IELTS Writing Task 2 | Problem Solution Essay

hi everyone chris here from ielts advantage and in today's lesson what we're going to do is show you exactly how to develop your ideas generate ideas and to structure your task 2 problem and solution lesson also what we're going to do in this lesson is download your free pdf study guide what we're going to try and do is to get you to interact with the lesson and do the things you're going to be doing so that you're actually maximizing your learning and really really improving so download your free pdf study guide the lesson will not make sense without it we're not asking for your email address or anything like that all you have to do is just click the link either above or below the video and you'll be able to download it immediately and follow along with the lesson and you'll be able to carry out the activities just like you would in a classroom based lesson and the aim of this lesson is to show you how to generate and develop ideas lots of students complain about this that they they don't know how to generate ideas we're going to show you that it's not that complicated and one of the main things that you need to do is develop your ideas i'm going to show you how to do that and then we'll also show you how to understand the structure of a problem and solution task 2 essay and overall we're going to show you that it's not as complicated as you think we're going to normalize all of these things because when students talk about generating ideas and developing ideas and structure they tend to over complicate everything and it's way simpler than you think so that's one of the sort of ancillary aims of the lesson so what i want you to do first so there's going to be seven tasks for you to complete what i want you to do is take two minutes and think of this what are the main problems associated with using social media platforms so take two minutes to think and write down at least one problem so you can write write it down on the worksheet or you can type it out on the worksheet or what you could do is type it out in the comments it's really important that you don't just skip this and don't even think about it because you're you're watching the video now you've invested this time don't waste your time so take two minutes and try and think of it all right and pause the video and come back when you have done that okay so you should have paused the video and let's look at some common ideas so many people don't like to use social media because it is very very addictive and they do nothing but all day every day just look at facebook and instagram and twitter and all those things and then related to that is you're wasting a lot of time it's kind of you're not doing anything really productive um if unless you're watching um one of my lessons on social media there's a lot of spam on social media so you're not actually looking at things that are interesting to you people are you know spamming you all the time there's a lot of scams on social media in the ielts industry people trying to sell you um certificates or you know all those sorts of scammy things related to the ielts industry and political interference you'll often get people trying to get you to vote a certain way or influence the way that you think politically and there are a lot of fake accounts there's a huge number of millions and millions of fake accounts on different social media platforms so if you didn't think of one of these ideas no problem there are thousands of different ideas that you could use and what matters is it's relevant to the actual topic and you could talk about it you could explain it you could use an example and the main thing to remember is in the context of ielts the examiners are not looking for fancy ideas or complex ideas or impressive ideas they're just looking for ideas that are relevant to the question that will help you actually answer the question and you'll notice that these ideas are probably the most popular ideas if you spoke to 100 people and asked them this question these would normally be the most popular answers the most obvious answers the simplest answers and those answers are the best and because they're easy to think of and easy to develop in your essay so task two you should be continuing on with these tasks all right make sure you're doing them click on the new story so it's new story is task two on the worksheet so it's a pdf worksheet so you can just click on that will take you to a bbc article and identify which of those problems so which of these problems is the main focus of that article so pause the video click on that article read the whole article you don't have to read every single word you can skim through it if you want but try and identify the main topic the main idea in that so pause the video and have a look at that and you should have done that by now don't cheat pause the video and you should have identified that the main problem is this one so they're talking about fake accounts so if you read it and thoroughly enough you would have identified that so why am i getting you to read a newspaper article why am i getting you to do that just to to waste your time no well one of the main things that students ask me is what if i get a question and i know nothing about that topic but i always say to them where do you think the the writers of the exam get their ideas they just go on to sites like the bbc news look at technology news education news environment health news these are the most common topics when it comes to task two and they will look at those new news articles and they'll develop and questions out of those so one of the best ways that you can guard against knowing nothing about the topic as many students do just go once a day to the bbc news read one story from the technology section one story from the education section one's story from the health section one story from the environment section doesn't matter how many you do as long as you're doing a little bit every day and that's going to improve your idea generation but also your idea development your vocabulary absolutely everything your reading skills and so that's a really really worthwhile thing to do so task number three what i'd like you to do now is pause the video again and you can take 1 2 5 20 minutes however long you want to do it and probably doing it in two or three minutes is the best because you can tend to overthink these ideas one of the big problems that i see with students is whenever they're sitting down on test day is they will overthink everything and try and think of this amazing idea when there's no such thing as an amazing idea normally the first one or two or three ideas that pop into your head are the best ones so think of a possible solution to the problem of fake accounts so imagine you're mark zuckerberg or you work at facebook and you have all these fake accounts how would you solve that problem so just try and think of one problem and try and think of a problem that you would be able to explain properly and you'd maybe use an example to help you explain it imagine you're talking to a friend in a coffee shop and they ask you oh there's all these fake accounts how would you solve this problem what would you say so pause the video and think of this and write it down on your worksheet because the act of writing it down is going to help you remember all of this and it's going to help you on test day so pause the video again don't cheat and let's have a look and think about this so when i worked with some other students on this these were the four ideas they came up with one was require id so you have to enter your passport number or your driver's license or whatever so that would guard against uh requiring id artificial intelligence so ai looks at all of the accounts and tries to figure out which ones are fake and which ones aren't and just automatically blocks fake accounts user reporting so asking the different users to report fake accounts um manually and education so facebook educating people about the difference between a real account and a fake account so people can ignore those fake accounts so you might have had one of these ideas it might be a different idea but what matters is think about if it is actually relevant to the question if you were imagine you're talking to a friend and you came up with this solution what would your friend say would they say what are you talking about that makes no sense or would they say um yeah that does make sense explain that to me okay yeah that makes total sense that would be viable so you're not trying to think of one ultimate magic solution you're just trying to think of one viable option that would work and that you could explain so let's move on to task four imagine you have to tell a friend about this problem write a short paragraph telling what the problem is why it's a problem and an example to help them understand so imagine you are sending an email to somebody and you're writing about this state the problem state why you think it's a problem in order in other words explain and then use an example it doesn't have to be a very complicated example to help them understand what you mean so on your worksheet just write one paragraph it doesn't have to be very long it could be between 50 and 100 words we're not writing an essay here we're just using this to help us understand what to do so again take five or ten minutes to do that don't take too long to do it and then come back after you pause the video and you have completed that make sure that you do this again you're wasting your time if you don't do it okay so you should have completed that by now task five do the same with a solution so try and think of a solution that is relevant to the problem that you discussed all right so the problem that you've just explained what would be a possible solution to that what is the solution how can it help and an example to help them understand again just take five or ten minutes to write this on your worksheet take or if you need more time take more time take all the time you need if you need to do that you need to start slowly if if you're just beginning or if you're a little bit more advanced try and do it in five or ten minutes so pause the video again and do this so why did i get you to do that well it's getting you to do that by is simplifying the overall structure of what you're doing the first task that i gave you write the problem it's basically going to be like a main body paragraph mbp main body paragraph one your solution mbp main body paragraph two so this is problem and this is solution all right so this is the whole structure of a problem and solution essay it's not the only structure there's no one structure to answer any particular type of ielts question this is the one that i teach my students and the one that has worked very very effectively for my students so what i'd like you to do is guess what these are what would you do here so there's two things you need to do in the introduction three things you need to do not three sentences but three things you need to do in your main body paragraph three things you need to do in this main body paragraph and two things you need to do in your conclusion on your worksheet what i'd like you to do is take five minutes and just guess what these are don't go on and cheat and look in the internet and look on the website and try and find out what these are just try and think from what you have learned so far in this lesson what would your structure look like what would be the what would be the key elements in your essay so again pause the video write this out on the worksheet and take some time to think about this and hear the answers don't cheat so in introduction paraphrase the question and then answer both questions so paraphrase the question this is what's happening this is the problem and this is a solution all right you're not explaining anything here you're not going into any detail you're just stating this is what's happening and this is the problem and this is a solution main body paragraph one state what the problem is explain why it is a problem and then give an example not three sentences but three elements to it main body paragraph two state solution explain hi on an example again not three sentences three elements and a conclusion summary of the problem this is what the problem is and summary of the solution now many of you right now are going but the question normally says problems and solutions can't you why don't you put multiple problems and multiple solutions into one paragraph you can do that if you want but i don't recommend it the reason why i don't recommend it is you have to fully develop your main ideas this is going to be your main idea here this is going to be your main idea here you have to fully explain it and give an example in order to be getting a 7 or above you need to fully develop your main ideas so you have a choice if you want to put multiple problems and multiple solutions in one paragraph you can either write an essay that's like five or six hundred words long and develop your ideas fully you'll never be able to do that or don't develop your ideas properly you're going to get a low score so you can debate all you want about whether to do this or whether or not this is what i use with my students we have more success stories than any other course in the world if we didn't know what we were doing that wouldn't be the case also i've spoken to multiple senior examiners about this and one problem one solution is totally fine so this is the overall structure and if you got a different structure that's fine but what i would recommend doing is decide which structure you want to use for these different types of questions because when you're doing the test and when you're preparing your writing is going to reflect your thinking so if you're going into the test and you have seven different structures in your head and you're not sure about any of them you're very very confused your writing is going to be very confused so pick someone you trust and follow that structure it doesn't have to be mine i don't care if you follow mine or you don't but pick one structure that you're happy with and then use that on test day and use that when you're practicing so you don't want to be using seven different structures when you're practicing just use one and make it simple and make your preparation easy so task seven what i want you to do is take this structure take everything that you've learned today so how do you generate ideas what think about how i've taught you that today how do you develop main ideas think about how i've taught you how to do that today how would you structure your whole essay think about the lessons that you've learned today on that and then think about all of those lessons think about what you've learned today and do this question many social media accounts are fake what problems does this cause what solutions can you suggest so do that pause the video if normally on test day you'll only spend 40 minutes you can spend more than 40 minutes doing this because you're learning what to do when you're learning how to do anything for the first time it takes you a long time to do it much longer than is normal think about driving a car or riding a bike or tying your shoelaces when you're first learning it takes you a long time to do it so don't try and do it as quickly as possible unless you're already you know your your test is like tomorrow and you're totally confident about what to do and you just want a little bit of extra practice so pause the video again do this and then once you've done don't cheat take the time to do it you don't have to do it today you can come back and do it tomorrow when you have time here's a checklist of things to think about when you're looking at your own writing does it make sense this is really really really important many people write an essay and then don't even think about this if it actually does make sense why do we write anything we write something to clearly communicate with the person reading it if you gave this to a stranger would they understand it would they understand what the essay is about would they understand what your main problem is what would they understand what your main solution is how have you developed those so did you follow the structure did you develop your answers well did you do your ideas make sense and could you do the same for another question so for another problem and solution question came up would you be able to do the same thing on a different topic so if you can answer those questions then you have learned something and you've really helped yourself develop in this area so if you have any questions about that or any follow-up questions feel free to send me an email i know in a classroom based class you would be able to say teacher i'm not sure about this or teacher i have a question about some other thing feel free to send me an email either myself or one of my team will get back to you we answer every single email looking forward to your comments and hopefully you enjoyed that lesson thank you very much bye-bye

Channel: IELTS Advantage

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Id: PuO_N0KpgEk

Length: 18min 15sec (1095 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 12 2020