapers that you know statistics show star victims in London and you don't have to be a criminologist to know that like it's on the radio it's in the newspapers and in London every single day you know so you don't have to say on the 24th of January in the Sun newspaper it said this say you know if there has been a massive increase in stop victims and wonder than most of them are teenagers proving why you should keep them indoors you know so again yeah it's not like you don't need a criminology PhD level answer or anything like that okay so the next one so the next the next topic was they are irresponsible when I know and I'm sane responsible that means that there's no one think twice of the actions like what the consequences of the action is going to be so you don't think of consequences and it can be easily manipulated by others although the different tops is that a different topic so you you have a tendency to do that where you in order to explain something you will explain it in three different ways which is if we're having a conversation and I'm let's say I'm really dumb and I'm letting my teenager go I kill any time he wants you could say to me well he's not thinking of the consequences and he might be drinking and other older boys might have an influence on him and there are lots of drugs around which makes him even more air spa that's kind of like four and that's fine if we're talking to each other but in a essay where we're being marked in coherence and cohesion we need to just focus on this and have one logical chain of an explanation so they don't think of consequences therefore know that mistakes yeah more likely to make mistakes what stops them making mistakes if you put down a time restriction yeah if indoors there will more make this mistakes curfew they will not get in trouble yeah or something something like that it's just a it's just a plan so it doesn't have to be absolutely perfect it doesn't have to be full sentences but we want to be thinking logically about it because if we have three or four different disparate ideas in the plan then we're definitely going to have it in the essay so we want to do our thinking here do all of our our thinking and our planning here so that when we're writing we can just focus on writing an example yeah so I put like every sin survey that was done in the USA showed that teenagers are more prone you know to be responsible and make more mistakes so remember what we talked about you would only use statistics if they were as a last resort if you'd no other choice can you think of any idea of any examples of teenagers being irresponsible all the time when they go out again drunk and then come home you could say say something like that so usually teenage drinking yeah you could say in well if I was using an example in Northern Ireland where I am every weekend the police stop and catch very young teenagers with big bottles of alcohol every weekend you know that's obviously the problem and is there and from if we weren't going to use that example anything from your own life so that could be something in Albania something in London you're a nurse is there anything that you can think of in terms of nursing we've got lots of you know young people being admitted with overdose or with or drinking so NHS at the weekend at the NHS admissions yeah there you go so again using your own life your own experience and if it was me I would use Northern Ireland Northern Ireland has a problem with a teenager other teenagers don't think it's a problem they think it's great but the police weren't too happy about it and but the best thing about DNA is drinking is getting chased by the police and as a nurse I'm sure you have to either worked in a kajol casualty ward or you have colleagues and casualty on you see on a Friday night Saturday night all the teenagers coming in and getting their stomach and you know took too much drug too many drugs and okay so are we happy with that night yeah do you want to try and and spend twenty minutes doing the introduction and the first main body paragraph writing yeah and then we'll put it up and we'll talk about it in ten minutes [Music] okay so what's the first thing that we need to do when we're reading our paraphrase what's the first thing that the most important thing you have to Partridge most so what is it what is a part of race you take a sentence you try to keep the same meaning by use different words does it mean the same thing yeah the first thing we need to do is does this in general mean the same thing as the question so in some parts of the US adolescents are not permitted by their parents to go out after a certain time unless they are with a grown-up does that mean the same thing I know I didn't what I'm not saying is are the words have you changed every single word but in general does this mean the same thing as the question in some areas of the u.s. a curfew is imposed in which teenagers are not allowed to be our doors after a particular time at night unless they are with an adult does it mean the same thing yeah it does mean the same thing you didn't talk about I doors for example but that doesn't matter because we can infer from the the context permitted by their parents to go all right that's fine okay so it means the same thing now we need to think or is it grammatically correct are there any vocabulary issues so let's read in some parts of the u.s. adolescents are not permitted by their parents to go art after a certain time unless they are with a grown-up is that okay sounds okay it's good well done because before you were making lots and lots of grammatical errors you were making lots of collocation errors for example so that's a very very good part of phrase well done good it's great start to your essay the only thing we might change is just put a hyphen in so we would make that groan and up when we hyphenated when we put it together grown-up you meant grown-up yep okay I totally agree with this so this is your might be your opinion okay it's your position what you think about this question needs to be clear throughout the essay so it put it in here in the introduction so we're making it super clear to the examiner this is what I think about it so that's good alright because it is dangerous for young people to be late at night so what is that it means that there is dangerous no it's our first main idea yeah this is our first main idea so they've got it here and most of them are irresponsible when it comes to make decision anything you want to change about that most of them make it comes to making decisions get verb tenses sometimes you get confused about the continuous versus then and present simple to making and when it comes to making decisions okay so that's our second main idea here very good okay so the next stage would be we're going to take our first main idea and develop it you know that's going to be our first main body paragraph and then the second idea that's gonna be our second main body paragraph and then we would summarize it all in our conclusion I need to get you to the airport before you miss your plane so what we'll do is you write your and two main body paragraphs on your conclusion I'll put it up on the board here next week I'll make the video as if you are in the room and I'll do it and then we'll have a full video okay alright so what we're going to do here is give Silvana some feedback on the rest of your essay and because of kovat 19 we're currently done so I'm not gonna be in the studio anytime soon so we're just gonna share the essay up here all right so what I'm looking at in the very first sentence in the main body paragraph what I'm looking for here is a topic sentence and the thing I'm looking for is does the topic sentence match her main idea here all right so this is her first main idea that's highlight this highlight yeah it is dangerous for young people to be out at night okay so pretty obvious it's dangerous so does this topic sentence match that and does the topic sentence tell me this main idea succinctly what tells me what the rest of it is a part because what we teach our students this is not the only way to write an essay by the way but what we teach our students is to outline the main idea here in the introduction and then state it again here in the topic sentence that means that all you have to do is just look up here at your idea in the introduction and you know what to write about in your first main body paragraph and it also makes it extremely easy for the examiner to then look at this and know exactly what you're talking about so making it easy for you and easy for the examiner keep it simple make things as simple and as easy as possible for you on test day and easy for the examiner to read recently many parts of the US us have seen an increase in the number of violent crimes so this is not a topic sentence this is a background sentence so I don't know why I shouldn't do this and I think it's because they see so many other sample essays and so many other teachers teaching this online where you put a background sentence in at the beginning of your introduction and then for some reason you put another background sentence in here and that is a complete waste of time every sentence every word should contribute to you answering the question we already know this but it was stated in the question and you've already know it because we paraphrase the question so there's no point in repeating this so this sentence has wasted the students time but it has also wasted the examiners time and made it more difficult for the examiner to understand what the point of this whole paragraph is because the topic sentence all it is doing is just holding up a little flag and saying hello this is what we're talking about here so let's help Savannah out with this a little bit and change it and children should remain indoors at night because it is not safe all right children should remain indoors at night because it is not safe so that's just stating the same idea I'm making it clear what the main idea is your main argument is here okay let's have a look at this one reports from the police suggests that the most affected age group is between 13 and 19 years old so this doesn't really connect up with the the main idea so we would we need to explain why it is not safe to be outdoors as a child at night so let's just delete this one and see what is here this age group is suffering more due to being more vulnerable than other age groups why one adolescent is outside alone he will be more vulnerable and easy talking about with an adolescent who's why all right so this isn't really explaining why it is not safe for children to be outdoors at night all right and and this would be the main area of concern for me that the explanation doesn't really explain why children should should remain indoors at night because it is not safe all right so all the explanation should do is like prove this argument all right imagine you're explaining this to somebody who knows nothing about the topic so imagine a little four or five year old boy and he's saying that's a good example actually because imagine your teenager saying why do I not have to why do I have to stay inside it's not safe why because there are criminals outside why like so you're explaining why they can't go outside why it's too dangerous outside and so we'll look at the example for example London has seen a double in the number of stubbing so let's just simplify this has seen an increase in the number of stabbings we're stabbing victims aged between 13 and 19 and the majority of this is related crimes are hopping during the late hours of the night so that's pretty good and because it what she's done is she lives in in London she lives close to London and she's just thought about why would I not let my child go outside okay in London at the moment there it is in the news all the time that there's a huge increase of stabbing victims and most of them are teenagers so she's used a real example from her own experience to prove this point which is really really good and so topic sentence make it simpler make it clear match it to the main idea and then the big thing that I would do and if I have Silvana's really work on just simplifying this and proving your explanation why and maybe this was just a difficult one for her because often the answers are so obvious like if you were talking to a mother or the for a father in London and you said would you let your 13 go out at 3 a.m. and play with their friends they'd say no and the mother or father knows i innately it's natural to understand why that is you don't need to explain it some things are so innate they are so obvious that it's difficult to explain them and I think this is maybe why Silvana had a problem with this and you know I've met Silvana he's a very responsible mother and there's no way that she would let her kids art but maybe this is so obvious that it's difficult to explain and so let's have a look at her second main idea here let's put this in blue they are irresponsible when it comes to making decisions okay let's have a look at our topic sentence adolescents talking about them in general as young people with little experience often will end up making responsible decisions good so this is a good topic sentence because as a reader of this if you are the examiner the examiner is reading this they understand what the rest of the paragraph is about let's have a look at their or explanation at this age their body will go through important hormonal changes which will make them rush while making decisions yep let's see very often they will be unaware of the consequences of their action so we'll be unaware of the consequences their actions will have on them and others and make mistakes okay some clunky grammar in there but overall quite good that the explanation is good that's why they should that's why they should be helped by adults during this process okay I see what you mean for example Ireland doubled the police force in order to do with drunk teenagers who thought it was fine to get drunk and cause trouble on the streets late at night so this is kind of true Ireland does have a problem I think like most Western countries with teenagers drinking but Ireland didn't double the police force to tackle this Ireland has bigger problems than this and most countries have bigger problems than this so they wouldn't double the police force just because of some drunk teenagers so you could make this a little bit more believable it is true that they probably increased the police force and Ireland increased the size of the police force in order to do with drunk teenagers who thought it was fine to get drunk and cause trouble in the streets late at night okay that makes a little bit more believable and if I was to make this a little bit better and just based on my own experience as a teenager when I used to drink and mice teenager and we would change it to increased the number of police patrols at the weekend that's when we used to drink in order to deal with drunk teenagers who thought it was fine to get drunk and cause trouble in the streets late at night okay and so that you see that makes it a little you don't want to make up examples that just don't make any sense whatsoever because the examiner is going to look at it and think you just made that up it's not logical it doesn't make any sense and so read your example and think about does this make sense and that's why it is much better to think of examples that are real from your own experience and because you're decreasing the likelihood that they're going to sound wrong in conclusion , I believe people as young as lessons why not just I believe adolescence people as young it's it's as if you're trying to avoid saying the word adolescence because you've repeated it but like a native English speaker would never say people as young as adolescence why not just say adolescence and in general you should try to vary your language as much as possible but don't add in things like that that just don't make any sense I believe our lessons should not be like to go out in the late hours of the night because they will not be able to protect themselves from danger okay the house is a safe place for them to be and it will prevent them from making a responsible decisions good good conclusion overall because you summarized your main ideas and you've made it clear and what your opinion is I believe adolescence should not be allowed to go out in the late hours of the night that's your opinion there and protect themselves from danger it's dangerous first main idea and then this is your second main idea so overall conclusion is quite good so silvana and apart from a few careless spelling mistakes some grammar especially articles and some vocabulary issues overall you did a good job I think just the main things that I would say is topic sentence make it really clear what your main idea is take it from your introduction and then explain logically and simply that main idea and then think of a example that makes sense from your own experience and I can go over all the conclusion is good so you're definitely making progress Silvana and I think just as always you can't look at this video and well let me put it another way there's there's two types of students one type of student would would get feedback like this and think I don't know how to do topic sentences I don't know how to explain things I don't know how to write good examples I'll never be able to do that as seeing it as evidence that you're not good enough and you'll never improve I don't think you are that type of student the second group of students see this vocabulary and they go great now I know that I need to work on my topic sentences I need to work on my explanation so I need to work on my examples now what I'm going to do is get more questions I'm going to practice them again learn from my mistakes and then improve and that second group of students sees massive progress and so that is what I would suggest that you do Silvana you get more questions and you really really focus on those things and and get more feedback and you will improve bit by bit thanks very much Solana and if you have any questions let me know [Music]

Channel: IELTS Advantage

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Keywords: IELTS, IELTS Advantage, Chris Pell, www.ieltsadvantage.com, IELTS test, IELTS exam, IELTS Writing Task 2, IELTS Writing, Writing Task 2, WT2, Opinion Essays, IELTS Writing Task 2 Opinion Essay, How to Improve your Opinion Essays, Writing, English, Silvana, London, Essay Correction, Essay overview, IELTS Sample Essay, IELTS Essay, Writing Task 2 Essay, Writing Task 2 Opinion Essay, How to write an opinion essay, Opinion Essays EXPLAINED!

Id: xiZQtldOf1Q

Length: 45min 32sec (2732 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 01 2020