How to Improve Your Grammar in the IELTS Test - Mini-Course: Day 1

Chris from IELTS has a head start with another week and another

mini

course

, so one of the most effective ways to

improve

your

overall IELTS scores is to

improve

your

grammar

. Grammar accounts for 25% of your total writing grade, 25% of your total speaking grade, and is. It is also important to read and listen, so to help you as much as possible, what we are going to do this week is a three-day

mini

grammar

course

, so let's take a look at what we will do this week, so on day 1 We will see that high grammar actually affects your score because, as I already mentioned, it is 25% of your total writing and speaking score, but it cannot affect other areas either. also and other unexpected areas, so we will talk about that and we will talk a lot about how examiners think about grammar and what they are looking for and especially for the writing

test

and we will also talk about a lot of myths surrounding grammar, so we will talk about the errors and how that affects your score structures tenses complex sentences simple sentences all those different things because there are a lot of myths around grammar, like in other parts of the

test

, like Well, to understand what to do, you first have to understand what not to do, so pay attention to that, today, day 2, we have many requests for help with simple and complex sentences, what is the difference between them?

Make complex sentences, how do they affect your score? So we'll be looking at a lot about that and not tomorrow Wednesday, but Wednesday at noon on Facebook here, we'll take a look at that life and then on the 3rd, which is Friday at around 11am. m., do it a little earlier on Friday. Let's see a Grammar Improvement Plan. This is a plan that you can use at home for free and you can work on improving your grammar, so we'll give it to you. It's a very simple strategic plan that you can use, so we'll give it to you on Friday.

Well, later on, let's take a look at how grammar actually affects your score, so it's 20, five percent of spoken and 25% of written. a look at writing, so here we have task achievement, 25 percent, coherence and cohesion, 25 percent, lexical resource, which is vocabulary, 25 percent, and range and grammatical accuracy, which is 25 percent, so these are the things that examiners are going to think about when we're looking at writing for task 1 and task 2, so one very common thing that we see is that A student may have an achievement in the band 7 task, they have answered the question quite well, their coherence and cohesion is around 7 and their vocabulary is a run out of 7, what we see a lot is that with grammar there could be a tab at 6, so what a lot of students think is that if I give these 3 a tab at 7, it doesn't matter if my grammar isn't that good because I'm going to get about 7 errors overall, that probably won't happen.

Let me explain why you might have what probably won't happen. So if you get a band 6 for grammar, that means you're making a lot of grammatical mistakes. Almost every sentence has some kind of grammatical error and what happens is that if you are reading someone who is a bad level six, the writing is quite difficult to understand because there are many, many, many grammatical errors. There might be some big mistakes, but there will also be a lot of small mistakes, so what happens is that someone who has about six years of coherence and cohesion can actually have their coherence and cohesion drop to six as well, why? is that because coherence means: can you read the essay or can you read the assignment?

An answer and understand what it says. Is it clear? It's easy to understand? If your grammar is about six it can bring down the essay also if your grammar is bad you can also start making a lot of vocabulary mistakes okay look if you don't understand how the word operates in a sentence then it can take to make even more grammatical errors, sometimes it can also lead to the examiner looking at you or having an answer thrown at you and you just don't know if you answered the question or not due to grammatical errors, that is rare, more common are these two , so it's very, very common for grammatical range and accuracy to cause people to get a 6.5 overall because they get a 6 in grammar, but then it could cause one or both of these two to drop to that level, so that's one of the reasons why 6.5 is a very, very common score, and there could be many reasons for that, but for a lot of people it's related to grammar, and that's what we're going to work on this week and to help you because if Your grammar is going to rise to this level, so you are more likely to get a 7 or higher.

If you want to get a 7, you should aim for all of these across the board to be between seven because you don't know what will happen on test day if you want a band. -Aid aims for everyone to be on a bad date, you shouldn't go in and think I could get away or I could get lucky, you know, try to move everything to the level you're looking for and then you know. You will get the score you need on test day. So what are examiners looking for when it comes to grammar? It is very important that you understand this.

I hope this is quite clear. I have done this as a seesaw. So I'm sure and in the playgrounds where you will live you have a child here. I'm a kid here. It's like a little seesaw and it goes like this. This is here for a reason. So the examiner is looking for two main things. it's related, so that's why we have the seesaw, it's a range of structures, range of tenses, range of complex sentences, simple sentences reign, complex sentences, compound sentences, so that's one of the things they'll look for, though. , the other. What they will look for is precision, how many mistakes are you making?

One of the ways you'll see it is error-free and error-free sentences, exactly what it sounds like, it's a sentence with no grammatical errors. completely free of any grammar related errors in this, the more error free sentences you have, generally the higher the score you will get, but why do we have this seesaw? Why is there a relationship between this? Because what happens? A lot of students and the reason they get around a five or a six in grammar is that they put too much emphasis on range, so they try to really increase the complexity of their sentences by including lots and lots of complex sentences and complex tenses and a huge amount. a wide range of tenses and structures and everything, and when they try to do that, their accuracy goes down, so it doesn't matter if you have this huge, wide range of tenses and sentences and complex structures if you're doing lots and lots and there are lots and lots of mistakes, so in general as students try to increase complexity their accuracy will decrease and that's why we have the seesaw here and the interesting thing about this is that for most students there is nothing wrong with their range because when you write an essay We will use a variety of structures and a variety of tenses and a combination of simple, compound and complex sentences that usually resolve themselves, what students really struggle with and the reason why 95% of students cannot do it. getting the score they need in grammar is down to accuracy, just making too many mistakes and this is what is very obvious whenever you look at a student's work you look at it and you will see error error error error error error and it is very It is impossible to give them a high score on grammar and as a high school student in general, if there are errors and multiple errors in almost every sentence they have, if you are looking for a seven or higher, you should aim for the majority of your sentences.

So more than 50% of your sentences should have no grammatical errors or no errors at all and by trying to focus on the range you are making it really very difficult, so that is something to keep in mind, it is something that is the key to understanding. how to improve your grammar is this diagram so let's talk about myths okay and there's a car here for a reason so if you do your driving test in the UK I don't know what it's like in different countries but in the UK, I think you can pass the test, you have to, it's less than 16 minor faults, that's correct 16 16 yes, so you can make less than 16 minor faults in the driving test, a minor fault is something like no check your mirror or cross your hands or something and there are no major faults, so a major fault would be speeding up or not looking at an intersection, something like that and this is not exactly the same, but very, very, very close to high , the IELTS exam is marked.

In terms of grammar myth number one, your grammar must be perfect, that's wrong, that's okay, to get a 7 you can actually make quite a few small grammatical errors in the same way as if you were taking your driving test in the UK , could you I made like 15, how many did I get? 9. I think I had 9 minor failures and I still haven't passed any major failures. We'll get to that in a second, but it's very, very similar to the IELTS writing test and especially the speaking test. In the speaking test you can make quite a few grammatical mistakes and still get a pretty high score, does that mean you can make yourself know many, many, many mistakes and still get a high score?

I mean, IELTS you realize that you are an English student, you will make mistakes, even someone in a bar nine makes little mistakes from time to time, they are just slips, but they are there so often that you will show a student an essay really good like about 9:00 o'clock 8 is a, I'm going to look at it and you'll see a couple of little mistakes and you'll say oh, that's terrible, they made one little mistake, that's about five, that's not the way thinking about it, especially for This is the speaking test, if you try to be perfect, your fluency will really suffer and you won't be able to speak because you'll be thinking about the perfect sentence and that will just destroy your fluency with the writing test you're on. doing. you're trying to aim for perfection you're never going to get there, even a benign learner won't ever really get perfect grammar you're not aiming for perfection your goal is to use grammar as a tool to help you communicate clearly through writing , so don't aim for perfection, try to improve your grammar as much as you can and minimize errors as much as you can, but it's not as much as you can.

Remember this little analogy for the driving test and you should do it. Also try to avoid major grammatical errors, so what are important grammatical errors? Major grammatical errors are errors that prevent the reader or listener from understanding what you mean smaller grammatical errors such as countable and uncountable noun errors, preposition errors, article errors, all can be sorted and but if only you are doing a couple of them in your entire essay or you know a few of them throughout your speaking test, it's not a big deal because they don't affect communication myth number two, you should use as many different structures as possible in order to get a high score. , this is not true, so again, using the driving test analogy, when you take your driving test in the UK, you are taken onto public roads and you turn left.

You are going to turn right. You are going down to a road. One-way roads. You are going to come to crosses. You will reach level crossings. You will come across a whole range of different ones. scenarios so that you don't immediately start the driving test and start going left and right and doing all these crazy things because naturally you're going to do them over the course of a. I think it's like a 40 minute exam or a 30 minute exam. This is true when you do the oral exam, you will naturally use a variety of different structures because you will be speaking for about 15 minutes in the written exam, you will naturally use a variety of different structures, so you shouldn't concentrate on that, you should concentrate on answering the questions and naturally you will use a variety of structures in exactly the same way as in the driving test, you just follow what the examiner says, go where he wants you to go and naturally you will do it. do that, but you focus on the driving test on minimizing mistakes, not making major mistakes, not making minor mistakes, or as few minor mistakes as possible, so what happens is that if you try to use as many different structures as possible, two things happen.

If you don't answer the question, try doing it even in your native language. Try simply writing an essay or writing a letter or email to someone and try to use as many different grammatical structures as possible. like something, a challenge that you would give yourself or something, a silly challenge but it's very difficult to do, naturally you will do it, you will naturally use a variety of structures, focus more on precision, myth number three, you should use as many different tenses as possible. As it is possible, this actually happened on Friday. I was working with one of my VIP students and I asked him a very simple question: what is your job? and she started talking about herjob, he just said he works here and explained what he did and everything was fine. her fluency was excellent her pronunciation was excellent her vocabulary was excellent her grammar was excellent and then she stopped and started going But in the past when she was a child she wanted to be this and then she started talking about and in the future I want to be this and her Fluency started to go downhill, his pronunciation actually suffered and he was also doing a lot of things. grammatical errors and I stopped her and said what are you doing why didn't you answer the question normally and she said oh my old teacher said I have to use every tenth in every answer in the oral test like no you don't you don't have to do that, you use the tense that is appropriate to use in the circumstance that you are using it exactly the same as in real life, you will use the appropriate tense when you use it if you are talking about the past you will use past tenses if you are talking about the present you will use present tenses if you are talking about the future you will use future tense structures so don't go into the exam thinking that I need to use as many different tenses as possible go into the exam thinking that I need to communicate clearly with the examiner and answer the questions effectively and, very similar to number two, you will use a variety of different tenses, especially in the oral exam, you will be asked questions about the past questions about the future questions that ask you to connect the past with the present so that you can naturally use all those different tenses , so don't think that it is a tense competition and it is a mythological speaking test number four, all your sentences must be complex and if you don't have all the sentences, if they are not complex, you will not get a high score again.

It's not true, it's not a test of how many complex sentences or how long they last. can you write a sentence is on the writing test can you answer the question clearly? communicate clearly in writing speaking Can you communicate clearly with the examiner by opening your mouth and pronouncing words correctly? some sentences will be simple some will be compound some of them will be complex as long as you show a variety of different sentences and you will be fine again. Focus on precision. It doesn't matter if you write a sentence that you know is fifty words long if it has 50 mistakes.

It doesn't really make any sense, myth number five, memorization is a useful skill, so memorizing sentence fragments or knowing half a sentence or a full sentence and then adding them to your essay is not a memorization test, it's an English test, okay memorization is a useless skill why aren't they testing memorization if it was a memorization test you could simply learn that you know how to memorize many different grammatical structures and apply them in your essays and in your speaking test and you will get a high score that you wouldn't It works because grammar is just a - okay, like having a hammer, a saw, and a drill.

Memorizing is like giving tools to someone who doesn't know how to use them, like me. I don't know how to use a hammer or a saw. I'm completely useless when it comes to DIY or, you know, using my hands in any way, so if you gave me these tools, I wouldn't know what to do with them, I'd completely screw it up, this is exactly what happens when you try to memorize structures , verb tenses and complex sentences? You don't know how to use them. So what's going to happen going back to our little seesaw? You will try to use all these things. and then your accuracy is going to decrease always remember it's a balance between those two things and your range is probably fine you will naturally use a wide enough range your problem I can really guarantee because I work with students every day yes If you have this problem it is the precision, so I hope you don't find them useful.

It's very important that you understand the relationship between scope and precision and that you understand myths and that they are myths, because if you go into the exam believing things that are not true and if you give the examiners things that they are not even looking for, then obviously you're going to have problems so the first stage is knowing the truth and knowing what they're really looking for so tomorrow or not tomorrow Wednesday we'll look at Simple sentences versus complex sentences this really helps you improve your writing and by understanding the difference between them also helps you understand the relationship between range and accuracy, and then on the third day, we will help you improve your accuracy.

As we've mentioned time and time again, that's the key to improving your grammar score, so we'll help you improve your accuracy by giving you this grammar improvement plan which will be on Friday around 11am. m. and this The day expands at about noon and as always with these live lessons, if you join us on Facebook, if you have questions, I can interact with you and everything, and what we will do is that many of you every time Let's do these courses. Let's say, oh, that's great, but what about writing, what about speaking, what about reading, what about listening?

We have a fundamentals course that covers all of that and teaches you the absolute fundamentals. It's totally free so we'll put a link in the comments and We'll put it if you're watching it on YouTube you'll get it in the description if you're watching it on Facebook we'll post it in the description there and if you need help comment help on the comment and We will contact you and try to help you as much as possible and if you need help you can email us. We cannot guarantee that we will be able to provide you with individual help because we have listened to people. sending us emails every day, but we will try our best if you need help and tell you don't hesitate to email us.

I'll try to help you with that, okay, so I'll bring my broken phone. I dropped my phone, the glass broke, and I see if you have any questions about grammar, and every time we present myths or things that a lot of people think are true but really aren't, we'll get a lot of responses. people who disagree with us, that's totally fine, feel free to disagree as much as you want and I'll be happy to answer any of your questions or anything like that. Banjo says Chris, we need example sentences that reflect the component of each teaching.

There will be Wednesday and we are going to do today: we are making simple and complex sentences. I'm going to put in a lot of example sentences, not so you can copy them, but so you can learn from them and see exactly what I mean, so we'll do it once. a lot of you need help, so you're saying help, okay, we'll get back to you and send you a message. If you have any questions, don't hesitate to write in the comments. I will contact you if we have time. What are you saying? Would you help with the punctuation.

We'll show you how to improve every aspect of your grammar on day three. We'll give you that grammar and a proven plan. So can you help me start the preparation? Yes, and send me an email. or comment help and we will contact you. We have a lot of free resources that we can send to you and you can use them for free or we have also paid for services so send us a message. and we will find out what is best for you Miriam how many complex sentences do we need to write to get approximately seven that is the wrong way to think about it Uschi, you shouldn't go into the exam thinking that I need to write X number of complex sentences because you are making it much harder than necessary.

You shouldn't think that I need to write this number of anything. This is because you are making it much more difficult and it is a very unnatural way to write anything. so you should start the exam mainly thinking that I need to answer the question and I need to use grammar in a way that is clear and precise and naturally you will use a variety of simple, compound and complex sentences, and in doing so, I will talk more about that on Wednesday Chris, give me your WhatsApp number. No, the reason I don't give out my phone number.

What's happening? Number? and those things. Hey, I don't have what's up on my phone, but B, I'm not going to give it away. my personal phone number is a million people and that would be a little crazy, but there's my email address and it's much more manageable. The quality of ideas increases grades. It depends on what you mean by quality and the two things you should have. thinking about when you're thinking about ideas or some things that you should be thinking about number one is relevant to the question number two answers the specific question and number three can you elaborate on it by explaining how it answers the question and supporting? with examples those are the things you should think about there is no hierarchy of ideas it's not that if you use this idea you will get about nine if you use this idea you will get about seven and if you use this no the way it works it's like there are a hundred ideas that They could give you about nine, it depends on what you do with those ideas.

Mohammed, could you suggest a book for IELTS grammar? And there's a book by, I think, Raymond Murphy. So you're PHY Murphy if you go to Amazon or whatever you use in your country. I think it has intermediate grammar. Upper Intermediate Grammar. Advanced grammar. Those books are good. However, grammar books are good for most people to check out grammar, but they are not really going to help. improve your grammar and we'll talk about that on Friday and since you need to do that, you need to practice, you need to get feedback to really improve your grammar, obviously a book doesn't really do that. review centers here in the Philippines no, no, we are one hundred percent online because we believe that online education is much better than being in a classroom face to face with thirty or forty other students, can you create a whatsapp group no, I don't have what's up so thank you guys so much I'll leave it there and I know a lot of you have questions that I couldn't answer just time as always and we have a lot of people want to contact us and there's not enough time but Thank you very much and I hope you enjoyed it.

On Wednesday we will have lesson two and then on Friday we will have lesson three. Thank you very much guys and if you need anything, feel free. to contact us goodbye