IELTS WRITING TASK 2 with SURE TIPS that really work!!! For Nigerian & African Test Takers

the ielts writing task 2 is an opinion essay it is probably the most important part of your writing task in the ielts and it is one that you definitely do not want to mess up so how can you ensure that you do a good job of it and that you deploy all the right strategies and tips to ensure that you get the maximum scores that is applicable for that task that is what i'll take you through today and i would advise you to please relax and watch this video till the very end because there are some tips that would be embedded towards the end that you need to know for the ielts writing task too there are different types of questions that could be given and these will be dealt with at a digital time in a little video but the basic structure of an ielts writing task 2 which is the same for both the academic model and the general training model is that it is an opinion essay here you will be given a question that you'll be given a question that has a concept or a topic or an issue embedded in it and you will be asked your opinion on it or you will be asked to support or dispute a particular claim or a particular view or you could be asked to discuss both views to discuss two opposing views and then give your own opinion you could also be asked to examine a problem and also profess solutions you could also be asked to examine a concept for the causes of the problem and also to outline the effects that it has you could also be asked to look at a concept or to look at an issue and looking at the advantages and the disadvantages there are various ways that the essays can come in but the most on the underlying principle is that in every essay your opinion is the most important thing that is required there are no correct answers in the ielts writing task 2. what we are interested in isn't the correct answer what we are interested in is your answer so the content of what you're saying the quality of your content is not as important as the quality of expression it is your expression that is assessed how do you express your ideas how do you express what you feel what you know or what you think about this particular concept nobody is going to fact check you nobody is going to penalize you for giving an idea or forgiving reasons or forgiving for expressing a view that they might find laughable or that they might find childish or that they might find even incorrect as long as you have a solidly logical way of expressing your points and defending it you will get the maximum scores applicable in the ielts it is important to clear this because i see a lot of people enter the ielts writing test seeing it as a test of intelligence and this is the first step to failure seeing that the test of intelligence means that what you see is you start disturbing yourself you start thinking about the things that you do not know about the concept that has been asked nobody requires you to have specialist knowledge or in-depth knowledge about the topic of discussion all they need you to do is to have a working idea a working view or a working opinion of the concept and then being able to defend or back up or expand your point that is the most simple and basic way to look at the ielts writing task room so what does it entail and how does it look like the structure for the ielts writing task two is the most important thing that you need to know once you get your structure right chances are that your expert or your ideas will be arranged in a logical manner that can get you that desired band aid or the desired man 9. the ielts essay writing task 2 sc has a maximum paragraph length of 5 paragraphs and minimum of 4 paragraphs i'll take that again the writing task 2 in the ielts has a maximum paragraph length of five paragraphs and a minimum of four paragraphs which means that under no circumstances should you write an ielts essay that has seven eight paragraphs what are you doing what are you discussing the most um the longest part the longest type of question in the ielts writing task two that could require you to write a five paragraph essay are questions that ask you to discuss both views and give your own opinion obviously in this type of essay you will be required to give an introduction a first paragraph discussing one view another paragraph of discussing another the opposing view and then one paragraph discussing expressing your own opinion and then the conclusion which will lead us to five paragraphs ideally the ielts essay is usually just four paragraphs an introduction two body paragraphs and then your conclusion if your asset discussed the advantages and disadvantages of a particular concept you have the introduction one paragraph for advantages one paragraph for disadvantages and your conclusion a problem solution essay would have a problem paragraph a solutions paragraph an introduction and a conclusion a cause and effect essay would also have a cross paragraph an effects paragraph an introduction and a conclusion so looking at all this varying type of essay you discover that the structure does not exceed that four to five paragraph length and this is significant because i see a lot of test takers approach the test and seeing it as a test where you are where you're supposed to write not less than 250 words they assume that the only way to make 250 words is to increase their paragraph the number of paragraphs that they are writing and what they and what this leads them to is that they start bringing irrelevant information or diverging from the topic or the concepts that they are supposed to address for the writing task do not fall into that trap keep your eyes on the ball and you ensure that you express yourself in the appropriate way and the most effective way possible that you can use to pass across your information so let's start from the introduction of the ielts the introductory paragraph in an ielts essay what does the introductory paragraph contain what does it look like and what is the structure of a standard ielts essm the first thing i will do is to give you a structure a skeletal structure of every ielts essay that is what you have in your introductory paragraph in your body paragraph and your concluding paragraph and this skeletal structure is applicable to any type of question that you can get be it a problem solution an advantage disadvantage a cause and effect or um or even an essay that asks you to either disagree or just agree with a particular claim or a particular view this particular skeletal structure works for all those types of essays in subsequent videos which will be a practical video i will put the skeletal structure to the test by putting it by filling in each of all the elements in the structure and practicalizing for you how you can use your structure to write a complete essay in the ielts but for the purpose of this video i will only outline the elements of the structure and then i will go ahead to give you specific tips as they pertain to the introduction to the body paragraphs and to the conclusion and like i mentioned in subsequent videos we will flesh this out and then see it in action so a standard ielts essay in the introduction will have this particular structure which i will list out and you will be seeing on your screen the introduction starts with the first element which is the hook the hook is a statement that sets the context for the topic of discussion it helps you to start strong the next element after the hook will be rephrasing the question rephrasing the question now this is an optional element as depending on the type of question that you're dealing with you may or may not need to rephrase your question like i mentioned earlier when we get to the practical video we will put this into action and you will see instances where a rephrasing of the question is important and where the rephrasing of the question is not relevant the next element after rephrasing the question is your thesis statement the thesis statement is basically your opinion statement it is that statement that says in my opinion personally from my own point of view that statement that sets out the tone for what you believe for the stand that you are taking about a particular concept is your thesis statement and this this statement doesn't stand alone it must be accompanied by your reasons what are your reasons your reasons are the points that led you to choosing that particular stand for example in a question that says that ask who is the most important member of the family unit the father or the mother if i were to if i were to respond to that question my thesis statement would be personally i believe the father is the most important member of the family as he is the disciplinarian and the breadwinner disciplinarian and breadwinner are the two reasons why i believe that the father is the most important member of the family unit your thesis statement follows that format you express your view or your opinion and you back it up with the reasons why you're choosing that particular stand this is an essential and integral part of your introduction and failure to put this in your introduction definitely will water down the quality of your writing the next element after your thesis statement is what we call the outline or your structure statement this is a statement that sets that describes how you intend to address the question how you intend to structure your writing in this statement you have something that you haven't for example you can have a statement that says in this essay i will discuss the benefits and the demerits of this particular concept and also back it up with examples to illustrate my points that's that clearly shows the examiner that the structure for this essay would be a benefits and demerits or an advantage and disadvantage paragraph in this essay i will look at the problems and also profess solutions to it this clearly tells the examiner how you intend to approach that question the outline or structure statement may not be a compulsive part of your introduction but is an essential part as it allows the examiner to have a clear path of how you intend to present your information remember it is a test of communication and what you want to do is to make your communication as effective and as easy to absorb as possible for the examiner if you put your communication in such a way that it is ambiguous or that it stresses the examiner in such a way that it finds it very hard to extract meaning from what you've written you would definitely be hard-pressed to give you a very good scope so write in the most effective clear and simple way as possible so that you can allow the examiner to extract your information effectively and easily doing this will set you up for success in the writing section of the ielts moving on the body paragraph a typical body paragraph in the writing task in the task 2 of the writing section of the ielts follows this format it starts with a topic sentence your topic sentence is basically the most important sentence in the paragraphs that carries the weight of the information or the message in the paragraph it is what the whole paragraph is all about it is what the paragraph is discussing so your paragraph your topic your body paragraph starts with the topic sentence because you want to put your best foot forward you want to put the reason why you are writing that paragraph as the first thing that the examiner would see this allows the examiner to easily skim through your writing if they intend not to read in depth so your body paragraph also contains just what your connective and your point what do i mean by that of course if you're starting a paragraph in the ielts you definitely want to start with a coercive device or a connecting word to show that your essay has cohesion so my first paragraph in the ielts would probably start with a sentence like to begin with or firstly and if i put this that is my connective what if i put this i will now put the points that i'm going to discuss in that paragraph so for example when i mentioned earlier that i personally believe that the father is the most important member of the family unit because he's the disciplinarian and the breadwinner this obviously shows that in that essay the two points that i will be developing for choosing the stand where i chose a father over the mother would be disciplinarian and breadwinner subsequently the first sentence in my first body paragraph would be to begin with the most important reason why fathers are more important than mothers are is because they are bread winners what you have there is my connective and my point making up my topic sentence to begin with the most important reason why fathers are special than mothers is because they are breadwinners full stop this sentence is non-negotiable it's an element that must be in your body paragraph the next element in your body paragraph will be the part where i call the define slash explain here you you take a key word from your topic sentence and you either choose to define it or explain it this is the part where you expand your point where you if your point contains some ambiguous words or if your main point contains some words that are technical and needs to be further expansion this is where you do it it's the second element of your body paragraph the third element in your body paragraph is the supporting details supporting details are compulsory they are essential for your essay because the question clearly states that you should provide reasons for your answers and also give examples drawn from your knowledge or experience to illustrate or to back them up if you write an essay and you do not expand your points by giving examples drawn from your knowledge or from your experience you cannot get that band line that you so desire so your support in detail can either be a fact that is embedded that has some statistics or numbers embedded in it or it could be a memory from either your past or from in from an experience narrated to you by someone that you know the last important element or the last element in your body paragraph is what i call the tie back the tie back is simply a statement that ties everything that you said in that paragraph to the topic sentence that you mentioned at the beginning of the paragraph for example if i've written an essay where my body paragraph i have state but my body paragraph is all about the father being the breadwinner and i have defined what the breadwinner is or explain the concept of a breadwinner and i've also given supporting detail maybe by giving a fact from a survey drawn uh for why fathers are breadwinners or how bread or how in most families fathers are the breadwinners my tie back will be a sentence that goes thus this simply shows that fathers are important because they provide for the family what this does is that it significantly ties up the whole essay the old paragraph as a single unit and it's an important part of your paragraph because it allows you to move smoothly to the next point that you're trying to make and also re-emphasizes the points that you're making in that paragraph for your conclusion paragraph or your concluding paragraph the structure is very easy in fact your conclusion is the shortest and the easiest part of your essay as you're not introducing any new point in your conclusion you're only restating or rephrasing the things or summarizing the things that you've mentioned before and also ending on a very strong point so for your concluding paragraph you start the first element would be a summary or a rephrasing of your thesis and your reasons this is very very important so you start with a connective word that maybe says that to sum it all up or finally or in conclusion and then you summarize your thesis with the reasons that you've given to back it up and then after you do that you can either end by giving a recommendation making a prediction or you can either end by using a rhetorical question these three elements are easy ways to end your con to end your essay on a very strong note and we will be practicalizing them when we get to the video where we actually do and where we actually take up an actual writing question for the ielts yes now that i've read out the structure for the ielts for the body for the essays in the ielts i will go ahead and dwell on some particular peculiar tips for each of those three parts that i have mentioned which are the introduction the body paragraphs and then the conclusion so for your introduction why is it important it is important because it's the first impressions matter it sets the context of what you're writing about and it give and it indicates that in case of the examiner your level of language competence a good introduction captures the examiner's attention and it keeps them interested so much so that they are that they want to read how you go ahead to express yourself or to defend the points that you've raised in your introduction so i mentioned earlier that you start with a hook with the general statement that outlines the context of the topic or the write-up you follow with a rephrasing or restating of the question in your own words this is another significant area where your knowledge of synonyms and rephrasing or paraphrasing will come into play now the next thing after you the next thing you do after that depending on the type of question would be to state your thesis or opinion depending on the type of question that you have it would be to state your thesis or your opinion when we get to the dealing with the different question types i will i will i will explain what i mean by your thesis depending your thesis being dependent on the type of question that you have and finally you give an outline or structure statement which explains how you plan to approach the question or how you plan to express yourself or to lay out or to structure your ideas in response to the question that has been asked the body paragraph four and writing task two also follows the format that i've listed earlier you start with a connective which is embedded which in your topic sentence and after that you have um a define or explained section where you go ahead and you give a definition or if the if the topic requires is an explanation for the key word in your thesis as much as possible this is very very important the kind of expressions that you can use to do this would be for example if i were to define the word breadwinner or disciplinarian i could start it and say according to the oxford advertising dictionary a disciplinarian is someone who does a b c d e this automatically improves my word count according to the oxford advanced learners dictionary seven words just to define a particular term a particular concept or you could just go ahead and you explain the term disciplinary disciplinarian in your own words the next thing after that is the supporting detail now for the supporting detail i out i mentioned earlier that it could either be a fact which is something that is drawn from your knowledge or you could either be a memory which is something that is drawn from your experience now in coming up with the support in detail a lot of people ask me what if i don't know any facts about this thing how do i how do i defend how do i expand my points please it is okay for you to cook up fictional facts to defend your points in the essay why is this nobody is going to fact check you in the ielts nobody has the time to pause reading your essay go online to google if the facts that you have given to back up your point is true or valid or false nobody's going to do that but what you want to do is you don't want to give a lie that is so outlandish or that is so unbelievable that it doesn't have any bearing on the topic that you want to discuss let me give you an example if i'm writing an essay where i'm defending the father and i say that the father is more important because he's a disciplinarian or is the breadwinner and i want to come up with a fact for that i could say according to a survey carried out by the university of california in 2001 100 families were assessed to discover their source of income the after the after the assessment 78 of them expressed the fact that the fathers were the sole source of income for their families while only 30 or only 21 of them um expressed the fact that the mother helped out with income in the family this simply shows that fathers are so important or are significantly important because they bear the weight of income or providing for the family now what i just said now is untrue it never happened but does it back up my point yes it does does it complete does it perfectly illustrate the point that fathers are disciplinarians and this is why they are important in the family unit yes it does this is how you want to approach the ielts so one other thing that i did when i gave that example was to ensure that i put in numbers why are statistics important in an ielts essay they are important because first thing that they would do is to cut the right the reader's attention if i'm reading a piece of text and i see numbers in between or embedded in there my eye will definitely go to them and i will want to read the surrounding information around where those numbers are this is a way for you to call your write the examiner's attention to the important points that you're trying to make another reason why i would use statistics is that they make me more believable and they make you sound more academic and this is something that is definitely a good point for you in the ielts writing task for memories how do you introduce your memories you could start by saying i remember from an experience i remember a particular experience i recall from something that i was told this illustrates all these are ways of introducing an experience a caveat though when you're using a memory or you're using an experience to illustrate or to expand your point try as much as possible not to bring in irrelevant details a lot of people start by narrating an experience and before you know it they have a paragraph that is bloated that is overflowing with irrelevant points that do not have any bearing on the topic of discussion do not fall into this trap finally the last element in your body paragraph is the tie back and the tie back just shows that what you have been saying in all the body of that paragraph is tied or related to the topic sentence that you mentioned at the beginning of the paragraph it signifi it essentially helps you to end your paragraph to help absolutely conclude your paragraph and makes it a single unit that is expressing just one particular thought or idea or particular strand of the topic that you are discussing for the concluding paragraph i also outlined the structure that the concluding paragraph takes and this i will review it also so that we should be able to have a clear idea of how it is your conclusion your conclusion shouldn't be less than four sentences and at most seven sentences the conclusion is usually the smallest or the shortest path of your essay in the ielts so you what you must endeavor not to introduce any new point in your conclusion you also should endeavor to ensure that your conclusion is tied significantly to everything that you've been discussing this is a challenge that i see with a lot of test takers they get to the conclusion and they remember points strong points that they should have used in the essay and they start bringing that into the conclusion this is wrong and you should not do this you briefly summarize your main points in one complete sentence in one complex sentence or two or three compound sentences and after that you restate your thesis your opinion or your stand i've also mentioned how you can do this by rephrasing or just paraphrasing what you said before in your introduction and then you bring the essay to a satisfying and clear end by using either a prediction by making a recommendation or by ending it with a rhetorical question all of these three things are options that you can use and you you should not use both you should not use more than two of them in any particular essay and i will definitely show you how to use them in the practical videos that will follow up with this writing video for this particular ielts multi-step program please as much as possible and they will not to introduce any new ideas or new points in your conclusion what are the things that you must do for your writing task two essential things that you must do for you to achieve any measure of success in your writing task two first thing is this be aware of the different types of essay and know if you are to give an opinion or not this is very very important they are very you have so many different types of essays that could be given to you in the writing task in the brightening tasks too for the ielts and i have mentioned them earlier i i've outlined them by saying that you could be given an advantage or disadvantage essay a problem solution essay a cause and effect essay an agree or disagree essay or an essay that requires you to discuss both views and also give your own opinion next thing that you need to do is to have a plan before you start writing planning is an integral part of success for the ielts have a plan brainstorm drop down all your ideas rank them in the order of importance weed them out read the ones that you do not need out and leave the ones that are essential even before you start writing in fact it is advice that before you start writing your essay at all before you put pen to paper to start writing your essay you take at least 10 minutes to interpret the question jot down the points that you're going to use to answer that question even add the examples and the supporting details that you're going to use to expand those points before you start writing at all this will make your job so easy because the only thing that you need to do when you start writing will be to consult your outline to consult your jot ins and then just develop them as opposed to someone who picks up the pen who picks up their pen looks at a question and thinks this is an easy question and they start writing immediately what that would do for you is that you will get to your first paragraph and at the end of the first paragraph you will stop and start thinking up another point to develop your second paragraph and once you have this break in transmission or you have this break in the flow of your ideas it will affect the quality of your writing the final thing that you need to do for your writing task two is to proofread proofread proofread review your essay edit your essay no ielts essay is perfect until it has been preferred reviewed and edited never ever join the gang of those who believe that they have written a perfect essay and they do not need to look at it again and just submit nine times out of ten when i mark an ielts essay and i identify 10 errors eight out of those errors are errors that could have been corrected by the test taker if they are taking time to only proofread and review their essay never ever submit your ielts essay without taking a second third look at it before you submit and one other tip for you for proofreading is please read out when you are profiting your essay read out or sound out the words that you've written why is this your ear has a very higher chance as a much higher chance of catching errors or catching expressions that sound funny than your eyes will most times when we are proofreading our essays we just came through and our eyes has a tendency of overlooking some particular errors when you proofread your essay and when i tell you to sound them out i do not mean that you should read at the volume at which i am talking right now that would definitely not be good as you would disturb other test takers in the exam hall but what you can do is to vocalize vocalize those words at a volume that would only be applicable or only be accessible to you alone you can hear yourself when you sound out the words you can even just mouth out the words and that would also help you to achieve that editing or proofreading thing that we want you to do next thing that we will look at are the things that you should not do for the writing task 2 the things that are you don't for your writing classroom the first thing that you want to avoid is ignoring what the task requires of you a lot of test takers do not interpret the question properly and they ignore at least a part of what the instructions tell them to do for example discussing only the advantages when the advantage and disadvantages are mentioned in the question for example also discussing only one point of view when the question significantly asks you to discuss what views and express your own opinion this is a very easy way to fail in the ielts by not interpreting the question correctly or by not doing completely what the question asks you to do another thing that you should avoid doing is trying to be too complex i see a lot of test takers enter the exam home feeling that the more jaw-breaking words that they use the more esoteric vocabulary that they use the more refined their ideas are the better marks that they will get no this is not it i have seen people will enter the ielts and write with the simplest ideas possible but the expression is top-notch and they get the maximum scores that is applicable for that particular task trying to be too complex will only set you up for failure one other thing that you also do not want to do in the ielts is you should not and i will repeat this you should not write an essay where you do not paragraph correctly paragraphing is an essential element of success in the ielts your paragraphs must be clearly delineated your paragraphs must be clearly structured in such a way that they only address one point or one particular section of the question at a time when you are writing paragraphs in the ielts you should i adhere to two rules the first one is a paragraph is only noted or identified by an indent you start a paragraph by leaving an indent which is a small space between the margin and your first letter for the paragraph another alternative way of indicating a paragraph is to leave one full line before you start between two paragraphs for me i always advise my test takers to leave both a line and also the indent why is this important for those of us who have really really bad handwriting our handwriting is illegible leaving one line and also leaving the indent ensures that the space in between that between the first paragraph and the succeeding paragraph is so vast or is so clear that no examiner will be able to juggle it all up or be able to jumble it all up please as much as possible if you have a problem with your handwriting practice practice writing with a pencil before the day of the test as you will be using a pencil in the ielts writing to write your essay why do i recommend using a pencil it is easier for you to erase your errors using the pencil it is easier for you when you are proofreading to also impute new ideas or new corrections when you are proofreading if you use a pencil as opposed to using a pen where the only thing that you can do if you've made a mistake is to cancel it all out which might make your work look much more rough than it should be and if your handwriting is not so legible practice writing clearly and as legibly as possible before the day of the test one of the one of the worst things that you can face in the ielts is to write a very good essay that nobody can read so please practice writing with a pencil before the day of the test practice writing allegedly before the day of the test also and finally before the day of the test if you know that you want to do well in the writing task for the ielts practice writing at least three complete essays before you take the test itself write three complete essays get a second opinion or a reviewer to review it for you before you go ahead to take the writing test do not assume that oh i'm good at writing oh i have so social skills at writing i do not need to practice i do not need to know where i stand before the day of the test you will be shocked to discover that on the day of the test you may not be able to deploy all those strategies or tips or all those strengths that you feel that you have inside of you proofreading like i mentioned earlier is important for the ielts and when you're proofreading i would advise you if you can if you have the time to do it twice the first time you're proofreading is to correct errors and mistakes the second time you're proofreading is to improve the quality of your writing that is the time where you change words when you change particular words for better sounding words or for words that particularly effectively convey the thought or the idea that you want to convey in that particular expression profiling is essential like i mentioned and every other tip that i mentioned in this video is also very very essential and integral to your success in the ielts practice this um these tips pause this video if need be rewind the video if need be and as much as possible deploy these strategies in an actual exercise where you write out and if you need extra tips or you need further information about how to write your essay please watch the next video which we will be uploading which is a practical video where we put all these tips and all these structures into action by writing an actual ielts essay i can't wait to see you succeed in the ielts and i know i definitely know that you will be one of those people who will give a testimony of having watched this video deployed these strategies and achieved the maximum scores applicable in the ielts

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Id: 9iYlR_k9Fuw

Length: 35min 57sec (2157 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 04 2021