Unit 8 – IELTS Writing task 2 – How to find ideas for the Task 2 test

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How to find idea for IELTS Writing Task 2

One of the biggest problems for candidates who take the Writing Task 2 exam is … being implicit. It is true that the great vocabulary or complex grammar that wants to show it is always necessary to mean. So when the secret, we have to do?

First of all, we need to know where the essay, or thesis, comes from. When writing an IELTS Writing Task 2, we must “put” our views into the article. That perspective, or the way we perceive everything around us, comes from the information we read or interact with every day. So the question you need to ask here is, what information are you exposed to every day?

Not necessarily in English, the information we interact with daily can be news, media, social networks, gossip with colleagues, etc. If you are not in contact with one of the This type of information, you should learn and create habits for yourself to see them every day. I usually get information from online newspapers and news, 2 sources that I think anyone on this day can also access.

So from the information sources that you read, you form two great arguments to use for the body of the text. Let’s take an example of a recent topic: university vs. vocational school

Suppose we support the university completely, so now we have to give 2 reasons to support the university?

Here is your first suggestion: “why?” Why support “university”? Support is good for the university to support, right? => Why is university good? => What does good mean, is there any benefit? => university what is the benefit? Benefits are specifically for whom, for those who go to school, right? => What are the benefits of University for students?

Continuously asking questions to clarify what is not clear from the “why?” is a way to shape big arguments. Now, suppose we have a big point:

University helps learners find jobs.

The next question you should ask is “Why?”

=> University gives learners the skills necessary to work

After the “Why?” Question, you should ask “How?”, Or “How is university for people to learn skills? How does it work? Is there anything at university that helps people get skills?” power?” => “Ah, courses”

The question “why” helps readers understand why you think so, while the “how” helps illustrate the reader to add persuasion. So, when the know-how in task 2, ask yourself the “why” and “how” questions in turn. You will get a complete, tight essay without “scattering” about unrelated issues.

I wish you a high score in the IELTS writing test!

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Unit 6 – Writing task 2 – Read and understand the topic in Writing task 2

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Read and understand the topic in IELTS Writing Task 2

One of the most basic requirements, if you read the grading barem, of Writing, is “address the question”. The question asks me what, I have to answer that. It sounds simple, but the reality is that there are too many friends who are “adventurous”, focusing on “topics” rather than asking questions. So, we need to determine the problem requirements before we start writing Task 2.

Task 2 has 4 main types of topics:

A. Opinion

This topic usually has common sentences such as:

– How much do you agree with this statement?

– Do you agree with this statement?

– To what extent to do you agree with this statement?

You can easily identify this topic when it asks if we have: agree or disagree with a point raised earlier.

With this form, you can choose to follow one of two directions: (1) totally agree / disagree or (2) half lean and half fat (partly agree). With the complete form, you will follow the structure:

Open lesson => Reason 1 => Reason 2 => Summarize

With half lean, half fat form, you will write:

Post => Aspect agree => Disagree aspect => Summarize

Whichever type of answer you choose, the examiner will not judge whether you chose “true” or “false”. However, according to the experience of 99% of IELTS test takers, going “completely” is always safer and easier to write. There are some things that would be silly to write both yes and no, for example:

Smoke:

=> Idea 1: extremely harmful to health

=> Idea 2: looks very cool

Obviously, going in the “completely” direction will be a lot easier to write. Remember, the examiner doesn’t care what you answer, people just care how you express the answer.

B. Discuss / Discuss + Opinion

This article is easy to recognize, because it simply has the word … discuss. The discussion will give you 2 points. It may ask you:

– talking about 2 points of view (A)

– talk about 2 views + give your opinion (B)

This article is also quite easy to write, with type A, you just need to write:

Open lesson => Viewpoint 1 => Viewpoint 2 => Summary

With type B, people will ask what opinion you support, that is, you will have to choose. After choosing the opinion that you support, you will write

Open lesson => Viewpoint 1 => Viewpoints that I support => Summary

Note, when writing point 1 in form B, not that you “object” to this view. You simply give out the reason why others support it.

C. Problems + Solutions

We can identify this form of post quite easily by the phrases:

– What are the causes?

– What do you think causes this?

– What are the solutions?

…

In short, see “causes” & “solutions”. The way of writing this article is simple:

Open the post => Causes => Solutions => Emphasize the need to do right solutions

When writing causes and solutions, the easiest way is to write in an enumeration, for example

– Causes: There are a number of causes to …

– Solutions: A number of solutions can be used …

Then list out the causes and solutions. Quite systematic and simple.

D. 2-part questions

Finally, there are 2-part questions, which are quite easy to recognize because there will be no sign words for the above forms, but 2 question marks.

=> …? …?

This is also very easy to write:

Go to lesson => Answer question 1 => Answer question 2 => Finish lesson

So here are 4 types of topics in Task 2, please pay attention to write as required so you don’t get lost!

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Unit 5 – Writing task 1 – How to read a large data sheet in IELTS Writing task 1

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How to read a large data sheet in IELTS Writing Task 1

Of all the types of tables, Table is probably the most difficult to read. It has too much data and often has no ordering. This leads to a situation where “numbers are still numbers” but have no meaning, making it difficult to compare and describe. So, when approaching a Table, the first thing before starting to write is to rearrange the information to make sense.

Have a look at the following table:

The table below gives information on consumer spending on different items in five different countries in 2002.

You can see there are 15 numbers in this table. Of course, we cannot report each number in turn. Instead, choose a axis to compare. You can go along (by Country) or traverse by each type of item (by Items):

  • Follow Country: if you use Country as the axis to describe, you will consider each country to see how they spend on the three items in the table.
  • Following Items: If Items are axes, you would describe the difference in expenditure for each item of the country.
    When doing Table task, not choosing any axis will give us 2 equivalent posts. In fact, one axis makes us have a more logical article than the other axis. If you notice above, if you write in Country, you will have to write an article of 6 different ideas, while writing in Items, the coal only has 3 different ideas. Similar to the spirit of the chart article, we always try to make fewer and more comparisons. So we can see, if followed Items, our article will have more comparisons (5 objects vs 3 objects). This also means that the reader after reading our article will remember more.

After selecting the axis, we can go into the table description. Like charting articles, you should always comment on this table. Since we have set an axis to describe as Items, we will comment on Items. It can be seen that people spend the most on Food / Drinks / Tobacco and at least on Leisure / Education

Looking at the graph, it is immediately obvious that people in six countries spend the most on food, drinks and tobacco while allocating the smallest portions of their budget to leisure and education.

Note: You can see above is that the word spend on the first side has been paraphrase back to allocate … portion to the back. In Task 1, we try not to repeat the two structures. Of course, you can write “… spend the most … spend the least …”, but the article will be more appreciated if you have more than one way to express an idea.

After making a general comment, you will go into the description along the selected axis. So, if you use Items as an axis, you will describe the difference of the same item in different countries. You should note not to write in this way:

In Food / Drink / Tobacco, Ireland spent A%. Italy spends B%. Spain spends C%. etc.

This style of writing does not reflect the relationship between the countries we want to compare. Instead, group the countries together. Looking at the table, we can clearly see that in Food / Drink / Tobacco, Ireland and Turkey spend significantly more than in the other 3 countries. So you can write:

Among the five countries, it can be noted that the expenditure for food, drinks and tobacco of Turkey and Ireland was significantly higher than that of the others, at 32.14% and 28.91% respectively. In the same category, Italy, Spain and Sweden all spent under 20% of their budget with Sweden having the smallest percentage at 15.77%.

As you can see, none of the expressions are used twice. You can repeat, but if possible, avoid doing this in the same paragraph. Task 1 only has 12-15 sentences, so it is not difficult to paraphrase.

Similarly, you can write a paragraph describing the remaining 2 items as follows:

Compared to food, drinks and tobacco, spending for clothing and footwear is noticeably lower in all countries. With the exception of Italy who spent 9% on these items, the expenditure of the other countries in this category was relatively the same and below 7%. The smallest proportion of spending was allocated to leisure and education. In this category, Turkey has the highest percentage of national consumer expenditure at 4.35% while the smallest figure can be seen in Spain at only 1.98%.

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Unit 4 – Writing task 1 – General comment in IELTS Task 1

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General Comment in IELTS Task 01

There is a very important part that is very easy to write in IELTS Writing Task 1 that many people take the exam or ignore, which is the general comment. In the right order, the first task when writing Task 1 is to paraphrase the topic, and before going into describing the details of the drawing, you must write a summary of about 1-2 sentences. You should note that never write more than 2 sentences to summarize, because if you write more, you are writing too specific.

So what do you need to write in the general comment section? Simply what catches your eye first. However, our eyes are not the same. The details you immediately notice may not be seen by others. So, a good rule of thumb for all Task 1 lessons is to: comment on the overall trend and / or order comments.

For this general comment, you should have a sentence template to get started. The most common, easy and effective sentence patterns are:

It is immediately obvious that … = Immediately obvious that …

There are also other spellings such as: It can be seen that …, it is transparent that …, etc. Notice that ways like “I can see” or “we can see” are not mentioned. In Task 1 as well as Task 2, we always try to avoid the use of human pronouns (I, you, we, they, he, she), because these words reduce the formality of the sentence. .

You can also add at the beginning of the phrase:

Looking at the graph / chart / diagram / picture …

In addition to the sentence pattern above, we have a sentence like “Looking at the chart, we have …” quite similar in math. This is an easy-to-remember sentence pattern that every candidate should understand and memorize to make the test smooth and effective.

A. Look in order

With the multi-line graphs or objects as above, ask yourself: which one is the largest or has the highest proportion? So, with the chart above you can write:

Looking at the graph, it is immediately obvious that people in Germany spend the most money on books out of the four countries.

B. Looking at the general trend

For items that have few objects (1-2 subjects) or no clear order, you should comment on the overall trend of all subjects. Although in the picture above, the order of the lines has changed, but in general, the trend of the lines is going up, because the end point is higher than the starting point. You can write:

Looking at the graph, it is immediately obvious that all three countries experience an increase in the number of people aged 65 years and over.

C. General commenting process (Process)

So what about non-numerical articles and trends like Process? For Process threads, you will write a general sentence to group the steps into the main stages: what to start with and what to end with. For example, study the following topic:

The above diagram can be divided into several steps, however, we can divide it into the main stages as follows:

  • Getting started: use limestone and clay to create cement
  • Finish: using cement and other materials to create concrete

After writing the opening sentence: The diagram shows …, we can add the general comment section right behind without having to go to a new sentence:

The diagram shows …, beginning with transforming limestone and clay into cement and finally adding that to a combination of other materials to produce concrete.

D. General comment Maps

Please rely on the peculiarities of maps to comment on it. All maps show the change of a place over the years, and this change usually revolves around the addition and loss of buildings (buildings, roads, …). The map above is a difficult problem of a difficult problem. However, you can see the change of this map taking place in two aspects: the appearance of roads and the appearance of new buildings. If you pay close attention, new buildings only appear after roads are built. So, you can write:

Looking at the picture, it can be seen that more buildings emerge in the village following the construction of different types of roads.

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Unit 3 – Writing Task 1 – The increase / decrease in the IELTS Writing Task 1

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The increase / decrease in the IELTS Writing Task 1

Statistically, Task 1 is most likely to fall into a number of graphs that focus on numbers: bar charts, line graphs, pie charts, and tables. In these types of articles, we focus on describing the changing or unchanged of numbers. So one of the most important vocabulary topics for this test is how to say the data increase/decrease

In the most basic form, we have the increase (and decrease) duo. Anyone who takes IELTS must know these two words. However, one more thing that every IELTS test person must know, that is to avoid word duplication. In a 10-15 sentence essay in Task 1, you have to show a wide range of vocabulary, which means you have to know more than one way to say a word. So, do we have other ways to describe the increase and decrease?

1. Increase

Interestingly, the other vocabulary for describing increase/decrease and even “advanced” than increase/decrease are the simple verbs that we come into contact with when we first learn English. Specifically, these are verbs that indicate an upward movement, such as:

Climb (climb the mountain)

.Rise (Sun rises)

Escalate (The escalator goes up)

Or simply go up

The fact that you use a variety of words rather than just using one word will help you easily improve vocabulary points in Task 1. In addition to the words above, sometimes you have to use the words “stronger” to Describe a sharp increase. In English, we also have very “figurative” words to describe this increase:

Shoot like a rocket (verb skyrocket or shoot up)

Soaring like an eagle (verb soar)

2. Reduction

Corresponding to the above rising words, we also have the opposite words with the opposite meaning, for example

Go up => Go down

Rise => Fall

In addition, we also have some other words that are quite memorable and familiar, such as decrease, reduce or drop.

With the sharp decline, in IELTS you will mainly use two words that are also relatively “figurative”: dip (sink) and plunge (dive).

You should pay close attention to the strength of the trends, because vocabulary points will be most appreciated when you use the most accurate words.

Take a look at a chart below:

This chart has a clear uptrend, but there are two types of gains, slow and fast. It can be seen that before 1985, national recycling rates inched up very slowly, but after this year, the increase was very strong.

So we can write:

Overall, total waste recovery increased. From 1985, it skyrocketed.

Other spelling
If you notice, the words given above are all verbs. So, when using these words, we will often write S + V sentences like:

A + increase / decrease / fall / rise / …

This style of writing is completely OK, but in IELTS, besides dividing the correct verb, if we show many different sentence patterns, the grammar of the article will be more appreciated. So is there any way we can describe an increase / decrease without verbs?

The simplest way is to use the nouns of the verbs above. Some of the verbs above have noun forms, and the great thing is that their noun forms are written exactly like the verb form. For example, you have:

Rise => a rise

Fall => a fall

Drop => a drop

But how to use these nouns? Obviously, all sentences in English have verbs. So what verb are we going to use?

Please write the following form:

A + experience + a rise / a fall / a drop …

So, the sentence above that we wrote:

Overall, total waste recovery increased. From 1985, it skyrocketed.

Can be rewritten to:

Overall, total waste recovery experienced an increase.

Please note that not all words can be converted into nouns. You should only use the structure “experience + nouns” with the words: rise / fall / drop and increase / decrease.

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Unit 2: Writing Task 1 – How to paraphrase thread in Writing Task 1

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How to paraphrase thread in Writng Task 1

Paraphrase is a very useful and necessary skill, because in both Task 1 and Task 2, you need to paraphrase the opening sentence. This is especially easy in Task 1 because at the beginning of the lesson you can immediately navigate the small parts to paraphrase.

Basically, the steps to paraphrase 1 at the beginning of Task 1 are as follows:

Step 1: show = give information about = illustrate = demonstrated

Step 2: If the title says “the chart” then write more specificly, becoming “the first chart” or “the bar chart”

Step 3: If the board has many different “objects”, you should specify how many objects.

Example of speech:

The chart below shows the amount of money per week spent on fast foods in Britain.

See my underlined part? Please write down what the fast foods are. I look at the chart there are 3 types of fast foods so I will rewrite them: 3 different types of fast foods.

Step 4: Quantitative words like amount, number, population, percentage turn into how many / how much and vice versa.

Step 5: If you have a number of years (for example, 1900 – 2015), you can write from 1900 to 2015, or use the very dangerous phrase over the course of 115 years starting from 1900.

So the following we have to paraphrase:

– from “show”

– from “chart”

– common noun

– amount

– time

Let’s paraphrase some threads, for example, paraphrase the problem above first:

The chart below shows the amount of money per week spent on fast foods in Britain.

=> The bar graph ILLUSTRATES how much money people in Britain spent per week on 3 different types of fast food.

I just paraphrase 4 parts as mentioned above, it’s simple right? Do some more examples for familiar hands:

1) The charts below show the results of a survey of adult education. The first chart shows the reasons why adults decide to study. The pie chart shows how people think the costs of adult education should be shared.

=> The bar graph demonstrates 7 different reasons why adults pursue education at their age.

=> The second chart shows how the surveyees think their education expenses should be allocated.

2) The table below shows the consumer durables (telephone, refrigerator, etc.) owned in Britain from 1972 to 1983.

=> The table illustrates the ownership rate of different home appliances in Britain over the course of 11 years starting from 1972.

This has to be explained a little bit. When I read the term consumer durables, I didn’t understand what it was, never seen it. But looking at the list, you can see the fridge, TV, washing machine, etc. so it’s similar to home appliances.

Many of you wonder what the ownership rate is like this. In the table it shows how many% of households own each of the listed items, so I spawned the ownership rate cluster. If you want to look more closely, you can write the changes in ownership rate, because every time period has changed.

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