IELTS Writing Task 2 | Everything You Need To Know

- Hello everyone. This is Chris from IELTS Advantage and this is IELTS Writing Task 2 –

everything

you

need

to

know

. Okay, so what we're going to do in this video is divide IELTS Writing Task 2 into three parts. The planning part, the

writing

part and the verification part. Often, students feel really confused about what to do when

writing

their two essays. And a very, very common problem is that people see the question, they start typing right away, they get lost because they didn't do any planning, then they run out of time, they don't have time to check. And what you should aim for is to plan

everything

well, then write your essay and then have time to revise it at the end.

So we will show you everything you

need

to

know

about these three stages. So let's start with the planning. Thus, the planning stage is divided into four more stages. When I teach my students, what I like to do is break things down so they're easy to understand, so they're easy to learn, and then easy to do on test day. So we'll talk about the different types of questions, how to analyze the question to fully understand it, how to generate ideas, and then something called structural planning, and then we'll move on to writing. So the first thing you need to keep in mind is that there are about six different types of essays.

And if you have the same approach to every different type of essay, you're not going to do as well as someone who understands the differences between these different questions and has a different approach to each of them. Then there are opinion questions, like do you agree or disagree? Discussion questions, advantages and disadvantages questions, problem and solution, causes and solution, and then double or direct questions. In this video, we'll focus primarily on opinion essays, but everything we're going to discuss generally applies to other types of essays. The video would be about eight hours long if we watched this one, then this one, and this one, and this one, and this one, we'll give you everything you need to know in one video.

So when you see the question, you must first understand what type of question it is, and then you must analyze the question. So the first question to ask yourself when you see the question is what type of question is it? Is this a discussion question or an advantages or disadvantages question? And you wouldn't believe how many students see a question like this here and immediately start writing and don't think about what they're asking you to do. The most important thing in writing Task 2 is that you answer the question, follow what they have asked of you, and give them what they are looking for.

So what kind of question? Here is a question from the book "Cambridge 11". Governments should spend money on railways instead of roads. To what extent do you agree or disagree? So as you look at this second sentence here, to what extent do you agree or disagree? We know that it is an opinion question, we must give our opinion and we must indicate to what extent we agree or disagree. The second question is really important. A common problem that examiners see every day is that students quickly look at the question and write generally about the topic. So if the topic is about global warming, they will write down everything they know about global warming and just put it on paper.

That doesn't answer the question. You need to understand what the general topic is, so you can then go deeper and focus on the specific thing they are asking you. So take a look at this and think about what the overall theme is. Governments should spend money on railways instead of roads. So what is the general theme? The general issue is public spending. So if you were to simply write down everything you know about public spending in relation to railways, roads and infrastructure in general, you wouldn't actually be answering the question. But it's important that you understand what the general topic is, so you don't write about it in general.

Then you must ask yourself the third question: what is the specific topic? Okay, so the government should spend money on railroads instead of roads. So in the context of the general issue of government spending, it is necessary to talk about whether the government should spend money on railways or on roads, that is the most important aspect of the question. And you need to say, do you agree or disagree with that? If you get into the habit of asking yourself those three questions, you will always understand the question and you will always answer the specific question. It means that you will be way ahead of 80, 90% of the students, because what they do is they just quickly look at the question, panic, and start writing about the general topic and not saying whether they agree or disagree. or give an opinion at all.

Next, idea generation. A very, very common question we get asked is how do we generate ideas? Keep it simple, don't overcomplicate it. And number one, don't brainstorm. If you go to most IELTS classes and the class where they teach you how to generate ideas, 99% of the teachers will tell you to brainstorm. Brainstorming for IELTS Writing Task 2, Idea Generation, is completely useless. Why is it completely useless? Well, what is brainstorming for? Brainstorming encourages you to come up with as many different ideas as possible, which is the exact opposite of what you're supposed to do. You're supposed to think of a limited number, a small number of specific relevant ideas that actually answer the question.

Brainstorming doesn't do that. What it does is produce 10, 20, I've even seen students generate 30 different ideas and 99% of them are completely useless. And brainstorming seems to encourage students to come up with the most complicated or complex ideas possible, that's not what they're looking for. They are looking for the most obvious, simple and direct ideas. You can't get extra points for coming up with amazing, complicated, high-level ideas. They want you to show that you can use ideas to communicate clearly in English, which means keeping it simple. So what should you do instead of brainstorming? Instead of brainstorming, simply ask yourself a direct question.

So for this particular question, what you would ask is: why should governments spend more money on railways than on roads? So instead of thinking about where you would write railroads versus highways and a little bubble around it and 20 arrows, just ask yourself a question. And what is the most obvious and simplest idea that arises? Write it in the comments below. Don't think of the most complicated idea, the simplest idea is always the best. And if you can't personally come up with an idea, try thinking a little outside the box: If 100 people were asked this direct question, what would most people say?

And that kind of change in your thinking gets you out of your own brain in a way and makes you think generally about the specific question, allows you to generate ideas effectively and quickly. Because you really only have 40 minutes to answer the entire question, plan, write and check your answer. You don't want to spend more than a few minutes generating ideas. Now that you have generated your ideas, you have thought about the question, you know how to answer it, you will have many ideas in your head. And it's a bad idea to start writing immediately. You want to structure your ideas and put them into a black and white plan on paper.

And in order to do that, what you have to do is get a structure. This is a structure for an opinion essay. It's not for any other type of essay and there are tons of different structures you can use for opinion essays. This is one that I teach my students because it is easy to learn and gets high marks. It's not the only framework you can use, but we have helped more people achieve a band seven or above than any other course or school in the world. So you can say, “Well, my teacher said to do this or that,” feel free to say that, but this is what we teach our students.

But the point is, and I'm not teaching you a structure for opinion essays, I'm teaching you how to plan your response. So get a reliable structure. It could be this one, but get a structure for all the different types of questions, you'll have a different structure for discussion questions, pros and cons questions, double questions, get to a place that you trust. How can you trust them? Look at their past scores, see if they have tons of success stories, successful students, if they do, their structures are probably pretty good. If they don't, I wouldn't trust them. But what I'm trying to say is that you memorize the structure and then you fill it in, add your ideas and all the information here.

So this will only take you a few minutes. If you practice doing this, it will be very, very fast. And all you're going to do here is fill this structure with your ideas. And then what you do is you create a roadmap for your essay. So when you write, you just focus on writing. You don't want to write and think about ideas and think about vocabulary and grammar, and what's my structure here? And what is the development of my idea? You want to focus solely on writing. Our brains are not very good at multi

task

ing. So this whole planning stage is about creating this roadmap for your essay.

And that will mean that you will write a very clear and coherent essay and concentrate on one thing at a time. And you might be thinking, "Well, Chris, I don't have time to do all this planning." You will have it. If you do all this, you will be able to write your essay much faster. You're not going to get lost. And if you try this method, it may take you a little longer to get started, because it's completely natural. When you are learning something new, it will take you a little longer. Keep practicing this way, you will have no problem doing everything in 40 minutes.

So just go through the planning stage, understand the type of question, analyze the question properly, generate your ideas and then put all your ideas out there. The things you're thinking about in a structural plan. And now we have a map and we can begin our writing stage. So there are three stages in the writing stage, the introduction, the body paragraph and the conclusion. down to make it very, very simple to learn, so that you can give the examiners exactly what they want on test day. The biggest problem that examiners see every day when looking at presentations is that people add things that are simply not necessary to the point that the presentations are meaningless.

The student has completely wasted his time. What is an introduction? An introduction is presenting to the reader what you are going to write. If you think about it that way, then you will write a very, very effective introduction. But if you listen to someone telling you things that you don't really know what she's talking about and telling you to include this and include this and include this, you're just adding a bunch of nonsense to your introduction. And it's a terrible way to present yourself to the examiner, because the examiner looks at that and thinks, "Another 5.5 or another six." It's very rare that someone writes one of these nonsensical introductions and then gets a high score.

These are five things you should not include in your introduction. Number one, a statement of neutral substance. It's a complete waste of time, adds nothing to your essay, and will lead to repetition because you're going to paraphrase the question anyway. So why would you write something that is very, very similar to a paraphrase and is a complete waste of time? Remember that you are on the clock. And it's just a terrible way to present your essay. Memorize phrases. You're not going to fool the examiners. This is what they do every day. They get up, watch rehearsals, go to bed.

They do nothing but watch these essays over and over and over and over again, they have seen every sentence memorized. And what they will do is just discard them completely. So if you're not in school or you're looking at a website where they tell you to memorize this set phrase and insert it into your essay, that's one of the worst things you could do. Furthermore, it is a waste of time to put this essay, for example, discuss both points of view and give a reasoned conclusion at the end. That's what your essay is supposed to do.

You're stating the obvious. And, just like a neutral background statement, you add nothing to your essay. You're not telling the examiner what you think about the question, which is what you're supposed to do. Number four, a specific number of words or sentences. I see this a lot on YouTube and on Facebook and blogs where they say, write three exact sentences and write 20 words in the first sentence, nonsense. Some presentations are long, others are short. Some presentations are long and good, and others are long and bad. Some are short and good, and some are short and bad.

Length has nothing to do with quality. It's about quality, not quantity. And number five, sophisticated vocabulary. You are trying to impress the examiner by showing him your list of vocabulary that you have memorized. It is not a memorization test. You will make a mistake or the examiner will know that you memorized it, it is very, very, very obvious. And you are not going to write an effective introduction because an effective introduction is written by writing aeffective introduction, not inserting many fancy words. So just by avoiding these five things, you'll write a much better introduction. But what should you include in your introduction?

So what I'm going to show you here is an answer from one of our students. What I tend to do is not share what I would write, because I am a native English speaker. You are learning English. I am an IELTS teacher. My sample answer won't be very relevant to you, but a student's sample answer will be. This is a VIP student we work with and this is his introduction. The state should allocate more funds to railway lines instead of building new roads. This essay agrees with this statement, because trains are environmentally friendly and benefit a greater number of people.

So what I would like you to do is read this introduction and think about the formula that they used. Think about the principles you used to write this. Containing? So feel free to pause the video, think about it. There are three things it contains. And the three things are; They paraphrased the question, clearly expressed their opinion, and expressed their main ideas. So the first sentence, the state should allocate more funds to rail lines instead of building new roads, they are just paraphrasing the question. This essay agrees with this statement, which is to make your opinion clear, because trains are environmentally friendly, idea one, and benefit a greater number of people, idea two.

So if I look at this as an examiner, what does it tell me? That is to say, they haven't included any of this nonsense, which is what they see 80, 90% of the time. And what they've done is show me that they know how to paraphrase effectively, which is one of the things they'll be looking out for if they hope to have a band seven, eight or nine. His position is very clear throughout the entire essay, because it is here, throughout the entire essay and also in the introduction. And I know exactly what his main ideas are, I know exactly what comes up in the rest of the essay.

They have presented. That's what you're supposed to do in an introduction, introduce what will be included in the rest of the essay. And if you are looking for more details and want more instructions on how to write an introduction, body paragraph or conclusion, we have a course called IELTS Essay Builder, which mainly focuses on how to write an introduction and body paragraphs. and conclusion. It's totally free. Just click below the video and you can get instant access to it. So if you look at your introduction, idea one, environmentally friendly, idea two, benefits a greater number of people.

Guess what we are going to put in the main body paragraphs? Paragraph one of the main body, environmentally friendly, paragraph two of the main body, benefits a greater number of people. A paragraph, an idea, a paragraph, an idea. You shouldn't have several main ideas in one paragraph. The purpose of a paragraph is to present an idea and explain it, give an example, discuss that idea. And then, if you want to start a new idea, start a new paragraph. And we're going to break down the main body paragraphs a little bit here, topic sentence, first thing you want to add, then you want to add an explanation, and then you want to add an example.

Not three sentences, three elements here. You will always have this first, then you will have this, and then you will have this. So it could be one, two or three sentences. It could be one or two sentences, depending on the question, depending on the topic, but you will always have these three elements here. The topic sentence simply tells the reader that this is my main idea. This is what the paragraph is about. Number two, explanation. You are giving reasons why your main idea answers the question. Alright, think about it that way. You are giving reasons, you are showing why.

Imagine that the examiner has that question for you. So you say, "This is my main idea, well, why does this answer the question?" "How does this answer the question?" What are your reasons? Give me more. And then the example will be the evidence to support it. Then you can give your opinion, this is what you think, that you are going to strengthen your argument by presenting evidence. And again, this is a quick overview of the main body paragraphs. If you want more details and more examples and everything else, click below to get the free IELTS Essay Builder course, it will help you a lot.

And then conclusions, things you don't want and things you do want. You want to finish your essays strong. You don't want to write a great introduction, a great body paragraph, another great body paragraph, and then throw away everything you've done at the end because you don't reach your conclusion or you write a bad conclusion. There shouldn't be any new ideas. This is not your chance to add future predictions, either this is what I think or it is something I should have mentioned above but didn't. And let's sneak in here. Oh, I thought of a new idea, let's put it out there.

No. And there should be no general statements. Okay, you're not adding a general statement here, because what a lot of people teach you is to start your introduction with a general statement, a complete waste of time, and then your conclusion, a general statement. Some even tell you to include a general statement in the main body paragraph. It's just filler. It's just fresh air, it doesn't really lead you to create a coherent argument in your essay. So what you should do instead is clearly state your position, refer to IELTS Writing Task 2, which marks the criteria that the examiners have at their side when they look at your essay, all the examiners look at the same criteria.

Express your position clearly throughout your essay. This is how it should be in your introduction and conclusion. Many people get confused by this. And many teachers do not teach this because they believe it is repeating ideas. You shouldn't repeat vocabulary, you should try to vary your vocabulary as much as possible, but it's okay to restate your position, because that's what an essay is supposed to look like. You state your position in your introduction, then discuss it in the main body paragraphs, and then express it again in the conclusion. And finally, summarize your main ideas. So what are you going to do in the conclusion?

I agree or disagree, why? Here are my two main ideas. And again, if you want to learn more about writing effective conclusions, check out the free course below. Okay, so we write our introduction, we write the main body paragraph, and we write our conclusion. Finally, we have to check everything. You wouldn't believe the number of students I work with who are at a band seven level, up until this point, and then don't check it out. They make some small mistakes and that brings them down to 6.5. How many people watching this video, put it in the comments, have gotten a 6.5?

Probably the reason you got a 6.5 is that you didn't have time to check it or you didn't check it correctly. Because it is those small mistakes, and they all add up, that lead you to obtain a 6.5. So there are three different checks you want to perform. And before you say it in the comments, I won't have time to check everything. You don't have problems with time, you have problems with writing. So I can write a rehearsal for band nine in 15 minutes because it's my job and I've done it over and over again. The students I work with can write a band eight or nine essay in about 30 minutes.

And that's not because they are really good at time management or because they learn some secret time management tricks, but because they are really good at writing. Then you need to improve your writing. And then you will improve your typing speed and do everything very, very quickly. And you'll have time to plan, time to write, and time to check it all out at the end. So the first review is the grammar. Grammar represents 25% of the total grade. And all those little mistakes add up. And if you get a band six, which is the most common score we see in grammar, you'll probably get a 6.5 overall, because it will probably lower your coherence and cohesion score as well.

And the first part of the verification is done weeks and months before even taking the test. Identify your main areas of weakness. So you don't do this while revising your essay, but rather you do it this way before you start the exam. The reason this is so important is that students are rarely terrible at all areas of grammar. They usually have one or two areas that could be prepositions or articles or verbs of that agreement or tenses or punctuation. Typically there is only one area of ​​weakness or two areas of weakness. And if you have one or two areas of weakness, that will lead you to make mistakes in every sentence.

So the best way to prevent mistakes is to identify those weak areas, work on them and turn them into strong areas. And then you won't have to check as much because you'll drastically reduce the number of mistakes you make. And then when it comes to grammar, there are three checks you need to make. Read after each complete sentence. So at the end of each sentence, read the sentence again, it doesn't make sense grammatically; If not, correct it. Read after each completed paragraph. Then, when you finish your introduction, read the entire introduction. When you finish the first main body paragraph, read the entire first main body paragraph and check for any grammatical errors.

Read it after you have completed the entire essay. That means you've revised each sentence three times. You might think it's excessive, but if you start doing it, you'll start to see that you miss small mistakes, even at this stage. And I think it's also a good idea to break up your revision to focus on grammar first and then vocabulary, because our brains are much more capable of focusing on one thing at a time and doing one thing effectively at a time. Often when people review, they simply search for everything. They'll look for grammar, they'll look for vocabulary, they'll look for ideas, development, and all those things.

And they have 17 different things going through their heads at the same time, and that means they don't detect anything. So first check your grammar and then your vocabulary. Here are some things you should think about when reviewing your vocabulary. The most important thing is the meaning. Does the word mean what you think it means? And what we tell our students is to follow the 100% rule. If you are not 100% sure of the meaning and whether or not it fits that sentence, don't use it. Use a simpler word. Now, many students will argue about that and say, "I want to put in as many high-level words as possible." If you do that, you will misunderstand most of those high-level words.

It's a complete waste of time to even put them in there and will lower your vocabulary score. Therefore, it is better to use a simple word correctly than to use a complicated word incorrectly. Collocations, very, very important in English. Check the placements. When you are learning new words, you should always think about and write down collocations. Appropriately, is it appropriate to use that word in that sentence? And variation. Have you repeated some words? It's okay to repeat some words, but you should try to vary your language as much as possible. So do a quick check: is there any way you can use a synonym instead of that word you've been repeating?

And then level. You may want to take a look at the simplest words in your essay and, if possible, improve them. So is there a way to improve your vocabulary by turning a simpler word into a more complicated one? For example, if you are writing about food and you say the food was very good, you can change very good to delicious. And the third check, think about everything else. So think about paragraphs. Is your paragraph clear? Word count, have you written more than 250 words? Coherence and cohesion: Is your essay as easy to understand as possible and well interconnected?

Was your position, your opinion clear throughout the entire essay? And did you answer the specific question? And if you check off all those things, I guarantee you'll spot some things and say, "Oh, if I'd left that out, I would have gotten a lower score than I expected." By doing all these checks, you will get the score you deserve. Ok guys, everything you need to know about IELTS writing

task

2, question type, question analysis, idea generation, structure, planning, for planning. stage, how to write an introduction, main body paragraphs and conclusion for the writing stage, we go into much more detail about these three things within our ILTSA Builder, it is a complete and free course that you can access.

Just click below the video. and you can get instant access to that. And then make sure you check your grammar, your vocabulary, and everything else. We hope you enjoyed this video and found it useful. If you need help, don't hesitate to comment. We then respond to each comment. And if you want to email us, chris@

ielts

advantage.com is my email address. We answer every question. If you have any questions related to IELTS, feel free to mail meemail, or if you would like our help with your preparation, please feel free to email us. If you liked this video, please like it or simply say thank you in the comments.

If you didn't like it, don't hesitate to dislike it or tell us in the comments. Thank you guys so much and check out our other videos if you want additional help with your IELTS preparation. (playful instrumental music)