Key Insights after Marking Over 10,000 Essays

getting a band 8 or 9 and IELTS writing is much simpler than you think over the course of my career I have corrected more than 10 000 IELTS essays I've seen every single mistake that an IELTS student can make from structuring their arguments to making silly vocabulary errors and one thing that I can tell you is all of these can be easily fixed every student that I have worked with that has got a band eight or nine has followed one simple strategy understand what the common mistakes are and learn how to fix those common mistakes so today what I'm going to do is I'm going to take a band 6 real student essay that is full of the most common mistakes that we see and I'm going to show you sentence by sentence how to transform that essay it's from band six to a band 8 so you'll be able to see how simple it is to transform your writing and get the score that you need so if your aim is to get a bond seven eight or nine in IELTS writing and relocate to the country of your dreams you're in the right place so sit back relax and let's learn how to improve our IELTS writing so let's start off by looking at this student's essay and figure out why this is a band six and then I'll show you how to transform it to a band eight now I do not skip ahead if you skip ahead you're not going to understand why most students get these things wrong and in my experience after you know correcting thousands of essays the students that learn what to avoid do much much better than the students that just learn a bunch of good things to do in their essay I know that doesn't make sense but a lot of things don't make sense about IELTS do not skip ahead watch this part of the video and understand the bad things to avoid everything that we're going to discuss will be related to these These are the official band descriptors when your examiner is marking your essay they are looking at these bands and this is what they're basing their score on and only this so it's really important that you understand why these things lead to low score I'll also share the new guidance that was released recently it's a little bit more detail and it's released from IELTS so it's something that you should definitely pay attention to so let's start off by understanding the question very very important some people believe that professionals such as doctors and Engineers should be required to work in the country where they did their training others believe they should be free to work in other countries discuss both views and give your opinion so the student starts off with noise a days spelled incorrectly The crucial debate about professional people working in other countries is Raging so when the very first sentence the student has made a crucial error they've made a mistake which is including a background statement now many of you have been taught because many teachers teach their students to start their essay with a background statement why is this wrong and why will this lower your score well a background statement is an example of a memorized sentence or memorized template normally they will look something like this nowadays The crucial debate about X so insert the topic is Raging so what happens when students memorize these things is they will often make mistakes so for example this student and this is a very very very common mistake they have misspelled the word nowadays as now is a days if I had a penny for every time I've read the word noise days I wouldn't be teaching you IELTS I'd be on a beach somewhere enjoying myself the other reason why this is a mistake is more strategic so you only have about 40 minutes to write your whole essay you should not include anything that doesn't improve your score background statements do not improve your score at all so including them is wasting time so anything that wastes time and leads to vocabulary errors grammar errors and doesn't improve your score at all is a complete and utter waste of time you've also created a very bad first impression because as I said the examiner has seen this a thousand times in their brain when they read that they are automatically thinking this person is just relying on memorization and templates they probably went to a very bad school had a bad teacher this essay is going to be bad do you want the very first impression to be that probably not it also simply just doesn't make any sense whatsoever read it now is a days The crucial debate about professional people working in other countries is Raging is it is it actually raging is this a debate that a lot of people are having no there are far more important debates and problems in the world than professional people deciding whether to stay or leave their country so you have just written something that is complete and utter nonsense I'd also like to draw your attention to the official marking criteria and what it says for a band zero where there is proof that a candidate's answer has been totally memorized your first sentence is providing proof to The Examiner that you do not know how to write if you knew how to write an essay you wouldn't use memorized sentences like this so what some examiners will do is they will discount that entire sentence because it is meaningless it doesn't mean anything it doesn't contribute anything to the essay let's have a look at the next sentence whilst many people believe they should remain in their home country others say they should have freedom to work anywhere in the world this essay will endeavor to analyze both side before coming to A Reason conclusion and let's look at the official marking criteria to show you why this whole introduction is just a complete waste of time if we look at band 9 for task response a clear and fully developed position Band-Aid a clear and well-developed position by on 7 a clear and developed position is presented and if we look at the guidance for the marking criteria it says the task response assesses how clearly the candidate opens the discourse establishes their position and formulates conclusions so what your position is is what you think about the question what do you believe is the answer to the question so what is the question asking you to do what's asking you to do three things discuss this view discuss that view and give your opinion three different things this introduction doesn't do any of those three things whilst many people believe they should remain in their home country that's just repeating the question it's not saying why it's not giving any position others say that they should have freedom to work anywhere in the modern world again no position they're just repeating the question this essay will endeavor to analyze both sides before coming to A Reason conclusion this is a memorized sentence again so not very good but also there is no position no opinion give your opinion there's nothing here now why do students do this well maybe it's not your fault I've taught in many many countries all over the world especially Asia and in many countries I'll not name individual countries don't worry I'll not pick on anybody but in your education system you are often taught from a very small child not to take a strong position or not to have a strong opinion on anything this is completely the opposite to the Western education system and how IELTS want you to write essays they want you to have a strong position and tell them what you think so if you want to move to a Western Country and get a high score on the IELTS test you have to abandon this idea of not taking any position and just being very wishy-washy about everything also the other reason is many of you go to IELTS schools and IELTS teachers that just teach you this templated memorization technique the examiners are not dumb most of the senior examiners have marked well over ten thousand essays on at least 70 80 percent of them look like this that is why it is extremely rare to get band-aid and get band 9 but it is extremely common to get banned five five point five six and six point five these are the most common scores but don't worry we'll show you how to transform this introduction in a very very simple way and show you how to tell the examiner exactly what you think about this question in a very simple effective way are there also multiple little spelling errors little spelling mistakes that is also a problem and is dragging your score down to about six I hope you're enjoying this video on IELTS writing if you want to improve your IELTS writing even more and put all of the things that you're learning from our YouTube channel into practice I've developed a free course called IELTS essay Builder one IELTS essay Builder does is it gives you a free course that structures everything from your introduction to your main body paragraphs to your conclusions it shows you a step-by-step sentence by sentence how to write everything that you're learning here and it's a hundred percent free and it's helped thousands of students get about seven eight and even nine to sign up for that for free all you have to do is just click the link in the description enter your email address on that page and we'll send you that free IELTS essay builder for free thanks very much now back to the video let's move on to the first main body paragraph let's check this out and see if this is good or not on the one hand okay this is a totally acceptable way to show I'm going to discuss this first point doctors have a duty to take care of their own people this is because doctors pay for a doctor's training therefore medical professionals have responsible to give back to Nation likewise Engineers have many crucial skills that are valuable to their home country for example my brother is an engineer who built a high-speed rail network of my home country which is now the Envy of the world so overall this is quite good but there's a couple of major issues here and if you read this paragraph if I gave you this paragraph before this video 80 90 of students would say you know that's quite a good paragraph they should be getting a high score but there are a couple of fundamental issues with it so if we have a look at band 6 for task response says main ideas are relevant these ideas are relevant there's nothing wrong with them but some may be insufficiently developed or may lack Clarity while some supporting arguments and evidence may be less relevant or inadequate if we compare that with a band eight ideas are relevant well extended and supported so this is all about idea development in other words did they take each idea and fully explain each idea and provide an example help support that idea even more so the problem with this particular paragraph is there are two main ideas instead of one Central main idea so instead of fully developing one idea they've put in two ideas and they have failed to really fully develop both of them because they just don't have time they don't have enough room to do that well when I asked the student why did you do this they said well it says in the question to talk about doctors and Engineers so I talked about doctors first and I talked about engineers my old teacher that's what they said told me that I must talk about everything in the question in order to get a high score well let's have a look at the question and analyze whether that is true or not some people believe that professionals such as doctors and Engineers why does it say such as doctors and Engineers well professionals is not a very clear succinct word it has many different meanings so by putting such as doctors and Engineers into the question what the people at Cambridge who wrote this question are trying to do is help you understand the word professionals they are not instructing you that you must talk about doctors and then you must talk about engineers so by following faulty advice the student is lowering their score and doing the wrong thing remember the examiners are only following what it says here in the marketing criteria they're not checking in with your local teacher and asking them well what did you tell them also this second sentence just doesn't make any sense in relation to the explanation that they're giving this is because doctors pay for a doctor's training therefore medical professionals have responsible to give back to Nation when I spoke to the student about this and asked them it doesn't make any sense it's confusing there are oh no I meant to write government this is because the government pays for a doctor's training therefore medical professionals have responsible to give back to nation and the reason why they made this mistake is they were trying to think of way too many things on test day because they were relying on memorization if you have memorized a bunch of vocabulary grammar templates memorized sentences you're not really focused on the one thing that you should be focused on which is answering the question and writing a clear essay students that just focus on writing a clear essay write a clear essay and answer the question students that are thinking of 17 different things at the same time write confusing things like this if we go back to the marking criteria May lack Clarity it's not clear likewise Engineers have many crucial skills that are valuable to their home country okay what are those skills how are they valuable there's no explanation in here for example my brother is an engineer who builds a high-speed rail network of my home country which is now the Envy of the world who cares is it really the Envy of the world or are you just listening to your government telling you that it is the Envy of the world who cares about your brother you're very proud of your brother but that doesn't mean anything to an academic essay this is just too personal you should avoid very very personal examples like this because they only tell the story of your brother or your cousin or your mother or whoever you are talking about and I'll show you how you can convert a very personal example like this that's easy to think about how to convert it into a Band-Aid example later in the video so not a bad paragraph apart from the fact that it is not clear the ideas are not developed enough and the example just doesn't make any sense okay let's move on to the next paragraph on other hand a mistake right away so if we look at coherence and cohesion for about six cohesive devices such as on the one hand on the other hand are used to some good effect but cohesion within or between sentences may be faulty or mechanical due to misuse overuse or Omission so this student knows what on the one hand on the other hand means but because they have memorized it they don't really know how to use it properly they've made stake and again if I had a penny for every time I've seen that mistake I would be a multi-millionaire it is better to write nothing and not make the mistake than it is to include things that you're not 100 sure about on the other hand doctor and Engineers might find it difficult to find a job and adapt to Society of foreign country there is always language barrier to face when moving to new country and many doctors require High IELTS score in order to do their job for example doctors have to achieve the incredibly high score of 7.5 in most English-speaking countries Engineers may also face a culture shock when they move abroad to a new place many Engineers have recently moved to Africa to build large infrastructure projects and find the lack of familiar home food and work culture very different from before so can you spot the major issue in this paragraph So if you haven't spotted it yet let's have a look at the question again so some people believe that professionals such as doctors and Engineers should be required to work in the country where they did their training so in this paragraph they have covered that point others believe they should be free to work in other countries in this paragraph they've covered that point so this paragraph should be about others believe they should be free to work in other countries but is it look at the ideas the ideas are about why it is difficult to move to a new country the obstacles someone will face the question is about should they have the freedom the right to work in other countries not about whether it will be difficult or not so if we have a look at the marking criteria for band 7 for toss response the main parts of the prompt are appropriately addressed for Bond eight The Prompt is appropriately and sufficiently addressed so for the second part of the prompt they're not addressing the question their ideas are not relevant so it's impossible for them to get up on seven or get a Band-Aid and this is often a problem that you'll get very angry students that can't believe that they got a 6.5 or a 6 or 5.5 because they said I answered the question I wrote A good essay no you didn't this is why it's so important for you to get someone who is experienced and knows what they're doing to look at your essays and point out your mistakes the other main issue is they have repeated the same mistake of talking about doctors and then talking about engineers way too many ideas there are four main ideas in this essay now really there should only be one in this paragraph and one in this paragraph then fully develop each idea and the good news for this student is their writing is quite good they don't have a huge problem they've just been taught the wrong thing so by fixing a few simple things that we'll show you in the rest of the video they'll be easily able to move from about six to about seven or even eight so let's have a look at the conclusion in nutshell it's not really appropriate in an academic essay to write in nutshell it's a very informal way of starting a conclusion how many conclusions will you write on test day one how many cohesive devices linking words do you need to learn to put at the beginning of your conclusion one learn one and properly in conclusion that simple easy to use and I know many of you right now are in the comments saying can I do it with this can I do it with that can I do it with this just learn one simple thing provided to you by someone who knows what they're doing keep it simple do not learn 17 different ways to write a conclusion because what will happen is you'll either write something inappropriate or you'll make a mistake it's in a nutshell they've missed out the article here there are plethora spelled incorrectly of reasons for Medics and those from an engineering background to remain loyal to their mother country like what stop sitting on the fence stop beating around the bush give me your position what do you think about this at no point in this essay has this student given their opinion at no point what is the question asking you to do give your opinion again this might not be your fault you might come from one of those educational backgrounds that you know for the last 15 years you've been taught not to do that but it's time to grow up you're moving to a different country you need to adopt their ways of doing things it is recommended they stay at home in order to avoid the hardships such as homesickness many face when they move abroad the question wasn't asking you to give a recommendation why is the student doing this because their teacher told them to so if you are relying on memorizing a template or a structure you're not really thinking am I answering the question all you're thinking about is what do I put into this part of the structure structures are helpful but they're about you know less than five percent of your total score and you should not use them if they're provided to you by someone who doesn't really know what they're doing so as you've seen this student is probably going to get about six for task response probably going to get a six for coherence and cohesion but that's only fifty percent of your total Mark the rest of your Mark will be for lexical resource and grammatical range and accuracy and this is a very good example of a band Six student for grammatical range and accuracy and lexical resource which is just a fancy way of saying vocabulary most students that we are working with that are getting a 6 or 6.5 overall they don't have bad grammar or bad vocabulary but they're making way too many small errors and these little errors add up so the way that an examiner is thinking about your essay in terms of grammar and vocabulary is not did you use some words like plethora and nowadays and the debate is Raging they don't look at that and go oh my God this person is amazing what they're doing is they are looking at your range but most importantly your accuracy they are counting the number of mistakes and very very basically if more than 50 percent of your sentences have grammar vocabulary spelling errors in them then you are going to get a bond six and it's impossible for you to get more than a band Six because all of these little errors add up so let's take vocabulary this student doesn't have bad vocabulary but they're trying to use too many words that they don't really understand and this is leading to a lot of spelling mistakes and spelling is counted in the lexical resource part of the marking criteria so now is a days plethora Endeavor responsibility and many other small little vocabulary errors that are present in more than 50 of the sentences I'll show you a very very quick and easy way a simple way to eliminate most of these mistakes and transform your essay from about six to a band 8 later in the video same thing with grammar so most of the students that we work with most of the essays that I have marked don't have a huge problem with grammar most of the grammar is quite good in this essay but they have one or two areas of grammar so that could be articles punctuation subject verb agreement tenses for example or other areas of grammar that they have a huge problem with so if you have a look at this student you will see that there are multiple article errors in nutshell on other hand might find it difficult to find job have a responsibility and over and over and over again so again all these small errors just add up and then when you combine that with lots of spelling mistakes too many ideas not answering the question irrelevant ideas this all adds up to a student who believes that they're getting about seven or about eight opening up their score on results day and seeing a big fat six but the good news is is that you can easily fix all of this and transform it and over the years I wish I could have just taken a each of these essays and giving the student you know 10 or 15 minutes of advice and they would have really improved their score and moved to the country of their dreams and how you know a very happy high-paying job and all of those good things so the good news is for you is we're going to do that for you in this video this video is sponsored by us IELTS advantage and ielt VIP course the IELTS VIP course is the most successful IELTS course in the world that is a fact because we have more about seven eight and nine success stories than any other IELTS course in the entire world we do that by simplifying the whole IELTS process supporting you with some of the best IELTS teachers in the world and being with you every step of the way until you get the score that you need to thank you for making it this far in the video I want to give you 10 off our VIP course all you have to do is just look down in the description you will see our special link that you need to get 10 off just click that and you can sign up if you have any questions about the VIP course always feel free to get in touch with us Chris Ilse advantage.com is my email address we answer 100 of the questions that we get hope that you become a VIP if not enjoy the rest of this free video so let's rewrite this and transform it from about six to about eight now before we look at the introduction we need to look at the question again it is the most important thing a lot of students really focus on structures and memorizing things and taking chunks of essays from teachers out but really the students that get a Band-Aid get about nine they focus a lot more on the question formulating the answer in their brain and then taking that answer and putting it on paper that's really what they're testing Can you look at something think clearly about it and then put it clearly on paper so let's reiterate what are they asking you to do they're asking you to do three things why do people think this side why do people think this side and what do you think now I used to go into a little bit more detail this is something that we teach our VIP students it's not why do you think this and why do you think that it's why do other people think this side why do other people think that side and what do you think so looking at the question again you need to be thinking about why do some people believe that they should be required to work in their home country why do some people think that if you ask someone that what would they say what is the main idea behind them thinking that then others say they should be free to work why do they say that and then the third thing that you need to do is what do you think do you agree with this side do you agree with that side or do you think something slightly different I'll show you how you can do that all in your introduction so what we're going to do is take this introduction that is meaningless and we're going to show you how to transform this into an introduction that answers the question which is what you should be doing so whilst many people think that professional workers owe a debt to the country they trained in so what have we done there we've explained why people believe this side they believe this side because they think that these doctors Engineers nurses lawyers whoever was trained in that country they owe a debt not necessarily money but they owe that country they have a responsibility to remain there and work there so what we've done in that sentence is we have immediately said this is why people think this and compare that with you know this is a Hot Topic that is Raging and some people think that meaningless to exactly what people think the difference between these two we often describe this as a shotgun approach so this one here is a shotgun approach if you think about how a shotgun works you use a shotgun to spray an area and hope that you hit something compare that with a rifle a rifle is one shot one kill a rifle is accurate that is why they are so deadly short to the point answer the question now let's move on to the other side of it I believe they should be free to work where they choose because they can make more money so if you asked someone you know you're a doctor engineer your lawyer you're a nurse why are you moving to a Western Country or an English-speaking country because I can make more money if you asked a hundred of them why are you moving away to make more money so we don't choose the most complex or the most high level or fancy idea we choose the simplest most straightforward most popular idea because they are easy to understand easy to write about one thing many of you are jumping up and down and you know furiously typing you can't put I you can't put a personal pronoun in your IELTS essay remember what the question says give your opinion what do you believe easiest way for you to do that is just say I believe I think it is my opinion you're not going to lose any marks for that in fact you're going to gain marks because you're making it super duper clear what you think and how you're answering the question and nowhere does it say in the official marking criteria or the official guidance that you're not allowed to do that so what have I done with this sentence I've done two things this is why these people believe this because of money and I agree with them I believe this too so you've done all three things in one sentence here's what these people think here's what these people think and this is what I think now many of you will look at this and think it's not long enough it's too short size does not matter thankfully there is nothing in the marketing criteria that says your introduction needs to be very long like other things in this world it's not the size that counts it is what you do with it I could write a very very long introduction like the bond six student did but it wouldn't really satisfy the examiner this one is short it's small but it's mighty in fact what this does is it shows the examiner that you've understood the question you've answered the question and you're telling the examiner what is coming up in the rest of this essay because all we need to do now is take this side write about it in our main body paragraph fully develop that main idea then take the other side fully develop that main idea and then summarize everything in our conclusion so that's what we're going to do now so in our first main body paragraph we're going to like the band Six student we're going to talk about this first view but we're going to reduce the number of ideas from two to one so we're going to change nothing about the cohesive device on the one hand showing the examiner I'm going to talk about this side first so on the one hand professionals often receive considerable funding from their government to become fully qualified so this is just a much simpler clearer way of saying the same thing that the band 6 student said doctors have a duty to take care of their own people this is because doctors pay for doctor's training not very clear this is much simpler but clearer what I have done is put a topic sentence that just clearly states this is the main reason this is the main idea there's no explanation here there's no complexity you're just saying this is why people believe this now we need to explain why they think this so big difference between band six and band 8 is band Six will just State main ideas and not really explain why those ideas are true imagine you're arguing with this person imagine you're saying well why should they do that you know I don't agree with you can you explain more it is only fair that they should repay this support by working in that place so if someone helps you it is fair it is the right thing to do to repay them but again we need to explain this why why is it fair so we need to continue to explain so that's a difference again between about six and a bond eight band Six when they're writing explanations they might write just one sentence where as a band Seven band eight by nine they will develop that explanation a lot more they will fully explain it they will fully develop it so that anyone could read this and understand this person's point this is because they often do jobs that greatly benefit society and this is why their government invested in them in the first place so you're explaining why do governments pay for doctors and engineers and lawyers and all of these professional people why do they pay for that is it just to keep them happy to keep them busy no it's actually quite selfish they do it so that that investment pays off in the future normally governments and politicians don't do things just to make people happy they do it to get a benefit so you're explaining that and also I made a mistake here and don't worry bandaid band 9 is not about writing the perfect essay without any mistakes without any messiness you can easily just cross something out and continue on you're not going to lose marks for that and band 9 students even make little slips it says that in the marketing criteria so we've fully explained that what we need to do now is we need to include an example to support that so remember the example of like my brother built the railways all by himself what you can do is you can take a personal example so I actually do have a member of my family that is a doctor and the government did pay for them I was a lawyer on the government paid all of my University fees so I got a law degree and went to law school for free now I do have those examples in my brain but they're too personal I'm not going to write for example my brother is a doctor and the UK government paid for everything but I can take that personal example and I can expand it to talk about the general idea the general population it's not just my brother it's thousands of doctors every single year that are trained by the UK government so take my brother expand it out the UK pays for thousands of doctors every year so for example the UK let's put spins it's a little bit more accurate millions of pounds training Junior doctors through University tuition fees and on-the-job training so as you can see we've taken multiple ideas we've reduced that idea down to one relevant idea that answers the question fully explained that idea and then supported it with an example that makes sense now we're going to move on to the second paragraph where we're going to show the counter argument I'm going to show the other side of it because that's what the question is asking us to do apologies this is going to look really messy I'm thinking about what to say to you guys and thinking about the cameras instead of focusing on what I'm doing however every individual should have the opportunity to reach their maximum potential so I'm showing the counter argument these people think that governments pay lots of money so they should stay and pay off that debt however other people think you should have the freedom to earn as much money as you would like to so what I'm doing here is I'm explaining it and what I do is I use this so what technique whenever I was in English class I had an English teacher and what he would do is he would walk over look over your shoulder and point to topic sentences point to ideas and say so what he would do it very violently I'm not going to do that with you um but what that English teacher was trying to beat into me was explain what you mean so they should have the opportunity to reach their maximum earning potential what does that mean well those in the professions those jobs are some of the most highly skilled highly sought people in the world so what keep explaining there is a global market for their skills and they can come out much higher salaries by moving abroad so you could go into a lot more detail you could talk about globalization and post globalization that now we live in a world where there is one market for labor it's a very complicated thing but a very simple way of saying it is there is a global market for their skills and they can command much higher salaries by moving abroad if they move abroad they make more money more money is good they should be able to do that so what keep explaining if they were blocked from doing so it would be a substantial Financial disadvantage for the individual so this would be a bad thing if people were not allowed to leave imagine you're a doctor or a nurse and you're not allowed to leave your home country that would be a very very bad thing and you wouldn't be happy about that so we've just explained that put yourself in the shoes of that person big difference between about six student and a band eight student is you will often hear band Six students saying I don't know anything about this I'm not a nurse I'm not a doctor I'm not a lawyer I'm not an engineer but you have an imagination you have a brain you can put yourself in the shoes of that person imagine you are a highly qualified doctor making ten thousand dollars a year and you could be making a hundred and ten thousand dollars a year in another country would you be happy if they blocked you from leaving the country so we've fully explained that next we need to think of an example personally I don't know anybody in this position because I live in a free country where you're allowed to come and go as you please but I can't think of other jobs where you can earn a lot more money by moving countries an obvious one that Springs to mind would be petroleum Engineers you know I live in Ireland there's no oil or gas here are very very little if you're a petroleum engineer in Ireland you are at a huge financial disadvantage but if you can move somewhere that has lots of oil and gas you will make a huge amount of money so let's use that as an example and that will also use the question doctors Engineers we've given the example of doctors here we're going to give another example of Engineers here so to those people that think oh you didn't answer the question well we just did you don't have to do that again we're using the question to help us so for instance petroleum Engineers can make hundreds of thousands of dollars more in oil-rich countries such as Saudi Arabia compared to remaining in Europe is this true yes is it related to the main idea yes so this part we've only really talked about why people believe this site we need to reiterate our opinion remember we're doing those three things that wasn't done in the second main body paragraph in the original essay and the easiest way to do that is I agree I agree that the individual's right to work wherever they please trumps any nationalistic considerations the individual a person's right to work wherever they want is more important than some nationalistic belief that you know everyone should stay at home okay let's change this conclusion so we're going to change in nutshell to just simply in conclusion so we're not going to talk about plethora of reasons we're going to actually State the reasons we are going to summarize our main points so we're going to say these people think this other people think that I believe this and do not worry about repeating yourself so in the original conclusion the person really didn't take a position and they were introducing some new ideas because often people are taught that your conclusion cannot repeat any of the ideas in your essay this comes from a misunderstanding of what a conclusion is and what an essay is and really it's confusion about not repeating words so many many teachers believe that if you repeat a word you will get a little score a lot of them confuse that with not repeating main ideas a conclusion is a by definition a summary of the main ideas of the essay that is what it is if you disagree with me then you don't know what a conclusion is so in conclusion although there is a tremendous amount of investment in a professional's development so I'm conceding I'm saying yes there is this argument there is a huge amount of money poured in to training these people I recognize that so you're conceding that and you're just summarizing what is in that first main body paragraph they should have the right to choose whether to repay that by working in their home state or moving to a region that pays them the highest value for their skills sorry that is very messy this has taken hours to make my brain is turning to Mush I should have really produced this essay and wrote this essay before writing it all out so again what I'm doing here is I'm conceding yes this is what people think but this is what other people think and I agree with them I believe this there's no recommendation there's no prediction it is just stating the main points and stating what I think now if we look at the whole essay I'm a native English speaker I could have used a lot fancier high level vocabulary but I choose not to because you're not being judged on how fancy your vocabulary is you're being judged on how topic specific it is and how accurate it is it also reduces complexity which it reduces mistakes reduces grammar errors that is far far better and a more realistic representation to you guys about what about 8 and band 9 essay looks like after marking thousands and thousands of essays I can truly tell you that people who get a bond eight and Bar Nine their essays look simple and easy to understand in fact let me tell you a quick story whenever I used to teach in the classroom what I would do is I would get band Six essays like this and band eight and nine essays like this and on the first day of class I would put them up on the walls of the classroom and I would give students stickers one said band six one said Bond eight Bar Nine and I would get them to put the stickers on the essays 99 of students always got them wrong because what students believe is band 8 and band 9 is a complex Essay with lots of complex ideas complex grammar complex vocabulary what students are always shocked by is how simple and easy to understand band-aid and band 9 essays actually are and what I always said to the students was what are they testing are they testing how much fancy stuff you know or are they testing your ability to communicate clearly in writing using English they are testing the latter they're testing when you move to a new country when you move to London or Singapore or Sydney or New York or wherever English-speaking City you move to can you clearly communicate with people and you do that by avoiding all of the mistakes that are commonly in these essays and replacing it with simple easy to understand language and clear easy to understand ideas if you do that your rating will improve dramatically I hope you enjoyed that video and I hope that it really helped you understand what the common mistakes are if you want to see how I transformed a different type of essay from about six to a band eight just click on this video and I'll show you exactly how I did it thank you

Channel: IELTS Advantage

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Keywords: ielts writing task 2, ielts writing task 2 academic, ielts writing task 2 general, ielts writing task 2 academic tips and tricks, ielts writing discuss both views and give your opinion, ielts essay writing, ielts essay, ielts essay writing task 2, ielts writing band 9, ielts writing band 8, ielts advantage

Id: kpRmyUNDmwc

Length: 46min 4sec (2764 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 07 2023